Guest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
In my last two articles I examined what we know, but more importantly what we don’t know, about the three main greenhouse gases (GHG). The first examined methane (CH4) and the second CO2. The fluster of responses about data and accuracy of measurements is essentially irrelevant because combined CH4 and CO2 represent only four percent of the GHG. It didn’t matter whether Beck was right or wrong about actual CO2 measures, what was important was the degree of variability the data showed, such as with the stomata data. This variability was deliberately eliminated in other measures to achieve a smooth, with no splinters, ‘hockey stick’ because it contradicted the well-mixed scenario essential to the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) agenda.
The articles about CH4 and CO2 illustrate the modus operandi of the creators and proponents of the AGW hypothesis. They designed them to prove the hypothesis rather than disproving, as is the proper scientific method. This includes selecting and adjusting the start and end points of records, ignoring those that don’t fit or worse contradict the hypothesis. There is inadequate temperature data for construction of the computer models, and there is even fewer data for every other variable. Data is created mathematically, such as the use of parameterization for temperatures. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explain parameterization as follows,
“…the technique of representing processes that cannot be explicitly resolved at the spatial or temporal resolution of the model (sub-grid scale processes) by relationships between model-resolved larger-scale variables and the area- or time- averaged effect of such subgrid scale processes.”
Figure 1 shows the current percentages of greenhouse gases as a part of total atmospheric gases. The challenge for the IPCC and its promoters was to create a different set of percentages and images for the public. This required amplifying one side, as I explained about CO2 and CH4 while downplaying the other side.
Figure 1 (After Heartland.org)
The first and most important device was the definition of climate change Article 1 of the UNFCCC, a treaty formalized at the “Earth Summit” in Rio in 1992, defined Climate Change as:
a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over considerable time periods.
This allowed them to limit the variables considered in their investigation, which is depicted by the forcing diagrams. Figure 2 shows those for the 2001 IPCC Report.
Figure 2
LOSU stands for Level of Scientific Understanding. Notice only two are rated “High” but we know that is not accurate. Stratospheric water vapour is included, but tropospheric water is not. This is interesting because the 2007 Report says,
Due to the computational cost associated with the requirement of a well-resolved stratosphere, the models employed for the current assessment do not generally include the QBO.
It appears they knew little and did not have the data or the ability to resolve what was going on. The level of knowledge is the same in the 2013 AR5 Report (Figure 3). The changes are telling. Now “Long-lived greenhouse gasses” are “Well-mixed greenhouse gasses.” This is because they switched the narrative. The early story said that CO2 residency time was 100 years, but that was challenged and corrected. The new, false, narrative was that CO2 was well mixed. The “Very High” assessment doesn’t fit the increasing divergence between the CO2 level and the temperature.
Figure 3
The confidence level for well-mixed greenhouse gasses is now “Very high”. This is simply not possible because, as the satellite data from OCO2 shows, CO2 is clearly not a well-mixed gas. The problem is similar to the objective of the IPCC to determine human causes of climate change. It is only possible if you know how much climate changes without the human effect. You can only determine the CO2 effect if you know the effect of the predominant greenhouse gas – water vapor.
The IPCC acknowledges that water vapor is the most important and abundant greenhouse gas. In the 2007 Report they wrote
“Water vapour is the most abundant and important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
They then explain why they are going to ignore it.
However, human activities have only a small direct influence on the amount of atmospheric water vapour.”
The 2013 IPCC Report FAQ 8.1 responds to criticism about not including water vapour as a greenhouse. Here is the entire FAQ, which is illuminating and begs many questions. (There is no significance to the fact it is on page 666.)
As the largest contributor to the natural greenhouse effect, water vapour plays an essential role in the Earth’s climate. However, the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is controlled mostly by air temperature, rather than by emissions. For that reason, scientists consider it a feedback agent, rather than a forcing to climate change. Anthropogenic emissions of water vapour through irrigation or power plant cooling have a negligible impact on the global climate.
Water vapour is the primary greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. The contribution of water vapour to the natural greenhouse effect relative to that of carbon dioxide (CO2) depends on the accounting method, but can be considered to be approximately two to three times greater. Additional water vapour is injected into the atmosphere from anthropogenic activities, mostly through increased evaporation from irrigated crops, but also through power plant cooling, and marginally through the combustion of fossil fuel. One may therefore question why there is so much focus on CO2, and not on water vapour, as a forcing to climate change.
Water vapour behaves differently from CO2 in one fundamental way: it can condense and precipitate. When air with high humidity cools, some of the vapour condenses into water droplets or ice particles and precipitates. The typical residence time of water vapour in the atmosphere is ten days. The flux of water vapour into the atmosphere from anthropogenic sources is considerably less than from ‘natural’ evaporation. Therefore, it has a negligible impact on overall concentrations, and does not contribute significantly to the long-term greenhouse effect. This is the main reason why tropospheric water vapour (typically below 10 km altitude) is not considered to be an anthropogenic gas contributing to radiative forcing.
Anthropogenic emissions do have a significant impact on water vapour in the stratosphere, which is the part of the atmosphere above about 10 km. Increased concentrations of methane (CH4) due to human activities lead to an additional source of water, through oxidation, which partly explains the observed changes in that atmospheric layer. That stratospheric water change has a radiative impact, is considered a forcing, and can be evaluated. Stratospheric concentrations of water have varied significantly in past decades. The full extent of these variations is not well understood and is probably less a forcing than a feedback process added to natural variability. The contribution of stratospheric water vapour to warming, both forcing and feedback, is much smaller than from CH4 or CO2.
The maximum amount of water vapour in the air is controlled by temperature. A typical column of air extending from the surface to the stratosphere in polar regions may contain only a few kilograms of water vapour per square metre, while a similar column of air in the tropics may contain up to 70 kg. With every extra degree of air temperature, the atmosphere can retain around 7% more water vapour (see upper-left insert in the FAQ 8.1, Figure 1). This increase in concentration amplifies the green- house effect, and therefore leads to more warming. This process, referred to as the water vapour feed- back, is well understood and quantified. It occurs in all models used to estimate climate change, where its strength is consistent with observations. Although an increase in atmospheric water vapour has been observed, this change is recognized as a climate feed- back (from increased atmospheric temperature) and should not be interpreted as a radiative forcing from anthropogenic emissions. Currently, water vapour has the largest greenhouse effect in the Earth’s atmosphere. However, other greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, are necessary to sustain the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere. Indeed, if these other gases were removed from the atmosphere, its temperature would drop sufficiently to induce a decrease of water vapour, leading to a runaway drop of the greenhouse effect that would plunge the Earth into a frozen state. So greenhouse gases other than water vapour provide the temperature structure that sustains current levels of atmospheric water vapour. Therefore, although CO2 is the main anthropogenic control knob on climate, water vapour is a strong and fast feedback that amplifies any initial forcing by a typical factor between two and three. Water vapour is not a significant initial forcing, but is nevertheless a fundamental agent of climate change.
FAQ 8.1, Figure 1 | Illustration of the water cycle and its interaction with the greenhouse effect. The upper-left insert indicates the relative increase of potential water vapour content in the air with an increase of temperature (roughly 7% per degree). The white curls illustrate evaporation, which is compensated by precipitation to close the water budget. The red arrows illustrate the outgoing infrared radiation that is partly absorbed by water vapour and other gases, a process that is one component of the greenhouse effect. The stratospheric processes are not included in this figure.
This section is so full of misstatements and false assumptions that it requires an entire column in itself, but that is not the purpose of this column. Suffice to say that this appears to be another way of presenting the already disproven positive feedback. It is also an example of, in the vernacular, having your cake and eating it too. Their argument misses the point entirely. They don’t know how much contribution human water vapour (H2O) makes because they don’t have critical information. They don’t know how much H2O humans produce, how much H2O there is in the atmosphere, or the amount H2O varies naturally. When assessing how much the energy balance is affected by greenhouse gases, the source is only an issue if you want to point an accusatory political finger. For science, the total amount of each gas and how it varies is critical. As NASA notes,
Water vapor is a critical variable for climate studies. The absorption of infrared (IR) radiation by atmospheric water vapor and its subsequent emission at lower temperatures greatly influences the radiative energy balance of the planet.
So, the questions are how much H2O is in the atmosphere and how much does it vary?
In 1996, the challenges for measuring water vapour were explained as follows.
It is very hard to quantify water vapor in the atmosphere. Its concentration changes continually with time, location and altitude. To measure it at the same location every day, you would need a hygrometer, which in earlier days made use of the moisture-sensitivity of a hair, and by now of for instance condensators. A vertical profile is obtained with a weather balloon. To get a global overview, only satellite measurements are suitable. From a satellite, the absorption of the reflecting sunlight due to water vapor molecules is measured. The results are pictures of global water vapor distributions and their changes. The measurement error, however, is still about 30 to 40%.
By 2002, according to NASA, it was no better.
Finally, water vapor plays a key role in the Earth’s hydrologic cycle. Therefore, a better understanding of its role will require long-term observations of both small and large scale water vapor features, a major goal of the National Aeronautics and Space and Administration’s (NASA’s) Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE) program.
But the IPCC is only interested stratospheric water vapour from CH4 as Figure 3 shows. Even here they don’t know much,
Since trend estimates from the cited literature are used here, issues such as data records of different length, potential lack of comparability among measurement methods and different trend calculation methods, add to the uncertainty in assessing trends.
If they were interested in tropospheric water vapour, they could use the total column water vapour measures from RSS.
We have merged the water vapor measurements from the many radiometers in operation since 1987, including SSM/I, SSMIS, AMSR-E and WindSat. These data were all processed in a consistent manner using our radiative transfer model and careful instrument intercalibration. The water vapor from these instruments are used to create a Total Precipitable Water (atmospheric water vapor) product that is best for use in climate study.
This means we have a 28-year record according to RSS and 19 years according to the IPCC. These are the people who demand a 30-year record for statistical significance.
The IPCC employed their standard amplification technique, known as the Global Warming Potential (GWP) to increase the effect of CO2 and CH4 while reducing the role of H2O. What is GWP?
The Global Warming Potential (GWP) is defined as the time-integrated RF due to a pulse emission of a given component, relative to a pulse emission of an equal mass of CO2 (Figure 8.28a and formula). The GWP was presented in the First IPCC Assessment (Houghton et al., 1990), stating ‘It must be stressed that there is no universally accepted methodology for combining all the relevant factors into a single global warming potential for greenhouse gas emissions.
