Ten killer questions that expose how wrong and ideologically driven they are
by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Willie Soon and David R. Legates
A century or so from now, based on current trends, today’s concentration of carbon dioxide in the air will have doubled. How much warming will that cause? The official prediction, 1.5-4.5 degrees Celsius (2.7-8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) per doubling of CO2, is proving a substantial exaggeration.
Professor William Happer of Princeton, one of the world’s foremost physicists, says computer models of climate rely on the assumption that CO2’s direct warming effect is about a factor of two higher than what is actually happening in the real world. This is due to incorrect representations of the microphysical interactions of CO2 molecules with other infrared photons.
As if that were not bad enough, the official story is that feedbacks triggered by direct warming roughly triple the warming, causing not 1 but 3 degrees of warming per CO2 doubling. Here, too, the official story is a significant exaggeration, as demonstrated by Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, perhaps the world’s most knowledgeable climatologist.
The wild exaggerations of both the direct CO2 warming and the supposedly more serious add-on warming are rooted in an untruth: the falsehood that scientists know enough about how clouds form, how thunderstorms work, how air and ocean currents flow, how ice sheets behave, how soot in the air behaves.
In truth, we do not understand climate enough to make even an uneducated guess about how much global warming our adding CO2 to the air will cause. Other things being equal, we will cause some warming, but – based on actual measurements to date – not much.
The national science academies and the UN’s climate panel have profitably contrived what the late Stephen Schneider called “scary scenarios,” based on inadequate knowledge coupled with ideological bias. Etatiste (government empowered or paid) politicians and bureaucrats have gone along with them.
A quarter-century has passed since the panel first predicted how fast the world would warm. Measurements since then show the predictions were much overblown. But don’t take it from us.
Ask any climatologist the following ten killer questions.
1: What is the source of the warming that surface thermometer datasets now say has occurred in the past 18 years?
The official (simplified) theory is that photons interacting with CO2 molecules in the upper air give off heat that warms that air, which in turn warms the lower air, which warms Earth’s surface.
Yet the two satellite datasets show no global warming of the lower air for almost 19 of the 21 years of annual UN global-warming conferences. Even if CO2 had warmed the upper air as predicted (and the satellites show it has not), that warming could not have reached the surface through lower air that has not warmed. Therefore, if the surface has warmed in the past couple of decades, as the surface datasets now pretend, CO2 cannot have been the cause.
In 2006 the late Professor Robert Carter, a down-to-earth geologist who considered global warming a non-problem, wrote in Britain’s Daily Telegraph that in the eight full years 1998-2005 the Hadley Centre’s global temperature dataset showed no global warming at all.
Since then, that dataset (and all the other surface datasets) was recently adjusted upward to create global warming that actual measurements did not show. The Hadley data now indicate a warming trend over those same eight years, equivalent to more than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) per century.
2: Why, just two years ago, did every surface temperature dataset agree with the satellites that there had been no global warming so far in this century? And why was every surface dataset altered in the two years preceding the Paris climate conference – in a manner calculated to show significant warming – even though the satellite records continue to show little or no warming?
3: Why do all the datasets, surface as well as satellite, show a lot less warming than predicted? Why has the rate of warming over the past quarter century been only one-third to one-half of the average prediction made by the UN’s climate panel in its 1990 First Assessment Report, even after the numerous questionable adjustments to the surface temperature datasets?
Figure 1.
The startling temperature clock (Figure 1) shows the UN panel’s 1990 predictions as orange and red zones meeting at the red needle that represents the IPCC’s then average prediction that by now there should have been global warming equivalent to 2.8 degrees C (4.9 degrees F) per century.
But the blue needles, representing the warming reported by the three much-manipulated surface temperature datasets, show little more than half that warming. The green needles, representing the satellite datasets, show only a third of what the UN had predicted with “substantial confidence” in 1990.
4: Why is the gap between official over-prediction and observed reality getting wider?
An updated temperature clock (Figure 2) shows the global warming that the UN’s panel predicted in its 2001 Third Assessment Report, compared with measured warming from then until 2015. The measured warming rate, represented by the green zone, is manifestly less than the warming rate since 1990, even though CO2 concentration has risen throughout this time.
Figure 2
5: Why is the gap widening between warming rates measured by satellite and by surface datasets?
It is legitimate to infer that the surface datasets have been altered to try to bring the reported warming closer to the failed but (for now) still profitable predictions. (That is, the altered datasets still bring profits in the form of money, fame and power to the failed prophets of climate doom.)
6: Why should anyone invest trillions of dollars – to replace fossil fuels with expensive renewable energy – on the basis of official predictions in 1990 and 2001 that differ so greatly from reality?
Plainly, this is not the “settled science” we were told it was.
7: Why has the observed rate of warming, on all datasets, been tumbling for decades notwithstanding predictions that it would at least remain stable?
One-third of all mankind’s supposed warming influence on the climate since 1750 has occurred since the late 1990s, and yet satellites show scarcely a flicker of global warming in almost 19 years.
Likewise, the strength and frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts – and the rate of sea level rise – are still completely within the realm of natural variability and human experience, even though atmospheric CO2 levels have increased noticeably in recent decades. And that extra carbon dioxide is fertilizing plants, making crops and forests grow faster and better, and “greening” the Earth.
Not only the amount but also the pattern of warming fails to match predictions. To the nearest tenth of one per cent, there is no CO2 in the air. (400 ppm is only 0.04% of the atmosphere.) Yet the UN’s panel said in 2007 that carbon dioxide would warm the upper air six miles above the tropical surface at twice or thrice the surface rate.
That tropical mid-troposphere “hot-spot” (one of us gave it its name) was supposed to be the undeniable fingerprint of manmade global warming. Its existence would prove manmade warming.
8: So, where is the tropical upper-air hot-spot?
Satellites do not show it. Millions of measurements taken by balloon-borne radiosondes do not show it. It is missing. If warming is manmade, there should be a distinct difference between measured surface and upper-air warming rates. It has not been there, for decades.
Similarly, just as official predictions claim CO2-driven warming will be greatest in the upper air, which will in turn warm Earth’s surface, so they also claim that the near-surface air will warm the ocean surface, which will warm the deep oceans – and that is where the global warming has been “hiding.”
