Guest essay by Eric Worrall
CO2 forcing is logarithmic – the more CO2 you add, the less effect additional CO2 has on the climate system. So how do you make this diminishing return sound scary? By creating a fantasy, or course.
Near miss: the importance of the natural atmospheric CO2 concentration to human historical evolution
ABSTRACT
When fossil fuel energy was discovered, the timing and intensity of the resulting climate impacts depended on what the natural CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was at that time. The natural CO2 concentration is thought to be controlled by complex, slow-acting natural feedback mechanisms, and could easily have been different than it turned out to be. If the natural concentration had been a factor of two or more lower, the climate impacts of fossil fuel CO2 release would have occurred about 50 or more years sooner, making it much more challenging for the developing human society to scientifically understand the phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change in time to prevent it.
Read more: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-016-1725-y
The crux of the argument appears to be the following;
… The set point of the CO2 thermostat depends on the intensity of sunlight received at the Earth’s surface, among many other things (Berner and Lasaga 1989; Berner 1997). According to the Berner formulation, if the temperature at the surface of the sun were just 1 % hotter, or if Earth were just a few percent closer to the sun, a significantly lower atmospheric CO2 concentration would have been needed, for weathering to balance the same rate of CO2 degassing (Fig 1a and b). A 10 % change in the albedo of the Earth, or in the age of the Earth (putting us later on the timeline of a warming sun), would also have had a significant impact on the steady state atmospheric CO2 concentration. The CO2 degassing rate could be a bit lower than it is. If any of these factors had been different at the time in Earth history when industrial society arose, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere could have been much different than it turned out to be, either higher or lower. …
Read more: Same link as above
Essentially the author is arguing that if humanity had evolved millions of years later in our planet’s history, when the sun was a little warmer, we would have encountered serious climate problems decades earlier in our industrial history than today, and therefore have been a lot less able to deal with them.
The problem with this argument is, despite the author’s assertions, we still haven’t encountered any “challenging” problems with the global climate. Despite wild claims about climate refugees and worsening storms, the reality is the global climate is benign. Our biosphere is growing more productive, more benign, thanks to greening from anthropogenic CO2.
If the Earth really was currently experiencing major anthropogenic climate related problems, there would be no need to invent fantasies about how it could have been worse.
“If the natural concentration had been a factor of two or more lower,”
What ??? If that would have been the case, there would be no plants & if there were no plants , there would be no animals & no humans & no one adding additional CO2, so the whole story is a logical impossibility.
As usual, alarmists always have “glass half empty” attitudes. I am would say the “glass half full” – We are pretty dang lucky that everything aligned just right here in our little corner of the universe.
If the CO2 level was at its historic 1000+ PPM, and the global temperature 10C higher due to the the poles being at Florida temperatures like they should be; we wouldn’t notice a couple of hundred PPM CO2 change except as social commentary.
The conversation as two regular guys plink at the crocs and brown polar bears from the porch of a summer home in Resolute:
“Gee Dave – the CO2 level went from 1500 to 1700 PPM”.
“And what difference does that make?”
“None really, but it will make turning atmosphere into fuel cheaper.”
“If the natural concentration … , the climate impacts .. would have occurred … years sooner,”
And if grandma had wheels, she would have been a fire truck.
BtW the pre industrial concentration was about 280ppm. If it were half of that, 140ppm, I think that plants would be in serious trouble.
If industrialisation is responsible for the increase in the CO2 concentration and if that increase is partly responsible for a modest rise in the GAT in the past 200 years then Hallelujah, just in time.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2 TemperatureSince10700 BP with CO2 from EPICA DomeC.gif
First it has to be shown that fossil fuel emissions cause atmospheric CO2 to rise.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2642639
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2654191
“The crux of the argument appears to be the following …”
lololololololo
(already nailed metaphorically by Tom in Florida (and others) above)
Here we all are (I took it with my phone, heh), in the WUWT lecture hall
listeninglaughing at the above author’s lecture about human CO2 and millions of year ago and stuff. 🙂(youtube)
Yeah, I know there are a lot more women in that photo than usually pipe up here… they are all in the Loyal Lurkers Club … like stars in the daytime, you don’t see them, but, the are there, watching…
P.S. I think the one in the red top is the author’s sister. She feels more like crying.
