Guest Opinion; Dr. Tim Ball
The only place in the world where CO2 increase causes a temperature increase is in climate models, including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The assumption that a CO2 increase causes a temperature increase is central to the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis. If incorrect, failure of this assumption alone should guarantee rejection of the hypothesis. In proper scientific procedure if the hypothesis is rejected the null hypothesis is considered. In this case, the null hypothesis is that CO2 is not causing global warming. The IPCC never considered the null hypothesis. Ironically and unwittingly, James Hansen proved the null hypothesis in his first major attempt to push his agenda that CO2 is causing global warming or climate change.
Background
The first IPCC Report appeared in 1990, but the more orchestrated push of the AGW hypothesis occurred with the 1995 Report. Four years later an Antarctic ice core record produced by Petit et al., was published in Nature. The article included a graphic that juxtaposed temperature, CO2, methane, and insolation (Figure 1).
It appeared to provide support for the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis. It looked like temperature increase preceded CO2 increase. I recall one of the authors, Jean Jouzel, warning in an interview not to rush to judgment. He noted it was 420,000 years plotted on a 10 cm long graph, complicated by a 70-year smoothing average that masked much detail. He was prescient. AGW advocates ignored the warning and used the graph as support for their hypothesis. It effectively became the forerunner to the ‘hockey stick’ in grabbing media and public attention.
However, in proper scientific tradition Hubertus Fischer, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography was already questioning the cause and effect relationship with a 1999 paper. In 2001, Manfred Mudelsee published another paper that challenged the relationship in Quaternary Science Review.
Lowell Stott followed with a 2007 paper in Science titled, Southern Hemisphere and Deep-Sea Warming Led Deglacial Atmospheric CO2 Rise and Tropical Warming. Sherwood and Craig Idso maintain the best website on all issues related to CO2. They provide a list of papers that yield further evidence that the relationship is opposite to the IPCC assumption. None of this ever received mainstream media attention.
Failed predictions, which began with the 1990 IPCC Report, were one of the first signs of problems. Instead of revisiting the assumptions and science of their hypothesis they made the first political adjustment by creating projections to replace predictions. They compounded their duplicity by allowing the media and public to believe they were predictions. Hansen et al,
produced a forerunner of the projection scenarios in 1988, the same year he appeared before the US Senate committee to kick-start the entire AGW deception. Figure 2 shows the original graph from that article.
In an incisive article on Hansen’s model Anthony Watts provided a modified version of Figure 2 with actual temperatures added (Figure 3).
Hansen et al, postulated three scenarios,
A: increase in CO2 emissions by 1.5% per year
B: constant increase in CO2 emissions after 2000
C: No increase in CO2 emissions after 2000
Naturally, the mainstream media focused on the temperature projections of scenario A. Some of us knew Scenarios A and B were unrealistic, and now we know how wrong they were. I had many discussions in the 1990s with Canadian ice core expert Fritz Koerner about his Arctic Island cores. He told me they showed temperature increasing before CO2. In retrospect, scenario C is more interesting and more telling.
Hansen presents it as the ideal scenario. He is telling political leaders and media what will happen if humans stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Salvation! Temperatures will stop increasing. Ironically, this is equivalent to running the model as if CO2 was not causing warming. In doing so, it effectively presents the null hypothesis to the AGW hypothesis. It shows what would happen if CO2 was not the cause of warming. It approximates reality.
Figure 4 shows similar scenario projections from the IPCC AR4 2007 Report overlain with actual CO2 increases. The difference with Hansen is in the low scenario. The IPCC say in AR4,
Model experiments show that even if all radiative forcing agents were held constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming trend would occur in the next two decades at a rate of about 0.1°C per decade, due mainly to the slow response of the oceans.
Figure 4 appears to show that the “Best” and “High” projections are primarily a function of the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels. Even the “Low” projection diverges from the actual temperature trend shown for the surface (HadCrut) and satellite (UAH) records. Besides confirming the null hypothesis the results show that the IPCC claim of continued increase because of slow ocean response is also incorrect.
Hansen limited his research and climate models to human causes of climate change. He produced two projections that argued CO2 would continue to increase. In doing so, he predetermined the outcome. He confirmed his hypothesis that continued human production would cause global warming, but only in the models. However, apparently driven by his political agenda, he had to convince politicians that a reduction in CO2 output would solve the problem. To do this, he ran his model to show what happens with no CO2 increase. It produced a curve that fits the actual temperature trend in the intervening 27 years. This is the result you expect if you accept the null hypothesis that CO2 from any source is not causing global warming. Thanks, Jim, enjoy your retirement.
It is an unfortunate constant failing of AGW doubter’s that they consider that by proving the science to be incorrect that they are winning. Sadly the reality is that is not and has not be for a long time about ‘the science’
+1
Interestingly Joe Bastardi agrees with you. If you disprove AGW, he believes it is still to late to stop the ship. To much money, ideological tribalism, prestige, careers (both political and academic) invested to admit defeat. The discourse has gotten so emotional and so far away from rational analysis, that it is immune to reasonable analysis, no matter what the real costs are to civilization. http://www.weatherbell.com/saturday-summary-october-3-2015 He by the way has outlined what it would take to change his mind on the subject.
Probably true. Without a very pronounced and prolonged cold spell, the juggernaut will likely continue. But, who knows? We may be in for just such an event.
I think the history of 20th century experiments with state socialism is relevant here.
Recall that State Socialism was considered correct by all right thinking and up-to-date intellectuals. It was “rational”, “atheist”, “scientific”, “historically inevitable”. Only those with a selfish private interest could deny the superiority of the socialist model.
As it actually played out, there was a lot of lurching about from country to country. The talk was everywhere, but only some countries really took the plunge.
It took a long, long time to admit error, and many intellectuals in the west have never frankly admitted error, much less accepted personal culpability for the multitude of ensuing disasters.
Now, 100 years later, socialism is back. The painful lessons all largely forgotten. Now we call it “regulation” rather than “state ownership of the means of production”, even though the meaning is essentially the same.
Not a particularly reassuring history, but is I think a bit more complicated than “too late to stop the ship”.
“Now we call it “regulation” rather than “state ownership of the means of production”, even though the meaning is essentially the same.”