A search for GWP values produces a bewildering range of numbers. This prompted Gavin Schmidt, now Director of NASA GISS, to write,
The relative contributions of atmospheric long‐wave absorbers to the present‐day global greenhouse effect are among the most misquoted statistics in public discussions of climate change.
How does Schmidt clarify the problem? In typical circular argument using self-generated computer model data.
Motivated by the need for a clear reference for this issue, we review the existing literature and use the Goddard Institute for Space Studies ModelE radiation module to provide an overview of the role of each absorber at the present-day and under doubled CO2. With a straightforward scheme for allocating overlaps, we find that water vapour is the dominant contributor (~50% of the effect), followed by clouds (~25%) and then CO2 with ~20%. All other absorbers play only minor roles.
The IPCC is less sure about what is going on. Here is what they wrote in Chapter 8 of AR5 Consider the number of values and subjectively related decisions in this supposedly scientific process (my bold).
Emission metrics such as Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Global Temperature change Potential (GTP) can be used to quantify and communicate the relative and absolute contributions to climate change of emissions of different substances, and of emissions from regions/countries or sources/sectors. The metric that has been used in policies is the GWP, which integrates the RF of a substance over a chosen time horizon, relative to that of CO2. The GTP is the ratio of change in global mean surface temperature at a chosen point in time from the uncertainties related to both GWP and GTP, and the relative uncertainties are larger for GTP. There are also limitations and inconsistencies related to their treatment of indirect effects and feedbacks. The values are very dependent on metric type and time horizon. The choice of metric and time horizon depends on the particular application and which aspects of climate change are considered relevant in a given context. Metrics do not define policies or goals but facilitate evaluation and implementation of multi-component policies to meet particular goals. All choices of metric contain implicit value-related judgements such as type of effect considered and weighting of effects over time.
Water vapour is the giant wet elephant in the IPCC laboratory. The definition of climate change they received allowed them to ignore anything that didn’t fit their hypothesis. As a result, the IPCC focus is on eliminating, ignoring, and creating false narratives to enhance the role of CO2. This has the effect of pushing the elephant of water vapour under water so that like an iceberg the public only see about 10 percent of the mass.
“Therefore, although CO2 is the main anthropogenic control knob on climate, water vapour is a strong and fast feedback that amplifies any initial forcing by a typical factor between two and three….”
..CO2 was supposed to increase temps a little…..which would increase humidity
It was run away global humidity that was supposed to do it..
…then someone realized that was the stupidest theory in the history of mankind
“water vapour is the dominant contributor (~50% of the effect), followed by clouds (~25%)”
….damn hard to measure the difference…got to catch it just right
Unless he’s thinking about clouds made of something else
I was already a skeptic of IPCC, esp. WG III (complete BS), WG II (ridiculous simplifications), and the whole science/politics thing. But I used to believe the AGW theory, although not definitely verified, was at least a reasonable theory based on sound science. (Anyway the controversy seemed too complex and too remote – I knew nothing about atmospheric physics and didn’t wanted to learn a lot about that.)
Then I heard they had this positive temp retroaction thing. O-M-G moment. They had a runaway device in their models. Not run-away when a limit is passed, run-away all the time… can you make a more self refuting theory?
I went to ask about that in a consensusly correct forum. I was told that my question was too intelligent for me. The question was more intelligent than my personae, a pseudonym on the Web. The question was so more intelligent than I appeared to be (I = the personae asking this very question and no other question). IOW the question was more intelligent than the person asking the question, so the question couldn’t asked by the person asking the question. I was told that I must have copied the question from elsewhere. I have been asked the definition of the words of the question.
This was from people pretending to be academics, which was probably true; there is a level of stupid only an academic can reach.
Your ending thought is very appropriate. There can even be a runaway effect associated with that where the academic gets dumber and dumber. See the runaway effect is real in certain cases.
“there is a level of stupid only an academic can reach.”
+1000
Well said.
simple-touriste,
A positive feedback doesn’t necessary include a runaway effect. As long as the overall warming CO2-temperature-CO2-temperature is less than unity, the only effect is that both CO2 and temperature increase somewhat more than without the mutual effect, here for a (small) effect for both, with and without feedback:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/feedback.jpg
“A positive feedback doesn’t necessary include a runaway effect.”
Otherwise we would have run away global humidity every time it went from night to day, or winter to summer…
or a front passes through
…and that’s why their original theory was the stupidest one in the history of mankind
…and the same people are still at it
the feedback problem is equivalent to the sum of an infinite series. this can be convergent of divergent. for example,
1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3 … 1/n is divergent
1/1 + 1/2 + 1/4 … 1/(2^n) is convergent
in the feedback problem you have something like:
1/x + (1/x)^2 + (1/x)^3 … (1/x)^n
which offhand looks like it should converge for values of 0 <= 1/x 1.
however, if x is large, then the series quickly converges, and the feedback has little effect. It is only when x is close to 1 (or less than 1) that the feedback becomes a concern. for example:
1/3 + 1/9 + 1/27 … – converges quickly – feedback contributes little
1/1.01 + (1/1.01)^2 … – converges slowly – feedback contributes a lot.
1/1 + (1/1)^2 … – diverges – infinite feedback.
0 <= 1/x 1.
==========
html problem
0 LE 1/x LT 1, therefore converges for x GT 1
The more intelligent an academic narcissist assumes him or herself to be, places upon them an amount of ignorance in their assumption of their intellectual prowess, which sometimes restricts their ability to grant value to a question or questioner because it is beyond the academic persons ability to either understand or answer the specific question and, as a result, the question must be assumed to be a defect of the questioner in order to maintain the appearance of academic intelligence. This situation is seen more and more, and most recently in liberal academia, politics and in climate change proponents, AGWers, etc.
Make any sense? No sleep last night. But I do understand Simple-touristes point above.
Positive feedback, once input is added, always runs away, you learn this in electronics, the only way to change this is for the feedback to become negative, ie it’s nonlinear. The physical earth would have evaporated all the water if it stayed positive. More nonsense from what are supposed to be climate experts.
Ferdinand Engelbeen @ur momisugly October 25, 2015 at 1:52 am
“As long as the overall warming CO2-temperature-CO2-temperature is less than unity…”
It isn’t. The gain of
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
goes to infinity at low frequency. Even if there were an ameliorating feedback that capped the gain, it would still be very large, as there is no such feedback observable in the past 57 years. As a result, the impact of CO2 on temperature must be very small.
“As a result, the impact of CO2 on temperature must be very small.”
There is no net annual increase in all of the surface stations that recorded temps for a full year since 1940, falling nightly temps are slightly larger than the previous days warming, taking measurement uncertainty into account net is 0.0F + / – 0.1F.
Bart:
It isn’t. The gain of
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
goes to infinity at low frequency.
That formula violates Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater: dCO2/dt depends of temperature in the water phase (= pCO2aq) AND the pCO2 difference with the atmosphere.
With increasing pCO2 in the atmosphere, the average pCO2 difference between oceans and atmosphere gets zero and thus dCO2/dt gets zero, even when still huge CO2 fluxes remain between oceans and atmosphere, but these cancel each other out…
No, it doesn’t. It is precisely the kind of equation you would expect for a dynamic transport process in which there is a continual flow in and out, and any sustained imbalance between the flows causes a sustained change in CO2 content of the surface oceans, and hence of the atmosphere.
You have the dynamics exactly backwards. The increase in the atmosphere is because of the increase in the surface oceans. It therefore cannot be a limiting factor on itself.
Must go, again. Failure of further response is not indicative of acquiescence.
Bart:
any sustained imbalance between the flows causes a sustained change in CO2 content of the surface oceans, and hence of the atmosphere.
A little too much fantasy here: CO2 releases into / uptakes from the atmosphere are directly proportional to the pCO2 difference between ocean surface and atmosphere. If CO2 piles up in the oceans, it is released into the atmosphere, which increase restores the original in/out fluxes at a higher CO2 level in the atmosphere… It is impossible that there will be a sustained imbalance, except for a continuous increase in CO2 upwelling, which is not observed at all…
— micro6500
October 25, 2015 at 9:03 am
Positive feedback, once input is added, always runs away, you learn this in electronics, the only way to change this is for the feedback to become negative, ie it’s nonlinear. The physical earth would have evaporated all the water if it stayed positive. More nonsense from what are supposed to be climate experts.–
Well, Hansen thinks this is what happened to Venus.
But such thinking is sort of like thinking one needs to explain where the Martians went to.
Or if you understand basic stuff like orbital mechanics, one could understand that Venus might not have ever had oceans like Earth- so Venus oceans didn’t disappear because they never existed in the first place. And there are other reasons why Venus may not have ever been a water planet like Earth. Such as Earth has plate tectonic activity and Venus doesn’t.
Hansen is a twit.
And don’t forget Venus get 25% (or 30%, don’t remember exact figure ) more solar energy input than Earth does.
— micro6500
October 25, 2015 at 5:19 pm
Hansen is a twit.
And don’t forget Venus get 25% (or 30%, don’t remember exact figure ) more solar energy input than Earth does.–
Twit is nicer description than a bugger, but he was suppose to be scientist much beloved, and has written many scientific peer approved papers. And he had keen and early interest [and access, due to his position- in NASA management of a NASA bureau and later rising in management of Goddard {GSFC)}- of Venus space exploration.
Earth gets about 1360 watts per square meter above the atmosphere, and above Venus atmosphere it’s about 2700 watts per square meter. At earth surface one gets about 1150 watts of direct and indirect sunlight [with sun at zenith and clear skies]. Below Venus atmosphere at it’s surface one gets at most about 100 watts per meter of sunlight which is mostly indirect sunlight.
” h gets about 1360 watts per square meter above the atmosphere, and above Venus atmosphere it’s about 2700 watts per square meter. At earth surface one gets about 1150 watts of direct and indirect sunlight [with sun at zenith and clear skies]. Below Venus atmosphere at it’s surface one gets at most about 100 watts per meter of sunlight which is mostly indirect sunlight.”
If it’s not reflected directly to space, I don’t think it matters.
Right on! simple-touriste.
The tendency with analysts (academics?) is that they know more and more about less and less and eventually know everything about nothing!
micro6500 October 25, 2015 at 9:03 am
Positive feedback, once input is added, always runs away, you learn this in electronics,
Take a better electronics class!
Build a Wien bridge circuit you’ll find for low values of +ve feedback you’ll get stable operation, you have to increase the overall feedback yo greater than 1 to get unstable operation.