Yet measurements from more than 3,600 automated buoys throughout the ocean (that dive down a mile and a quarter and take detailed temperature and salinity profiles every ten days) show that the deeper strata are warming faster than the near-surface strata.
9: Why, if CO2-driven warming ought to warm the surface ocean first, is the ocean warming from below? And why has the ocean been warming throughout the eleven full years of the ARGO dataset at a rate equivalent to only 1 degree every 430 years?
As NASA thermal engineer Hal Doiron bluntly puts it: “When I look at the ocean, I see one of the largest heat-sinks in the solar system. While the ocean endures, there can’t be much manmade global warming.” And he had to get his heat calculations right or astronauts died.
Believers have silenced serious and legitimate scientific questions such as these, by unleashing an organized, well-funded, remarkably vicious campaign of personal vilification against anyone who dares to ask any question, however polite or justifiable, about the Party Line. Most scientists, politicians and journalists have learned that they will have a much quieter life if they just drift along with what most scientists privately concede is sheer exaggeration.
Believers also insist there is a “consensus” that manmade global warming is likely to prove dangerous.
10: Given that the authors of the largest-ever survey of peer-reviewed opinion in learned papers found that only 64 of 11,944 papers (0.5% of the total) actually said their authors agreed with the official “consensus” proposition that recent warming was mostly manmade – on what rational, evidence-based, scientific ground is it daily asserted that “97% of scientists” believe recent global warming is not only manmade but dangerous?
The “97% consensus” is a pure fabrication, used to justify harmful and even lethal public policies.
Millions die worldwide every year because they do not have cheap, clean, continuous, low-tech, coal-fired electricity, to replace the wood, grass and animal dung fires they must use to cook their food and heat their homes. Given the growing and flagrant discrepancies between prediction and observation that we have revealed here for the first time, the moral case for defunding the profiteers of climate doom and redeploying the money to give coal-fired light and heat to the world’s poorest people is overwhelming.
We are killing millions of parents and children today, based on a scientifically baseless goal of saving thousands who are not at risk “the day after tomorrow.”
____________
Christopher Monckton was an expert reviewer for the Fifth Assessment Report (2013) of the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC. Willie Soon is a solar physicist and climate scientist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. David Legates, PhD, CCM, is a Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware.
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Good summary of SOME of the issues. The obvious feedback loop of rent-seeking investors and politicians and “scientists” seems a larger issue, and is what I think drives the controversy.
Never underestimate the importance of moral preening political correctness: “I CARE about the environment, as you can see by my support for the environmentalist position. If you disagree it can only be because you are a greedy selfish, overconsumer who is indifferent to dirty air. Therefore you should be on the moral defensive and silent in my presence as my ideas, and I, take precedence.”
Political correctness is the secular equivalent of Praying in Public, and that is not a mild effect in human affairs.
Q11: Does placing a candle in front of a mirror change the temperature of the flame?
If you’re indoors, it may change the brightness of the room you’re in (the Watts per square metre) but does the colour (read= temperature) of the flame change?
Simple enough experiment because most of us are able to distinguish all 24 million colours (out of a very narrow spectrum compared to the IR spectrum) that the machine we’re presently looking at can display and we have other machines miles better than our own eyes.
The result is……
It works if you put a mirror around the filament of an incandescent light bulb.
Lord Monckton says:
“In truth, we do not understand climate enough to make even an uneducated guess about how much global warming our adding CO2 to the air will cause. Other things being equal, we will cause some warming, but – based on actual measurements to date – not much.”
So we can’t make even an uneducated guess but we can tell that the effect will not be much. i don’t get that. Isn’t there something a bit inconsistent there?
There is no scientific proof that there even is an effect. The supposed effect is all model-based, not observation-based. Thus we fall back to the null-hypothesis.
You really should learn the difference between a projection and an observation.
We don’t know enough to make projections.
By observing the actual climate we can see that CO2 doesn’t make much of difference.
Alba:
It is perfectly consistent: we don’t know anything but “actual measurements to date” suggest.
Richard
“9: Why, if CO2-driven warming ought to warm the surface ocean first, is the ocean warming from below?”
________________
Who’s claiming that the global ocean is warming “from below” and is there any evidence for this claim?
As I understand the theory, the heating of the ocean is the result of the cool surface layer warming up. This reduces the temperature gradient between the warmer bottom and the cooler top of this very thin layer, slowing the rate at which heat can leave the ocean and enter the atmosphere.
DLR from increased greenhouse gases isn’t warming the ocean; the sun still does that. CO2 warming just slows down the rate at which accumulated solar heat is lost from the ocean. More heat energy is then available to be distributed through the ocean by currents, etc, causing the temperature to rise.
” CO2 warming just slows down the rate at which accumulated solar heat is lost ”
Do you think that the time element for the slowing of the rate of heat loss is about the same order of magnitude as the amount of time a room full of mirrors stays lit after turning out the lights?
Thomas,
The difference is that the ‘CO2 warming’ light doesn’t go out when the ‘lights’ do.
The increased DLR carries on 24/7. When the sun goes to bed the greenhouse gasses don’t even notice.
The ocean continues to receive its extra dose of warming at night as it does by day.
This is also how I understand the theory, but I have never seen a paper that quantifies the effect.
Simply multiplying the theoretical forcing from DWLW radiation by the surface area of the oceans must surely overstate the theoretical gain in OHC, compared to the indirect ‘insulating’ effect of warming the thin film layer.
Until I see such a paper the whole issue of potentially dangerous increase in OHC is simply alarmist hand waving.
Old’un,
Have you seen this paper (pdf): http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0426%282001%29018%3C0994%3ATMAERI%3E2.0.CO%3B2
DWR54 thank you for the link. I will read it with interest.
DWR54 The paper that you referenced deals essentially with measurement technique, but there is a later paper using a similar (or the same) instrument on a NZ research vessel (don’t have ref to hand) that takes the next step, of measuring the effect of downwelling radiation on the temperature gradient of the top few millimetres of ocean surface. I think that they used cloudy conditions to ensure significant radiation levels.