Now, what if we lived in the Buffy-verse? (and not the “Normal Again” special-Buffy-verse)
Would be scary, hug?
Hi from Oz. Wow, the author, David Archer of University of Chicago, must have plenty of spare time on his hands to be able to waste it by writing this paper stating the bleeding obvious, complete with about 30 cited references to support it! But if all his buds quote it in their subsequent papers stating the bleeding obvious in a slightly different way, his H-index (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index) goes up! Just rinse and repeat – then everybuddy wins!
How is that different from becoming famous thanks to a reality show or even a séxtape?
Climate scientists only use the best physics formula ever invented, when it suits them.
Let’s have a look at another physics formula which provides for a logarithmic effect. The Stefan Boltzmann equation which has proven to be eerily accurate wherever it is used in the universe.
So beyond, the forcing of CO2 being algorithmic, the forcing itself only increases temperature in another round of semi-algorithmic impacts. As the energy level received from the Sun goes up, the temperature only increases to the fourth power.
Illustrated here with the greenhouse effect also included. This is a very handy equation because it underpins what climate science is really all about but the scientists themselves throw it out as soon as they start using climate models and shortcuts.
http://s13.postimg.org/syf6lu6h3/SB_Equation_Earth_Surface_Temp.png
Let’s compare the Earth surface temperature/energy level compared to the Sun. The formula works eerily magically again and we can see that the Sun has a surface temperature of 5,778K (the actual temperature measured) and it puts out 63,240,000 W/m2 every single second. Just a metre square on the Sun surface puts out 63,240,000 joules of energy every single second while the average metre square on Earth is just 390 joules/second. If one takes this number and using the inverse square law for how much energy from the Sun reaches the Earth for square metre, it works out exactly to that measured by satellite, 1,366 W/m2. The formula works perfectly no matter how it is tested.
http://s12.postimg.org/pzw4ajtjh/SB_Equation_Earth_Sun.png
Okay, what does climate science do with a “perfect” energy to temperature conversion formula that works everywhere in the universe to the “T”.
They throw it out and use simple shortcuts instead. For example, When have ever heard that doubled CO2 (and the other GHGs like methane) provide a direct forcing/energy increase of 4.2 W/m2 and then the feedbacks have to kick in to produce another 12.0 W/m2 if we are ever get to +3.0C per doubling.
You NEVER, EVER, ever, ever hear a climate scientist saying this and you have never seen this from the IPCC and most climate scientists probably have no clue, this is what their theory implies.
http://s18.postimg.org/nanmqc6d5/SB_Equation_Zoom_in_GW_Math.png
So, you can completely discount this shyster because he knows nothing about what he is saying. Even 450 million years ago, the Sun was a little less strong, but according to the most “perfect” equation in the universe, the Earth’s global temperature would only have been about 2.4C lower due to the dimmer Sun.
It will take about 1.0 billion years of the Sun gradually getting more luminous and bigger in order to raise the Earth surface temperature by 5.0C. How do I know this? I have the formulae which is needed and the calculations which are needed which this shyster wouldn’t be able to understand because he has only been taught shortcuts in this science.
It’s so perfect that the defective satellite agreed with them on wattage. What a coincidence!
Oops!!!!!!!
“The situation is completely different for a CO2 concentration of 240 p.p.m., which is close to that observed at the end of MIS19. In this case all four model versions simulate rapid ice growth several thousands of years before the present and large ice sheets exist already at the present time (Extended Data Fig. 1). This means that the Earth system would already be well on the way towards a new glacial state if the pre-industrial CO2 level had been merely 40 p.p.m. lower than it was during the late Holocene, which is consistent with previous results.”
Paywalled here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v529/n7585/abs/nature16494.html
higley7 says: And, let’s not forget that, if CO2 had been a factor of two lower than they claim, our plants would be either dead or not growing and the animals would be dying.
This needs a little explanation. On geological time scales the world ocean is a carbon sink, or if you prefer a CO2 sink. This is because microscopic organisms (forams) combine CO2 with calcium to form calcium carbonates and the CaCO2 accumulates on the ocean floor.