Okay Phil, you got me, fractional positive feedback doesn’t run away.
“When the loop gain is positive and above 1, there will typically be exponential growth”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback
How much is the positive feedback from water from an increase in Co2?
Isn’t a sensitivity > 2.2 by definition a gain of greater than 1?
So, I think you just proved CS has to be less than 2.2, good job Phil!
Bart October 25, 2015 at 11:43 am
Ferdinand Engelbeen @ur momisugly October 25, 2015 at 1:52 am
“As long as the overall warming CO2-temperature-CO2-temperature is less than unity…”
It isn’t. The gain of
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
goes to infinity at low frequency.
So what Bart (or is it Bartemis)? Just another reason your non-physical, curve fit model should be consigned to the junk heap.
In reality:
dCO2/dt =Fossil fuel source + Natural sources (T, CO2)- Sinks (T, Co2)
In the case of the ocean sink, T increase is negative feedback and CO2 increase is appositive feedback.
Phil. @ur momisugly October 26, 2015 at 8:34 am
I use Bartemis when commenting at places there are other Barts, so that is what I use for my WordPress account. The first time I comment, I typically use Bart, but subsequently, WordPress takes over, and you get Bartemis. In the future, I think I will just go with Bartemis from the start.
Anyway, no, you are the one living in a fantasy. Your model does not match empirical reality. You must make your theory match the data, not the data match the theory.
micro6500,
How much is the positive feedback from water from an increase in Co2?
Isn’t a sensitivity > 2.2 by definition a gain of greater than 1?
That is one-way sensitivity plus its own feedback, you need to calculate the two-way sensitivity:
1°C extra gives 16 ppmv CO2 extra.
16 ppmv extra gives 2.2 * 16 / 280 = 0.126°C extra (is in fact non-linear, but so what…).
0.126°C extra gives 2 ppmv extra.
2 ppmv extra gives 2.2 * 2 / 280 = 0.0157°C extra
…..
Still far from a runaway effect, due to the (very) small effect of more CO2 on temperature…
But then CS isn’t > 2.2C.
If a doubling with no feedback is the widely agreed ~1.1C, to get to a CS of 2.2C, that is a feed back greater than 1.
Now what it looks like you’re saying is feedback is nonlinear and actually less than a gain of 1. But it doesn’t look like you’re including the increase in WV that will in itself cause warming, which is the water feedback that causes doubling to be greater than 1.1C. You’d have to also add the increase due to water, and then add the increase in Co2 from the total warming, and so on.
The fact that the e-fold times are not the same wouldn’t matter, or feedback gain is less than 1
micro6500,
The gain of 2.2 was included in the calculation: that is the 2.2 in 2.2 x 16 / 280.
But 16 ppmv increase is only 16/280 of the 3.7 W/m2, thus of the ~1°C only that part increases the temperature.
Even if it was 4°C gain, still the overall gain temperature – CO2 – temperature – CO2 – temperature – …
would get smaller and smaller. That is because the effect of CO2 on temperature is quite small…
” ould get smaller and smaller. That is because the effect of CO2 on temperature is quite small…”
Co2 by itself is 1.1C per doubling.
To get CS of 2.2C, it has an additional 1.1C from water, @2.2C will increase Co2 from beers law, plus if the 1.1C increased water 1.1C, a 1.1 C increase from water will induce an additional 1.1C plus some more from the additional Co2 from the warming, you have a positive feedback loop, a gain greater than one.
On the other hand, as you say Co2 does Hardly anything, which is supposed by surface temps, so CS is far below 2C, and compensated by negative feedback from water, ie there no AGW.
water vapour is a gaz…clouds are not…it is right to me.
But when does water vapour become clouds?
How much of the water vapour leaving the ocean by evaporation eventually becomes clouds?
water vapour becomes a cloud when it condenses out and or freezes into water and/or ice
Have you never been in a snowstorm or dense fog?
Ferdinand Engelbeen October 25, 2015 at 1:52 am
In your plot what is the X and Y?
What sensitivity are you prescribing to CO2 no feedback, and what sensitivity are you prescribing to CO2 with feedback?
Richard,
Both X and Y were randomly taken, together with a small gain for both to show that a positive feedback doesn’t necessary lead to a runaway effect. No resemblance with real life figures and that was plotted many years ago…
Meanwhile in modern control theory they seem to have changed the definition and now a slight positive feedback would already give a runaway effect, see the comment by micro6500…
The definition I used still is from the old school, as Wiki shows:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback
Ferdinand, my experience is in electronics.
“Positive feedback in economic systems can cause boom-then-bust cycles”
This is an example of positive feedback until some inflection point followed by a change of input polarity. In my previous post this was what I was referring to when I used nonlinear, as I was typing this, I realized it too was actually still positive, not nonlinear.
Ferdinand Engelbeen @ur momisugly October 25, 2015 at 10:17 am
But, your model is incorrect, as you assume CO2 responds directly to temperature, instead of its rate of change responding to temperature.
Bart,
CO2 did respond to temperature over the past 800,000 years, it is a transient response where dCO2/dt does respond immediately to a T change, but then slows down in ratio to the new steady state (for the oceans, which are the main driver) and its increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere…
Ferdinand says:
CO2 did respond to temperature…
But the real question is this: Does global temperature respond to CO2?
In other words, does a rise in CO2 cause global warming?
I’ve looked at the geological record, but I find nothing to corroborate that conjecture.
“…but then slows down in ratio to the new steady state …”
Only over very long periods of time. For the past 57 years, CO2 has responded with high fidelity to the relationship
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
Right now, the Ferds are demonstrating the original example about academics and self-tying knots. (grin)
Clouds are NOT made of water vapour. They are made of ice, or water.
Water vapour is transparent to most if not all optical frequencies.
IIRC the reason clouds are somewhat opaque is because of multiple internal and external reflections from the surface of droplets or ice crystals.
Latitude: “Unless he’s thinking about clouds made of something else”
Clouds of BS!
CO2 is relatively well mixed in the atmosphere. It’s the water vapour that is not well mixed, by altitude, by latitude, and most particularly the variability regionally in the horse latitudes.
(check “no night” and click “update”)
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Earth/action?opt=-p&img=vapour.bmp
That regional WV variability has a huge effect on the amount solar near infrared reaching the Earth’s surface. With solar near infrared estimated to be around 49% of the total potential heating effect of solar irradiance.
Not according to the latest OCO2 images.
And what regional variation in ppm do they show?
Stephen see the full scale graph here…
Finally: visualized OCO2 satellite data showing global carbon …
wattsupwiththat.com/…/finally-visualized-oco2-satellite-data-showing-global- carbon-dioxide-concentrations/
So generally around +/- 5 ppm regionally. That’s a whopping +/- 1.25%, that is very well mixed. It’s a lot better mixed by altitude than water vapour too.
I remember that chart from the 2001 report very well. I also remember the IPCC procedural document that explicitly stated the scientific reports could be altered to bring them into consistency with the Summary for Policymakers. Up until then I had pretty much bought into the alarmist view and thought skeptics were more-or-less nuts; ironic that it was reading the IPCC’s own reports that started convincing me the real nuts were in the other tree.
I too remember this comment being made several times. I would very much like to find the actual text about altering the scientific reports…do you happen to have a reference for it? It is very damning evidence about the politics behind the IPCC nonsense.
The rate of change in dew point is an indicator of the direction and rate of energy exchange. For example, dew or frost forms on surfaces when those surfaces radiate energy to a clear night sky with no wind. Condensation/evaporation not only probably controls the rate of energy loss to space but also may control the concentration of CO2 ejected into the upper atmosphere from tropical thunderstorms.
Appreciate your candor; however, I am interested in what made you believe in AGW in the first instance – was it the media with the ever present doom and gloom; the supposed ‘scientific’ credibility of the IPCC without you performing your own due diligence?
have you ever performed this introspective analysis?
Darn – my comment should have been posted under ‘mstickles’. My apology.
Do you believe vaccines recommended or mandated in your countred are effectives? (hint: some are mandatory in parts of the US yet have never been demonstrated to be of any use, not even talking about inherent risks)
Have you done the litterature review of the drugs your doctor gave you?
There is a reason I mention vaccines first, even critics of many drugs get quite hysterical (in some real medical sense) when it comes to vaccine skepticism.
No, most people blindly trust the “science” (*), expert reports (**), judicial conclusions (***) until the “science” hits them badly and then they reconsider.
(*) from such “credible” sources as PNAS, WHO and IARC (#), BEIR, IPCC….
(**) such a accident reports citing, in passing, credible witnesses who formally contradict the official conclusion (see crash of Concorde)
(***) in France, a judicial expert mistook a serie horrific of ritual rapes+murders (with panties of the victim in her mouth) for suicides; this expert was appointed again for a extremely high profile scientific expertise involving alleged radiation victims (in France the high profile medical cases based on scientific expertises often end nowhere)
(#) in French, IARC is CIRC, pronounced by “cirque” (circus)
I used to trust my Drs. with everything they prescribed. However, in recent years, I have been so badly affected by some drugs that I now ALWAYS ask to see a product data sheet before they write a prescription out. I then discuss the side affects and look for alternatives. I do this every time now because I have had some very nasty experiences in recent years. I even did this very recently while suffering from pneumonia.
Doctors are not a pack of infallible super geniuses, no matter what any would have you believe.
I wonder what the temperature of Earth would be if there were no water vapor in the atmosphere.
Probably similar to Mars.
More likely no difference in mean temperature but greater differences between minimum and maximum day and night. It’s water vapour’s greater heat capacity not any back radiation bs that has an influence.
Roy Spencer comments that topic here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/12/what-if-there-was-no-greenhouse-effect/
Dr Spencer’s article says “there would be no weather on Earth without the greenhouse effect.”
What I understand this to mean is that the atmosphere would be isothermal without GHG, consistent with the predictions of statistical thermodynamics. There would be no convection, without GHG to cool the upper atmosphere and warm the lower atmosphere.
This really is the crux of the GHG argument. If the atmospheric lapse rate is the result of GHG, and without GHG there would be no lapse rate, then we would expect warming of the surface due to GHG. This would happen because some of the energy that was in the upper atmosphere would find its way to the surface when the upper atmosphere cooled.
The question then becomes, what happens if we add more GHG. Will it increase the heating effect. Here we have a problem because the the dry air lapse rate (DALR) is stubbornly stuck at 9.8C/km. If we add more GHG, then we would need to increase the DALR to something more than 9.8C/km. But we cannot because the 9.8C/km has nothing to do with GHG.
