Guest essay by Mike Jonas
/Continued from Part 2
6. The Awful Process
6.1 Paradigm Shift
In Part 1, I referred to the truly awful process by which science currently operates.
Science is supposed to be self-correcting, and Karl Popper described the process by which this should be achieved: empirical falsification. Every hypothesis has to be falsifiable, and every hypothesis can and should be tested in every way possible.
The way that science actually works was later described by Thomas Kuhn: paradigm shift. Once a scientific pattern (paradigm) is generally accepted, it stays in place until a new paradigm replaces it.
Provided science is conducted honestly, it will progress reasonably smoothly, with all paradigms open to proper testing. Unfortunately, a culture of gate-keeping has prevailed within science for a long time, whereby a current paradigm is tenaciously defended in the face of contrary evidence until its defenders’ position becomes politically untenable. One of the techniques is to abuse the peer-review process in order to prevent contradictory papers from being published, hence the term ‘gate-keeper’. The gate-keepers are typically those who have staked their reputation on the paradigm that they are defending. Over time, it seems that gate-keepers have become more adept, but that may be illusory – back in the 1930s(?), Max Planck said “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” [Now paraphrased as “Science advances one funeral at a time“].
Climate science has suffered massively from gate-keeping, as revealed by Climategate. Physicist Harold Lewis, in his letter of resignation to the APS, wrote “It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. [] I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion.”. Climategate was in 2009 and Harold Lewis’ resignation letter was written in 2010, yet the CAGW paradigm has continued to be successfully protected by the gate-keepers.
6.2 The Hot-Spot
As might be guessed from Harold Lewis’ letter, there has been a massive amount of unscientific behaviour within the climate science fraternity. Most here at WUWT will be familiar with much of it, but I will highlight one item only, because it illustrates several relevant features.
One of the persistent claims by those critical of mainstream climate science is that the lack of a Tropical Troposphere “Hot Spot” proves that the IPCC and the climate computer models are wrong. For those not familiar with the Hot Spot, it was identified in the fourth IPCC report as the principal place where man-made-CO2-driven warming originates, and from where it spreads to the rest of the globe.
Figure 3.1. From IPCC AR4 Figure 9.1. Zonal mean atmospheric temperature change from 1890 to 1999 (°C per century) as simulated by the PCM model from [] (f) the sum of all forcings. Plot is from 1,000 hPa to 10 hPa (shown on left scale) and from 0 km to 30 km (shown on right).
The chart clearly shows that the tropical troposphere should warm more than the surface, and more than most of the rest of the troposphere except at the poles. In Karl Popper’s terms, that is a falsifiable prediction. If such a Hot Spot could not be found, then that should at the very least cause the whole man-made global warming hypothesis to be carefully re-evaluated, if not actually dismissed as falsified.
No-one ever found the Hot Spot. The mainstream climate scientists were understandably dismayed by the failure of the Hot Spot to appear, but instead of accepting that their hypothesis had been falsified, they carried on undeterred. And then this paper appeared – Sherwood et al (2008). After a quantity of very technical stuff, the paper contained this chart apparently showing the Hot Spot:
Figure 3.2. Chart from Sherwood et al (2008). Top row are observed temperature trends, bottom row are model hindcasts.
To a casual observer, the Hot Spot has been found, even though it is not quite as strong as the models’ hindcast, and the argument has at last been settled. But as Alec Rawls pointed out in 2010, the whole thing is a sham. If you look at the temperature scale, you will see that zero warming is coloured red. There is no Hot Spot. Jo Nova described it thus: “Sherwood[] changed the colour of “zero” to red to make it match the color the models were supposed to find. (Since when was red the color of no-warming? Sure you can do it, but it is deceptive.) That effort still remains one of the most egregious peer reviewed distortions of science I have ever seen.“.
This episode illustrates the following relevant features:
· Scientists can go to severe lengths to protect the current paradigm, including highly unscientific behaviour.
· Papers that support the current paradigm can pass peer-review no matter how bad they are. It would be easy to think that this paper was not truly reviewed at all (they went through the formal process, but that’s about all).
· It can take a long time to take down an established paradigm, no matter how good the contrary evidence is, and no matter how badly its proponents are shown to have behaved.
7. The Least Worst System
7.1 Democracy, anyone?
As I have illustrated above, the peer-review process is heavily flawed and open to abuse. But it might not be a good idea to blindly throw it out. After all, there might not be a better system.