Eventually this process reduces the CO2 in the atmosphere, which is the opposite of what land plants need, because at around 150 parts per million, the low partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere causes plants to stop growing.
Part of the problem is that when CO2 partial pressure is low, plant stomata (breathing pores) have to increase in size and this increases evapo-transpiration (loss of water).. Low atmospheric CO2 may have an effect similar to drought.
Some plants evolved a more efficient form of photosynthesis as an adaptation to low atmospheric CO2, called the C4 pathway. Corn (maize) is our most popular example, but there are many others.
Now that CO2 is around 400 ppm, C3 plants have an easier job in getting enough CO2 and in conserving water (because of smaller stomata). So we expect an increase in productivity from both C3 plants and C4 plants, but more increase in C3 plants, which is what has been observed.
CaCO2 should read CaCO3 (chemistry quibble). The only plants that could survive a CO2 level below about 150 ppm are probably monocellular photosynthetes such as blue-green algae, which lack stomata and transpire CO2 directly through their cell walls.
Somebody should inaugurate the “Broom, Bucket and Scoop Award” to be given to academics who waste time and taxpayers money on pointless speculation and Doom-mongering so they can, instead, go outside and do something useful like clean dogshit off the pavements.
“If the natural [CO2] concentration had been a factor of two or more lower,” photosynthesis would have been nearly impossible, and most plant life would not have been around.
This is the kind of idle speculation that my father would have termed ‘wool-gathering’.
My initial reaction to this paper was that it was a clever parody of typical CAGC papers intended to demonstrate that anything that includes CO2 and climate change could get published no matter how ridiculously and absurd the thesis. But bit of checking indicates it is real. Can’t tell if it was “pal reviewed” but I suspect it will soon become another piece of the vast body of scientific evidence of CAGC nonsense.
“It is an interesting question to ponder, how much that might have mattered to impeding a social response to climate change. If real pain is mostly what it takes, Arrhenius would have had an explanation of how further pain could have been avoided.”…”If atmospheric CO2 had been a factor of 10 lower than it turned out to be, the changes we are now seeing in climate today would have occurred at about Arrhenius’ time (~1900).”
If “normal” CO2 had been 10x less it would have been really painful and social change would not have been impeded and Arrhenius would have persuaded everybody to use windmills not coal. Okay, I’m done pondering, can I have that 20 seconds back?
“The greenhouse blanketing effect of the initial CO2 concentration provides a fuse of some variable length, giving humanity time between when the match is lit and when the bomb goes off” … “the fuse was lit in 1800.”
Ohhh nooo, the world is going to explode!!!
“Taking these as our end points, the background-CO2 time-delay fuse lasted about two centuries.”
Oh, it already exploded. Never mind. Good thing we had those windmills.
“Trying to build such a model, it becomes clear which preconceived notions of how things work actually pan out, and which are undermined by some hidden flaw in reasoning or unexpected connection in reality.”
Hear, hear.
” if the temperature at the surface of the sun were just 1 % hotter ” , the Earth would be 1% hotter .
Perhaps the most fundamental quantitative absolute is that the temperature of a radiantly heated body is linear with the temperature of the radiant source .
” if Earth were just a few percent closer to the sun, … ” , the Earth would be the square root of that percent hotter .
The lack of universal understanding of these most basic high school level non-optional quantitative physical relationships I find disgusting . They show the utter nonscience fraud of AlGoreWarming , and what I see as inexcusable intellectual laziness pervasive in the “climate science” community which needs to be scrubbed clean by serious required undergraduate physics curricula .
YOU SAY:
“CO2 forcing is logarithmic – the more CO2 you add, the less effect additional CO2 has on the climate system.”
I SAY:
HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT ?
Could it be possible that CO2 has little or no effect beyond the first 100 ppmv ?
Or no effect at all beyond 400 ppmv ?
Could it be that burning fossil fuels releases more than just CO2 into the atmosphere, and the other chemicals / particulates offset any warming effect from CO2 ?
Could there be negative feedbacks that offset much, most, or all, effects of CO2?