9.8C/km is an absolute upper limit on the lapse rate induced by GHG, because it is set by gravity. No matter how much you cool the upper atmosphere it will not accelerate faster than the force of gravity, which sets the conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy to 9,8C/km. Therefore there is an upper limit on how much heating GHG can contribute. And we are already at that limit.
the alternative theory is that the atmosphere would not be isothermal even without GHG. conduction predicts an isothermal atmosphere, but convection predicts that a lapse rate will develop. Since we see a lapse rate on all planets with atmospheres, this suggests that it is not atmospheric composition, rather it is the convection in the atmosphere due to differential heating that causes the lapse rate. In which case atmospheric composition will not significantly change the surface temperature.
for example, the rotating bands of wind we see on Jupiter. Are these really caused by GHG? Or are they the result of convection in the atmosphere due to differential heating combined with the rotation of Jupiter? Would there be no winds on Jupiter without GHG in the atmosphere?
I tend to suspect that Jupiter would have weather even without GHG. The temperature difference between the poles and the equator will set up a circulation due to convection, and coupled with the rotation of the planet this will set up band of wind.
>> ferdberple,
Please allow me a friendly extension of your post.
I think the simplest 3d model would be a spherical blackbody with some initial, non-zero temperature, and sufficient mass to retain an atmosphere of some noble gas (implies an initial gas-phase temperature). This system would have no transfer mechanism to add heat to the gas because the ideal blackbody is not material, i.e, no mechanical contact with the gas. I think there would still be a temperature gradient in the atmosphere because of gravity-induced density gradient, but perfect symmetry would prevent convection. Now if you add a flux of incoming plane-wave energy and provide for the blackbody to be material, including properties of radiation absorption and thermal conduction, the symmetry will be broken and convection will occur at the night/day boundary. Other thermal gradients will be seen on the surface of the material blackbody because of the projection of plane-wave energy onto the sphere, so convection appears all around and not just at the night/day boundary. Still no GHG in this model, but there is wind, and thus weather.
Dr Spencer’s article is very interesting, but I believe he is in error (says I in trepidation!). Dr Spencer states: “Well, notice that what we are left with in this thought experiment is an atmosphere that is heated from below by the ground absorbing sunlight, but the atmosphere has no way of cooling…except in a very shallow layer right next to the ground where it can cool by conduction at night.” Dr Spenser also states: “Eventually, the atmosphere would still become ‘isothermal’, with a roughly constant temperature with height.”
His atmosphere absorbs heat at the base from heated earth surface. A parcel of heated air rises, displacing the cooler air in a column adjacent. At the top of the atmosphere (a mythical boundary between “atmosphere” and the “vacuum of space”) gravity prevents it rising further, there being no adjacent cooler air in relation to which it is buoyant. Has this parcel really no way of cooling? Dr Spencer supposes that a parcel of (warm in comparison to the 4K vacuum of space) air cannot cool. I maintain that this is a physical impossibility, until the air has cooled by expansion to match the 4K temperature of space. At this point, gravity ensures that the parcel of air will then spread out over the “top of the atmosphere”, ready to be displaced by another rising parcel of ‘warm’ air. Thus there will, by day, be a constant convective cycle of air, at differing temperatures depending on height and direction of movement, rising air slightly warmer, descending air slightly cooler.
This is NOT an “isothermal” atmosphere as Dr Spencer indicates will happen.
Dr Spencer’s thought experiment needs an atmosphere to conduct heat away from the surface, in addition to what is directly reflected, or absorbed and re-radiated. This results in a fluctuating surface temperature, increasing by day, and decreasing by night. The difference between the maximum and minimum is reduced by the thermal inertia of the atmosphere. Reduce the atmosphere and its thermal inertia decreases, with resultant amplification of the minimum/maximum temperature difference. In the limit, with no atmosphere, the day surface temperature can attain 100C and the night surface temperature can fall to -170C, with a sufficiently low planetary rotational period. These figures are quoted from “Stars and Planets”, Ian Ridpath, HarperCollins, 2nd Ed 1993, p 298, Fortunately we have no need of this “thought” experiment – we have a real, material, sister planet in our orbit with no greenhouse gases. The above temperatures are those found in practice.
“The contribution of stratospheric water vapour to warming, both forcing and feedback, is much smaller than from CH4 or CO2.”
Why would it be contributing to warming when it is absorbing solar near infrared?
Big ass,umptions. I was wondering about that line also.
A big oversight more like.
I believe the stratosphere is cooling. The percentage relationship of water (mostly ice) in the stratosphere is lower as water is strongly concentrated in the lower Troposphere. CO2 is virtually transparent to solar near IR as are ice and liquid water. In the following water and ice are red and blue, respectively, and water vapor is green. From the left to about 2.6 microns is solar near IR. You can see that VAPOR is what absorbs across this spectrum.
gymnosperm, that shows that water and ice absorb more the WV does.
Mmmm…you’re right. Been looking at too many of those inverted transmittance plots lately, Unfortunately, that difference changes the conclusion somewhat. The confusing thing is that absorption and penetration are inverse.Liquid water (and ice) are great absorbers, but that means nothing penetrates much deeper than the wavelength. What does that mean for the stratosphere? Ice crystals are pretty small. Their surfaces absorbing and reradiating act as a drag on transmittance (apart from reflectance) from the sun to the surface in the solar Near IR. That should be a net warming effect. The opposite of what I suggested.
Work fast, make mistakes. I appreciate the help.
I don’t see how it can be a warming effect as it impedes the solar NIR to the surface.
Warming the stratosphere and reducing NIR to the troposphere, where absorption as vapor and liquid (clouds) predominates, as you say. Yet the troposphere is warming a bit and the stratosphere is cooling so this cannot be the predominant factor.
Stratospheric temperatures have fallen along with upper level water vapour, allowing more solar NIR to reach lower levels and the surface. Low level humidity has increased, so the solar NIR that is absorbed there stands a better chance of warming the surface than warming space as high altitude water vapour (ice) does.
That’s negative feedbacks to a reduction in climate forcing. Increased forcing of the climate will increase upper level water vapour and reduce NIR to the surface, again a negative feedback.
Sheepherder and ignoramus.
Whoops, infarction, that was for something else.
Take 2:
I don’t know the trend in stratospheric ice, so I’ll take your word for it. Certainly less of it will allow more solar NIR closer to the surface. In the troposphere it will be a mix of water in the form of clouds and vapor in the form of that invisible stuff that is neither ice nor water. You say this is increasing, but the IPCC disagrees. Not that I trust the IPCC, but the guy who rammed this into the liturgy is an honest scientist reporting what he believes and it is hugely contrary to the meme.
Not sure at what atmospheric level you mean “climate” to apply. Probably the troposphere. Negative feedback to a reduction means an increase in forcing.I am not sure how it follows that this increase in forcing increases stratospheric ice.
We’ve increased the forcing to the best of our abilities with both CO2 and water (2 molecules water for every molecule CO2 in hydrocarbon combustion).
Why isn’t it working?
It is working, a good proportion of the surface warming since the mid 90’s is such negative feedbacks. Lower troposphere water vapour has increased, and upper trop and lower stratospheric water vapour has decreased.
The really crappy information I have been able to find indicates a small increase in stratospheric water (called SLV in microwave sounder parlance).
http://mls.jpl.nasa.gov/products/h2o_product.php
The data is all gridded for making maps and it would take way too long to download all the individual years, amalgamate the data from all the cells. Can’t believe it’s so hard to get data friendly for time series analysis. No wonder nobody’s done it.
I’m seeing an AMO type signal with strat WV reducing since around the mid 1990’s
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n10/images_article/ngeo2236-f4.jpg
https://www.imk-asf.kit.edu/english/sat.php
Very interesting. I may register to access their data but it seemingly only goes back to the 90’s. WVLS data should theoretically go back to the late 70’s. May ask Roy Spencer.
Surprising seasonal variation and correlations with the NH monsoon, ENSO. AMO? Why not?
To measure the amount of “warming” in/of the atmosphere ….. the temperature of the gas molecules in the atmosphere must be measured.
The temperature of the atmosphere can not be measured by measuring the amount of IR radiation flowing un-impeded through the atmosphere.
Satellites can detect and measure the amount of IR radiation flowing un-impeded through the atmosphere at different locales and different altitudes …… but they are incapable of determining the actual or original sources of the “upgoing” IR radiation.
Sam CC & the deceiving Radiation Transmitted graph.
Since Stefan-Boltzmann Law (P = Aeσ T^4) contains that little T^4, power is greatly related to temperature.
So your chart visually trying to equate incomming vs outgoing radiation levels, completely misses on the intensity levels.
http://www.pveducation.org/sites/default/files/PVCDROM/Properties-of-Sunlight/Images/LOGSP.GIF
3,000 K peak is 5xE7 w/m2/wavelenght & 300 K is 12 w/m2/wavelenght.
You trying to fool us or yourself?
Relevant links on the contribution of stratospheric water vapor. Its effect on cooling is I think the more important point.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100128_watervapor.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/06/nasa-satellite-data-shows-a-decline-in-water-vapor/
Of course it causes local cooling in the atmosphere. The original point is what difference it makes to surface temperatures.
Up to 200mb is still in the troposphere too.
Upper troposphere water vapour decreasing since the mid 1990’s. That will be the warm AMO mode then, as it dries out continental interior regions.
” That will be the warm AMO mode then, as it dries out continental interior regions.”
Surface station rising/falling temp difference at the regional level has distinct disturbances at differing times (years different) that I posit are the ocean cycles changing, and altering how much warm moist tropical air enters the continents. This also fits with the difference between today’s rising temp and tonight’s falling temp being negative. For a long time I did not know how that could be, I was confident on the process I used with the data, but it seemed wrong, where was the extra heat coming from, and then it dawned on me it was warm tropical air moving onto the continents where it cooled and dropped the water it carried on its way pole ward.
@ur momisugly micro6500
October 25, 2015 at 5:12 pm
The larger proportion of continental interior regions will cool when wetter, as well an overall reduction in temperature variability, i.e. lower maximums and higher minimums.