We call it “crony-capitalism”, or “corporatism”, or “fascism”. Benito Mussolini preferred “corporatism”. Private “ownership” with state control via various means is the norm and has been for many, many generations. In the end, the state is a gang of thieves writ large.
“Anatomy of the State”
https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Anatomy%20of%20the%20State_3.pdf
“Venus.”
Proof Venus surface temperature has nothing to do with CO2 content or a Hansonian “runaway greenhouse effect,” and is merely a function of the Maxwell et al atmospheric mass/pressure/gravity “GHE”:
From NASA’s fact sheet for Venus:
Venus atmospheric pressure 92000 mb
density is 67 kg/m^3
mean molecular mass is 43.45
Using the Ideal Gas Law, we calculate temperature of T = PV/nR = 92000/(67000/43.45*0.082) = 727K for Venus
According to NASA, the actual surface temperature is 737K
It is almost as if no one gives a hoot about the many facts that disprove the erroneous myth of CO2 warming. The delusion is deep in this generation.
Nnngghhglrmph…
Thank you for this. It is so relevant, I plan to screencap your reply and use it immediately. I just had the Venus factor thrown in my face 2 days ago and had no idea how to respond… until now. Many thanks.
Hockey , You know I consider your comments and calculations to be among those that finally made me see the light wrt gravity being the factor explaining the higher temperature at the base of atmospheres than that given by their effective ToA spectrum . I think the point that it is gravity which creates the pressure and makes it stable needs to be emphasized because that is the “source” of the energy which must be in balance at the radiative surface .
I would add that my Heartland presentation , http://cosy.com/Science/HeartlandBasicBasics.html , just shows the quantitative absurdity of the notion that Venus’s surface temperature can be explained as a spectral phenomenon . At the time I had no good answer for why the surface was so hot , just that it could not be Hansen’s qualitative non-computational word-waving .
Lots of people get hung up on the paradigm of null versus alternate hypotheses which comes from the field of statistics , eg , Fisher . In quantitative physics , a hypothesis can be disproved even when the alternate hypothesis is simply “I don’t know” .
I love the warm air a Chinook brings down from the mountain. Don’t you Ferdinand Englebeen?
Thank you Bob Armstrong for your kind words.
Many reject gravity as the source of the “GHE” since gravity is a conservative force, but as Feynman eloquently explains, it is the interconversion back and forth between kinetic energy KE and gravitational potential energy PE that is the source of the tropospheric temperature gradient in a PURE N2/O2 atmosphere, and has nothing to do with “radiative forcing” or backradiation from IR-active gases.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2015/07/feynman-explains-how-gravitational.html
After “acing” highschool physics , I went by a circuitous route thru psychophysics back to finding late in grad school that math provided the only satisfying answers . I got Feynman’s 4 volume intro physics texts which are Feynman lucid and he has a chapter on “The Exponential Atmosphere” . But he essentially only explains pressure in it as I remember .
I mentioned previously meeting Alan Guth and being impressed by the simplicity of his arguments in a brief appendix to his Inflationary Universe book on gravity being usefully thought of as a “negative” energy . Certainly that works well in considering this situation .
Dr. Ball’s name on an article guarantees its quality and readability. — Eugene WR Gallun
Agreed.
In various blogs and warmist Facebook posts no one has ever explained how CO2 achieve this feat lots of crap links but they cannot or will it explain, everything I read leaves conduction and convection out of the theory and experiments, surely it needs to be included??
“To do this, he ran his model to show what happens with no CO2 increase.”
can also be restated as
To do this, he ran his model to show what happens with no global temperature effects from any CO2 increase.
As you say, QED.
The feedback that controls Ice Ages in fig 1 is albedo, not CO2.
CO2 can give a change of about 4 wm2, which may or may not be assisted by another 4 wm2 of water vapour. Ok, lets give the combined pair about 10 wm2 of feedback-forcing – max.
But a change from 10% albedo (land and water) to 60% albedo (mature snow and ice) can give a change of 230 wm2 in a northern latitude summer. (Average summer insolation at 60ºN about 460 wm2.) Now that is some change in warming potential.
So what is going to be the primary driver of temperature changes and Ice Ages – the widespread 10 wm2 derived from CO2 and water vapour, or the localised northerly latitude 230 wm2 derived from albedo changes?
R
What is the changed caused by greening the planet some 20% since the mid-eighties (Or whatever the exact number is)?
Is a world which experiences more, and more intense, thunderstorms via Willis’s convection hypothesis, enriched in nitrogen as well, via the effects of lightning induced fixation, above what is the case without such enhanced convective activity?
>>What is the changes caused by greening the planet?
Not very much, I imagine, because the cloud thermostat will act to stabilise temperatures. There are two positive feedbacks and one negative.
Positive — Ice-snow albedo change – fairly significant warming due less ice.
Positive — CO2 and water vapour – insignificant warming due more CO2.
Negative — Cloud albedo – significant opposition to the effects above (in this case cooling).
And since cloud albedo is as strong as ice albedo, and much stronger than CO2, the clouds can and will act to regulate and stabilise the temperature.
Bob Tisdale’s cloud graph shows clouds and therefore cloud albedo increasing in the late 20th century, to counter the increased ice-albedo warming, and then leveling off as temperatures stabilised in the 21st century. This is much as you would expect with a cloud regulated thermostat.
http://i42.tinypic.com/20kacuf.jpg
My understanding is the portions which have greened have been disproportionately the margins of deserts and other places where there was sparse or absent vegetation to begin with.
So the greening may represent somewhat of a “reverse UHI” effect, by taking bare rock and dirt and moderating the temperature of it.
It may well be the case that there are compensating mechanisms, separate from the direct affects on heating and cooling of bare surfaces.
If there are such compensating mechanisms, then the situation would presumably work the other way as well, and compensate for the actual UHI by the inverse of these compensatory processes occurring.
We know that vegetation tends to moderate temperature, all else being equal…it will get less how in the afternoon sun, and less cool during nighttime heating, vs areas with no vegetation.
Sorry, …less hot in the afternoon…
OLD DEATH TRAIN HANSEN —
Always Good For A Laugh
More holy than thou
He warns you of Venus
The only thing now
That hardens his penis
He rants at the crowds
A coot with the hypers
His mind in the clouds
A load in his diapers
He quotes from the Greens
We work for the many
(Diversity means
The colors of money!}
He quotes from the Reds
Consensus is dictum
(Good Socialist heads
Are all up one rectum!)
