Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova – The following is a video presentation by John Christy from 2015 (published a few days ago), in which Christy uses his tremendous communication skills to help a non-specialist audience understand what is wrong with climate models, and the terrible moral downside of attempting to restrict CO2 emissions.
John Christy is the Alabama State Climatologist and a climate scientist with the University of Alabama. In 1991 he received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement for his contribution to global temperature monitoring. In 1996 he received a special award from the American Meteorology Society.
One of the most interesting parts of the video is the Q&A section at the end of the video, as Christy answers questions and clarifies issues for intelligent students who have been fed a lot of nonsense about climate change.
My favourite question and answer;
“Why do you think there has been such an agreement in the scientific community towards one side of the debate? I’d like to think the scientific community accepts points according to the evidence”.
“What you see in terms of the consensus and so on are self selected groups. They for example the authors of the IPCC are selected by governments because of their views. Guess what they produce? The results you would expect. I’ve been a lead author myself and a reviewer, throwing at them, this would not stand up in court. What you’re claiming here in the IPCC would not stand up under cross examination, yet it goes through anyway”.
My thought – if we could clone half a dozen John Christy’s and send them out to all the classrooms of America, the climate scare would collapse overnight.
Here is a good clip of Dr Christy. He was featured in this documentary.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=15m13s
WUWT Readers and Mr Anthony Watts, I’ve tried to compile the best arguments found in these discussions and wrote a blog post titled: “How to Discuss Global Warming With A Liberal. The Smoking Gun Files.” I’d appreciate a review and QC of my arguments. It is designed to be a one-stop shop of arguments against the AGW theory. Here is the link:
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/03/how-to-discuss-global-warming-with-a-liberal-the-smoking-gun-files/
Please pass the link on to all your warmist friends, science teachers, skeptics and politicians.
Very good points you make at your link. I’m going to spend more time reading your points, but a couple of preliminary thoughts.
One key to good argument is to undercut the credibility of the opposition as much as possible. About a month ago I did that to good effect with my brother, who’s a liberal warmist. We have had discussions about AGW going back years, some going on for hours, but the other night I got the best of him in very few words. I announced “you must be hating life; Trump said ‘no more money for politicized science.'” “He said that??” I said that politicized science is not credible, as these ‘scientists’ are in effect advocates for a cause, not impartial seekers of the truth, and it was unexpected that he didn’t seem to have much a rebuttal. Once you knee-cap the credibility of the opposing camp all your arguments gain greater weight. Call it “politicized science” and it’s no longer science. So to the extent that you can add more points to add doubt to the credibility of the Chicken Littles, good.
Your coverage of CO2 and the models is outstanding. In referring to the models I think your phrasing it as their “extreme failure” has a greater impact than saying the models are “very inaccurate.” In the video that I posted below (Physicist Lawrence Krauss Bombs out on Climate Science) I like the way the skeptic narrator responds when Krauss says that the models predict a 3.6°C rise in temperatures:
Weirdly all you need to know was published in 1896.
Before politicized science.
And again in 1938.
Confirmed by the air force in the 50s.
Relied on by Reagan star wars.
Nice try
Weirdly, Steven Mosher thinks that any readers who don’t grasp what it is he’s alluding to, don’t really need to know the science facts, but must instead, just trust his assertion. And then he vilifies any who disagree.
What a perfect metaphor.
“Steven Mosher January 2, 2017 at 9:58 pm
Weirdly all you need to know was published in 1896.”
For a confined/controlled/closed lab experiment, sure. A real open and chaotic system, not so sure.
Steven Mosher “Before politicized science.”
Lol because in 1961 Dwight Eisenhower said:
Eisenhower probably sensed that leftists were even then gaining control of the scientific establishment. And now anyone with a different view from the leftist orthodoxy on “climate change” is forcibly shut out:
Question to Dr. Richard Lindzen: Is it possible for a young person today to get tenure in one of these institutions (universities) if they disagree with global warming alarmism?
Dr. Richard Lindzen: … NOT OPENLY.
“Politicized science” is propaganda. And with limited exception that’s all that “climate science” is now; it’s little more than leftist dogma and has ZERO credibility.
Mosh, in 1896 he also omitted clouds, convection of heat upward in the atmosphere, and other essential factors.
Much the same as they omit in 2016 … in other words … nothing has change in ‘climate science’ for 120 years. Talk about settled science!
1896? The results of the experiment were not alarming then and are not alarming now. In fact we are only halfway to a doubling of CO2 from so-called pre-industrial levels so how much of the real warming, as opposed to warming created by manipulation of data by unscrupulous persons, is actually due to CO2?
Mr. Mosher, and three years after “all you need to know” was the following infamous quote: “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Charles H. Duell, U.S. Commissioner of Patents, in 1899. I personally prefer the science of today and more importantly, the dataset that we have that has clearly demonstrated that even with rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, that the atmospheric temperature has not changed over the past 20 years. Are you sure that you are not “Skankhunt42”, ….. . er, I mean “Griff”???
Steven,
“Weirdly all you need to know was published in 1896.”
Based on what was published then, isn’t the expected effect on global temps due to our CO2 emissions thus far, very minor? Even with a doubling of total CO2 in the atmosphere, wouldn’t we be talking about a bit over a degree (centigrade) of “global warming”?
I suggest you avoid the line of argument you just touched on, if you want to justify climate alarmist, frankly . .
+99
Climate has been changing here for the past 4.5B years..
You make some excellent points. However, you err in stating that all of the predictions of the models are wrong as they make no predictions at all. They make projections and a projection is not a prediction.
Weirder still, Mr Mosher, Arrhenius wrote about carbonic acid, and then everybody focussed 100% on carbon dioxide, not carbonic acid.
Why? Carbonic acid is too unstable to easily study in condensed phases at temperatures warmer than -80 Celsius (similar to the temperatures near the effective radiating layer). It is only prepared in the laboratory with great difficulty, yet it’s transient existence is ubiquitous… It is easier to ignore molecules that you don’t believe to exist in any significant amounts.
But it’s a different environment in the upper atmosphere and, once formed and convected from lower levels, or formed on the surface of ice crystals, it should be kinetically stable. A molecule that is more IR-active than carbon dioxide in the same window, and other wavelengths too. A potent, regionally-active, CO2-related, greenhouse gas whose existence is very temperature dependent. Ignored. Weird indeed.
Perhaps I can find no discussion of this because nobody has bothered to apply for a grant to do so. Or the self-appointed high priest of global warming were Physicists, not Chemists or English graduates.
“its”, not it’s, but I’m not an English graduate.
“Arrhenius wrote about carbonic acid”
As Wiki says
“Carbonic acid is also an archaic name for carbon dioxide.”
AGW theory has been around a long time.
Thanks a million, I greatly appreciate all the feedback I’ve been getting. I look forward to your future comments.
Isn’t that a distinction without a difference? The way it is always stated is that the earth will increase in temperature by X°C by year X. If that isn’t a forecast or prediction, what is it? Would wording it, “the projections all failed to model the reality of observed temperatures? BTW, I just looked up the difference between a projection which is simply a hypothesis that isn’t supported by data and a forecast/prediction that is based upon data and analysis. The IPCC charts have error bars around them and a largely extrapolations of their models. If that is the case, those are predictive models, and they are certainly are used in that manner by the IPCC, NGOs and politicians.
typo in Smoking Gun #9:
Man’s production of CO2 can not explain the large variation is either the atmospheric CO2 or atmospheric CO2.
Thanks a million, I got it changed.
CO2 is life:
Your smoking gun #4 is just a statement with a metaphor (400 ppm = 40 persons in the 100,000 capacity Buckeye Stadium). Not convincing–best to drop this one.
The microprocessor chip that allowed you to post your several posts here is totally dependent for its function on the presence of trace impurities in its other wise extremely pure silicon (> six nines purity) slice that are way way less in abundance than is CO2 in the atmosphere.