It mostly depends where the air mass over head is from, I live in Ohio, sometimes we get tropical air, other times Canadian(depending on the jet stream). The difference can be 10-20F. Rain itself tends to be cooling. Also at night, frequently temps approach the dew point, and reduces the rate of cooling, but it also deposits a lot of water on the ground, only some of which evaporates the next day, the rest goes into the ground or water table.
as well *as* an… etc
What about Lacis(2010) and Lacis(2013)? His point is that the difference between CO2 and H2O is that the latter condenses out of the atmosphere while the former is “long loved”. Do you have a direct response to that argument? In my own empirical study of lag plots 1958-2014 I found some indication that surface temperature lags atmospheric CO2 by about 4-7 months. Here is the link.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2679246
The “hiatus” shows that surface temperatures lag CO2 by 18 years or more.
Besides, CO2 induced warming should be quite evident in places where water vapor is nearly absent. Can you point me to data that shows this?
“Can you point me to data that shows this?”
Yes, the data is in the fevered minds of climate alarmists and con-artists who then put it into computer games.
CO2 induced warming should be quite evident in places where water vapor is nearly absent.
here we have a graph from SS. What does it show? That temperatures shoot up when CO2 is LOW and temperatures cool down when CO is HIGH. This tells me that CO2 causes cooling. Look closely. CO2 is low, temperatures increase. CO2 is high, temperatures decrease. Consistently, time and time again.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Milankovitch_Cycles_400000.gif
lacis did his h2o effects using a 1 d model and always took the worst case scenario that they could come up with. for things to happen the way they (lacis & hansen) claim – Earth’s current 62% or so cloud cover is at a maximum and that either increased or decreased temperatures would result in a lower fraction. when one looks at the simple factor of h2o absolute humidity and assumes relative humidity will remain constant (an acceptable assumption) for increasing temperature, there is insufficient h2o increase to create more positive forcing/feedback than the original very small co2 increase. Only by making ridiculous assumptions like a decrease in cloud cover can one achieve anything close to the increased amount needed.
“long-lived”
sorry
You have been reading to many of Pachuari’s novels.
“However, human activities have only a small direct influence on the amount of atmospheric water vapour.”
///////////////////////
Really!
I always thought that the major by products of burning fossil fuels (hydro carbons) is water and CO2.
On that basis how can the IPCC claim that man does not emit copious amounts of water.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with this on a water world inhabited by carbon life forms. The by product of burning fossil fuels (ie., water and CO2) is fertiliser to such a water world and the life forms that inhabit it.
1 litre of H²O for every litre of gas burned (the butane propane and petrol variety). That’s the figure I have from the back of my failing brain
And we are burning a lot of those litres.
The point I was making is that it is very convenient for the IPCC to (incorrectly) claim that man emits little water vapour, since it enables the IPCC to claim that the impacts of CO2 are more important than they are. It enables the IPCC to concentrate upon CO2 rather than on the main so called ghg of water vapour.
If the reports had had to addressed water vapour and the water cycle, it would have been difficult to ‘conceal’ that CO2 is only at most a bit player. The public are unaware that the main so called ghg in the atmosphere is water vapour, and that CO2 is only about 4% of the so called ghgs in the atmosphere, and that even if man is responsible for the rise in CO2 from about 270pm to ~400 ppm, then man is responsible for only about 1.5% of the so called ghgs in the atmosphere.
The message would have been much more difficult to sell if the IPCC reports had had to address the water vapour issue, and with it the water cycle, and with all of that the absurd suggestion that water vapour is a positive feedback..
“If the reports had had to addressed water vapour and the water cycle, it would have been difficult to ‘conceal’ that CO2 is only at most a bit player.”
Agreed. CO2 is at most a bit player — if in a movie it would just have a walk on as the credits ran.
2 molecules H2O for every molecule CO2. That’s a factor of 2 off everyone’s radar. Add in the concentration of surface stations in urban high combustion areas and you suddenly have a significant UHI amplification.
Depends of the type of fuel. In molecular releases
Coal: 1xCO2, 0x water
Oil: 1xCO2, 1x water
Gas: 1xCO2, 2x water
But still the relative quantities of the emissions and the decay rates are important:
CO2: 6% of the carbon cycle, e-fold decay rate of an excess over 50 years.
Water: 0.01% of the water cycle, e-fold decay rate of an excess only a few days.
Ferdinand, Bituminous Coal is about C1H0.8 so you’d expect 1x CO2: 0.4xH2O
Sephen & Ferd,
Typical Moisture Content in Coal
Anthracite Coal : 2.8 – 16.3 weight %
Bituminous Coal : 2.2 – 15.9 weight %
Lignite Coal : 39 weight %
Wyoming Sub-bituminous = 23.8 %
PRB coal’s lower heating value is resulted from its higher moisture and oxygen content.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/classification-coal-d_164.html
http://www.boilercleaning.org/Applications/knowledgeBase/PRBcoal/PRBcoalProperty.htm
And that is dry analysis.
Phil. and DD More,
Thanks, didn’t take into account moisture and less quality coal…
Thus even from coal, you will have some water vapor releases. No that it makes much difference, as the decay rate of that extra water is a matter of days…
Irrigation has brought lots of water to areas where water was scarce before.
Dr. Spencer had some (long) time ago an article about the influence of irrigation on the local temperatures in valleys. Seems to give a huge UHI effect…
Dear Dr. Tim Ball,
Excellent article indeed (again). Brilliant work and so very detailed.
I have just Google+1’d it and perhaps others would take the trouble to shout this from the rooftops too.
The general public don’t understand the science at all: they cannot fully grasp it because it SEEMS complicated.
They need to see SIMPLE STUFF.
The massive amount of work that you do and Craig D. Idso Ph. D. (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) and Viscount Monckton plus MANY others at The Heartland Institute is thoroughly scientific, superb, well written and well presented ALL THE TIME: the work is truly appreciated by readers and commentors here and across the world at various websites.
What it needs is something along the lines of a simple, clear message aimed at the general public which says something like …
“CO2 = LIFE” (with a child’s drawing of the sun, raindrops and a smiling flower).
Kick this one around folks please: I reckon it’s time for Josh and Anthony to hit the big-time with a cartoon of the century which can be understood by anyone across the world.
The entire basis for the Global Warming nonsense is carbon-dioxide, therefore, a simple idea / CO2 cartoon / picture / sketch COULD be the very thing that “kills the cancer” – worldwide !
Just an idea of course but I’ll bet that we can all bring to mind ONE simple “picture” we’ve remembered all our lives.
Regards,
WL
Sturgis Hooper
Further to my post above, according to
http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Fe-Ge/Fossil-Fuels.html
WORLD ENERGY SOURCES IN 2000
Source Percent of Energy
Petroleum 39
Natural Gas 24
Coal 24
Hydroelectric 7
Nuclear 6
I do not know what the current mix is, but coal has fallen out of favour in the developed West, and there has been a switch to gas and a slight increase in renewables. But it would be fairly safe to say that of the fuel that man burns to produce energy, the ration of hydro carbons to coal is probably 3:1.
Given that water is a by product of burning hydro carbons, it is immediately apparent that man emits a lot of water into the atmosphere.
On top of this is water used for irrigation, cooling in industrial processes (including that used in the cooling towers which are an integral part of the coal fired electricity generating stations) etc.
It appears to me that the IPCC is making a basic error in concluding that man emits little water vapour into the atmosphere. .
I agree. It is very apparent in urban areas like Phoenix that we add to the local %RH.
Plus small scale usage by many billions of people who water lawns, wash cars, wash windows, etc.
Take a pee ???
That is included in “etc”.
Richard,
I did once calculate the human contribution of water to the overall cycle. That was about 0.01% (including cooling towers, not including irrigation). Because of the extreme short decay rate of water, a matter of days, the human contribution plays no role at all. CO2 has a decay rate of ~51 years, which makes that the human contribution is responsible for ~90% of the increase…
Should have refreshed before replying…
10e-4 may be ok but 51 is much too precise for the subject.
That is the same argument that you try to shoot down when someone points out that man’s emissions of CO2 compared to the total carbon cycle is only a tiny fraction of that cycle (albeit I accept that in relative terms, if the water cycle has an order of magnitude greater than the carbon cycle, then there may be a corresponding order of magnitude difference).
The fact remains that man is burning huge quantities of hydro carbons and alongside the CO2 that is produced there is as much (or more) water vapour produced.
So the issue here is quite simple, what is the radiative forcing associated with the emission of say a giga-tonne of CO2, and what radiative forcing is associated with the emission of a giga-tonne of water vapour?
And if the radiative forciang associated with the man made emission of a giga-tonne of water vapour leads to a temperature increase which will then in turn cause more evaporation, one gets the same so called water vapour feedback loop.
If one is signed up to the radiative theory of anthropogenic ghgs emissions leading to warming, one cannot ignore the amount of water vapour that man is emitting.
I would like to know why you consider the forcing associated with man made emissions of water vapour is unimportant.
Rainer,
Based on the current net sink rate of ~2.15 ppmv at ~110 ppmv above steady state for the average ocean surface temperature: 110 / 2.15 = ~51 years. Seems quite linear, as a similar calculation near 2 decades ago shows a similar decay rate (55 years):
http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
But should have said “slightly over 50 years”, that is more than precise enough…
Richard,
The relative contribution of CO2 and water from fossil fuel burning is one difference, the e-fold decay rate of an excess CO2 or water is the main difference.
Take CO2: that is about 6% of the carbon cycle, but the e-fold decay rate is over 50 years. Thus while not extremely small at one side, its decay as an excess input is long-term and you need 110 ppmv extra in the atmosphere to get enough pressure to get rid of only halve the emitted quantities…
A CO2 doubling gives 3.7 W/m2 extra IR absorption, that is for ~280 ppmv or ~600 GtC extra. 1 GtC extra CO2 thus is good for average (linear – which is not the case) 0.006 W/m2.
Take water: that is about 0.01% of the water cycle and its e-fold decay rate is a few days. Thus not only the direct influence is negligible, its build-up in the atmosphere from human emissions is negligible too.
I have no figures for water vapor at hand, but even with a build-up of 0.05% water vapor from human emissions, the influence on the radiation balance is extremely small…
@ur momisugly Ferdinand Engelbeen – October 25, 2015 at 9:34 am
It wouldn’t matter one (1) “twit” if your per se …. “e-fold decay rate of CO2 was over 1,000 years” ….. simply because the quantity of thermal “heat” energy that is absorbed by atmospheric CO2 is not additive or cumulative from one (1) day to the next, …. one (1) week to the next, ….. or one (1) year to the next, ….. but on the contrary, ……. it is here today, and gone tonight. And that CO2 has to “warm back up” each new day.