What I am still looking for is a paper that actually quantifies the reduction of ocean heat LOSS due to the change in temperature gradient caused by increased DWR from CO2. As this relates to 70% of the earths surface, it seems incredible to me that this calculation hasn’t been attempted despite the miriad assumptions that would have to be made in doing so. Without this figure, the jury is still out as far as I am concerned, on the magnitude of increased OHC due to rising CO2.
“What I am still looking for is a paper that actually quantifies the reduction of ocean heat LOSS due to the change in temperature gradient caused by increased DWR from CO2.”
I don’t think the loss can reduce. Almost all of the incoming solar must exit, else there will be rapid warming. The thing to quantify is how warm does the surface have to get to maintain the loss, taking account of DWLWIR.
Nick Stokes. Yet scary analogies such as so many Hiroshima bombs worth of heat being gained per hour would have everyone believe that heat loss must be reducing. The proposition is that this is due to the insulating effect of a change in the temperature gradient at the surface caused by the additional DWLWR from increasing CO2. Unless someone attempts to quantify this effect we cannot attribute the cause of the rise in OHC objectively.
I’m a long retired engineer knocking on eighty, I guess there may be a correlation between age and scepticism and I certainly don’t like to take important issues such as claims of potentially catastrophic climate change at face value. I like to dig to make my own judgement on the probability of them being soundly based. Understanding the numbers is an important part of this, hence my frustration at the apparent failure of the climate science community to put some to this critical mechanism.
You don’t fancy having a go?
Regards, Old’un
Nick Stokes:
You say;
“Almost all of the incoming solar must exit, else there will be rapid warming. The thing to quantify is how warm does the surface have to get to maintain the loss, taking account of DWLWIR.”
The surface temperature changes need not be great, and global temperature need not change.
Thermal energy has to be radiated to space and the energy radiated is in proportion to the fourth power of the temperature (i.e. T^4) of the radiating surface. Sea surface temperature (SST) has a maximum limit and, therefore, temperature rise is severely limited in the tropics. Any variation in the thermal distribution from the tropics towards the poles will alter the global radiative heat loss.
All the global temperature rise of ~0.8°C since 1900 could have resulted from a variation in the rate of thermal distribution from the tropics towards the poles.
Richard
‘Millions die worldwide every year because they do not have cheap, clean, continuous, low-tech, coal-fired electricity, to replace the wood, grass and animal dung fires they must use to cook their food and heat their homes. Given the growing and flagrant discrepancies between prediction and observation that we have revealed here for the first time, the moral case for defunding the profiteers of climate doom and redeploying the money to give coal-fired light and heat to the world’s poorest people is overwhelming.’
Non sequitur, Argumentum ad Misericordiam.
“Gamecock” appears to have a more than usually tenuous grasp of logic. If millions (or, on some estimates, tens of millions) are dying now because they are being deprived of fossil-fuelled electricity, and if – as is the case – part of the reason why they still have no electricity is the campaign against fossil fuels by Socialist elements in the West, then that campaign is contributing to their deaths. On the other side of the account, global warming that is not happening at anything like the predicted rate is not killing anyone. The utilitarian metric requires that we defund the global warming nonsense and spend the money instead on providing Africa with electricity, which would lift more people out of poverty per dollar spent than just about anything else.
It is a scandal that people like “Gamecock” can express their contempt for the world’s poor from behind a cowardly cloak of anonymity.
Thank you for your reply.
‘defunding the profiteers of climate doom and redeploying the money to give coal-fired light and heat to the world’s poorest people is overwhelming.’
Two different subjects. Defund the profiteers without the pity party. The lurch to “the world’s poorest people” does not follow from what preceded. Defunding the profiteers is not related to the worlds’ poor.
“contempt for the world’s poor”
More Argumentum ad Misericordiam. Please develop your case for building coal-fired plants, instead of appending it to unrelated thread without development. Your declaring my contempt is not like you; I’m sorry I have upset you. I consider you to be a very important person.
Over two dozen comments on this thread are from behind a cowardly cloak of anonymity. It’s the internet. Get used to it.
It’s is uncanny how often Christopher M starts his rebuttals with an insult. It’s almost like he is programmed to play the man before he thinks about the ball.
“Gamecock” appears to have a more than usually tenuous grasp of logic.”
“Stokes, as usual, wriggles like a stuck pig.”
Mr Gates makes an ass of himself as usual.”
Simon:
Factual statements are not insults.
The evidence presented in each case was more than sufficient to demonstrate that the following are examples of factual statements.
“Gamecock” appears to have a more than usually tenuous grasp of logic.”
“Stokes, as usual, [pruned]”
Mr Gates makes [pruned] as usual.”
Richard
Mods:
Simon posted statements which are not pruned.
I replied that those statements were justified but my copies of those statements in my reply have been pruned.
The pruning implies that I wrote other than the statements made by Simon: I did not.
Richard
[Noted. We are working through about 1200 comments a day. Takes a while. .mod]
Gamecock, who continues to lurk behind a cloak of furtive anonymity and cites the cowardice of others as the pretext for his own, is of course entitled to fail to see the connection between the Greenshirts’ hate campaign against coal, oil and gas and the lamentable lack of universal electric power, most notably in Africa.
However, as my lovely wife says, now that we’ve won the scientific argument it’s time to advance the moral argument, which is that perhaps tens of millions are dying worldwide – some of them even in the western countries – because of the Greenshirts’ vicious and unprincipled campaign against hydrocarbons.
Gamecock is entitled to look the other way and pretend there’s no connection. But he is not entitled to label a justifiable argument in favor of the victims of the Greenshirts’ policies as an argument from misplaced pity, because the pity is not misplaced. Back to the logic textbooks.
My contempt is for the rich who use “the worlds poorest people” as a shield.
The world’s poorest people are the indigenous people of the world. The UN says there are about 370,000,000 of them. They live in traditional ways, without modern medicine, electronic communication, without electricity.
They have a universally recognized right to be left alone. Yes, left alone, with high infant mortality, cooking with dried dung, and no electricity. Saying you are going to build them a power plant does not put you on the moral high ground. You could correct by saying you are going to build an electric plant for the world’s second poorest people, but that’s not the effect you were looking for.