In 1947, Winston Churchill famously said: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.“. Peer-Review might be like democracy in that respect.
Open review is now possible on the internet, and I hope it proves to be valuable, but once people work out how to abuse it successfully, it may turn out to be no better.
A concerted effort is needed in the scientific community, to try to eliminate the confirmation bias in the peer-review process that protects current paradigms.
7.2 Always ask: How can that be tested?
Science needs to get back to a culture of carefully and dispassionately testing everything – and then testing it again. In other words, bringing Karl Popper’s philosophy actively back into the mainstream. For every hypothesis, for every significant statement in every paper, the question needs to be asked “How can that be tested?“.
It would be easy to think, looking at how climate science has been conducted over the last few decades, that that question has never been asked. The IPCC has taken control of climate science. Its reports are produced by an internal committee, and are not subjected to any form of independent review. Many “findings” reported in “peer-reviewed” climate papers are based on the output of computer models, so the errors in the system are self-perpetuating. It seems that the idea of impending doom from CO2 went instantly from being a hypothesis to being blindly believed.
Whenever there is any kind of dispute in science, the scientific community needs to enforce an unbiased testing regime on the issue. ie, if rigorous tests are applied to a new proposed paradigm, it needs to be ensured that the current paradigm is being subjected to equally rigorous tests. It might also be useful if anyone putting forward any new hypothesis could also present with it suggested ways of testing it.
7.3 Testing my Hypothesis
I have put forward a new hypothesis of How Climate Works. For now, and for the sake of having a name that can be used to refer to it, I’ll call it the “Sun-Cloud-Ocean” hypothesis(“SCO”). It has no more weight than any other hypotheses. As with all hypotheses, it must be tested in every way possible. But I do ask that for every test of SCO, an equally searching test should be conducted on CAGW.
Fortunately, that isn’t all that difficult to arrange: The only tests that are useful to resolve the dispute between the two hypotheses are tests that can distinguish between them. Any such test, if conducted dispassionately and honestly, effectively becomes a test of both hypotheses.
NB. I have called SCO “my” hypothesis, because I am not aware of anyone having already proposed it. I do know that many parts of it have been proposed by others, but I have not come across the whole. If this hypothesis has in fact already been proposed by someone else, then I apologise and the hypothesis is theirs not mine. But everything I have said about it, and about testing it, still stands.
7.4 How can SCO be tested?
Like other elements of climate, testing SCO poses serious problems. SCO involves a lot of factors that are unknown or unpredictable:
· We don’t know which measures of solar activity to use – sunspots, TSI, UV, GCRs, etc.
· We can’t predict solar activity.
· We can’t predict ocean oscillations.
· We don’t have long term cloud data, in fact we have little suitable reliable data about anything from before the satellite era.
· The climate system is non-linear.
· Many elements of climate operate over long timescales.
· Virtually all factors in climate interact with each other.
In fact, once we start thinking about how climate hypotheses can be tested, it becomes clear just how little we do know about climate and its drivers.
Tests might include:
· Do clouds tend to change long term trend before temperature. In SCO they do, in CAGW they don’t.
· More testing for a sun-cloud-ocean link [though it’s hard to be specific in a non-linear system where the effect is minor in the short term]. In SCO there is a link, in CAGW there isn’t.
· It might be possible to predict different heat patterns in ocean currents for SCO and CAGW respectively.
· I think that in decadal+ periods of ocean cooling (warming) in SCO the tropical troposphere would cool (warm) more slowly than the upper ocean, although it might not be by a measurable amount. In CAGW I think it would warm faster in both phases.That would be worth thinking through carefully, and could then be tested if the global temperature started a definite trend again.
· I’m sure others could think of suitable tests – there should be many possible places to look at.
8. One size fits all.
Even if SCO gets confirmed by rigorous testing, don’t fall into the ‘One size fits all’ trap of getting carried away with one solution and expecting it to apply to everything.
At present, it seems that climate scientists see everything on all time scales as caused by CO2. Don’t make the same mistake with SCO. Check every situation carefully in its own right. For example, Milankovitch cycles might not have a sun-cloud-ocean effect on climate.
– – – – –
I hope you enjoyed this series of articles. I think that everything I say is correct, but I acknowledge that reliable long term data is in scant supply, and hence it is very difficult to be sure of anything. It will be necessary to ask “How can that be tested?” of everything I say.