A Fascist he cries
This Goebbels of weather —
THE TRUTH IS IN LIES
THE BIGGER THE BETTER!
So just like a skunk
His sight is alarming
His science is junk
There’s no global warming
Eugene WR Gallun
Hansen seems to be a person utterly obsessed with himself. When you examine his public life everything he has ever done is about putting himself at center stage. That is why he has troubles with others in the “global warming scam”. Hansen psychologically needs to be the one and only “Global Warming Poster Boy”. A sick man.
Eugene WR Gallun
The null hypothesis is already satisfied. Hansen didn’t beed to do anything.
As a reply to Bubba Cow, it is well-known that the oceans uptake yearly about 50 % of the CO2 emissions of the mankind. The absorption rate of the oceans varies a lot and there is a pretty good correlation to the temperature of the oceans (r2= 0.75). Today the early emission rate is about 10 Gt carbon – 50 % stays in the atmosphere and 50 % is absorbed by the oceans. In 1960 the CO2 flux emission was only 2.5 Gt carbon but the division between the atmosphere and the oceans was about the same 50/50.
If you like to read a short overall description about the CO2 fluxes between the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere, you can find it in my English blog by name “Simulation proves that the anthropogenic CO2 portion in the atmosphere is 7.7 % – not 28 % as argued by IPCC”. From this title you can see that I have cancelled out IPCC’s claim about the high anthropogenic CO2 content in the atmosphere. The link: “http://www.climatexam.com/”
The blog in question is the 6th in the row in the subsection “English blog”.
thank you Dr. Ollila – as well as for the additional excellent readings at your site
Cheers
Virtually no one in the general public, including many educated folks, even scientifically educated people do not realize that CO2 is only .04% of our atmosphere. When informed of this it makes the concept of CO2 being the boogieman much less believable for most. This trace gas does nothing but enable photosynthesis! We spend too much time playing on the other side’s field and using their rules in the way we measure increases in CO2 and tenths of a degree temperature anomalies. The magnitudes of the quantities being measured are miniscule and in many cases the results of those measurements are well outside of any true statistical significance when all of the potential sources of error are considered.
Many in the general public have no idea what to make of a number like 0.04%.
There are legions of innumerate folks, and even more with no perspective on what such a number signifies in real terms, even if they do understand that this is a small amount.
But I would not make too much of this fact.
As I have pointed out on other threads, there are dyes which will prevent the passage of light through water at concentrations many orders of magnitude below the amount of CO2 in air.
A chemical compound can have effects far out of proportion to the concentration of that substance in a medium.
Menicholas,
My point is that due to the unending propaganda people think that CO2 is 20, 30,…..50% of the atmosphere and when they find out what a small percentage it is they begin to have doubts about the propaganda they have been fed. As you point out regarding their lack of understanding of numbers, such would be also true regarding their knowledge of the dies you speak of. This is a propaganda war with regard to most of the general public and we continue to use the competition’s rules! Even showing properly scaled graphs of actual temperatures rather than anomalies is helpful in changing people’s minds about CAGW. I always start off by indicating that there has been global warming for about 12, 000 years but we are not causing it. It is a natural process. Picking fly shit about real science and die concentrations is not helpful as most folks will look at you with a blank stare.
Jim,
Do not get me wrong, please. I was not disagreeing with you in the least…merely extending the thought.
You are absolutely correct when you say that there is widespread lack of knowledge, and in fact startling ignorance, of actual CO2 concentrations.
Sadly, this is only the tip of the iceberg…as many people are functionally illiterate when it comes to factual matters of science.
Similar situation exists with matters of history.
And when you get into Earth history…fuggedaboudit.
Even many so-called climate scientists seem to know almost nothing about the actual documented knowledge in Earth history texts.
Clarification…not disagreeing in regard to the knowledge or lack thereof of the general public.
I am agnostic at this point re the discussion here of whether there is a GHG warming affect.
I am a physical chemist, and a geographer, with a smattering of knowledge of biology and Earth history…sort of a generalist, my first degree pursued was interdisciplinary natural sciences…a degree since discontinued…I am not a condensed matter physicist, and many here are. Or at least seem to be and purport to be. If they cannot agree on the radiative properties of the atmosphere, who am I to jump in and offer an opinion one way or the other?
I do love the debate though, and go back and forth on which way I am leaning depending on who is talking.
I understand the persuasive arguments on both sides, and just hope I do not run out of popcorn.
How can it be that there is such a seemingly stark and basic disagreement over this topic?
It would seem that experiments could and should be devised to put the mater to rest and settle it once and for all.
I find the arguments put forward by Mr. Bob Armstrong, Fedberple, and Hockeyschtick compelling. But much of the counter-argumentation seems compelling as well. If the statements regarding Venus are not true, those on the other side of this question should dispute them in clear and plain language and argument.
Ditto with the temperature profile of the Earth’s atmosphere being completely and adequately explained without regard to the specific composition and mixture of gasses.
” AGW advocates ignored the warning and used the graph as support for their hypothesis.”
As usual, no quotes or support offerred. In fact, it has never been part of AGW theory that ice age terminations are caused by rising CO2. The theory says that CO2 blocks IR, and if you put a whole lot of CO2 in the air it will warm. But that doesn’t mean that all warming is caused by CO2, and back in the past, no-one was actually forcing new CO2 into the atmosphere.
Petit Nature 1999 actually referred to and commented on Fischer’s paper:
So did the IPCC ignore Fischer? No, the AR3 (2001) quoted it directly:
Are you sure the theory says it blocks IR? And doesn’t this same sketchy theory say it is logarythmic and the effect is statitsically negligable at this point? Also doesn’t the theory and subsequent experiments omit convection and conduction entirely?
Sketchy? You doubt the greenhouse effect?
CO2 doesn’t “block” IR, other than acting as an “optical delay line” of a fraction of a second, whereupon it either transfers those same quanta of energy to the other 99.96% of the atmosphere via collisions (ONE BILLION times more likely throughout the entire troposphere AND accelerates convective cooling) or re-emits a photon (again within a fraction of a second) of the exact same ~15 micron IR. The alleged “heat trapping” of all CO2 in the atmosphere results in a mere delay of seconds from the surface to space, easily reversed and erased during each 12 hour night for no net diurnal, annual, or multidecadal effect.