Additionally, building coal-fired power plants is dependent on many things, like logistics, skilled labor, population density, security, and property rights. The idea that you are going to fix ‘Millions die worldwide every year because they do not have cheap, clean, continuous, low-tech, coal-fired electricity’ by plunking down power plants is naive – so much more must be fixed first.
‘cowardly cloak of anonymity’
More irrelevance; it refutes nothing.
It’s not a non sequitur as Lord Moncton has explained and it’s not an appeal to pity.
That millions die as a result of no access to cheap reliable electricity is not given as evidence that the dangerous human-induced global warming hypothesis is untrue, but as a consequence of policies based on that false claim.
Quote:
Therefore, if the surface has warmed in the past couple of decades, as the surface datasets now pretend, CO2 cannot have been the cause.
____________________________
But albedo could be the cause.
R
[snip . . you would need to supply evidence of that extreme claim . . mod]
A citation, please.
Sorry for formatting. Relevant testimony about halfway through the pdf document:
http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/roy%20spencer%20peabody%20energy.pdf
IV.
SENSITIVITY VALUES
14
Q.
What is climate sensitivity?
15
A.
Climate sensitivity S is the warming in
degrees Kelvin (K) that would be
16
caused by a doubling of the CO
2
concentration. The
sensitivity S is defined
17
by the simple equation,
T= S log(C
2
/C
1
)/log(2), where
T is the warming
18
caused if the atmospheric concentration of CO
2
increases from the initial
19
value C
1
to a final value C
2
.
20
Q.
How are climate sensitivity values determined?
21
A. Ideally, climate sensitivity shoul
d be determined by experimental
22
observations of how changes of the
Earth’s temperature are related to
23
changes in the concentrations of CO
2
in the atmosphere. In practice this is
24
very difficult since many other
factors besides atmospheric CO
2
affect the
25
Earth’s temperature. These factors,
few of which are understood very
26
William Happer Direct
OAH 80-2500-31888
MPUC E-999/CI-14-643
7
6986686
quantitatively, include solar influences
, clouds, aerosols, volcanos, massive
1
ocean instabilities like El Ninos, etc.
2
One can also try to determine the sens
itivity purely theoretically, with the
3
aid of computer models that include
as much of the climate physics as
4
possible. The physics, including clouds
and complicated fluid flow in the
5
atmosphere and oceans, is so complicat
ed that few scientists have much
6
confidence in purely th
eoretical calculations.
7
Q. What is the track reco
rd of climate models used by the IPCC that have
8
tried to predict cl
imate sensitivity?
9
A.
Nearly all of the IPCC
climate models have pr
edicted several hundred
10
percent more warming over the past tw
enty years than has actually been
11
observed. There is something seriously wrong with the models.
12
Q. What are “feedbacks”?
13
A. Feedbacks are changes in the atmosphe
re that amplify (positive feedback) or
14
attenuate (negative feedback) the dir
ect surface warming from changes of
15
CO
2
. For example, if more CO
2
induces more high-a
ltitude water vapor or
16
cloudiness, it would amplify the warming and there would be a positive
17
feedback. If more CO2 were to indu
ce more low-altitude clouds, they would
18
reflect more sunlight and keep the su
rface from heating as much as before.
19
This would be a negative feedback.
20
Q. What is the impact of fee
dbacks on climate sensitivity?
21
A. With no feedbacks, doubling CO
2
concentrations will increase the average
22
surface temperature by about S = 1 K.
The IPCC has used large positive
23
feedbacks to claim “most likely” doubling
sensitivities of S = 3 K or larger.
24
Models with such large doubling sensitiv
ities have predic
ted several hundred
25
per cent more warming than has actually
been observed over the past 10 to
26
William Happer Direct
OAH 80-2500-31888
MPUC E-999/CI-14-643
8
6986686
20 years. Observations are consistent
with little, and perhaps even negative
1
feedback, corresponding to doubling se
nsitivities of S = 1 K or less.
2
Q. What do IPCC climate models assu
me as to climate sensitivity values?
3
A. The IPCC states, “equilibrium climate
sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5 K
4
to 4.5 K (high confidence).”
5
Q. In your opinion, are these assu
med values accurate and reliable?
6
A. Even the lower limit, 1.5 K, is hard
to reconcile with the almost complete
7
lack of warming since the year 1998.
8
A.
In your opinion, what is the proper
range for climate sensitivity values
9
based on the latest scientific literature?
10
A.
My opinion is that the sensitivity is
somewhere between S = 0.5 K and S=
11
1.5 K, with a most likely value close
to the feedback-free sensitivity, which
12
is approximately S = 1 K.
[We cannot make sense of this entry, nor can other readers.
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Thank your for the response, but I don’t think that’s it.
What Dr. Happer said in that testimony was, “My opinion is that the sensitivity is somewhere between S = 0.5 K and S=1.5 K, with a most likely value close to the feedback-free sensitivity, which is approximately S = 1 K.” This feedback-free sensitivity doesn’t seem far off from the 5.35 x ln(2) / 3.2 = 1.16 degrees Celsius the authors contended in their “irreducibly simple” paper that the consensus value is.
If Dr. Happer said what the authors seem to say he did, it must have been elsewhere, presumably after that (June 1, 2015) testimony.
Joe,
Happer also said this in the linked testimony:
“Nearly all of the IPCC climate models have predicted several hundred percent more warming over the past twenty years than has actually been observed. There is something seriously wrong with the models.”
Several hundred percent would be more than twice, ie a factor of two.
Sorry; I see we’ve been talking past each other.
I was interpreting the head-post passage as a comment on what the sensitivity would be if there were no feedback. The part of Dr. Happer’s testimony I quoted seemed largely consistent with what I understand is the consensus view of that, no-feedback quantity.
As you observed, on the other hand, Dr. Happer disagrees with the consensus view on a different quantity, namely, what the with-feedback value is. I agree with you on what his testimony indicates is his position about that quantity.
Joe,
Probably due to my formatting problem and timing of my response to Mods request that I fix it.
Hope this testimony by Happer contained what you wanted.
That testimony isn’t what at least I thought I wanted, because, as I said, I interpreted the above-quoted passage as referring to the no-feedback sensitivity, whereas the Hopper testimony you brought to my attention concerns with-feedback sensitivity.