So don’t hang your hat on any ” 400 ppm can’t do much of anything.”
I think there are about 5 x 10^22 silicon atoms per cc of single crystal silicon.
One part per million, would be 5 x 10^16 impurity atoms per cc. A perfectly suitable dopant level for some layers of a CMOS IC.
400 ppm would be a veritable boat load of impurity dopant in any kind of IC or semiconductor device.
You are still correct that water is much more important; but don’t try arguing that 400 ppm of CO2 can’t do anything.
G
Even if we raised CO2 to 1000ppm that’s only 1 part per 1000.
In theory maybe that shouldn’t make a difference in the greenhouse effect as theorized. But something is making CO2 not act as theorized, because the model projections on how CO2 would work through time are falling way flat. Conceivably in stable laboratory experiments such tiny concentrations of CO2 does not affect the outcome, but just maybe in the turbulent real climate world of the atmosphere / land / oceans it does make a difference that the CO2 exists in such an infinitesimal concentration.
Regardless, it’s clear that much higher levels of CO2 has no effect on human health, but is a boon to plant and agricultural productivity. Indeed, it is argued that without the recent rising levels of CO2 we may have seen Ehrlich’s dream of mass famine come to fruition as higher CO2 had lead to a boost in agricultural productivity of up to 20%.
Well, George, your example of adding dopants to SiO2 is an extremely beneficial addition, just as adding more CO2 to the atmosphere is also greatly beneficial to both plants (directly) and humans (indirectly).
I’d go with it.
If anyone thinks 400 ppm cannot do anything, try taking any one of an enormous number of medicines such that your body contains 400 ppm (for example, try 1000 tablets of digoxin) – I think you’ll discover that 400 ppm can be quite a lot.
There are several poisons where a couple of grams can kill a full grown adult.
For the record, I’m not a believer that the present levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are any threat either to humans or to the planet; or ever will become a threat.
Nor am I a believer that CO2 in the atmosphere does nothing at its present 400 ppm level.
I believe SOME of the physics; specifically that CO2 in the atmosphere captures some of the 13.5-16.5 micron wavelength outgoing surface emitted LWIR EM radiation. It also captures some of the 4 micron CO2 absorption band incoming SOLAR radiation; thereby warming the atmosphere and cooling the surface. There’s only 1% of the TOA TSI at longer than 4 microns in the solar spectrum.
I don’t believe that the atmospheric or climate response to atmospheric CO2 abundance is in any way logarithmic , either in theory or in observational evidence.
Logarithmic means that changing CO2 from 1 ppm to 2 ppm in the atmosphere does the same as changing 400 ppm to 800 ppm. Nothing in the universe is logarithmic over more than a small number of decades of abundance.
Call CO2 response ” non-linear ” if you want. It isn’t any closer to being logarithmic than it is to being linear or being exponential. I could even fit the data to the form: –
y = exp(-1/x^2).
People should stop bandying about words like logarithmic, and exponential.
They are very specific mathematical functions, and they are NOT approximately anything else.
G
That’s pretty much the definition of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, the number of degrees the surface temperature increases for each doubling of CO2. If you don’t believe the surface temps will increase about 2.5C if the CO2 hits 800ppm, you’re a denier, just like us!
Lance, thanks a million, and your comments triggered some thoughts.
1) CO2 is 400ppm, yet it is claimed that 400ppm can actually warm 100% of that atmosphere. Is that even plausible? By warming/activating 0.04% of the atmosphere, can you actually warm the rest of it by a material amount?
2) If I take a flask of 0.04% CO2 and put it in the vacuum of space and shine outgoing radiation with a peak of 10µ through it, the temperature in the flask won’t change (or will it?), but the IR signature will still show it as having a peak of 2.7, 4.3 and 15µ. Is the IR signature truly a measure of temperature? CO2 isn’t a black body, neither is the earth.
3) If I take a flask of 0.04% CO2, 21% O2 and 79% N2 and put it in the vacuum of space and shine IR os peak 10µ through it, will the flask warm? Can activating 0.04% of the atmosphere actually warm 100% of the atmosphere? Regardless of the temperature of that flask, the IR signature will still be the 3 peaks of 2.7, 4.3 and 15µ, but those bands have nothing to do with the actual temperature within the flask.
Does anyone know if these types of experiments have actually been run?
Smoking Gun #5: Water Vapor is by far the most significant Green House Gas (GHG)
True but not really central to the argument. Recommend dropping from your central set of slides, which should contain just the strongest points.
Water vapor/clouds/precipitation are also the factors that are the most poorly understood. The forcing for the most important greenhouse gas is an unknown.
“””””…..
jorgekafkazar
January 2, 2017 at 8:52 pm
Water vapor/clouds/precipitation are also the factors that are the most poorly understood. …..”””””
Well if YOU don’t understand them; then YOU should say that you don’t.
There are plenty of people who do understand them just fine. It’s about 4-H club science.
More solar energy reaching the ocean means more evaporation of H2O. More H2O in the atmosphere leads to more moisture laden clouds.
Clouds block solar energy from reaching the ocean and return much of it to space.
Less solar energy reaching the ocean leads to surface cooling and atmospheric cooling as a result.
A cooler atmosphere leads to more precipitation from moisture laden clouds, which reduces the cloud amount.
Less clouds lead to more solar energy reaching the ocean which makes the surface warm up more.
This takes you back to the start, so you can repeat it as many times as you like until you get the idea.
Anyone else who does not understand clouds can follow the same processes, and learn how clouds work.
G
“george e. smith January 2, 2017 at 9:40 pm”
WAIT! Wait wait wait! There are people who believe, and claim, it is the air warmed by CO2 that warms the oceans, y’know, that missing heat etc which is stored in the ocean which will come back to heat the air and so on. You get the picture, or rather, model.
George, I understand how a car works.
Gas goes into the cylinder and is ignited by a spark plug. The expanding air pushes down the piston, which in turn turns the crank shaft which in turn causes the crankshaft to move and eventually the drive wheels.
That said, I couldn’t build one.
Knowing at a conceptual level that evaporating water removes heat from the surface and that through convention carries this heat up into the atmosphere, is one thing. Going from there to an accurate model is another thing entirely.
“””””…..
MarkW
January 3, 2017 at 6:59 am
George, I understand how a car works. …..”””””
Well MarkW my “model” as described briefly in my post is already far more accurate than the IPCC’s models’ all 32 or 118 of them, or how many they have these days.
And just what convention is it that dictates that water vapor should carry heat up in the atmosphere ?? The relevant thing is that evaporation due to solar energy leads to CLOUDS which block solar energy from the surface.
The transport of heat is a secondary and almost irrelevant effect compared to the formation of solar energy blocking clouds.
IPCC isn’t even convinced that cloud feedback is negative.
So I’ll stay with my accurate model.
Don’t have any idea where Patrick was heading. Solar energy IS stored deep in the oceans to come back at some future time and event, to warm us; so what’s up with that ??
G
Thanks Lance, I expanded the commentary to make it more relevant.
Smoking Gun #6: Antarctica isn’t warming
True but like the US slide , easily refuted–we are talking here about Global change. Use this argument and you are immediately hit with another true but irrelevant statement: “But the North Pole is warming!”
According to CO2-Climate Change Predictions, CO2’s “Polar Amplification” is Predicted to apply to both Poles, the North and South Poles. Therefore, the empirical lack of its effect at one Pole completely negates the Prediction.
Good point, although according to the chart in the video I posted below (Physicist Lawrence Krauss Bombs out on Climate Science), according to HadCrut4, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930s than now. Same with Greenland.
The N Pole is an awful “control,” and is largely due to ocean currents.
Smoking Gun #7: Antarctica isn’t warming, but the Oceans are warming
Smoking Gun #8: Atmospheric Temperatures follow ocean temperatures, not atmospheric CO2.
Can you combine these two? The important point is that temperatures follow ocean temperatures.