Your devotion to “science fiction” is utterly amazing.
This is exactly what the surface data shows. When it’s not infilled, homogenized and turned into made up fantasy trash.
“Given that water is a by product of burning hydro carbons, it is immediately apparent that man emits a lot of water into the atmosphere. ”
I don’t believe that. Did you at least calculate the order of magnitude?
“a lot” is a relative expression.
The fact is that man puts out about as much water vapour as he does CO2, therefore the amount of additional radiative forcing associated with the quantity of water vapour that man emits is more than the additional radiative forcing associated with anthropogenic CO2 emissions, since water vapour is a stronger ghg.
It follows from this that if additional radiative forcing caused by anthropogenic emissions is a problem, it will be as much of a problem with manmade emissions of water vapour as it is with anthropogenic CO2 emissions, such that it would be inappropriate to ignore manmade emissions of water vapour.
The residency time is a different issue, but I would suggest one which is mainly relevant to the claim of locked in long term warming.
So why is the IPCC ignoring this? Well it does not really wish to look at the water cycle since it does not properly understand it, and the models do not properly model this, and the variance in clouds alone could fully explain the 20th century temperature anomaly.
The water cycle (and the way that DWLWIR interacts with the oceans where it cannot penetrate more than a few microns), is the fundamental brick wall that cAGW comes up against. So it is no surprise that the IPCC does not want to look at this issue in the detail that this cycle needs to be addressed.
The CAGW hypothesis entirely depends on a mythical “runaway positive feedback loop” involving a rapid increase in ocean evaporation from CO2 forcing, which multiplies the 1C of gross CO2 warming to a net 3C~5C of warming by 2100.
The problem with “runaway feedback loops” is that when the sum of feedbacks exceeds 1, outputs quickly go to infinity… To get around this, CAGW climate models arbitrarily assign negative feedbacks to manmade particulate pollution to keep temperature projections from going to infinity.
What actually seems to be occurring is that the tiny 1C of gross CO2 induced warming per doubling, is causing a slight increase in ocean evaporation, which leads to increased cloud cover, that reduces CO2’s NET warming by about 50% to generate a net warming effect of just around 0.5C by 2100…
CAGW is already a disconfirmed hypothesis as temperature projections already exceed reality by more than 2 standard deviations for almost 20 years, which is sufficient disparity and duration for disconfirmation with high confidence…
Bingo. “water vapour is a strong and fast feedback that amplifies any initial forcing by a typical factor between two and three.”
If water vapor were truly a positive feedback, the system would have made an excursion to high temperatures in ages past. It never happened.
That is the key flaw in CAGW theory.
Yes, Walter, that’s exactly the point.
CO2 concentrations were an order of magnitude higher than today for 100’s of millions of years and yet life thrived and the mythical “runaway feedback loop” never occurred…
Cloud cover flux is, as Willis has so elegantly shown, the control mechanism which prevents global temps from going to extremes.
During warming periods, there is increased ocean evaporation, causing more cloud cover albedo, which reflects more TSI, which mitigates warming.
During cooling periods, there is less ocean evaporation, causing less cloud cover albedo, allowing more TSI to hit earth’s surface, which mitigates the cooling…
Nature abhors its own destruction. Our very existence is evidence of this fact.
IMO water vapour has always represented a fatal flaw in AGW,
Dr. Ball has made it the wooden stake in the heart of the AGW vampire.
Alarmists should be afraid, very afraid.
They went all in with their investment of hopes, dreams and aspirations into the subprime climate unicorn. The fools, fanatics and liars have no one to blame but themselves.
They could have gained the same understanding as the skeptics they tried to destroy for doing so.
Thanks, Dr. Ball. A very interesting article.
Like your elephant swims in the water, water vapor swims in the troposphere.
The elephant is forced by food availability (I suppose), water vapor by winds at the surface level (that evaporation thing, that now we know we know little about it).
Of course CO2 has a base effect, the reason why Earth is not super-cold, but the present-times incremental effect? The “Climate Sensitivity”? Dr. Roy Spencer and others think it’s low, the IPCC says its high. I think the IPCC is wrong.
Only time and good measurements will tell for sure.
the troposphere is where convection dominates heat transfer and h2o vapor is a significant part of the convection activity. when one compares the satellite surface temps between hemispheres, N&S, one finds that despite the SH receiving more TOA insolation, the fact that the NH has most of the land surface results in average Temp differences of over 1 deg C with the NH being hotter.
Dr. Ball referred to the IPCC’s document that they do not know what are the contributions of H2O and CO2 in the GH phenomenon. Of course they know but they do not want to show it, because it would destroy the image of CO2 as a strong GH gas. The most referred percentages are 60 % for H2O and 26 % for CO2 presented by Kiehl and Trenberth. These effects were calculated in the atmosphere containing only 50 % of the total water in the atmosphere. The real numbers are about 82…84 % and 9…11 %. Because the warming effect of CO2 is highly nonlinear (logarithmic), the relationship between the strengths of H2O and CO2 is about 15:1 in the present atmosphere. CO2 is not a control knob of the climate – it is water.
Water, as in clouds ??
Very intresting, can you tell some more? The percentages are unknown to me. Trenberthish numbers are not I think give good name from settled science.
Below are six relevant peer-reviewed papers on water vapor, feedbacks, and questionable assumptions in climate models.
Doubling CO2 by itself (no feedbacks) from 275 ppm to 550 ppm is presumed to cause a positive radiative forcing of 3.7 W/m-2, or a temperature change of about 1.2 C per convective assumptions about CO2. The primary means by which we are presumed to get dangerous warming of 3.0 C and up with CO2 doubling (after the 1.2 C of additional warmth from CO2 alone) is via runaway positive feedbacks with increasingly higher levels of water vapor. Yet there have been no observed trends in water vapor concentration in the last few decades, which is inconsistent with the models that suggest the hydrological cycle should intensify:
—–
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL052094/full#grl29301-fig-0001
Introduction: Water vapor is a principal atmospheric variable, and is a central component in both the Earth Energy Budget and the Global Water Cycle. Clouds and precipitation manifest its presence, its phase transitions are a source of energy to influence motions in the atmosphere, and its transport (e.g., atmospheric rivers can produce significant weather events. Increasing water vapor amounts in a warming climate could accelerate the global hydrologic cycle.
Conclusion: [A]t this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/figures/doi/10.1029/2012GL052094/#figure-viewer-grl29301-fig-0004
—–
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n2/full/nclimate2068.html
The hydrological cycle is expected to intensify in response to global warming. Yet, little unequivocal evidence of such an acceleration has been found on a global scale. This holds in particular for terrestrial evaporation, the crucial return flow of water from land to atmosphere. Here we use satellite observations to reveal that continental evaporation has increased in northern latitudes, at rates consistent with expectations derived from temperature trends. However, at the global scale, the dynamics of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) have dominated the multi-decadal variability. During El Niño, limitations in terrestrial moisture supply result in vegetation water stress and reduced evaporation in eastern and central Australia, southern Africa and eastern South America. The opposite situation occurs during La Niña. Our results suggest that recent multi-year declines in global average continental evaporation reflect transitions to El Niño conditions, and are not the consequence of a persistent reorganization of the terrestrial water cycle. Future changes in continental evaporation will be determined by the response of ENSO to changes in global radiative forcing, which still remains highly uncertain.
—–
Furthermore, there is still some question as to the sign of the feedback from water vapor itself (whether + or -):
—–
http://pages.jh.edu/~dwaugh1/papers/Garfinkel_etal_2013-temptrends.pdf
In the regions where moisture is increasing, radiative heating is decreasing because water vapor is a very efficient GHG at these altitudes. In contrast, regions that are dehydrating are warmed by radiative heating because the local emissivity is decreasing. Recall that the temperatures were decreasing where water vapor was decreasing. Thus, the trend in radiative heating acts as a negative feedback on the temperature changes. In other words, the lower stratospheric temperature response to rising SSTs is opposed, but only partially, by changes in water vapor.
—–
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140202111055.htm
The satellite observations have shown that warming of the tropical Indian Ocean and tropical Western Pacific Ocean — with resulting increased precipitation and water vapor there — causes the opposite effect of cooling in the TTL region above the warming sea surface. Once the TTL cools, less water vapor is present in the TTL and also above in the stratosphere. Since water vapor is a very strong greenhouse gas, this effect leads to a negative feedback on climate change. That is, the increase in water vapor due to enhanced evaporation from the warming oceans is confined to the near- surface area, while the stratosphere becomes drier. Hence, this effect may actually slightly weaken the more dire forecasted aspects of an increasing warming of our climate, the scientists say.
—-
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n11/full/nclimate2039.html
A study reveals that recent warming in the Indian Ocean and in the Pacific ‘warm pool’ has caused a cooling near the top of the tropical troposphere above, leading to less water vapour entering the stratosphere.
—–
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1003.1554.pdf
Climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling in function of the feedbacks (from Knutti and Hegerl [5]). Note the large uncertainty: a CO2 doubling may cause a global warming from 1 C to 10 C at equilibrium. The figure on the left explains why there exists such a large error. The GHG warming theory is based on two independent chained theories. The first theory focuses on the warming effect of a given GHG such as CO2 as it can be experimentally tested. This first theory predicts that a CO2 doubling causes a global warming of about 1 oC. The second theory, the climate positive feedback theory, attempts to calculate the overall climatic effect of a CO2 increase by assuming an enhanced warming effect due to secondary triggering of other climatic components. For example, it is supposed that an increase of CO2 causes an increase in water vapor concentration. Because H2O too is a GHG, the overall warming induced by an increase of CO2 would be due to the direct CO2 warming plus the indirect warming induced by the water vapor feedback responding to the CO2 increase. The problem with the climate positive feedback theory is that it cannot be directly tested in a lab experiment. Climate modelers evaluate the climate sensitivity to CO2 increase in their climate models, not in nature. Thus, the numerical value of this fundamental climatic component is not experimentally measured but it is theoretical evaluated with computer climate models that create virtual climate systems. It is evident that different climate models predict a different climate sensitivity to CO2, which gives rise to the huge uncertainty seen in the figure. Moreover, if the climate models are missing important mechanisms, it is evident that their predicted climate sensitivity to CO2 changes may be extremely different from the true values.
Thanks for the links! I now have more ammo against dangerous warming fanatics. The lack of a strongly positive water vapor feedback is a death sentence for CAGW.
Ken,
Put into perspective your 3.7 W/m-2 on an energy balance with a doubling.