Mike Jonas (MA Maths Oxford UK) retired some years ago after nearly 40 years in I.T.
Abbreviations
AMO – Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation
APS – American Physical Society
AR4 – Fourth IPCC Report
AR5 – Fifth IPCC Report
C – Centigrade or Celsius
C-C – Clausius-Clapeyron relation
CAGW – Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming
CO2 – Carbon Dioxide
ENSO – El Niño Southern Oscillation
EUV – Extreme Ultra-Violet
GCR Galactic Cosmic Ray
GHG – Greenhouse gas
IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IR – Infra-Red
ISCCP – International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project
ITO – Into The Ocean [Band of Wavelengths approx 200nm to 1000nm]
NCAR – (US) National Center for Atmospheric Research
nm – Nanometre
PDO – Pacific Decadal Oscillation
ppm – Parts Per Million
SCO – the Sun-Cloud-Ocean hypothesis
SW – Short Wave
THC – Thermohaline Circulation
TSI – Total Solar Irradiance
UAH – The University of Alabama in Huntsville
UV – Ultra-Violet
W/m2 or Wm-2 – Watts per Square Metre
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Doesn’t the simple observable fact that the ice cores show CO2 following temp make the entire theory of AGW untenable? Is there an argument as to how to reconcile this contradiction? If so I haven’t been able to find it, but maybe it’s out there somewhere. I’d be obliged if someone knowledgable here could help me understand the counter argument if there is one…
David, two things… According to hansen, yes, temperature does cause the co2 rise. BUT, that co2 rise then causes higher temps which cause higher co2 levels still. This would be called a “positive feedback loop” (if i’m not mistaken). Secondly, there is a school of thought out there that the apparent lag of co2 behind temps is really global temps behind temperatures at the poles. Ocean overturning at the equator retards global warming and cooling. Shallow cores when compared with global temperature reconstructions do not exhibit the 800 year lag of deeper cores.
Thankyou afonzarelli, those are interesting explanations that seem plausible, though not necessarily persuasive. What is your level of confidence in them?
Having scratched the surface on AGW my initial reaction was to say of course it’s true, mostly due to headlines and the apparent scientific “consensus”.
But then I began to consider that scientific consensus has been massively wrong on some major stuff, even in recent history. I’m thinking of the fat vs. sugar consensus that was just overturned and will necessitate a major paradigm shift on that subject. Or Eugenics in the late 19th century up till the 1950’s, which was widely accepted as the cutting edge of science, and taught in the worlds most renowned Universities, lavishly funded and government supported.
So then I was considering the idea of what Viking era farmers in Greenland would have said about our hysteria about Greenland melting, or what hundreds of thousands of Americans forced to migrate in the Dustbowl of the 1930’s would have made of the modern panic over climate. Those are just two examples of populations that lived through dramatically more extreme variations of climate than anything we have seen so far, and that was prior to any significant CO2 production.
So common sense tells me to be skeptical of the endless pronouncements of doom, though I fully agree we need to move on from fossil fuels as soon as we can find a practical and reliable substitute.
So I am on the fence about AGW, in that I know CO2 is a greenhouse gas and has been increasing due to man, and that the temperature has been steadily rising since the Little Ice Age, but feel that much of the alarm is based merely on computer model predictions, and those models seem to have a great deal of uncertainty to them if you read the fine print of the IPCC reports. Computer models certainly can’t do a very good job of predicting economics, and climate has a level of complexity(a chaotic non linear object) that far surpasses economics.
So…. I also react negatively to the idea of the popular labels “climate heretics” and “climate deniers”, I mean that’s straight up Spanish Inquisition language that just throws the whole thing into a very suspiciously dogmatic light from my point of view.
Anyway, thanks again for your reply to my question, and would welcome any more thoughts on AGW.
David, i’m just a “parrot head”. (a. i’m just repeating what i’ve heard and b. i like rum… ☺) i’m just saying that’s how hansen, at least, “reconciled the contradiction”. Whether it’s actually happening is another matter. As for my second point, seems right to me. i got wind of it from dr. jan perlwitz (of giss) over at spencer’s blog. But i haven’t heard much in the way of discussion on it, so it’s hard for me as a “layman” (non pejorative for “dummy”) to really have much confidence in it either way…
“the ice cores show CO2 following temp make the entire theory of AGW untenable?”