The reason why I interpreted the above-mentioned head-post passage as I did is that it was followed by the following:
However, Lord Monckton’s reasoning can be somewhat muddled, so you may be right about what the authors actually intended.
Thanks anyway for the response.
You’re welcome if it were helpful.
How about this final sentence as a summary:
“My opinion is that the sensitivity is somewhere between S = 0.5 K and S = 1.5 K, with a most likely value close to the feedback-free sensitivity, which is approximately S = 1 K.”
Relevant testimony about halfway through the pdf document:
http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/roy%20spencer%20peabody%20energy.pdf
Again, thanks.
But, again, I don’t think that’s it, for the reason I gave above.
Joe,
You asked for a citation for this statement:
“Professor William Happer of Princeton, one of the world’s foremost physicists, says computer models of climate rely on the assumption that CO2’s direct warming effect is about a factor of two higher than what is actually happening in the real world.”
I cited this testimony by Happer:
“Nearly all of the IPCC climate models have predicted several hundred percent more warming over the past twenty years than has actually been observed. There is something seriously wrong with the models.”
IMO that satisfies your request.
It seems so to me too, G.M. . . but Joe Born’s reasoning can be somewhat muddled, so he may not realize it ; )
(Well done, I say)
John Kniight:
I don’t expect that that you will be able to respond with any thing like clarity, but I’ll give you the opportunity to make the attempt. I am fairly sure that you will fail, since I have seen many such lightweights, like Lord Monckton, at this site. Still, I hope you won’t fail. I long for a worthy interlocutor.
1. Lord Monckton says , “Professor William Happer of Princeton, one of the world’s foremost physicists, says computer models of climate rely on the assumption that CO2’s direct warming effect is about a factor of two higher than what is actually happening in the real world.”
2. Anyone of even modest analytical ability would interpret that passage, in light of Lord Monckton’s follow-on statement that, “As if that were not bad enough, the official story is that feedbacks triggered by direct warming roughly triple the warming, causing not 1 but 3 degrees of warming per CO2 doubling,” as stating the Dr. Happer had reservations not only about the consensus with-feedback sensitivity value but also about the consensus no-feedback sensitivity value.
3. Despite little hard evidence to the contrary, I am skeptical of that value, even though I see few people, even among us skeptics, who question it. Therefore, I am quite interested in any evidence, particularly from Dr. Happer, that would tend to support my skepticism; I would find the above-mentioned head-post statement congenial. Unfortunately, my experience is that Lord Monckton is quite cavalier about the facts, so I require proof before I believe anything he says, however congenial to my inclinations it may be.
As Lord Monckton and his colleagues have, you have failed to provide any proof that Dr. Happer has said what the head post’s authors have contended he did. I would be happy to find that Dr. Happer had indeed said it and given real support. Sadly, however, I see no evidence.that either you or Lord Monckton is a serious person who can support his claims.
Most people believe what they want to believe. Now, in truth, I confess to believing that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in one’s “philosophy.” At this site, though, we should deal only with science, which should involve only in what we see evidence for. Unfortunately, few who comment at this site seem to see science in that way.
That’s a long way of asking, Do you have any evidence that Dr. Happer has questioned the no-feedback sensitivity? If you have, I would welcome it. Otherwise, you’ve submitted a groundless comment and are not a serious person. Sad to say, you have plenty of company.
Joe Born:
Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou for writing this comedic gem!
An intellectual pygmy boasts that John Knight, Viscount Monckton, Gloateus Maximus and all others who have trounced him here are not “worthy interlocutor(s)”!
Laugh? I almost fell off my seat.
Richard
Joe Born,
“That’s a long way of asking, Do you have any evidence that Dr. Happer has questioned the no-feedback sensitivity?”
Well, I can’t be sure of course, but my impression is that you may be reading more into this sentence than was intended, in terms of what Mr Happer himself said;
” Professor William Happer of Princeton, one of the world’s foremost physicists, says computer models of climate rely on the assumption that CO2’s direct warming effect is about a factor of two higher than what is actually happening in the real world.”
It seems reasonable to me to think the authors consider “what is happening in the real world” to be most likely reflected by what the satellite/balloon records show, which is (as I understand it) substantially below the 1 degree “sensitivity” direct warming estimate Mr. Happer makes.
Mr Born is his usual spiteful, trolling self. I decline to answer his sordid comment.
CAGW stands and/or falls on three basic, simple points:
1) Anthropogenic’s net 4 GT/y CO2/carbon contribution is trivial in comparison to the 45,000 GT in reservoirs and 100s GT/y in fluxes.
2) The 2 W/m^2 of additional RF due to the CO2 added between 1750 and 2011 is lost in the magnitude and uncertainties of the overall power flux: e.g. 340 W/m^2 ToA, 240 W/m^2 OLR +/- 22!!!!!! W/m^2, 101.4 W/m^2 reflected solar +/- 11.7 W/m^2!!!!!, etc.
3) By IPCC’s own admission the GCM’s haven’t and most likely can’t accurately model the atmosphere.
All the rest of the yakking, temperatures, glaciers, polar bears, sea levels, yadda, yadda, is just noise, sound and fury, and pretty much beside the point.
Here is an idea to cloud source. Do it for your own region and report for all to see.
Start with daily time series data from a longer term station say with raw Tmax and Tmin from 1900 on.
Start looking at the % of variability explained by other factors. Pull them into multiple regressions one after another starting with CO2 then local rainfall next. Add in baro pressure and relative humidity and so on until well cooked and served.
You could find that 10 to 40 % of the T variation over time is statistically explained by rainfall. In short, rain cools. Plenty of physics to support this.
You get clearer results if you then use a scalpel at the main break points and treat the data over these smaller times.
Rainfall cools.
This is a rough first pass approach. Maybe for California the higher historic temperatures go hand in hand with lower rainfall. Maybe GHG has little part to play.
This could merit a separate pomst, eh mods?
H/T Dr Bill.
The Bonk will experience real Climate Change in Ottawa and Montreal these next few days. However we call it weather. http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2016/02/05/prime-minister-host-meeting-united-nations-secretary-general-ban-ki-moon These next few will be the coldest of the winter -22 C
I think than the way IPCC highlights radiative forcing but fail to mention the net energy absorption is remarkable.