Arrhenius-believers confuse the cause (gravito-thermal GHE of Poisson, Maxwell et al) with the effect (IR absorption & emission from IR-active gases).
Bill- I don’t doubt it I flat out say it’s hokum! Grade school science used to tell us how to see the gaping holes in its theory. Maybe that’s the trouble crap teaching today making people gullible! They hate kids who can think for themselves they want Stepdord kids!
Here is my problem. Using an electrical circuit as an analogy where a 1 ohm resistor represents the energy absorbed by radiation from the sun and the voltage represents the radiation from the Sun. With a constant voltage source of 1 volt (the Sun). Apply this to a 1 ohm resistor. It will generate 1 watt of heat at that resistor. Let this represent the energy adsorbed by an area of land on the Earth. Now place a 100 ohm resistor in series with that 1 ohm resistor. The 100 ohm resistor represents the energy blocked by the CO2 in the atmosphere that does not reach the earth. Yes, the 1 ohm resistor will no longer have 1 watt of power, however, now the 100 ohm resistor will be delivering ~ 1 watt of heat. Point is, even though the CO2 “blocks” the suns energy from reaching the Land/Ocean it does not block it from reaching the Earth and becomes part of the energy balance. It is NBOT reflected it is adsorbed. This becomes intuitively obvious when you look at any radar images of the earth. The lakes, rivers and oceans are BLACK. They do not reflect back the radar signal, they adsorb the radar signal and are “heated” by that radar signal. Just where does all of this heat from the sun that is adsorbed by the CO2 (and all of the other GHG0 go? It must warm the atmosphere and then warm the earth. It definitely will warm the water vapor and this warmed water vapor will be carried somewhere to release this heat somehow.
I agree fully with hockeyschtick here.
We need a time perspective on radiation physics because it is happening at the speed of light and at the miniscule amount of time that a molecule absorbs that energy before passing it on through emission or collisional exchange. CO2 holds onto an absorbed IR photons for an average 0.000005 seconds before it is emitted or passed onto another molecule, Every atmospheric molecule hits another atmospheric molecule every 0.00000000015 seconds, an emitted IR photon from the surface could escape the atmosphere in just 0.000016 seconds at the speed of light – yet it actually takes 40 hours to make the journey. In the Sun, the average photon takes 200,000 years to make it out. It is not CO2 absorption which is slowing the energy/photon getting out from the Sun. It is all the molecules here operating at the quantum level where all this actually happens and quantum theory includes “TIME”. Greenhouse theory does not.
– the energy represented by a solar photon spends time in 5 billion individual molecules on Earth before it escapes to space. That means it is bouncing around from molecule to molecule to molecule almost continuously. The IR emitted by the surface is not skipping Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules and preferentially seeking out CO2 and H20 only. Every molecule on Earth and in the atmosphere is participating in this process and does so continuously. Maybe CO2 or H20 provides the initial absorption, but that energy is shared amongst the rest of the atmospheric molecules almost immediately. What happens to it then? That is a question which seems to have no meaning in Greenhouse theory.
usurbrain:
Not the way it works.
The sun is putting out a 3000k spectrum. CO2 is largely invisible to this spectrum. Sunlight hits a surface and some is reflected and most is converted to kinetic energy (heat) in the surface of the ground or converted to heat in about the first 100 meters of water. This material is heated to some temperature (~27C (call it 300K) for the oceans pn average and whatever the climate zone is for the land (somewhere between 230K and 320ishK)) and emits IR radiation around that temperature spectrum and heats the adjacent air by conduction. The air then also emits at its temperature.
CO2 absorbs at 15 microns which corresponds to a temperature of about 193K. This is way down the power spectrum of the 230K emissions which is peaked at 12.6 microns while the 320k is centered at around 9 microns. The oceans make up most of the surface and average about 300K or a peak of 9.6 microns. CO2 is simply not in the peak of any IR emission for temperatures experienced on earth.
Because of the nature of the Wien’s law curve, there is SOME energy there for CO2 to absorb, but it is well below the peak. When CO2 absorbs this photon it excites the bond to a higher quantum level. This quantum excitation of the bond has a very short statistical lifetime and will relax back to ground state either through collision with other molecules or by emission of the same wavelength photon in some random direction. This is repeated over and over as the packet of energy is absorbed and re-emitted. As the atmosphere becomes less dense at higher altitudes, it becomes more likely that the packet will be emitted as a photon rather than kinetic energy through collision.
The lower altitude collisions will slightly raise the temperature of the air. This will cause the air to rise to stabilize PV=nRT, (rises to expand to a volume that makes its density the same as its surroundings,lowering its temperature as a side effect,) thus raising slightly the mean altitude of the center of mass of the atmosphere and thus the mean emission altitude for the atmosphere. If I really wanted to find how much each collision added to the temperature of air would take more statistical manipulation of the Maxwell distribution than I want to do, but it is tiny in the grand scheme of things.
At night, all emissions are for the temperature of the material surfaces and the air. Because of the fourth power temperature law, the surface quickly gives up its heat. In a body of water this leads to overturning of the top layers, so a new layer gives up its heat over and over. In the atmosphere this leads to contraction of the atmosphere slowly over the whole night and a lowering of the average height of the center of mass. This helps to maintain the surface temperature by converting some potential energy in the atmosphere to kinetic energy and is why the surface temperature doesn’t drop to the cold of space. The water content of the air mass also slows the cooling by both the increased mass density and water’s own IR absorption effects that are centered closer to the temperature emission peaks than CO2.
I know this got long, but there have been whole books written on the basics of atmospheric dynamics that go into far more detail than I did here.
Bill says:
Bill, I rarely disagree w/you, but that’s one of my pet-peeves. Most every time a photon hits something, it’s actually absorbed (destroyed) and re-emitted (created). No individual photon survives more than the tiniest fraction of a second — in the sun at least. I do get the gist of what you’re saying, tho.
beng135,
Yes, you are right. It is more the energy released in a fusion reaction in the core of the Sun. This eventually results in photon emission from the surface of the Sun, but the point is it takes TIME for the energy to get out, a surprisingly long period of time in fact. And it is no different for energy emission from the Earth as well.
Aren’t we looking at two different, independent phenomena? The gravitational / lapse rate is one effect and forms the base of the temperature distribution on any planet with an atmosphere.