Should have added #9 to be combined with 7 & 8.
Can you add the Hot Spot your list? Arguably the single sufficient smoking gun to falsify the hypothesis. Recall that ANY and ALL greenhouse gases must result in a high temperature region in the tropical troposphere. Even Gavin Schmidt recognizes this. But some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of radiosonde, balloon, and more recently satellite measurements fail to see anything of the kind. ‘Nuff said. Quote Feynman in your writeup.
Lance,
“radiosonde, balloon, and more recently satellite measurements fail to see anything of the kind”
Just not true. In 2011, an extensive review paper concluded:
“The state of the observational and model science has progressed considerably since 1990. The uncertainty of both models and observations is currently wide enough, and the agreement in trends close enough, to support a finding of no fundamental discrepancy between the observations and model esti mates throughout the tropospheric column.”
Here is a 2013 paper:
” Using these approaches, it is shown that within observational uncertainty, the 5–95 percentile range of temperature trends from both coupled-ocean and atmosphere-only models are consistent with the analyzed observations at all but the upper most tropospheric level (150 hPa), and models with ultra-high horizontal resolution (≤ 0.5° × 0.5°) perform particularly well. Other than model resolution, it is hypothesized that this remaining discrepancy could be due to a poor representation of stratospheric ozone or remaining observational uncertainty.”
And Sherwood et al did a more careful analysis of the radiosonde data here in 2015
“First, tropical warming is equally strong over both the 1959–2012 and 1979–2012 periods, increasing smoothly and almost moist-adiabatically from the surface (where it is roughly 0.14 K/decade) to 300 hPa (where it is about 0.25 K/decade over both periods), a pattern very close to that in climate model predictions. This contradicts suggestions that atmospheric warming has slowed in recent decades or that it has not kept up with that at the surface. “
There was a review paper on the matter in 2011
And Po-Chedley et al, 2014, on satellite data:
“It is shown that bias corrections for diurnal drift based on a GCM produce tropical trends very similar to those from the observationally based correction, with a trend difference smaller than 0.02 K decade. Differences between various TMT datasets are explored further. Large differences in tropical TMT trends between this work and that of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) are attributed to differences in the treatment of the NOAA-9 target factor and the diurnal cycle correction.”
Nick, would you mind putting some numbers to that qualitative phrase “no fundamental discrepancy”?
Obviously, if the models were accurate, they would have ballyhooed that conclusion to the moon, but they did not.
So what do those three little words “no fundamental discrepancy” mean in real mathematical terms (because I look at the discrepancy as a highly-trained engineer and scientist and I see gaps that would never get me to come to their conclusion of “no fundamental discrepancy”….
…especially since the GCM they’re using has a temperature range of +/- 15 degrees C using a 95% confidence limit 100 years out.
Sheesh!
You can fudge the correlation between models and temps all you want, but if your method has such a mathematical problem, it’s easy to get buried in a pile of computational garbage.
RockyRoad “Nick, would you mind putting some numbers to that qualitative phrase ‘no fundamental discrepancy’?”
Interesting that you bring that up when in the video for this post Christy says:
It’s incredible the verbiage that is spewed to try to say that the lack of tropospheric warming is consistent with the alarmist hypothesis. And the same for the overall lack of warming. But one thing they’ve got no explanation for is how all their ghastly predictions of disaster have failed to come true. By now much of the world was supposed to already be under water as we abandoned our homes in haste and headed like a million sizzling zombies to the Canadian border. Didn’t happen. In case after case the year has past to which their predictions applied, and … lo and behold … nothing happened. No disaster, no noticeable change. But these shameless Crying Wolf chicken littles just keep at it. Every year it’s more of the same, more regurgitated doomsday garbage.
“A billion people could die from global warming by 2020.” -John Holdren, 1986
“European cities will be plunged beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020.” -Paul Harris, UK Ecojournalist
“[Inaction will cause]… by the turn of the century [2000], an ecological catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust.” -Mustafa Tolba, 1982, ex UNEP Director
RR,
“Nick, would you mind putting some numbers to that qualitative phrase “no fundamental discrepancy”?”
It’s a quote from the linked review paper, to which I refer you for details.
Eric,
The claim here is that:
” Arguably the single sufficient smoking gun to falsify the hypothesis.”
It only falsifies if you can say that the observations and hypothesis are definitely inconsistent. Otherwise it’s a “can’t tell”. If you are claiming falsification, produce evidence, not arm-waving.
The review paper says that things aren’t definite enough (then) to say that hypothesis and observations are different (so no falsification). The more recent papers say agreement is actually good. There really is a hotspot.
The Tropics Troposphere is supposed to be warming 1.3 times faster than the surface to account for the Tropical Hotspot predicted by the way the climate models forecast warming to occur.
Yet it is less than half that rate. Let’s see what happens in the next few months when temperatures fall further after the super-El-Nino. Note 1998 was much higher than 2016.
Climate modelers fiddle with a CO2 component to get an upward trend in temperature. Well, they could just as easily fiddle with an H2O component and get the same upward trend–but then who would fund them?
I wonder how many other components they could model that would result in our planet’s upward temperature trend, especially one that would be… um…. how do I say this politely… financially acceptable to “climate modelers”?
Well, if a review paper says so we can’t be sure that falsification has occurred, then it must be true.
Meanwhile, I’m ready to bet Nick and any comers $100 Canadian that the discrepancy between models and measurements will be larger in 2027 than it is now. Furthermore, the same amount again that another review paper will appear in that very year, arguing that falsification STILL has not occurred.
” Note 1998 was much higher than 2016.”
?noredir=1
That says it all, right there.
I said “Let’s see what happens in the next few months when temperatures fall further …”
December 2012 UAH is out with Global down a monster 0.21C and Tropics is down 0.16C.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2017/01/global-satellites-2016-not-statistically-warmer-than-1998/
Chart updated.
Yep, that is on the list. Please keep the suggestions coming. Also, please provide your best talking points about the Hotspot. I’ve been struggling with that one because the one graphic actually shows CO2’s mechanism is to assist in cooling of the stratosphere.
We don’t need to clone Professor Christy, or his Lead Side Kick / Man Friday, Dr. Roy Spencer.
We just need to support them, and publicize their scientific papers among the people who get their propagandizement from the political hacks, who wouldn’t recognize a scientific result if it ran them down in the street.
The few instances that I have seen John Christy or Roy Spencer testify before some congressional committee; it has appeared to me that they got their five minutes of exposure, followed by a polite (???) dismissal with a “now don’t say we don’t listen to all sides” brush off.
Hopefully, in a few weeks when the USA gets relieved from their first born and raised moslem, President who has certainly lived up to a belief that the US Constitution can be ignored and replaced by a totally foreign and un-American law system; we will have in Washington, some people in control, who can start to restore the control machinery our forefathers crafted for our benefit.
It wasn’t us who replaced “global warming” with “climate change” when the warming yarn ran its course.
What idiots ! No rational person denies that climate changes. The largest climate change in the experience of most of the readers here, actually took place between Jan 1st, 2017 and Jan 1st 2016.
In that short recent period, the climate for most reasonably populated regions of the world, underwent the largest change, in local weather and local Temperature norms, that anyone can ever remember happening.
And virtually all of that change can be traced to physical changes in the earth/sun system and caused (on a regular basis) by the eccentricity of earth’s orbit around the sun, and by the 23.5 deg. (approx.) tilt of earths axis of rotation from that orbital plane.
So yes; we know climate changes; only a total idiot would deny it.
G
And a happy new year to Dr. Roy, and Prof. Christy.
<blockquote"The few instances that I have seen John Christy or Roy Spencer testify before some congressional committee; it has appeared to me that they got their five minutes of exposure, followed by a polite (???) dismissal with a “now don’t say we don’t listen to all sides” brush off.
That is why I am writing the smoking gun blog post so that we can boil these arguments down so that even an 8th grade educated politician can understand them.