In a year 3.7 W/m-2 would equate to (W = J*sec)
3.7 x 365 x 24 x 60 x 60 = 1.17E+08 Joules/m^2
So Evaporation of water is 2,500,000 J/kg.
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints2/524/
To evaporate 1 m^3 of water with sea water specific volume @ur momisugly 15 oC at 0.001009 m^3/kg for each m^3 there is an exchange of
=> 2,500,000(J/kg)/0.001009(m^3/kg) = 2,477,700,000 J/m^3 = 2.48E+09 J/m^3
1.17E+08 J/m^2 / 2.48E+09 J/m^3 = 0.05 m
Oh yea, the average yearly amount of evaporation on open ocean (non-ice) is around 1.40 m. That’s how the oceans cool.
Evaporation from the Surface of the Globe – They peg the total energy for evaporation ocean plus land at 1.26 X 10E24 or 25 percent of ‘energy in’ at the surface.
paper here – http://www.eolss.net/sample-chapters/c07/e2-02-03-02.pdf
Radiative heat transfer at room temperature can mostly be ignored.
And how many times that did Patrica pickup and carry into Mexico?
Dr Tim, I know that you have visited my blog and i presume that you have read the post https://cementafriend.wordpress.com/2011/10/ about methane. CH4 does not burn or is oxidised in the atmosphere by O2. because a) it does not come up to ignition temperature and b) the concentration is below the ignition point of sustained combustion which in turn sustains ignition temperature. Combustion is part of the chemical engineering subject- reaction kinetics which is far beyond the laboratory work of chemistry. Methane can be oxidised by ozone to form methanol CH3OH which is highly soluble in water and is removed from the atmosphere by clouds and then precipitation or direct contact with water surfaces (oceans, lakes etc) by convective currents.
cementafriend,
CH4 is thought to be oxidized by OH radicals, formed from water by UV light in the higher troposphere, not only by ozone, which is formed maximally in the lower stratosphere. Indeed for the rest removed by precipitation.
IMHO Tim has hit the nail on the head with this little treatise. Water in its three phases buffers the energy (and hence) temperature of our wonderful BLUE ball by both actively absorbing (phase change) and actively transporting incident radiation up-wards and pole-wards, to even out and govern the ideal conditions for life on earth. Neither CO2 nor CH4 change phase at reasonable life-supporting temperatures, so neither can actively participate in our planet’s temperature governing processes.
However, Tim did leave out one other important fact that I think no one has explored nearly enough. As he pointed out CO2 is NOT well mixed over much of the vast surfaces of the earth. But, I also contend that CO2 is not even well mixed over short distances. Why not? Well one reason is that excess CO2 sources (eg. cities, mines, volcanoes and the ocean) and the larger CO2 sinks (forests, farms, etc) can be spread out over significant distances. In addition, a more obvious reason is that CO2 dissolves in liquid water and thus gets actively transported by water. Every time it rains a certain percentage of CO2 is scrubbed from the atmosphere proportional to the partial pressures of the gas in both its gaseous phase and its dissolved phase in water. Since water that condenses from water vapor is initially pure, it very rapidly scrubs a portion of the gaseous CO2 in the surrounding air at that local temperature. The intial condensing temp is quite cool, and carries quite a bit more CO2 downward than might normally exist in water that has equilibrated to the temp at the surface. (One can measure just how much CO2 has been scrubbed by measuring the pH of the rain, since dissolved CO2 quickly forms carbonic acid in the water.) When a thunder storm rolls through it is doing quite a good job of returning vital CO2 back down to earth to participate in the cycle of life on the surface. This local and most likely quite repeatable phenomenon is not really highlighted in any “climate studies” primarily, I believe, because the CO2 data everyone relies on is taken “above the clouds” at mountain top locations. Were the data taken along the coasts of Hawaii, local rain storm events would present too much CO2 variability to give meaningful “noise free” (ie. natural) results. If CO2 were measured at the same sites as the temperature was taken in well sighted locations, I strongly suspect one would see significantly higher natural variability than is presented by the data taken on the top of Mauna Loa. I’m quite certain that immediately AFTER an evening thunderstorm sweeps a line through an area, the CO2 blanket that supposedly would provide green house protection has been quite effectively reduced sufficiently to allow greater direct irradiation out to space than the warm humid period immediately preceding the storm.
What do you all think?
Don V. Couldn’t agree more. The amount of carbonic acid produced as a consequence of water vapor and lightning would have to be significant given the number of lightning strikes occurring word-wide at any one time. Rainwater in equilibrium with atmospheric (gaseous) h2o and co2 from basic chemistry should have a pH of -5.6 (slightly acidic). any increase in thunderstorms, ( say to AGW ? , or any other GW mechanism) should remove increasing amounts of co2 from the atmosphere. Gaia strikes back.
As many have stated on WUWT, indeed it *IS* water, in all it’s forms along with solar energy, that *IS* the primary driver of weather (Climate) on this rock.
Don V,
I did once calculate the influence of fresh water on CO2 levels: it is negligible. CO2 is mostly released in places where water vapor is maximal. Where water condenses, you need about 400 m3 air to form 1 liter of rain. As the solubility of CO2 in fresh water at 0.0004 bar is extremely small, the CO2 change in the atmosphere where the drops are formed is not measurable.
If the rain drops on the ground and all water evaporates, releasing all CO2, that increased the air CO2 in the first meter of air, without wind mixing, with less than 1 ppmv. Again negligible.
That doesn’t mean that gigantic amounts are circulating together with the gigantic amounts of water, but in concentrations that doesn’t count…
Don V
October 24, 2015 at 9:25 pm
IMHO Tim has hit the nail on the head with this little treatise. Water in its three phases buffers the energy (and hence) temperature of our wonderful BLUE ball by both actively absorbing (phase change) and actively transporting incident radiation up-wards and pole-wards, to even out and govern the ideal conditions for life on earth. Neither CO2 nor CH4 change phase at reasonable life-supporting temperatures,
*******************************************************************************************
Maybe, but it is essential to remember that ” to even out and govern the ideal conditions for life on earth.” it is not like this.
We are not the be all and end all – the earth developed it’s climate/weather according to the laws of Physics (not to make ideal conditions for life) and we evolved afterwards in order to fit in and take advantage of what was there.
Too many people think the earth was made for us and not the other way round – if you change your point of view, our life as we know it doesn’t seem to rely on so many wonderful coincidences after all.
SteveT
Although I don’t agree with your worldview SteveT, I also wasn’t injecting my world view into the discussion. Are you saying that the current conditions (ie. average temperature, radiant energy in/radiant energy out balance, orbital distance vs. solar radiance, etc.) aren’t ideal conditions for life (as we know it) on earth and that these conditions aren’t primarily and directly governed by the immutable physics of the vast amounts of water on our planet that has the net effect of acting as a climate governor/temperature buffer to sustain “earth life”? Or are you, in trying to inject your religious world view into this discussion, somehow also suggesting/stating that one of the life forms on this planet – man – actually has a ghost of a chance of doing ANYTHING to affect either the current weather or the future climate? . . . that man can somehow shift us out of the “sweet spot” that water’s influence currently anchors us by somehow modulating the trace life-sustaining gas CO2? Since neither CO2 nor CH4 experience phase change around this sweet spot, nor are present in anywhere near sufficient quantity, nor have anywhere near sufficient heat retaining capacity, they simply do not participate in any significant degree in the overall energy balance. IMHO wishing that man can actually influence future climate conditions is utter folly and silly pointless windmill tilting.
To Marcus, Yes, but actually in many other ways. 1) Absolute water content as humidity in the atmosphere compensate small variations of GH gas concentrations, 2) clouds magnifying the effects of solar activity changes, and 3) as ocean water controlling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the very long term. For example, IPCC says that anthropogenic CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is 28 % even though the direct isotope measurements show it to be about 7.7 %. The reason is that about 25 % of the atmospheric CO2 is recycled annually between the oceans and the biosphere that dilutes the anthropogenic portion of CO2 effectively..
The figure one is broken.
Literature says roughly 25 per cent of CO2 in the athmosphere is anthropogenic. The fact that anthropogenic emissions are small compared to annual natural CO2 budjet is – if I understand English proverbs right – a red herring.
Hugs:
You say
Hugs:
Sorry for my false post.
You say
It cannot be true that “roughly 25 per cent of CO2 in the atmosphere is anthropogenic”. What do you think the atmospheric CO2 concentration was before humans existed?
At issue is what contribution the anthropogenic CO2 emissions make to the observed recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. And that can be modeled as being whatever percentage of the rise you want to suite your claims.
Richard
Richard,
Only in your dreams…
If you have any alternative explanation of a non-human rise of CO2 (except for 10 ppmv from warming oceans) that doesn’t violate one or more observations, you may have a point. Until then…
Ferdinand:
Only in your dreams…
If you have any explanation for a human rise of CO2 that doesn’t rely on a circular argument, you may have a point. Until then…
Richard
Richard,
Human emissions are twice the measured increase in the atmosphere. If you can find a bookkeeper who can twist the figures in such a way that humans are not the cause of the increase, he can make a fortune for any firm he likes (including the mafia).
BTW, the only possible theoretical alternative by Bart violates not one or two but ALL known observations…
Ferdinand:
If you can find a bookkeeper who can twist the figures when most of the inputs and outputs are not quantified then he would soon be in jail for providing a result that fits what he wants it to be.
Oh, sorry, this not accountancy but is ‘climate science’ where making data fit what you want it to be is accepted practice.
Richard
Ferdinand Engelbeen October 25, 2015 at 9:02 am
Pseudo-mass balance argument again. Pitiful.
One thing is for sure, if nature can remove as much as 47% of anthropogenic co2 on average, then there is no reason why nature couldn’t remove much closer to 100% of anthro co2 on average. Bart, it looks like i may have stepped in the mass balance cow pie here. (hoo-wee, what a smell…)
Literature (Sprenger & Kramer, 1486) says roughly 50 percent of all tempests are caused by witches.
The IPCC literature quoted here says:
===================
“However, other greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, are necessary to sustain the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere. Indeed, if these other gases were removed from the atmosphere, its temperature would drop sufficiently to induce a decrease of water vapour, leading to a runaway drop of the greenhouse effect that would plunge the Earth into a frozen state.”
===================
Do you believe that extraordinary claim in the literature, Hugs?