In the contribution from Working Group I to the fifth assessment report – IPCC highlights the net anthropological radiative forcing:
“The total anthropogenic Radiative Forcing for 2011 relative to 1750 is
2.29 [1.13 to 3.33] W/m² …”
Ref.: WGI; AR5 – Page 13
IPCC does not mention with a word, in the summary for policy makers, that the anthropogenic radiative forcing is countered by:
“.. an increase in outgoing radiation inferred from changes in the global mean surface temperature ..”
Ref: WGI; AR5 – Figure TFE.4, Figure 1 The Earth’s energy budget from 1970 through 2011
IPCC does not mention with a word in the summary that a central estimate for the current net surface warming is 0.6 W/m²:
“considering a global heat storage of 0.6 W/m² (imbalance term in Figure 2.11) based on Argo data from 2005 to 2010 (Hansen et al., 2011; Loeb et al., 2012b; Box 3.1).”
Ref: IPCC;AR5;WGI;page 181; 2.3.1 Global Mean Radiation Budget
And IPCC does not mention with a word that the central estimate for current total feedback from clouds is also 0.6 W/m²:
“Based on the preceding synthesis of cloud behaviour, the net radiative feedback due to all cloud types is judged likely to be positive. …. the central (most likely) estimate of the total cloud feedback is taken as the mean from GCMs (+0.6 W m–2 °C–1).”
Ref: WGI; AR5; 7.2.6 Feedback Synthesis; page 592
That is quite important isn´t it? The central estimate for cloud feedback effect is about equal to a central estimate for net global warming – and the cloud feedback effect is caused by the warming.
More here:
Without cloud feedback there would be no global warming!
I think I can answer these questions – or, at least, tell you what the answer you will get will be if you ask them:
…1: What is the source of the warming that surface thermometer datasets now say has occurred in the past 18 years?
The source is the carbon pollution which we are putting out every year. This is basic science which is irrefutable.
2: Why, just two years ago, did every surface temperature dataset agree with the satellites that there had been no global warming so far in this century? And why was every surface dataset altered in the two years preceding the Paris climate conference – in a manner calculated to show significant warming – even though the satellite records continue to show little or no warming?
Datasets are adjusted for a variety of technical reasons. Satellite datasets are also adjusted. It is coincidence that the adjustments in 2014/5 happened to go upward.
3: Why do all the datasets, surface as well as satellite, show a lot less warming than predicted? Why has the rate of warming over the past quarter century been only one-third to one-half of the average prediction made by the UN’s climate panel in its 1990 First Assessment Report, even after the numerous questionable adjustments to the surface temperature datasets?
Though it is agreed that carbon pollution raises temperatures, we still need to fund a lot more research before we can provide precise predictions.
4: Why is the gap between official over-prediction and observed reality getting wider?
I refer you to my answer to Item 3
5: Why is the gap widening between warming rates measured by satellite and by surface datasets?
I refer you to my answer to Item 4
6: Why should anyone invest trillions of dollars – to replace fossil fuels with expensive renewable energy – on the basis of official predictions in 1990 and 2001 that differ so greatly from reality?
The threat from carbon pollution is so great that we cannot wait to get the science absolutey precise.
7: Why has the observed rate of warming, on all datasets, been tumbling for decades notwithstanding predictions that it would at least remain stable?
I refer you to my answer to Item 5
8: So, where is the tropical upper-air hot-spot?
The tropospheric hot-spot has been found by statistical examination of wind-speeds.
9: Why, if CO2-driven warming ought to warm the surface ocean first, is the ocean warming from below? And why has the ocean been warming throughout the eleven full years of the ARGO dataset at a rate equivalent to only 1 degree every 430 years?
I refer you to my answer to Item 7
10: Given that the authors of the largest-ever survey of peer-reviewed opinion in learned papers found that only 64 of 11,944 papers (0.5% of the total) actually said their authors agreed with the official “consensus” proposition that recent warming was mostly manmade – on what rational, evidence-based, scientific ground is it daily asserted that “97% of scientists” believe recent global warming is not only manmade but dangerous?
…
The UK Met Office and NASA are not responsible for flawed external surveys. Our internal surveys show that 100% of scientists believe in Global Warming.
Whose internal surveys are those?
Is your comment meant to be satire? Surely you aren’t serious.
How can CO2 possibly be a pollutant? It is vital to life on earth. More of this presently dangerously low essential trace gas is better and has greened the earth.
The alleged increase from 285 ppm in AD 1850 to 400 ppm in 2015 has been a good thing for the planet, without having any detectable negative effects. During its longest period of monotonous rise, ie from c. 1945 to 1977, earth cooled dramatically. During its highest period, ie c. 1996 to 2015, global average temperature stayed about the same or fell slightly.
More CO2 would be better, not worse, for life on earth. Ideal would be actual greenhouse concentration at up to 1300 ppm.
Satire.
9: Why, if CO2-driven warming ought to warm the surface ocean first, is the ocean warming from below? And why has the ocean been warming throughout the eleven full years of the ARGO dataset at a rate equivalent to only 1 degree every 430 years?
I refer you to my answer to Item 7 (work back)
I refer you to my answer to Item 5
I refer you to my answer to Item 4
I refer you to my answer to Item 3
Dodgy Geezer
So. The entire argument now comes down to:
1. Trust me, because me and 100% of my colleagues – who also want more money next year – agree with me, even though none of us can measure at all (much less measure accurately) what we claim to be measuring because what we cannot measure accurately is irrefutable evidence because we said so.
2. Give me more money, because of the above.
3. Continue destroying the world’s economies, continue causing millions of innocents to die and billions more to continue living in hardship and poverty because we feel the world might be in danger of something we fear but cannot measure accurately and cannot predict accurately even in the next 20 years – much less 150 years of hardship caused by OUR fears of a danger (which we cannot measure).
My unscientific internal survey is to ask each of the hundreds of scientists of my acquaintance what he or she thinks of the hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming. The result is that those whose careers depend upon supporting the hypothesis “believe in” it, most of those who don’t rely on it for funding don’t, and others honestly state they don’t know enough about the contention to decide conclusively either way. I’d say that a majority thinks that humans have some effect on at least local climates, warming some and cooling others. The net human effect on global climate, however, cannot be known, if any, even as to its sign.