Isn’t the GHG effect, which mainly redistributes its capturing of IR in the lower atmosphere as heat, simply additional? I still don’t see that the additional warming simply is redistributed from warmer to colder places by convection without any effect on surface temperatures…
THANK you gentlefolk for your explaining effort. This re-re-radiation business seems at times to us not-so-physics persons like some zany but fantastic game of photon billiards sinking balls right and left playing out in Pikachu-seconds, leaving one to imagine if it were ‘true true’ the Universe would have been game over by now. I look around and see there are still balls on the table. What a relief.
I know explaining Greenhouse must be tired old hat to you all by now but we sincerely appreciate it. As a side trip you may find it fun to visit the archived Talk pages for the Wikipedia ‘Greenhouse Effect‘ page, the hidden places where articles are gnashed and churned into consensus. As with many Wiki pages, the GH page itself appears serene and informative but it has a history of tumult. I poke fun at the tumult and link directly into some of those Talk pages in this romp last year where I honor Dr. Seuss by coining Fourier’s blocks-convection greenhouse as Thing One and the Re-radiation explanation as Thing Two. Some people show up at the GH Wiki page to become confused because they thought they implicitly understood Thing One. Others show up to revel in Thing Two and become confused and annoyed that Thing One is even mentioned. The definition of Greenhouse can be a real Circus McGurkus at times.
Ferdinand says, “Aren’t we looking at two different, independent phenomena? The gravitational / lapse rate is one effect and forms the base of the temperature distribution on any planet with an atmosphere.
Isn’t the GHG effect, which mainly redistributes its capturing of IR in the lower atmosphere as heat, simply additional? I still don’t see that the additional warming simply is redistributed from warmer to colder places by convection without any effect on surface temperatures…”
The source of the 33C “greenhouse effect” and the even larger negative 35C “anti-greenhouse effect” from 5100m to the top of the troposphere is entirely gravito-thermal. Arrhenius-believers have confused the cause (gravito-thermal) with the effect (IR absorption and re-emission from IR active gases).
There cannot be both a 33C Arrhenius radiative GHE and a 33C gravito-thermal GHE, because if so the GHE would be doubled to 66C. One and only one GHE is correct: gravito-thermal, as proven by giants of physics including Poisson, Helmholtz, Maxwell, Clausius, Carnot, Boltzmann, Feynman, et al.
Hockeyschtick, if conduction is so much faster then LWIR radiation, then, sans GHGs in an equally dense atmosphere, and assuming an initially cooler atmosphere, would not more energy conduct (as conduction happens faster) from the surface to the atmosphere, until the atmosphere equaled the surface T?
Also would not atmosphere become more isothermal?
“David A October 4, 2015 at 8:35 pm
Hockeyschtick, if conduction is so much faster then LWIR radiation, then, sans GHGs in an equally dense atmosphere, and assuming an initially cooler atmosphere, would not more energy conduct (as conduction happens faster) from the surface to the atmosphere, until the atmosphere equaled the surface T?”
By “conduction” I assume you are really talking about collisions between gases in the atmosphere. However, convection dominates by a factor of >8 times the heat transfer throughout the troposphere, thus dominates radiative-convective equilibrium in the troposphere from the surface to 0.1 atm tropopause.
The 68K tropospheric temperature gradient is a linear function of gravity (g) and the heat capacity (Cp) set by the adiabatic lapse rate equation (which is in turn derived from the Ideal Gas Law and 1st Law of Thermo)
dT/dh = -g/Cp
and has nothing to do with radiative transfer or radiative forcing from IR-active gases.
“Also would not atmosphere become more isothermal?”
No temperature is a function of pressure, which is in turn a function of mass/gravity/geopotential height. Nothing to do with GHG concentrations.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2015/07/physicist-richard-feynman-proved.html
True on Earth, Venus, Titan, and all 8 planets in our solar system for which we have adequate data.
David A : “Also would not atmosphere become more isothermal?”
To amplify :
This is exactly why nothing other than gravity can explain the gradient . The Divergence Theorem would demand the atmosphere be isothermal without it .
From below Figure 1, referring to Petit et al:
‘…It looked like temperature increase preceded CO2 increase….”
Is there a typo in there? Or am I confoozed?
The CO2 Warming hypothesis is that CO2 rises, and that then causes temperatures to rise later
The reality is that temperatures rise, then a few hundred years later CO2 starts to rise.
Temperature increase prior to CO2 rise shows that CO2 is out-gassing (likely from oceans) in keeping with all we know about the gas laws and CO2 solubility; and that CO2 is not a cause, but a result, of warming. Therefore the CO2 causes Global Warming is shown false. QED.
Yup, the cause cannot follow the effect.
QED simples.
Not really what the IPCC/warmistas say: the start of the warming after a glacial period is by the Milankovich cycles, which warms the oceans, which release some extra CO2. The latter helps the temperature increase, but is not the primary cause. According to Hansen (2003) GHGs are responsible for about 40% of the increase in temperature during a deglaciation (fig. 3):
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2003/2003_Hansen_1.pdf
BTW, there is no problem with the mutual influence to both sides, as long as the overall gain is less than one: a response of CO2 after temperature followed with a small response of temperature on CO2 levels will run both a little higher without runaway effect:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/feedback.jpg
Which doesn’t imply that Hansen was right: as there is a huge overlap between T and CO2 rise during a deglaciation, it is quite impossible to separate the influences. But during the onset of a new glacial period, CO2 remains high while T decreases to a new low with CO2 lagging thousands of years. That was the case at the end of the last interglacial (the Eemian). The subsequent drop of 40 ppmv CO2 after temperatures reached a new minimum (and glacial ice a new maximum) had no measurable influence on (proxy) temperatures…
Regards the Ice Age record. It has been confidently determined and widely accepted that surface temperatures begin to rise (or fall) first, while CO2 concentrations follow between 200 and 800 years later. So CO2 is a follower, not a leader.
However, they also assert that CO2 and water vapour provide positive feedbacks that assist the temperature increase (or fall), creating an Interglacial (or an Ice Age). However, as per my post above (12:05 pm), the most significant feedback during Interglacial or Ice Age formation is actually albedo, which can provide up to 20 times as much forcing as CO2 and water vapour combined.
So what is going to be the primary positive feedback enhancing the Interglacial warming (or Ice Age cooling) – the puny CO2, or the mighty albedo? Personally, I think that these so-called ‘scientists’ backed the wrong horse – possibly for political-economic reasons (you cannot tax albedo).