I’ve always liked the argument,
“If climate science is ‘settled’, why do we use over 100 climate models? Surely three models would be enough to mutually verify the results.”
We have 102 climate models, none of which track the historical record well, some better, which means some worse, than others; yet we weight them all equally. Name one other science where we would adopt such a methodology?
…and none are capable of hind-casting. Seems that would be the easy half of the equation.
Stephen, good point.
Also if the science were settled, why do the models diverge so much one from another. It is clear that each of the different models have used a different “fudge” factor which in itself reveals that the system is so complex and they do not understand the thermodynamics, chemistry, or Physics enough to waste taxpayer dollars on such rubbish in a feeble attempt to predict what the temperature will be in 2100 and beyond.
Even if we did understand all the factors sufficiently well to model them, we still don’t have sufficient computer power to run those models and still come out with answers in less than the lifetime of the model writers.
To make this computational problem manageable, modelers result in first turning the atmosphere into huge boxes, as much as 100 miles on a side and 1000 feet thick. Then they assume that they can simulate everything that happens inside that box using a single calculation.
Beyond that, they have to parameterize many of the reactions. Use tables of interpolated data instead of running the direct calculations, and they assume relationships between variables, rather than calculating each variable independantly.
Because of these limitations, even if we did understand the physics with 100% certainty, the errors from the models would still be huge.
Typo. Replace “such at” with “such as”
“…such at the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO/El Nino/El Nina) and others.”
cil,
I appreciate your efforts and will eventually read what you had to say. It is unfortunate that the first half, at least of this page’s commentary, isn’t about about John Christy’s video and is driven into the weeds.
sure, but we can just subtract 2, 3 or 4 degrees and make this station ok, riiiiiight?
As I said at Jonova:
The first 20 minutes of this Christie video are the best.
Indeed, I was thinking that if you were trying to put together a very short group of key videos to show a warmist friend or relative I would lead with this Christie video.
But clip out just the first 20 or 19 minutes. I start with that video because if you’re unfamiliar with the failure of the climate models .. Christie, who sounds very reasonable and logical, brings that point to the fore and makes it clear that in the failure of the models we see that the central part of the warmist theory has been totally repudiated.
Next, I would show them this awesome 23 minute video: Physicist Lawrence Krauss Bombs out (gets it all wrong) on Climate Science:
In the above Krauss video a tough skeptic narrator in a very compelling and satisfying way takes apart, point by point, all the major warmist talking points. The Krauss video provides the most anti-warmist bang per minute that I’ve ever seen!
I would never show anyone this video as I could not make it 2 minutes through without falling asleep.
I don’t give a rat’s ass what you would never show anyone, stranger on the internet ; )
Dr. Christie’s presentation was clear and to the point and SHOULD have been compelling.
It was the audience of young college students that continue to disappoint.
– attendance reminded me of some of Hillary Clinton’s town hall meetings (Sorry, couldn’t resist the jab).
– several of the questions reflected the brainwashing experienced by these kids; for example “Why did you use temperature as a metric instead of the Mauna Loa CO2, data?”; in her mind the rise in CO2 itself is the problem and missed John’s whole point of lack of correlation in the models between the CO2 and temp. Or “Aren’t you hurting our children by recommending using up all of the resources now?” .
I got the impression they were humoring a “well meaning” scientist who is way out of the consensus mainstream.
Yes, the questions generally indicated a very low level of comprehension. Maybe the “CO2 is a pollutant” (or should I say, “carbon pollution”) meme has grown legs of its own and no longer needs the connection to global warming.
Since carbon comprises a big part of the human body, maybe those students haven’t realized the connection yet.
I had a nephew of mine tell me that CO&8322; is VAIRY toxic — had to explain to him that CO ≠ CO&8322;. He accepted that; didn’t stifle his enthusiasm for carbon pollution and global warming though.
Trying again with those subscripts:
I had a nephew of mine tell me that CO₂ is VAIRY toxic — had to explain to him that CO ≠ CO₂. He accepted that; didn’t stifle his enthusiasm for carbon pollution and global warming though.
If you look at his picture at the head of this thread you can even learn the correct spelling of his name. That would be a step forward.
G
Snarky….
If I were a college youngster again, with my brain washed free of math and logic from kindergarten on up, the most persuasive argument to me would be Dr. Christie’s moral argument for introducing 3rd world countries to more energy and thus a better quality of life.
Agreed.
I consider that most right minded people do not appreciate this point. They do not appreciate that the Green Meme, that the pursuit of policies restricting CO2 is dealing in death on a massive scale on a daily basis happening right now under our eyes. MSM ought to report this, but obviously it does not given its political bent.
Why should people in Africa (and similar developing places) have a life expectancy of only about 45 years? Why should they be forced to endure high rates of infant mortality with loved ones dying routinely in labour? Why should their kids not be able to be educated properly because of the lack of electric lighting so they cannot properly better themselves? Why is the West forcing them to endure a lifestyle that we ourselves would not dream of enduring?
What a morally bankrupt world we live in.
Noaa, you miss the ore persuasive meme in play; developing nations will b gifted with renewable, sustainable carbon free energy systems that will not only guide them into the light of the 21st century, but also free them from the corruption of western oil barons (who mostly live in the middle east and northern Africa).
It’s the noble cause. Free the slaves of industrial culture. The agrarian communities of the “third world” who have been victimized by the capitalist pigs.
I believe John shows that science is not, and should not, be done through edict or consensus.
Nor should any conclusions be drawn from short-term data collection methodologies related to climate. Show me the temperature records from the Roman warming period or accurate arctic ice measurements from the twenties and thirties as an example.
Sure we know the basic physics but we don’t know the forcings and feedbacks to any degree of accuracy in nature. Just looks at our modeling of such.
Well if it was true that we know the basic physics, then it stands to reason that we would know the forcings and feedbacks to the degree of accuracy needed.
We obviously aren’t applying the basic physics needed for the problem, or we would be getting the proper results.
G
There is no better example of that than the fact that there are some 102 climate models, not one of which follows reality within an acceptable margin.
I often comment upon the Dire Straits lyric
Since there is only one climate, we know as fact that 101 of the 102 must be wrong. Or if there is 3 different emission scenarios, we know as fact that 99 out of the 102 models must be wrong.
What confidence can one have when we know as fact that the basic physics is either not well understood or, if properly and/or sufficiently understood, not properly described in 99% of all the models that are meant to tell us something about our future pathway?
The so called well understood basic physics and the so called settled science is completely blown away by the most cursory review of the models and Dr Christy’s plot of output verses observation.
It is not sufficient to know the laws of physics; you also need the constraints/boundary conditions. And even if you have those, the complexity of the thing may be prohibitive.
The theoretical people in my department (of chemistry) use models to understand the behaviour of molecules. In all but the simplest cases, they do not use first principles but simplified rule sets; for example, groups of atoms are treated as a single “super-atoms”, water is treated as some kind of continuous, amorphous space-filling medium, some molecular forces are parameterized or entirely neglected etc. As far as I understand it, coming up with new simplification tricks to cut computation time while still remaining reasonably close to physical reality is a major preoccupation.
And while those studies concern ensembles of hundreds to thousands of atoms, the simulations still require days, weeks, or months of computer time to model the dynamics of the system for just fractions of a second of real time. What is more, all the boundary conditions are known — you just get to make them up out of thin air!
Needless to point out just how far this is removed from the complexity of planet Earth. Maybe some day planet Earth will become tractable, but with today’s tools it isn’t.
That was an awesome video/lecture. I like the line “Science is numbers”. However, most people just want to believe what they want to believe. One debate I had ended up with “Look, I know you lean to the right, and I am more left of center. You aren’t going to change my view.” No one wants to hear numbers that go against their political beliefs. This is certainly more political than scientific. Maybe President-elect Trump can at least start a national debate on the subject that exposes what all these bureaucratic “scientists” have been doing with all that grant money.