Yep. The authoritarians, “hot for certainty,” want their feculently simple-minded premises accepted – and their victims to submit in all regards – without question or resistance. Thus we get the demonization of anthropogenic carbon dioxide while they “blank out” acknowledgement of the other product of complete combustion: dihydrogen monoxide.
Tucci,
While human CO2 emissions are the cause of most of the 30% rise in CO2 over the past 165 years, thanks to a long decay rate of ~51 years, the accompanying water vapor emissions (including the lost energy in cooling water towers) is less than 0.01% of all natural water vapor and its decay rate is a matter of days. That plays zero role in the radiation balances…
Isotopic analyses enable the determination of how much of the “rise in [atmospheric] CO2 over the past 165 years” is due to the purposeful combustion of petrochemical fuels, but precisely how much of “the accompanying water vapor emissions” can be with similar surety attributed to said combustion?
Considering how vanishingly little role anthropogenic carbon dioxide plays in the Earth’s radiation balances, if it’s allowable for our Indonesian-in-Chief to persecute us for our CO2 emissions, are not his minions and co-religionists equally justified in taxing, regulating, fining, droning and assassinating us for the water vapor we engender?
It’s true that the total mass of water vapor in the atmosphere is so great that the H2O resulting from complete petrochemicals combustion is “lost in the noise,” but how can anthropogenic water vapor be distinguished from atmospheric water vapor that’s the product of “natural emissions”? We need to know!
Water vapor is a “greenhouse gas” of indisputably greater potency than is CO2. Shouldn’t the warmunists – watermelonically determined that no sparrow shall fall except as it’s chopped into gobbets by a wind turbine and accordingly counted to their profit as a carbon credit – be pursuing each whistling teakettle and exhaled breath to keep mankind from fogging up Mother Gaia’s mirror?
Tucci,
While near the total increase of CO2 is from human emissions, the easy to determine isotopic ratio only shows how much original “human” CO2 still is in the atmosphere. That is “diluted” by the 20% seasonal exchanges of CO2 between different reservoirs. Thus isotopic changes are not sufficient to know the source.
For water it is simpler: a daily human addition of 0.01% and de decay rate of a few days means that the human accumulation of water vapor maybe average 0.03%, still negligible for the radiation balance…
Ferdinand,
May I add the conclusion that always seems to be missing? Thank you:
A few decades ago many scientists were unsure whether the rise in CO2 was good or bad. Now we know.
The rise in CO2 is an unmitigated good. There is no downside, and unless you’re a plant, you can’t tell the difference between 300 ppm and 400 ppm.
This cannot be stressed enough. More CO2 is better. A lot more is a lot better.
It’s all good. ☺
At present – mark you: RIGHT NOW, in this wonderful ultra-progressive Age of Obozo when the Woman With One Eyebrow is being kept out of the federal prison system in order to sustain and extend his legacy – though “the total increase of [atmospheric] CO2 is from human emissions,” given that the total amount of atmospheric CO2 is fiddlin’ goddam teensy (the expression used in clinical pulmonology when we’re messing around with ABG analyses and ventilator settings is “trace gas”), such an observation begs one key question that keeps slipping out of consideration as the discussion of the climate quacks’ “settled science” is sustained without cutting to the chase by shooting the thieving, duplicitous sons of bitches to death by musketry as they deserve:
What the f— SIGNIFICANCE is there in the fact that the “near the total increase of CO2 [right now] is from human emissions” if that measured increase in a trace gas doesn’t really do dick in terms of altering the planet’s radiation balances?
It’s perfectly fine to acknowledge the evidence provided by isotopic analyses of aliquots drawn from the well-mixed atmosphere over Antarctica and Mauna Loa, and to credit the purposeful burning of coal and other petrochemical fuels for the enrichment of the Earth’s bioavailable carbon dioxide supply, but those of us with scientific literacy and moral integrity really can’t speak “thus far and no farther,” ’cause by doing so we concede to the scrabbling, prevaricating, power-grabbing, grant-fund-sucking, carbon-credit-trading, “Clean Power Plan”-foisting, EPA-metastasizing warmunist son of bitches yet more opportunity to push their frabjous Big Lie.
Tucci,
As dbstealy already mentioned, while the about 30% increase in CO2 is good for ~2 W/m2 extra outgoing IR retention, that doesn’t mean that the induced warming is of any harm.
Theoretically, a doubling of CO2 will increase the earth’s temperature with around 1°C. Climate models increase that figure with a lot of – all positive – feedbacks (mainly water vapor). In reality, there are negative feedbacks at work (mainly clouds), which make that the influence of more CO2 less than expected…
Thus admitting that the CO2 rise is (near) all human doesn’t harm the main case of all skeptics: all models are wrong, as their sensitivity for 2xCO2 is far too high. Refusing to accept the obvious human cause harms the skeptic arguments more than it helps their case…
Rather than “Theoretically,” it would seem that the word to be used in climatology with regard to the warming effects of increased atmospheric CO2 really ought to be CONJECTURALLY.
For a speculative explanation (i.e., a “model”) of phenomena to reach the level of validity denoted by the term “theory,” there are criteria not yet met by the idea that “a doubling of [atmospheric] CO2 [concentrations]” would or could “increase the earth’s temperature” to any extent at all.
“A hypothesis is a model based on all data in its specified domain, with no counterexample, and incorporating a novel prediction yet to be validated by facts,” whereas “A theory is a hypothesis with at least one nontrivial validating datum.” (Glassman, 2007)
On the basis of evidence thus far observed and reported, it doesn’t seem possible to hold that the conjecture voiced by “the consensus in climatology” regarding “extra outgoing IR retention” which should (according to what’s known about the physical properties of atmospheric carbon dioxide) be produced by “the about 30% increase in CO2” – anthropogenic and otherwise – has attained a level of reliability above that of the hypothetical.
Might be argued that it doesn’t even rise that high.
This is a point of discussion against which I’ve never been much inclined to contend, as the isotopic analyses of atmospheric carbon dioxide seem reliably to support the contentions of Keeling et alia as to the ancient origins of this gas fraction increase. This notwithstanding, as you’ve observed, the physical effects of this increase in an atmospheric trace gas seem neither to be significant (i.e., beyond the “wiggle room” error bars inescapable in precedent and present instrumental assessment techniques) nor adverse.
Even speculatively.
(Can enough be said about the “climate consensus” quacks’ perpetration of suppressio veri, suggestio falsi in dismissing – indeed, denying – consideration of known and decidedly non-adverse climate conditions during the Minoan, Roman, and Medieval Warm optima?)
Tim Ball:
Thankyou for another very fine article.
For decades I have been saying the anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW) hypothesis is impossible because it relies upon a water vapour feedback (WVF), and the existence of oceans demonstrates that a significant WVF does not exist. The explanation of this is as follows.
The WVF is a feedback on temperature rise induced by increased radiative forcing; i.e.
1.
increased radiative forcing raises temperature
2.
raised temperature increases evapouration of water
3.
more evapouration of water increases water vapour in the air
3.
more water vapour in the air increases radiative forcing
4.
Return to 1.
This feedback may or may not induce runaway warming depending on its strength.
Importantly, ANY increase to radiative forcing starts the loop at 1.
The Sun is a g-type star and, therefore, the Sun has increased its output over time such that radiative forcing has increased by ~20% over the time that the Earth has had an oxygen rich atmosphere.
However, the Earth has had two apparently stable conditions – glacial and interglacial – without any clear trend of increasing temperature since the Earth gained an oxygen-rich atmosphere.
If change to radiative forcing had caused the WVF to provide significant temperature rise then the oceans would have boiled to steam long ago as a result of the increase to solar forcing the Earth since the Earth gained an oxygen-rich atmosphere.
In summation, the AGW hypothesis says an increase of 0.4% to radiative forcing from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration would be amplified by the WVF to provide significant global temperature rise, but it is known that an increase of ~20% to radiative forcing from increased solar output has not been amplified by the WVF to provide any discernible global temperature rise.
In other words, the AGW hypothesis is ludicrous nonsense.
Richard
There is another relevant factor. More evaporation leads to more precipitation. Studies by Wijfells and by others indicate that precipitation increases at roughly the same rate as evaporation, yet the climate models allow for only a fraction of that level of precipitation. When water evaporates at the ocean surface, it carries with it the latent heat of evaporation. When the water vapour then condenses prior to precipitating, it releases its latent heat into the atmosphere, from which a significant proportion escapes as IR to space. The whole water cycle therefore has a net cooling effect. If the water cycle was correctly increased in the models alongside the water vapour increase, then the net warming effect would be greatly reduced, and the models’ CO2 climate sensitivity would be correspondingly reduced (because, in the models, the increased water vapour is a CO2 feedback). In short, the models overestimate warming because they underestimate precipitation.
Mike Jonas:
Yes, there are many other relevant factors but I repeat that the existence of the oceans in the present is alone sufficient to demonstrate that the AGW hypothesis is ludicrous nonsense.
As I said, the AGW hypothesis says an increase of 0.4% to radiative forcing from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration would be amplified by the WVF to provide significant global temperature rise, but it is known that an increase of ~20% to radiative forcing from increased solar output has not been amplified by the WVF to provide any discernible global temperature rise.
Richard
Don’t forget that there have been times in the past when CO2 has been in the order of 8,000 ppm (some claim even higher figures, although proxy evidence must be viewed with caution). This is 5 doublings of the pre-industrial CO2 level. From this fact alone, one can immediately see that the forcing from CO2 (plus any consequential water vapour forcing consequent thereon), if any at all, must be towards the lower level of the IPCC range.
The entire claim of strong positive feedbacks is absurd however one looks at it. we would not be here today, if there were such strong positive feedback loops.
“The entire claim of strong positive feedbacks is absurd however one looks at it. we would not be here today, if there were such strong positive feedback loops.”
Agreed. It is amazing how simple logic like your observation is just totally ignored by the alarmist climate “scientists”. It boggles the mind.
In the 70s we were looking at the long term temperature records (from proxies of course) and saw that an end to the current interglacial was the most probable event in the relative near term. This was based on the patterns of the past. We also noticed that CO2 concentrations much, much higher than the present seemed to coincided with some of the best conditions for life in the past. Why would more CO2 not be good for life now? (that plus the amount of CO2 that plant growers pump into their hot houses for optimum growth)
So, for these reasons I could never buy into the CO2 is death delusion.
Mike Jonas,
Correctomundo. To take it one more step: global warming would cause more evaporation.
Both relative and specific humidity have been declining for decades.
Where is that increased evaporation? Where is the increased precipitation?