Ralph
“It appeared to provide support for the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis. It looked like temperature increase preceded CO2 increase.”
I stumbled over this too. Prima facie, if temperature increase preceded CO2 increase, it would be a problem for AGW, rather than ‘appearing to provide support’. I assumed that it was a slip of the pen; that what Dr Ball meant to say was something like: ‘At first sight it looked like CO2 increase preceded temperature increase, but on closer analysis this was not the case.’ Maybe Dr Ball could look at this again.
David
October 3, 2015 at 2:50 pm
David. It is actually simple if you consider it carefully and without prejudice..\
AGW hypothesis is about anthropogenic forcing due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
Anthropogenic emissions do not depend and do not follow temps. This is the first point.
The overall CO2 emissions follow the temps, and will be increasing with the increasing of temps (personally I do not completely agree with this), which the hypothesis claims it will increase (the temps) due to anthropogenic forcing as a result of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions….and the warming will keep going up as the CO2 concentrations keep going up in a “limbo effect” due to the temps keep going up……and the whole thing turning in a runway global warming at some point.
So if somewhere in all this mess the data show that actually the CO2 concentration keeps going up with no regard to temps, as during the last ~17, with no any sign of caring to follow the temps but even considered as overtaking the temps in the variation path , then the AGW is in a big trouble……….
cheers
Whiten,
There is no runaway effect as long as the overall gain between T -> CO2 -> T is less than one, see my previous message…
So still pushing half a theory? So CO2 is transparent to sunlight but absorbs one band of ir and re emits it? So if it gains energy then it takes up a greater volume( correct me if I am mistaken) this energy will transfer to and other gas in contact and so conduction and then convention need to be considered. In fact back to the greenhouse! The experiments effectively have taken place in greenhouses thus removing convection from the equation, how ironic
increase in mass. Mass = Energy
Just look at ‘constitution’ of the IPCC. It was established with on the basis that acceptance that anthropogenic global warming was a confirmed scientific fact. This was its starting point. So much for the ‘science is settled’ .Now move along please.
Very well done. Just nicely terse and complete at the same time. Bravo!
The shaded area on Hansen’s 1988 graph labelled “Estimated Temperatures During Altithermal and Eemian Times” is highly misleading; Eemian temperatures: “… [the] Eemian climate was significantly warmer than the climate of the current Holocene interglacial – probably about 5°C warmer …” (Centre for Ice and Climate Copenhagen).
I’m sorry to be so stupid, but can someone explain in layman’s terms what ” Null Hypothesis” means ?
null = no or nothing so –
in a relational set-up: (correlation stats r=0 and R squared =0)
null hypothesis then would be = there is no relationship between temperature and CO2
as CO2 increases, temp doesn’t follow (could go up, down, or “pause”)
in “experimental” set-up: (F and t = big numbers (without getting obscure))
null hypothesis would be = changes in CO2 do not cause changes in temperature
the alternative hypotheses are that one thing is related to the other of the one thing changing causes the other to change – this is where IPCC is and it is generally unacceptable practice in traditional science research to test the alternative unless there is overwhelming evidence as a basis
I didn’t think so 🙂
If the claims of an hypothesis are observed to be false then the null hypothesis is satisfied. The original hypothesis is wrong. The null hypothesis is a construct that identifies what it takes to indicate an hypothesis wrong.
@ur momisugly DP
Can you deconstruct that comment for a poor layman ?
It’s starting to sound like philosophy.
Easy to find many usable definitions of such a term.
Here is one:
“In inferential statistics the null hypothesis usually refers to a general statement or default position that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena …”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis
Here is another couple:
”
null hypothesis
n.
A hypothesis that is assumed to be true for purposes of statistical testing against an alternative hypothesis. The null hypothesis is usually that there is no treatment effect or no difference between groups.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
null hypothesis
n
1. (Statistics) statistics the residual hypothesis if the alternative hypothesis tested against it fails to achieve a predetermined significance level. Compare hypothesis testing, alternative hypothesis
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Null+hypothesis
u.k.(us):
You are not being “stupid” when you ask
In hope of helping, I again provide an explanation.
The Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed a system has not experienced a change unless there is evidence of a change.
The Null Hypothesis is a fundamental scientific principle and forms the basis of all scientific understanding, investigation and interpretation. Indeed, it is the basic principle of experimental procedure where an input to a system is altered to discern a change: if the system is not observed to respond to the alteration then it has to be assumed the system did not respond to the alteration.
In the case of climate science there is a hypothesis that increased greenhouse gases (GHGs, notably CO2) in the air will increase global temperature. There are good reasons to suppose this hypothesis may be true, but the Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed the GHG changes have no effect unless and until increased GHGs are observed to increase global temperature. That is what the scientific method decrees. It does not matter how certain some people may be that the hypothesis is right because observation of reality (i.e. empiricism) trumps all opinions.
Please note that the Null Hypothesis is a hypothesis which exists to be refuted by empirical observation. It is a rejection of the scientific method to assert that one can “choose” any subjective Null Hypothesis one likes. There is only one Null Hypothesis: i.e. it has to be assumed a system has not changed unless it is observed that the system has changed.
However, deciding a method which would discern a change may require a detailed statistical specification.
In the case of global climate in the Holocene, no recent climate behaviours are observed to be unprecedented so the Null Hypothesis decrees that the climate system has not changed.
Importantly, an effect may be real but not overcome the Null Hypothesis because it is too trivial for the effect to be observable. Human activities have some effect on global temperature for several reasons. An example of an anthropogenic effect on global temperature is the urban heat island (UHI). Cities are warmer than the land around them, so cities cause some warming. But the temperature rise from cities is too small to be detected when averaged over the entire surface of the planet, although this global warming from cities can be estimated by measuring the warming of all cities and their areas.
Clearly, the Null Hypothesis decrees that UHI is not affecting global temperature although there are good reasons to think UHI has some effect. Similarly, it is very probable that AGW from GHG emissions are too trivial to have observable effects.
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 (just as the global warming from UHI is too small 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).
To date there are no discernible effects of AGW. Hence, the Null Hypothesis decrees that AGW does not affect global climate to a discernible degree. That is the ONLY scientific conclusion possible at present.