Their ROI on grant money would be as difficult to measure as the anthropogenic component of our planet’s increasing temperature.
John Christy is a great speaker. For those who like podcasts, he has a debate with Kerry Emanuel on Russ Robert’s Econtalk:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_featuring/john_christy_an/
It’s a few years old, but has anything new in climate really been discovered?
Posted at: http://joannenova.com.au/2017/01/john-christy-on-the-big-picture/#comment-1875442
More than a year ago (Oct 2015) John Christie gave this presentation ‘The Science and Politics of Climate Change’ at a University in Massachusetts (?), though I was unable to determine the host institution. The address was clear and disarmingly free from polemic. I was disappointed to observe that attendance appeared low. The caliber of the questions was very broad, and ranged from the inane, what would happen to future modeled temperature projection if the World ceased all emissions? to the insightful, why is there ‘consensus’?
Regrettably, Christie omitted to define ‘climate change‘ http://tinyurl.com/UN-definition.
To have done so would have clarified most succinctly why the definition can neither be falsified nor can it survive a test of ‘reductio ad absurdum’ and therefore why it is NOT essentially a scientific issue but a monumental scientific distraction and a colossally wasteful travesty. Christie rightly points out the political and moral dimensions of the issue but I think falls short of demonstrating that these are in fact the key theaters of a scientifically demonstrable non-problem that have been used to aggressively further the ends of a globalist Agenda by an eco-Marxist UN.
The election of Trump has been identified to be the grand tripping point for the climate charade in particular, and climatism in general. This alone is evidence of its solely political MO. Tragically, the debasement of empirical science to its post-modern precautionary incarnation has facilitated the politically correct engagement of many ‘scientists’ as paid, useful idiots. John Christie however, stands out among one of a small band of exceptional survivors, beacons of the scientific method and indeed, beacons of humanity.
One major problem is our understanding of what climate is, and hence whether changes are nothing at all.
I frequently take issue on this.People often say they do not deny climate change; climate always changes, always has. Dr Christy says that in his presentation.
But in my view this is to fail to understand what climate is. It is a range of variables none of which are ever in stasis and are constantly meandering between bounds. Temperature is just one of these variables.
A change in one (or more) variable is not climate change. Change in and of itself of one (or more) of these variables is not even evidence of climate change. It is simply what climate actually is.
Of course, this is intrinsically linked with defining climate as the average of weather over a 30 year period. Given that the planet is some 4.5 billion years old, it seems a blink of an eye to define climate in this manner. Why are we not defining climate say over a 1000 year period embracing the natural variation that led to the MWP and to the LIA. Are these two events not simply the outer bounds of the present natural variability of climate?
By defining climate over a period as short as 30 years we are failing to properly encompass natural variation. Given that it appears that there are oceanic cycles of 60 years or more, it is ludicrous to define climate on such a short base line.
Until a country changes its Koppen (or equivalent) classification there has been no climate change.
It’s actually a good question. If the world completely quit using carbon-based fuels, thereby extincting humanity, it would avoid about half a degree of warming. So, even with the ultimate sacrifice, there would be essentially no benefit.
I disagree. The question lacks sense (is inane) precisely because it posits the extinction of humanity, which is THE key requirement for zero change under the UN definition of “climate change.” http://tinyurl.com/UN-definition. Had the questioner been aware of the UN definition of “climate change” then she might have asked instead, “what was the underlying ideological purpose of a policy without benefit?”
very nice
There is another very good topic doing the rounds on Jo’s site relating to the impact of station changes and the impact that this has on the quality of data . The article examines the issues raised in the surface station project/investigation.
It is well worth a read. See:
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/01/sydney-observatory-where-warming-is-created-by-site-moves-buildings-freeways/#more-52473
I routinely share the Christy link with folks.
In addition, here are a couple of links to powerpoint presentations by the guy who runs http://www.isthereglobalcooling.com/ They look pretty good to me.
http://www.isthereglobalcooling.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/jwbishop_6a.297124625.ppt
http://www.isthereglobalcooling.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/jwbishop6b.297124510.ppt
I don’t trust Christy & Spencer very much. They are not honest with data.
They claim that the troposphere doesn’t warm in accordance with the models. To prove this this they use the broad TMT and TLT- layers that blend troposphere and stratosphere. The real world stratosphere cools much faster than that of the models though, which bias the whole comparison.
As alleged “upper air specialists” they should know this…
With the cooling stratosphere removed, the free troposphere warming is quite similar to that of the model average..
Here is a fair model-obs comparison for three atmospheric layers:
http://postmyimage.com/img2/588_Ratpaclayersvsmodels.png
This post lacks in specifics; the claims it makes cannot be fairly assessed. References would help. As it is, it amounts to nothing more than innuendo.
Well, if you refer to my chart, the explanations and data traceability is an order of magnitude better than in those used by Christy when he makes his testimonies before the Congress…
If I refer to your chart, I see curves with nothing more than acronyms for explanations. You know, when I write a paper or a book, I always make it a point to explain the graphics I show, and to give sources for them. But you may simply lack experience.
Oh, I see, you lack experience in climate science discussions and common acronyms used. I thought that most people could google all basic stuff nowadays. All significant search words are included in the chart..
You must be really pissed when you see Christys graphs. It’s impossible to fully understand, trace data, and reproduce them.. They simply do not live up to scientific standards…
Ratpac A refers to NOAAs radiosonde/weatherballoon dataset, the only continuously updated product around.. Unlike satellites radiosondes have good vertical resolution, and can separate different atmospheric layers.
CMIP5 refers to the most recent generation of climate models. The chart is based on an average of 38 models, everything that is available at KNMI climate explorer.
Well, the difference between your graphs and Christy’s is that he actually stands next to them and explains them. It is the explanation that matters, not whether it is spoken or written. And your explanation is still lacking.
In response to ‘O R’
Sorry, the Tropical Troposphere at 8km above surface of the planet did not warm which explains why the tropical region of the planet did not warm. The CAGW models are falsified.
1) Latitudinal Warming Paradox
The latitudinal temperature anomaly paradox is the fact that the latitudinal pattern of warming in the last 150 years does match the pattern of warming that would occur if the recent increase in planetary temperature was caused by the CO2 mechanism.
The amount of CO2 gas warming observed is theoretically logarithmically proportional to the increase in atmospheric CO2 times the amount of long wave radiation that is emitted to space prior to the increase.
The amount of warming is also proportional the amount of long wave radiation that is emitted to space prior to the increase in atmospheric CO2.
Now we know that as the earth is a sphere, the tropical region of the planet receives the most amount of short wave radiation and hence also emits the most amount long wave radiation to space. The tropical region of the planet should have hence warmed the most due to the increase in atmospheric CO2.
P.S.
The paleo climate record supports the assertion that high latitude regions of the planet cyclically warm and cool with the warming and cooling correlating with solar cycle changes. The Antarctic ice core peninsula data shows 342 such warming and cooling events in the last 250,000 years with the periodicity of the southern warming and cooling matching the periodicity of the warming and cooling cycle in the northern hemisphere.
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/images/rad_balance_ERBE_1987.jpg
There is in fact almost no warming in the tropical region of the planet. The observed warming is at high latitudes rather than in the tropics. This observational fact and the fact that same high latitude regions of the planet have warmed and cooled cyclically in the past correlating to solar cycle changes supports the assertion that the majority of the warming in the last 150 years was not caused by the increase in atmospheric CO2.
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/Published%20JOC1651.pdf
If A (tropical tropospheric warming at roughly 8km above surface of the earth had occurred, it did not, see above paper) is true, then B (the tropical region would have warmed which it did not) must also be true (observed).
The corollary is that as B (tropical region warming) is not true (did not occur) then A (tropospheric warming) is also not true.
Likewise, if A (tropical tropospheric warming is occurring) is true then as the CO2 forcing is logarithmic proportional to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, then the planet should warm in a wiggly fashion where the slope of the increase in planetary temperature is due to the CO2 increase and the wiggles are due to natural variation. What we observe instead is no warming for 18 years.