To which rent-seeking, taxpayer-funded profiteering quango does “Dodgy Geezer” belong? Whichever it is, it should be entirely defunded and all the soi-disant “scientists” sacked. The correct scientific answer to the question “Do you believe in global warming?” is that science is not a matter of belief, and that the survey question should be refined so as actually to mean something. That the “scientists” gave such a dopey question the political answer they were expected to give, an answer upon which their fat income-streams depend, does not bode well for the future of true science.
I think you may have misinterpreted Dodgy’s position on the matter.
Read Dodgy Geezer’s post again, and with more attention.
As Chris Hanley says “I think you may have misinterpreted Dodgy’s position on the matter.”
Dodgy Geezer
I should indeed apologize to Dodgy Geezer for misinterpreting his comment as suggesting that he belonged to one of the profiteering quangos. They should still be defunded and shut down, though.
“The UK Met Office and NASA are not responsible for flawed external surveys. Our internal surveys show that 100% of scientists believe in Global Warming.”
You forgot the part where they’ll be fired if they don’t “believe” in Global Warming.
“The threat from carbon pollution … ”
That term is deliberately designed to mislead and inflame. It should be avoided
Thank you authors!
Look for the prime flaw: “pre-industrial and pre- CO2 acceleration temperatures”
Can someone please explain to me how the “+1C /century” can be established given the distribution and accuracy of the data points during the 2 ‘pres’ are taken into account? Surely the current calculation required that the pre measurements were within 0.1 C? I will make a stab at predicting the accuracy was within 3 C
We need a historian with their tenacious ability to do the hard research. I would love to see a map of data point locations used for each decade of the 150 year record
There was a rural weather data station in my own location throughout the early 20th century. I doubt that the thermometer could be read to 0.1 C. Why would they bother? My understanding is that a volunteer read it and rung the info through. 2 or 3 degrees here or there – why would it matter unless it was unusually hot or cold? A normal human would take a quick glance and make a stab at the nearest 1C. The same would go for bucket temps
Imagine a student proposing a PhD project designed to establish results of precision of 0.1C based on this history. There was a time when it would be thrown in the trash bin. Now billions of dollars are committed on the same basis
This stuff does not require just science and maths. It requires simple logic and common sense. The basic principles are not rocket science
Given the paucity and low quality of the ground based temperature network, it’s ridiculous to think that we can use it to measure the earth’s temperature to within even 5C.
As you go back in time, the problem gets worse.
Why did BP call for global carbon tax on 2-11-16?
Here’s a guess. If the coal industry is out of business, they’ll sell more oil.
“If the coal industry is out of business, they’ll sell more oil.”
Oil is not used to generate electricity in the US and hasn’t been for decades. Coal is going to be around for a long time yet. Maybe 15% of the old coal capacity will be retired and replaced with fossil fueled, CO2 producing, natural gas fired combined cycle plants because gas is cheap and CCPPs are twice as efficient as the traditional Rankine steam cycles.
BP sells natural gas as well.
Go along, get along.
PS: BP was probably pressured into making such a statement; Greenies are well funded and well organized and habitually engage in twisting corporate arms.
“Why did BP call for global carbon tax on 2-11-16?”
Don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
No Idea is more valid than its Premise – if its Premise is Bogus the Idea is Bogus.
The Premise upon which the whole AGW movement is based is the notion that a Warming Earth is Evil, Wrong, Immoral, Bad, Dangerous, Harmful, Unhealthy, etc…, etc…
IF the Premise that a Warming Earth is Evil is Bogus THEN the whole AGW movement to stop it is Bogus.
Thank you. BUT in future please re-write 2nd to last paragraph –
OLD
“Millions die worldwide every year …..”
NEW –
“Millions of children under age five die every year because their parents don’t have access to …..”
This is more powerful and it has the virtue of also being true.
To the dogmatist a single death may be a tradgedy but a million is just a statistic. But they cannot argue the death of children is necessary to save the planet. That goes beyond the Pale.
Thank you again.
The earth’s population grew to 7 billion (which would fit easily in half of the Grand Canyon) because of a declining death rate, not an increasing birth rate. Birth rates are falling in most developed countries, even below replacement numbers. The prospect of 8, 9, 10 billion people is becoming less likely every year.
I defer to Hans Rosling who has stated that we have reached ‘peak child’. Hans identifies peak population at 10 to 11 billion. I think 8 or 9 is too low without global Maoist type policies ‘in the bedroom’ as Hans would say.
Also using data we can see that longevity and declining death rates relate primarily to a decline in global child mortality. Declining birth rates also correlate most closely with declining child mortality rates. If your child is likely to survive and support you in old age, there is not incentive to bear 6 or 7 kids.
IMO, eight billion is baked in the cake, nine million probable, but ten billion possibly not.
Should stabilize around ten billion, IMO, which is not the unsustainable catastrophe Malthusians imagine.
Ten billion people living at the density of Mong Kok, Hong Kong (130,000 people per sq. km.), would fit in an area of less than 77,000 sq. km, ie smaller than the Czech Republic. However the farmland to support them would cover a larger area, of course.
The Earth’s population will stop growing in 10 to 20 years, and start falling rapidly after that.
Robert makes a good point: children are at least as vulnerable as adults to the policies of hate pushed by the Greenshirts.
Dear Christopher Monckton, Willie Soon & David R. Legates,
I find that your item/question #1 is the key strategic and the most fundamental scientific issue of your ten. It is sufficient to “kill” (Monckton’s, Soon’s and Legates’ word) the ‘hypothesis that AGW** is significant’ .
That said, your other nine items/questions are good for establishing diverse multiple lines of reasoning and evidence to show purposeful exaggeration to achieve subjective goals based on pre-science premises (ideology).
** AGW is GW from burning fossil fuels
John
OK, not so much a parody; more like a metaphor of the actual situation . . . . : )
John
Propheteers. Same old, same old.
A “killer question” for you Christopher.