And that conclusion is also explained by the above article from Tim Ball.
Richard
“In hope of helping, I again provide an explanation.
The Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed a system has not experienced a change unless there is evidence of a change.”
Would you care to provide a reference? (it isn’t true)
IWO, If one is unable to find evidence for something, the possibility that no evidence exists must be considered.
As stated, this is the bedrock foundation of evidence based science.
“the bedrock foundation of evidence based science.”
Well, maybe, bu that isn’t the Null Hypothesis. You can generally tell that people don’t know much about it if they use capitals. The Merriam-Webster definition is:
“a statistical hypothesis to be tested and accepted or rejected in favor of an alternative; specifically : the hypothesis that an observed difference (as between the means of two samples) is due to chance alone and not due to a systematic cause”
And it’s not quite so simple – in formulating a null hypothesis you have to postulate a stochastic distribution – give a meaning to “chance alone”. There could be more than one null hypothesis that you could test.
Nick Stokes:
Science is NOT statistics.
Some good science uses statistics. Most good science does not.
As I said, in science
Statistics adopted its version of a Null Hypothesis in the twentieth century and long after science had been using the Null Hypothesis. Indeed, Newton’s Laws of Motion are a formulation of the Null Hypothesis for dynamic systems.
Richard
Crikey! Why on Earth has that reply gone into moderation!?
Also closely related to modern theory of jurisprudence…namely, that a person is presumed to be innocent until/unless proven guilty.
The burden of proof is on the person or body seeking to propound a conclusion.
Being accused of a crime was, at one time, considered to be strong evidence of guilt. Under this presumption of guilt, various methods, including physical torture, were used to extract confessions from the accused.
Once one was accused, such methods would be employed for as long as it took, and in whatever severity needed, to extract said confession.
It was up to the accused to prove that they did not commit the charged offense.
It is now generally regarded as a truism that it is a logical impossibility to prove a negative proposition.
One cannot arrive at conclusions first, discard exculpatory evidence, magnify the significance of incriminating evidence, and call the result justice.
One may not do the same and call the result science.
Thanks for trying everyone.
Avoid Nick’s last name.
Dr Ball, thanks for a very interesting and generally accurate article. But there is one serious error:
You say “Ironically, this is equivalent to running the model as if CO2 was not causing warming. In doing so, it effectively presents the null hypothesis to the AGW hypothesis. It shows what would happen if CO2 was not the cause of warming. It approximates reality.“. That is incorrect. The models are not able to model any of the natural drivers of climate http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/17/how-reliable-are-the-climate-models/ , therefore a model run without CO2 would simply show an unchanging climate. In no way does that show “what would happen“. A change of wording is needed!
Mike Jonas
October 3, 2015 at 2:55 pm
Hello Mike.
I think you do not get the point that Dr. Ball was making.
What I think it really needs a change of wording is this:
“The models are not able to model any of the natural drivers of climate http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/17/how-reliable-are-the-climate-models/ , therefore a model run without CO2 would simply show an unchanging climate. In no way does that show “what would happen“.”
It is a paradoxical statement or conclusion.
Also I think you referring to GCM models, when the Hansen models in question I think (not sure though) are not GCM models.
And as far as I can tell there is not a suggestion about any model run in question as in without CO2.
Please try do be a little more specific, otherwise, as far as I can tell, you can easy end up with a paradoxical statement, which in turn will be very difficult to unravel and understand at its main point, if it ever has one.
cheers
I continue to be astounded by the ignorance of the most basic physics this entire displayed in this endless Pinky & the Brain nonscience . I use the term “ignorance” because most have had this classical physics presented to them in college , but they ignore it . They treat it as interesting anecdotes , but not as adamantine non-optional constraints on the quantitative understanding of a planet’s surface temperature . Perhaps some of it comes from the fact that “climate scientists” start from the wrong perspective to analyze the problem . They are looking up at the turbulent complexities of weather when what is needed in determining global means is a more abstracted view from the outside .
First of all , if you are going to quantitatively explain the temperature of a planet , you have to be able to explain the temperature of a radiantly heated ball . And the entire conversation starts derailing right there . The 33c , 255k “atmospheric green house” computationally useless meme based on a hypothesized step-function spectrum becomes pervasive rather than computationally fundamental value calculated simply by summing the total energy impinging on the planet , which in our orbit corresponds to about 278.6K +- 2.3c from peri- to ap- helion . The 33c meme disguises the important fact , demonstrated in the 1830s , that a flat spectrum gray ball comes to that same 279K however dark or light .
The effect of the color , ie , spectrum , of the ball can then be expressed as a simple ratio of dot produces of source and object spectra times that gray body value . Other than my Heartland presentation , I know of no place on the web where this most essential quantitative relationship is explained . It should be required in the first week of an curriculum leading to a degree in climate science .
So , the equilibrium temperature of a radiantly heated ball is determined by its spectrum as seen from the outside , eg , for a planet , more or less by its “Top of Atmosphere” spectrum . This boundary is actually not a simple surface but is wavelength dependent reaching down to the surface of the Earth itself ( or clouds ) over much of the visible spectrum .
But let’s be sure we can calculate the experimentally testable temperature of a simple ball first .
Next , we run into a profound and exacting constraint : the Divergence Theorem . This is at most second year calculus , but at least that much math should be required of anybody claiming to be a “climate scientist” or they simply do not have the education to have any useful opinion on issues of global mean temperature .
At this point we have left Gore and apparently Hansen behind . Essentially the theorem shows that the mean temperature of the interior of a ball must equal that calculated for its surface unless their are internal sources of heat . That is , you cannot explain our estimated 3% warmer than gray body temperature on the basis of spectrum . Especially given that our ToA spectrum apparently is more towards that 255K extreme than towards warming . Hansen’s claim that Venus’s extreme surface temperature 225% its orbit’s gray body temperature is due to an extreme greenhouse spectrum simply does not compute . It requires a spectrum an order of magnitude more extreme than anything humanity has yet to be able to create .
The changes to Earth’s ToS spectrum are , as one would expect from Beer’s Law , so minuscule as to be a minor factor in the ~ 0.3% change in our estimated surface temperature we have seen .
So how can it be warmer down here than it is up there ? What can “trap” heat ?