Clearly the most amount of tropospheric warming should have occurred in the tropics not in high latitude regions. That makes sense as the most amount of long wave radiation that is emitted to space is in the tropics not in high latitude regions.
The following is a link to a peer reviewed paper that explains the latitudinal warming paradox.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf
Additional data to support my above comment.
The below graph is a comparison of the CAGW general circulation model predicted tropical warming vs actual warming.
Global warming is not global. The majority of the warming in the last 150 years has occurred in high latitude regions which is the same region that warmed and cooled cyclically in the paleo record with the warming and cooling periods correlating to solar cycle changes.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/TMI-SST-MEI-adj-vs-CMIP5-20N-20S-thru-2015.png
At the beginning of your post, you argue that ΔT should be greatest in the tropics, whereas the excerpt that you post at the end argues that ΔT should vary only slightly with latitude. How does those pieces fit together?
Ignoring the fact that RATPAC is a selected “adjusted” series put together specifically for the purpose.
>>O R (3rd Jan 04:44 am)
I think you have miscalculated your levels. Your graph shows:
850 – 300 mb (1 – 8 km) which is warming.
300 – 100 mb (8 – 14 km) which is steady.
And the average emission height is around 5 km, which your graph shows to be warming. So you presume this to refer to CO2 warming.
However, CO2 absorbs and emits at around 15 microns, and the 15 micron spectrum has an emission height of about 15 km. So if Co2 was a greenhouse gas then your yellow plot should be warming, and it isn’t, it is steady. So by your very own graph, you have proven that Co2 is not a greenhouse gas.
Thanks for that,
Ralph
Look at where they place the hotspot. Ah, yes, at the 250mb level, or about 12 km. The very location that your graph displays steady temperatures – ie, no hotspot.
Richard Verney’ s remarks about most right minded people not understanding about the harm that the Green narrative is doing is exactly correct and also the way that I think that the climate change narrative should be attacked – for causing death, misery and perpetuating poverty. I have several times given presentations to students on the alternative view of climate history. Generally speaking most students are at first shocked or surprised, but when they are shown evidence, including some of the slide illustrations above, they do begin to question things for themselves, especially when give time to look at material for themselves.
A real issue in England is the absolute lack of quality of argument in school textbooks, especially in subjects like geography, religious studies, citizenships etc where human responsibility for “global warming” is merely uncritically assumed or stated. Unfortunately the some of the MSM and the broadcast media are relentless in giving only one side of the arguement.
Tackling this by telling people about the consequences to the world’s poor is a good way of shaking the tree, I recommend it.
“I think that the climate change narrative should be attacked – for causing death, misery and perpetuating poverty.”
Which is, unsurprisingly, exactly where the DDT narrative should have been attacked in the 1960’s. It wasn’t then either.
The global ban on DDT (ignored by Vietnam, who’s exception proves the chemical is safe when used correctly) killed millions of people in poverty stricken regions of the tropics who were at risk of malaria. They’re all dead now, thanks to Rachel Carson’s book “A Silent Spring”, a screed that incorrectly attributed ecological damage to the chemical. Rachel was concerned that predators such as bald eagles (the National Bird of the USA) were dying as a result of its use. She mobilized an international campaign against it and, in so doing, murdered millions.
Later Rachel’s hypothesis was proven false, but people are still dead.
John is the best and most moral scientist I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.
Just a heck of a nice guy. Extremely effective public speaker.
“…if we could clone half a dozen John Christy’s and send them out…”
Well, let’s get on it!
Nice video. Very nice.
However… Christy demonstrates the lack of a tropical tropospheric hotspot – and then says that C02 does cause warming, but the climate is dynamic and it does not show etc: etc:.
Not sure I agree with that.
The tropospheric hotspot is the fingerprint of greenhouse warming — of CO2 molecules absorbing and re-emitting LW radiation back towards the lower atmosphere and the surface. If there is no tropospheric hotspot, then there is no (measurable) greenhouse effect from Co2. Reactions of clouds via the emergent thunderstorm theory, and other weather phenomena, are merely reactions to greenhouse warming. But if there is no tropospheric hotspot, then there is no (measurable) warming to cause any mitigating emergent weather phenomena.
As far as I can see, the CO2 greenhouse addition theory has failed at the first fence. There is no point looking at temperatures, sea-ice, cyclones, and weather — if there is no tropospheric hotspot, then there is no (measurable) greenhouse warming from CO2. End of….
Ralph
Hello, stranger. As far as I can see, he argues that CO₂ should cause warming, but that we are not sure how the planet responds. That seems to allow for the possibility that compensatory changes in the atmosphere reduce the warming effect to insignificance.
Indeed he does.
But if there is no tropical tropospheric warming – as recorded by detection of downwelling LW radiation (DLR) – then increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations cannot be having any effect. There needs to be an initial DLR warming effect, before the climate can respond and compensate. But there is no effect to start with.
As you know, Michael, I have looked at many of the DLR records, and Christy’s graph displayed some more, but the DLR record is flat. No response. Nothing. (DLR being the resultant downwelling radiation for all the greenhouse gasses, including H20, methane, CO2, nitrous oxide, ozone, and others. And by knowing the individual frequencies, it is also possible to pull out just the CO2 signature.)
This (below) was Willis Eschenbach’s graph, extracted from CERES data. This is satellite data, which performs a clever trick of measuring ULR (upwelling ratiation), humidity, and other parameters, and from those inputs deriving a value for DLR. And Willis’ surface data extracted from TAO buoy records indicates that CERES is calculating a reliable value for DLR. And yet the DLR data is flat – much like the satellite temperature data is flat. (Unfortunately, the DLR dataset only extends to the mid 90s. I was excited once to find a ‘dataset’ going back to the 70s, but it transpired to be a model reconstruction.)
So our steadily increasing CO2 concentrations have not resulted in any increase in DLR since 2000, and as a consequence surface temperatures have remained virtually static since 1998. Which to me is prima face evidence that CO2 is a bit-player in the greenhouse effect marketplace. Possibly due to much of its emission spectra already being occupied by H2O, and other such factors.
Whatever the cause of static DLR, this should be the primary topic in climate discussion, rather than the surface temperature. *** No increase in DLR while CO2 concentrations rise, means no greenhouse effect. ***
Here is another DLR graph, going back to 1984. And appears to be real rather than reconstructed data. It was extracted from:
Pavlakis. “ENSO surface longwave radiation forcing over the tropical Pacific”
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/2013/2007/acp-7-2013-2007.pdf
The black line on the upper graph is tropical DLR data. The black line on the lower graph is of NSL, which is DLR less ULR. The red lines are the El Nino index.
As can be seen, DLR values are responding to El Nino sea surface temperatures, and not to our ever increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. But this is what we might expect, because the dominant greenhouse gas is H2O, not CO2. So warmer seas are producing more humidity, and a greater DLR. But the role of CO2 is so small it cannot be measured, and so the overall trend is flat. There is no discernable increase in DLR due to atmospheric CO2. And the old adage is:
*** No DLR increase – No CO2 greenhouse effect ***
Ah, I spoke too soon. The Pavlakis graph above is a model reconstruction:
“We present DLR and NSL data generated by a deterministic
radiation transfer model for the period 1984–2004 for the
tropical and subtropical Pacific Ocean and examine their spatial
and temporal variability during ENSO events.”
.
Try this graph instead. This is Mauna Loa CO2 vs Mauna Loa DLR. As can be seen:
a. There is no significant increase in DLR, despite continually rising CO2. (ie: no tropospheric warming despite continually increasing CO2.)
b. The level DLR plot is similar the pause in the satellite temperature record.
c. The annual CO2 peaks are out of synch with DLR peaks, by almost half a year.