Were you previously aware that global sea ice area has recently reached its lowest ever level (since the Cryosphere Today satellite records began)?
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2016/02/global-sea-ice-area-at-lowest-ever-level/
Jim Hunt,
No, that’s just natural variation. And it’s not the “lowest EVAH!!”
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Thanks DBS,
Actually it is the lowest ever (since CT satellite records began) as I stated. I can assure you that this has been rigourously peer reviewed!
Also I think you will find that my original question was addressed to the author of this article rather than to your good self.
Please, Jim, let’s strive for accuracy; it’s my ‘great’ self. ☺
Anyway, Cryosphere says global ice isn’t the … Lowest EVAH!!
For some strange reason that comment I keep banging on about still hasn’t made it’s way out of moderation. Could somebody (anybody?) dig it out please? [Reply: Please re-post. There is nothing in the Spam folder. -mod]
Meanwhile CT global sea ice area just posted a new all time low reading today. Since their records began of course, in 1979.
14.359 million square kilometers
Jim Hunt,
Please forgive me for replying to your comment, since it was undoubtedly directed to someone else. But if you wouldn’t mind, please explain why Arctic ice is special?
Mr Hunt, in his desperation to promote the purely political but now collapsing cause of shutting down fossil-fuel corporations that were once the major donors to his hated Republican opponents, displays a shameful disregard for, or ignorance of, elementary statistical method. He founds his case on a single data point, and one that is little different from similar data points in 2006 and 2011.
However, as he will learn when he attends his first Statistics 101 course, to place undue weight on a single data point is to err. Grown-ups determine trends on multiple data points. As Mr Hunt will learn from the graph helpfully posted by Mr Stealey, to whom he is as churlishly ungrateful as most of his sort are, the trend on the daily observations of global sea-ice extent by the satellites since 1979 is remarkably close to zero.
There has, of course, been some global warming since 1979, though only one-third of what the IPCC predicted in 1990. Naturally, one consequence of the little warming that has occurred might be a very small loss of global sea ice.
For life on Earth, of course, ice is not generally a good thing. The less of it the better.
Christopher – As I hoped you would have realised by now I hail from Soggy South-West England and am therefore not entitled to vote in any elections in the Good ‘Ol US of A.
In addition I fear that you fail to comprehend the point I am in actual fact attempting to make, not least because a previous elucidatory comment of mine is still “awaiting moderation” here. Perhaps you might be able to have a word in the WUWT webmaster’s shell like about the issue?
Re: dbstealey February 16, 2016 at 8:57 am
In case you hadn’t noticed I’ve been banging on about GLOBAL sea ice here. That’s because history strongly suggests that, for reasons best known to himself, Viscount Monckton likes to bang on about that particular metric too.
[so do you, with a blog dedicated to it. do you have a point? -mod]
Phil Clarke is, as usual, wrong. The head posting did not use any “forcing scenario”: it used the predictions made by the IPCC in 1990 on its “business-as-usual” case.
Huh? What is the ‘BAU case’ if not a scenario?
The rate of CO2 emissions growth from 1990 till the present is actually somewhat higher than on the IPCC’s 1990 “business-as-usual” case, but the predicted rate of global warming did not occur
But, as you correctly stated, “Scenario A was its business-as-usual scenario, and it had incorrectly predicted a far greater rate of forcing, and hence of temperature change, than actually occurred”
Both of these statements cannot be true, unless you are relying on non-CO2 forcings. Under Scenario A the radiative forcing for 2010 was approximately 3.5 Watts per square meter (W/m2) as opposed to 3 W/m2 under Scenarios B &C. The actual number 2.8 W/m2,
For CO2 only, Scenario A CO2 forcing was 1.85 W/m2 by 2000 and 2.88 by 2025. A peer reviewed paper has the value for CO2 forcing at 1.82 W/m2, in other words by 2011 we were still below the value Scenario A had more than a decade earlier.
The title of the peer-reviewed paper was:- ‘Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model, by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Willie Soon, David Legates and Matt Briggs.
Clearly Scenario A (BAU) did not come to pass, the comparison is bogus.
I found an atmospheric heat/power flux balance diagram among Bing images that is labeled “Fig 10 Trenberth et. al. 2011.” Some of you might recognize the paper. What is interesting is that there are eight values and an average displayed for each of the major state points. From what I can tell they are eight different studies/data bases/calcs and in some cases with quite different values. What happened to consensus? A couple of the variation ranges/uncertainties are an order of magnitude greater than anthropogenic CO2’s 2 W/m^2 RF. And there is the 333 W/m^2 perpetual (GHG?) power flux loop between earth’s surface and sky, i.e. lower troposphere.
A summary table:
………………………..ave W/m^2…..+/- %…+/- W/m^2
ToA net…………………342.1……..1.5……..…..5.13
OLR…………………….243.9……..9.0……..…21.95
Albedo, %…………………29.8……..3.5……..…..1.04
Surface Radiation……..398.0…….2.5……..……9.95
Back Radiation………….338.3…….8.5…………28.76
Evapo transpiration…….85.1…….9.0………..…7.66
Reflected Surface………..27.4…….5.7……….…1.56
Reflected Solar…………..101.4….11.5….…….11.66
Latent Heat……………….88.1…… 8.0……….…7.05
Per IPCC AR5 the cumulative CO2 RF between 1750 and 2011 is about 2 W/m^2. OLR is +/- 22 !!!!!!! Reflected solar +/- 12!!! Even RCP 8.5 gets lost in uncertainties this large. How can anybody claim significant confidence in the present or future global temperatures with such huge uncertainties?
Phil Clarke is, as usual, wrong. The IPCC, in its 1990 First ASSessment Report, put forward its estimate of the anthropogenic emissions of CO2 that the world would make. Like it or not, our emissions are above those that the IPCC predicted, yet the amount of warming it predicted did not occur.
It is, of course, part of my contention that the IPCC has in the past overstated the radiative forcing from CO2. Phil Clarke now confirms, citing the most authoritative of reviewed sources (me) that that is indeed the case.
The fact is that there has been far less warming than the IPCC predicted, even though our emissions since 1990 have been if anything a little greater than predicted. that means the IPCC got it wrong. If it was wrong then, why should we believe it now?