The effects of burning fossil fuels includes more than just the release of CO2.
The claimed positive feedbacks allegedly multiply the warming effects of CO2 — yet negative feedbacks are much more likely, because even with much higher levels of CO2 in the past, our planet has never had runaway warming (that has been predicted for the past 40 years).
The people who claim the average temperature effect of burning fossil fuels is logarithmic, and attribute all climate changes to CO2, have been making inaccurate climate forecasts for 40 years, based on the alleged logarithmic effect of CO2 — why should we believe them ?
Question everything !
It’s Beer’s or Beer & Lambert’s Law . Google it and work thru the computations and their assumptions .
These effects can be computed and experimentally verified as they have been understood for more than a century . It’s like people have totally forgotten , or chose to ignore , how real branches of applied physics work .
First you understand the basics — the equations in 1 variable — and their experimental validation .
Then combinations . And you only claim to understand that which you can quantitatively explain .
Burning fossil fuels does a lot more than just releasing pure CO2 in the air.
Humans also affect the primary greenhouse gas: water vapor.
There may be negative feedbacks that significantly offset, or even eliminate, the effects of CO2;.
No one knows how much warming CO2 has caused so far.
And no one knows how much, if any, warming more CO2 in the air will cause.
Much of the “proof” that CO2 causes warming is merely measuring the warming, and arbitrarily declaring it must have been caused by CO2, since we don’t like any other explanation.
It remains possible that CO2 has always been a minor climate change variable, and has caused much less of the warming in the past 150 years than some people think … meaning it is possible future warming from CO2 will be smaller than expected, perhaps too small to measure.
Much of what is “true” in science turns out to be temporarily true — later found to be slightly wrong, or mainly wrong, or completely wrong.
I know the Beer-Lambert Law governs gas absorption, but was not aware the IPCC uses it for their climate predictions.
A scientist who is “sure” about something often turns out to be wrong.
It may take many years, or even decades, but scientists today who are “sure” of what CO2 does to the average temperature … may end up being wrong.
The same equations apply . The only effect on our global mean temperature any changes in the atmosphere , or surface for that matter , have are thru their effect on our spectrum as seen from space .
And no spectral effects , ie : GHG effects, explain why the bottom of atmospheres are hotter than the their tops .
If we had some ham we’d have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs! I’ve heard that saying all my life, but I didn’t know it could be ginned up into a grant and a paper. Idiots, but dangerous idiots.
The global climate is not “benign,” it is extremely dangerous. It is only technological society, fueled by among other things fossil fuels, that makes it possible for humans to exist in the current climate regime.
If ifs and ands were pots and pans there’d be no need for tinkers.
“CO2 forcing is logarithmic – the more CO2 you add, the less effect additional CO2 has on the climate system. So how do you make this diminishing return sound scary? By creating a fantasy, or course.”
With tiny amounts of a gas, warming is proportional to N, the number of molecules. As the gas increases, wattage is proportional to the square root of log N, which is where we are..
With even further increases, the wattage increase becomes proportional to the square root of N.
The first article refers to the sun, but would apply to gases in earth’s atmosphere also.
http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys440/lectures/curve/curve.html
http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~lea/courses/grad/cog.PDF
Aside from Bill Illis’ approach, we have no idea where we fall on the negative log curve of diminishing effect. Modtran gives us some perspective.
CO2 has completely absorbed OLR in the fundamental bending CO2 bands at 280 ppm. The remaining bands are very weak and/or also nearly saturated at 400 ppm.
We can invoke Boltzmann in a different attitude to evaluate the potential radiative forcing in the different CO2 bands.
89% of the potential radiative forcing from CO2 is in the 667.4/15 micron band where OLR is already extinguished at 280 ppm.
As usual, the argument in the paper is upside down and backwards. If human industry had evolved during a period brighter sun (we are actually children of the Pleistocene), initial CO2 would have been higher per Henry’s law, and therefore at an even flatter part of the curve of diminishing effect.
“CO2 forcing is logarithmic – the more CO2 you add, the less effect additional CO2 has on the climate system.”
Yes this is true. We know that thanks to climate scientists.
All together :
Thank you climate scientists.
Thank you climate science.