So this graph almost appears to indicate that increasing CO2 causes cooling. In reality the two have no connection and are responding to completely different agents. DLR peaks are regulated by summer humidity. CO2 troughs are regulated by summer-autumn plant growth.
Ergo, CO2 does not appear to be the primary greenhouse warming control knob.
“Whatever the cause of static DLR, this should be the primary topic in climate discussion, rather than the surface temperature. *** No increase in DLR while CO2 concentrations rise, means no greenhouse effect.”
That sounds like the winner to me, Ralph.
The missing DLR. How can this be explained? 🙂
Thanks for the detail. Good point about radiation being a much more direct and meaningful measure of the CO₂ effect than temperature.
Ralf Ellis writes” ” Which to me is prima face evidence that CO2 is a bit-player in the greenhouse effect marketplace.”
And this of course defies logic. It’s very clear and well documented in, at the very least, 6 independent data sets. That this conclusion CO2 has no measurable effect is not generally accepted remains a mystery.
The evidence seems to be there. Where is the dissent? The outrage? Why hasn’t anyone brought out the tar and feathers? People, real people, are dying of this. I can’t understand, at all, how the United Nations and the World Court can stand by, fully informed, and watch this happen.
>>Bartleby
>>And this of course defies logic. It’s very clear and well
>>documented in, at the very least, 6 independent data sets.
Oh, you would love for me to be tarred and feathered, wouldn’t you? There is nothing quite as fassccist as a liberal greeeneey.
In reality there are six independent tamperature datasets that indicate warming. And they are called tamper-ature datasets because they have been tampered with, while the more independent RSS and UAH show no such warming.
And the bottom line, which you fail to address, is that if there has been no increase in DLR, then CO2 increases CANNNOT be causing any warming. If there is no extra ‘blanket’ on the bed, then how does the sleeper get warmer? They cannot. Please address that issue, before talking about these deceitful tamperature datasets.
R
CO2 the Smart Molecule:
It’s amazing how smart a CO2 molecule is. CO2 molecules know up from down. Evidently a CO2 molecule’s ability to absorb and re-emit infrared energy knows to send more down than up. . It seems to know gravity and re-emits more infrared energy in a downward direction than upwards. (Isn’t this what the CAGWarmist’s theory of the “greenhouse effect” says?)
I would think logically that the CO2 molecule would emit this energy/heat radiation equally in all directions. Am I wrong here? Do CO2 molecules know up from down, and emit more in a downward direction toward the earth than upwards toward outer space?
REF: https://scied.ucar.edu/carbon-dioxide-absorbs-and-re-emits-infrared-radiation
>>I would think logically that the CO2 molecule would emit this
>>energy radiation equally in all directions. Am I wrong here?
It does.
Think of this as a soccar match. On a clear pitch (with no Co2) the ball (LW radiation) can be kicked from one side of the pitch (the surface) straight into the opposite goal (into space). However, if we load the pitch with 50 defenders (Co2 molecules), that same ball may get deflected all over the place, before reaching the opposite goal (space).
Those random deflections not only delay the exit of the ball, its collision with other defenders and bystanders warms the atmosphere, and its occasional return to the origin warms the surface. The ball will, however, eventually reach the other goal (space) and maintain the surface-space energy equilibrium (so that energy in = energy out).
The only thing that changes with this greenhouse ‘delay’, is the average emission height of the radiation. This will rise, as the atmosphere absorbs more energy. And because the average lapse rate remains steady, then each level within the atmosphere will, on average, be a bit warmer. But according to MODTRAN the emission height for CO2 is 220 degrees k, or about 18 km altitude. This is the tropospheric CO2 hotspot, which is missing from the DLR record.
MODTRAN
http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
R
“It seems to know gravity and re-emits more infrared energy in a downward direction than upwards.”
I don’t see how you derive that conclusion from the site you reference Phillip. CO2 is “isomorphic”, it radiates in all directions (not just 360 degrees, think about a sphere). I believe you’ve leaped to a conclusion with this.
O/T
Eric…have you seen this (Cardinal Harrabin at the BBC today about Baking powder from Coal in India))
“The firm behind the solar plant, Adani, is also looking to create Australia’s biggest coal mine, which it says will provide power for up to 100 million people in India. Renewables, it says, can’t answer India’s vast appetite for power to lift people out of poverty”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38391034
I heard some on Radio 4 earlier but kinda fell in and out of consciousness? H’s shoving some junk out this eve on R4 also – Climate Change: The Trump Card
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b086s95f
Hugely disappointed at the poor turnout at this university, for such a respected scientist making time to speak to them. Who ends up talking to an empty hall. It speaks volumes, I think for the biased attitudes and education of modern students.
Disappointed also for there being no acknowledgement of which university this talk was held at. Are they embarrassed that Christy was on campus, giving a talk? Would they do the same to Stephen Hawking (or such-like) giving a talk?
And likewise disappointed at the inarticulate and largely incomprehensible questions from the floor. There is absolutely no point getting an education, if you cannot project it to others. Do they not teach public speaking, or English?
Frankly, this is as good an advertisement as any, for the dire state of the US education system. And the British education system is much much the same. All the violent ‘hope not hate’ demonstrations, much the same as we have seen in the US recently, were organised from the offices of NATFHE, the university lecturers union. Yes, university lecturers, schooling, promoting and organising the thugs of tomorrow.
Sad, isn’t it?
Ralph
ralfellis
“Hugely disappointed at the poor turnout at this university, for such a respected scientist making time to speak to them.”
Except he is not respected as much as you might think. A large chunk of the scientific community have little time for him. What really annoys me about him (apart from a lot of this talk being misleading) and Dr Spencer, is they go into the whole free market thing. I think that compromises what they say. They would be best to stick to the science and do their best to get it right.
Christy is the lead scientist in a major climate data-gathering program, and so he is as important (or more so) than Hansen and Mann. What you are trying to say, is that he is: “not as politically acceptable as you might think”. And that is a whole different ballgame.
R
So you respect Hansen and Mann? And I say again a lot of that talk was misleading. Some of those young people would have found him entirely believable, but he played some pretty old card tricks in that talk that an experienced person would have nailed him on…. and some of the questions did.
>>And I say again a lot of that talk was misleading.
Examples? And in what way did you find them misleading?
R
OK here’s a few…. I have more.
“Sea ice is not shrinking”….. Wrong!!! That was wrong when he said it and it’s more wrong now.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/columns/2016/11/22/one-chart-captures-alarming-decline-sea-ice/ndn2lcr80WxKfetCfbzDsI/story.html
Temp data he used was only the atmospheric. If he used the ones down here where we live they would (particularly now) go way to closer to matching the models.
“Seal levels have been rising for the last … how may years”. Yes they have, but we should be cooling now and that would slow/stop rise. We aren’t cooling so levels rising and are predicted to increase.
“Climate always changes.” The oldest card in the pack. The suggestion here is that means we are all fine. Actually no we are not. Like the science says… we should be cooling, but this increase is faster than anything during human existence(probably). And we know why it is happening.
“CO2 levels have been higher and it’s been cooler.” Yes they have and we know why it was cooler back then. Those things aren’t in play now. He would know that, but still played the old trick card.
Simon, don’t be dense. Nobody respects Mann. If Michael Mann did not exist, the skeptics would have to invent him.
““Climate always changes.” The oldest card in the pack. The suggestion here is that means we are all fine. Actually no we are not.”
Explain how CO2 has made things not all fine. What has CO2 caused to happen in our lives that would not have happened otherwise, without extra CO2?
Does the word “important” necessarily imply “respected”?
>>Simon
>>“Sea ice is not shrinking”….. Wrong!!! That was wrong
>>when he said it and it’s more wrong now.
Actually, Christy was correct. Global sea ice has barely moved from the average. This is a global problem with a global gas, isn’t it? Or have you suddenly invented Northern Hemisphere Warming? If so, you will have to tell the MSM, because they are still wittering on about Global Warming.
.
>>Temp data he used was only the atmospheric.