The apparent answer finally got thru to me in a discussion on http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/22/why-we-live-on-earth-and-not-venus/ : the obvious precisely understood radial parameter which must be considered is gravity . In order for the divergence theorem to be satisfied at equilibrium over the radiative boundary , the total energy , including gravitational , must be in balance . That requires increasing thermal energy as one descents in the gravitational well .
This is non-optional , persistent not dynamic , and simply calculable . And apparently matches measurements on all planets to which it has been applied . I’ve added some notes and links on this to http://cosy.com/Science/HeartlandBasicBasics.html .
I think I resisted considering gravity as the next non-optional parameter in any planetary temperature model because I didn’t think it was significant enough and because it implies a very deep relationship between gravity and temperature . For one thing , it implies Lord Kelvin was wrong — with or without radioactivity . There is a calculable temperature , much hotter than the surface , the core of the Earth will stay at as long as the Sun shines with its current power .
With respect to AlGoreWarming , it implies that CO2’s molecular weight has as much to do with our surface temperature as does its spectrum .
Please excuse several typos . Some mechanism is badly needed here to allow at least a few minutes for corrections as most other blogs have . I , at least , see things in the posted font I miss in the draft .
I agree Bob…Exact same thing happens to me. I get typos that I am sure I spelled correctly when I typed it.
Typos were the least of the problems with that post. What a pile of woo.
The presentation on Heartland is rubbish.
Alice : Please show us your equations or experiments which falsify the classical physics I present . To start , please show how the computation I present of the 255K value so widely parroted is wrong when it produces the same value , just presents the computation for arbitrary spectra .
Do you have anything specific to say Alice?
“What a pile of woo” makes for the start of a real feisty criticism,, but it does not sound like much of a refutation to a what Mr. Armstrong had to say unless you have even one specific counterpoint to make.
Finally wrote one about little Jimmy Hansen
back in the day when sceptics were called “cautious scentists”:
Blowing hot and cold in the greenhouse, by Fred Pearce, New Scientist, 11 Feb, 1989
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=fA9tecLhj9wC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=blowing+hot+and+cold+in+the+greenhouse&source=bl&ots=hYN04thvsS&sig=BR-lfRBNpgp0iU4k-HuSqtaoun8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAWoVChMI1LvM3rWnyAIVSCKmCh2DFQYH#v=onepage&q=blowing%20hot%20and%20cold%20in%20the%20greenhouse&f=false
shame Hansen’s co-author died so long ago. doubt if he would have followed down Hansen’s activist path:
2 Nov 1990: Obituary: Sergej A. Lebedeff, 62, Atmospheric Scientist
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/02/obituaries/sergej-a-lebedeff-62-atmospheric-scientist.html
The null hypothesis stuff kills me. In the case of climate science the null hypothesis is that increasing human CO2 is increasing global temperatures which is globally increasing the number and intensity of dangerous weather patterns which then eventually damages all life on earth.
The burden of proof is with whomever is making a positive claim, climate alarmists are making the positive claim so they they need to prove it, Skeptics do not need to disprove anything, the true null hypothesis is that human CO2 has no exclusive measurably negative impact to life on earth. But the climate null hypothesis problem is worse than that, it is not for skeptics to disprove the AGW ill-gotten and preposterous null hypothesis, but skeptics must just accept it like gravity or the speed of light. The ignorance and hubris is staggering.
This is similar to debates about religion which go nowhere when the religious side claims the null hypothesis is the existence of God. While I do not deny people may feel in their heart and spirit the reality of God, in the realm of science there is no proof of God. In truth, concerning religion, there is nothing to debate scientifically or empirically. The same is true for the Climate Science null hypothesis.
Whether the word “greenhouse effect” is right or wrong, whether it is obserbed or reflected, —- the basic issue is in nature the process is not unlimited. It has a limit some where. In the nature CO2 is part, it controlling the Sun’s energy wavelength and Earth’s energy wave lenghs — vary with albedo factor –. This natural process reached a plateau. Any increase in CO2 has a limited impact and thus rise in temperature. Because of this IPCC is trying “rial and error” concept to relate the CO2 with global warming” and this is reflected in sensitivity factor sharp decline. In global temperature raise, there are factors contributing which are not related to the word greenhouse effect. With all these confusion, now a day IPCC and other pro-warming groups use “human actions” and “Climate Change” and not by the specific words “anthropogenic greenhouses gases” and “global warming”, because they are not quantitative figures to prove what they are talking.
Let us look at pollution [CO2 is not a pollutant] and natural variability in climate and local/regional ecological changes impact on climate to help developing nations in specific and globe in general.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
But CO2 is the (current) fulcrum of the lever to control.
In other words, if CO2 (man-made) is not the cause of in the seasonal swings in the weather us “old guys” have lived long before enough to experience, then there is no justification for trying to control it.
There’s much more power-grabbing and politics going on here than actual science.
Typo!
” lived long before enough to experience,”
Drop “before”.
Not quite a “typo” but:
Replace “control it” with “control civilizations’ source of energy.”
Dr. Roy Spencer says the convective heat loss if there’s no greenhouse is almost exactly as the convective heat loss with a greenhouse present. Yes he said convective both times.
But that’s ridiculous. A greenhouse with the windows closed will have close to zero convective heat loss.
One could compare it to conductive heat loss through the glass of the greenhouse, but he doesn’t say that. And anyone who lives in a house with windows in the winter knows you lose heat much faster when you open the windows.
His “facts”, and hence his whole argument about the greenhouse effect, are discredited.
I tried to post this on his website, but that page is no longer accepting replies or at least I didn’t see how to post one.
David,
Do you have a reference? In general Dr. Spencer knows where he is talking about. In this case I suppose he is comparing two open window cases, one with extra heat retention and one without…
David, is this the reference?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/06/what-causes-the-greenhouse-effect/
Seems that Dr. Spencer shows the opposite thoughts as the gravitational theory shows?
No comment of mine on this controversy, need some more reading.,.
The problem anybody who proposes a spectral , ie , greenhouse , explanation of increasing temperature below the effective ToA radiative “surface” is the Divergence Theorem , which being centuries winnowed math is more certain than even such things as conservation of mass=energy .
On the political side of the science there are all of the elected Washington representatives who get elected by voters who want the money from hosting/having solar panels and wind turbines to continue flowing.
Iowa is a good example of votes for wind turbine cash and California for solar panel cash. So global warming alarm suits the voters from these states just fine.