What he used was the satellite records – RSS and UAH. These were once hailed as the ultimate in global temperature monitoring, because they truly record temperatures globally. But then they showed no warming, and so the Warmist lobby suddenly rejected them and went back to thermometers. These are much better for warmists, as six thermometers can give a temperature for all of Antarctica – honest.
.
>>“Seal levels have been rising … but we should be cooling
>>now and that would slow/stop rise. We aren’t cooling so
>>levels rising and are predicted to increase.
Not sure what you mean here. But we have been warming since the Little Ice Age, so you might expect some sea level rise – with a lag. And since there has been no real warming for 19 years, we would also expect sea level rises to halt in the near future.
And I still have my doubts about this sea level business. As I have posted before, Mediterranean cliff undercuts show the Med sea level has been steady relative to the cliffs for some 500 or more years. Are all the Med cliffs really rising in tune with sea levels? Or are the seas steady, and measurements wrong? The cliff data would suggest the latter.
.
>>“Climate always changes.” The oldest card in the pack.
Perfectly true. What is it with alarmist warmists, that they hate and reject the truth so readily? Yes, the climate has always changed. So this poses alarmists with a conundrum – how much of this change is natural?? They tried to overcome this problem by deleting the Medieval and Roman warming periods (and the 1930s warming), in order to blame all of climate change on man. But even the dumb MSM saw through that one, and these natural fluctuations had to be reinstated.
So the possibility remains that the 60-year cycle we see in our recent climate record, is merely the result of the 60-year PDO and AMO oceanic cycles. But no climate ‘scientist’ will entertain or discuss such a possibility, because it cannot generate grants. Warmists need an anthropogenic source for climate change, otherwise they will be out of a job. And so they avoid and deny the most obvious source of climate change variability, for personal glory and gain.
>>“CO2 levels have been higher and it’s been cooler.”
True. Again, you reject the truth. During all the recent ice ages, high CO2 concentrations resulted in glacial cooling, while low Co2 concentrations resulted in interglacial warming. Please explIn that conundrum, in a couple of paragraphs.
Ralph
“What he used was the satellite records – RSS and UAH. These were once hailed as the ultimate in global temperature monitoring”
Thanks for writing that Ralph. I and my compatriots appreciate it. We were once the best and the brightest. What have we been replaced with?
>>Thanks for writing that Ralph. I and my compatriots
>>appreciate it. We were once the best and the brightest.
>>What have we been replaced with?
Have you not noticed? You have been replaced by GISS and HADCrut, because they tell the story that the warmists and the liberal media want to sell to the public. The media never quote RSS or UAH.
By being honest, RSS and UAH are destroying the jobs and careers of thousands of so-called ‘scientists’. How can they sell doom and gloom to politicians and the public, if temperatures are not rising?
I can see the headlines: “we must invest in more renewables, and more climate research, because temperatures have not changed for 20 years…”. Met Office to the UK government: “we desperately need that new £150 million supercomputer, because the climate is not changing….”. It does not work, does it?
Surely you know that this is all political, and nothing to do with science? Surely.
R
Since the warmists frequently go into their command and control solutions, it is only right that the alternatives be aired.
That was a masterful presentation. It should be mandatory viewing in schools and by all bureaucrats, especially by those in my own country of Canada, who seem hell bent on destroying our economy and making life for poor people unaffordable. Bravo.
I hate disagreeing with someone I highly respect, but Professor Christy is wrong that $0.38/kWh is not sustainable. There are still places in the world that rely on Diesels to provide power. Those Diesel Generators are expensive to run. The electricity, which can run as much as $1/kWh is still cheaper to use than humans pushing saws through wood, or mixing buckets of dough, or …
$0.38 is still cheap.
That doesn’t mean it is viable against $.09 / kWh. It just means that Given a choice between $0.38/kWh and no kWhs $.38 is unbelievably cheap.
What is the $/kWh necessary to make $0.01/hr labor ignorable. The scary part is that if it is easily converted to a rotational solution, this number is somewhere close to $0.25/kWh. If the going wage is $20/hour… It doesn’t matter much….
But this is in a world where my neighbor has to pay the same rate for electricity.
I think what he really means is that the high cost of energy in Germany is causing industry to become uncompetitive and in the long run that leads to the closure of the industries.
Many energy intensive industries relocate abroad many to India and the Far East but some are relocating to the US simply because of the cheaper energy. For example, a number of German chemical companies are considering locating to the State and/or are increasing their North American divisions/subsiduaries to take advantage of cheap energy.
Nic concluded:
… based on eplanations in his cited papers such as:
Multiple lines of evidence suggest that many radiosonde datasets suffer from a bias toward excessive stratospheric cooling and insufficient tropospheric warming and that this bias is largest in the tropics, where the separation between the models and some of the radiosonde observations was largest. Further, independent wind measurements, physically-based arguments involving model-observational comparisons on short and long time scales, and explicit removal of stratospheric cooling effects from satellite tropical tropospheric trend estimates argue in favor of the consistency between modeled and observed trends.
I look suspiciously at such verbiage, where the translation in my (perhaps deluded) thoughts goes something like, … Since the radiosonde datasets show more stratospheric cooling than we would prefer that they show, and they show less warming than we would prefer that they show, we are going to label this as … BIAS … and figure out a way to insert OUR own bias to make the datasets agree more with our preferred, foregone conclusion, which will then establish a reasonable-looking argument favoring the hot spot that our cherished models do, in fact (in our fiction) predict.
A previous WUWT post already seems to have addressed this:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/14/claim-climate-scientists-find-elusive-tropospheric-hot-spot-over-the-southern-ocean/
And John Christy seems to have raised questions on the rationale for … “adjustments” to such datasets:
https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-114-SY-WState-JChristy-20160202.pdf
I certainly do not have anywhere near an inkling of Nick’s expertise, but I have enough insight to detect something that could be a little off in the claim that there really is a hotspot.
Also, this is relevant to the data adjustments that appear to lead to the conclusion that … “there really is a hotspot”:
https://judithcurry.com/2015/06/04/has-noaa-busted-the-pause-in-global-warming/
Robert it was pretty obvious to me also. As soon as they elevated the models to reality, then discussed uncertainty and overlap, they lost.
The uncertainty in a model is infinite. Considering uncertainty, the rest is easy (to paraphrase Roger Zelazny).
Do you notice how empty that auditorium was.
Actually, I DID notice how sparse the audience appeared to be. And I noticed how the students have little clue about how to speak into a handheld microphone. Also, I noticed the slack standards of audience decorum, as evidenced by the student with her bare feet propped on the seats in front of her. I wonder how many of these few were texting while the speaker was talking, or how many students were on Facebook with their laptops or on some other social media.
Besides showing what I think is an excellent presentation by a very competent public speaker, the video, unfortunately (as someone else mentioned), shows a slack educational standard in the current USA university system. Universities court the money that students bring in as much as they court the ideals of their supposed mission statements. One seemingly prominent goal is to keep students happy, so that this tuition money keeps coming in to pay the salaries of all those university employees grooming the next generation of politically correct stewards of Earth. Keep ’em slack, keep ’em happy, keep the money coming in. That’s just good marketing, right?
“the video, unfortunately (as someone else mentioned), shows a slack educational standard in the current USA university system.”
Yes it does. In Britain and now the US, we taxpayers are supporting the transfer of largess to the academic community. Like “health insurance”, rates have risen to the point an unsupported individual can no longer pay them. This of course benefits the organizations receiving funds. Gone are the days you might offer a chicken or a pig to the local MD in payment for services.
In many ways, our free society is doomed. I consider myself lucky that I have a statistically significant chance of dying by natural causes in the next five years.
God help the survivors.
Climate models are God, and so I think the “survivors” have that covered. The issue will be whether this is “help” or “hindrance”. I vote hindrance.
We now have truly IR-transparent containers: mylar balloons. Use them, and CO2 heating vanishes, even in the lab.