No, it is irrelevant. It is true that when the seas warm, CO₂ will outgas with delay, as observed, and will cause some further warming. But our situation is that we are burning fossil C and putting it directly in the atmosphere. No issue of delay there. AGW looks at the consequences of doing that. It hasn’t happened before.
But the planet has experienced about 7,000 ppm of CO2 without runaway warming.
All positive feedback loops that exist would have come into play when CO2 was circa 7000 ppm, but they did no create a tipping point.
Ditto, with high temperatures. we know the planet has been at least 10 degC hotter than today, but there was no drastic water feedback loop that caused runaway warming.
“But the planet has experienced about 7,000 ppm of CO2 without runaway warming.”
Yes, and Mars would have over 6000 ppm if it had 1 ATM of O2/N2 along with it’s CO2 and it certainly does not exhibit runaway warming. The simple fact is that runaway GHG warming is a physical impossibility, largely because of the transparent window remains significant at any CO2 concentration. Those that point to Venus don’t understand what part of Venus is in equilibrium with the Sun,
and it’s not the solid surface which has more in common with the solid surface of Earth beneath the ocean than with the surface of Earth in direct equilibrium with the Sun.
Nick, i think that he was thinking that, since co2 lags temps, co2 can’t be causing warming at all. Thus if we add aco2, then that co2 won’t cause warming either. i’m always amazed when skeptics don’t “get” hansen’s positive feedback loop. (goes to show that group think ain’t just a warmist thing… ☺)
” i’m always amazed when skeptics don’t “get” hansen’s positive feedback loop.”
As I understand it, I do not claim any expertise, the ice cores also show that glaciation starts when CO2 is at a maximum or thereabouts. It is reasonable to conclude therefore that there is another mechanism of negative feedback that overcomes what you call CO2 positive feedback. Does anyone know what that is?
Fonz
” Thus if we add aco2, then that co2 won’t cause warming either. “
It’s a nonsensical argument. It’s like noticing that your house is on fire, but reasoning that the house only ever gets warm after you have turned on the heating, so no need to call the fire brigade.
Fonz
” Thus if we add aco2, then that co2 won’t cause warming either. “
It’s a nonsensical argument. It’s like noticing that your house is on fire, but reasoning that the house only ever gets warm after you have turned on the heating, so no need to call the fire brigade.
My understanding is that ice core data show that cooling/glaciation start when CO2 is at or near maximum. Ergo nature has its own fire engine. What is it?
“My understanding is that ice core data show that cooling/glaciation start when CO2 is at or near maximum.”
It’s not my understanding – I’d need to see the data.
Yeah, nick, skeptics really haven’t thought that one through. (hansen’s loop…) And yet, that’s probably the most common skeptic talking point out there. (how many times have we heard that co2 can’t cause temps to rise because co2 follows temperature?) That’s one of several dubious skeptic arguments that drove me to dr spencer’s blog. Whatever Dr. S. is, he ain’t crazy…
Peter, theories as to what triggers ice ages are a dime a dozen. (that’s one thing that’s really neat about anthony’s blog is that he’ll cover every paper that comes up)…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/27/100000-year-ice-age-cycle-linked-to-orbital-periods-and-sea-ice/
Peter, here’s one from just last week. i liked it because it’s an easy read and it makes a lot of sense. These type of posts pop up here every so often at wuwt. (not too long ago they had one on the role of terrestrial dust in changing ice albedo) i imagine you could search ice ages and a whole host of posts will come up…
For those not familiar with the Hot Spot, it was identified in the fourth IPCC report as the principal place where man-made-CO2-driven warming originates, and from where it spreads to the rest of the globe.
When I saw the hot-spot graph, I wondered if the same old mistakes about it would be made. Well, there was one old mistake and one new one.
Enhanced warming of the tropical mid-troposphere is not meant to be a fingerprint of AGW. It is meant to be a result of warming at the surface regardless of the cause. If the hotspot is missing, it means that models of heat transfer in the atmosphere (moist adibiat) are incorrect. It doesn’t mean that the greenhouse effect is broken.
That’s the old mistake. The new one is that this is where AGW “originates… and spreads to the rest of the globe”. That is strange invention. Like claiming the heat from a concentrating reflector ‘originates’ at the point of focus.
Nicely put barry. Would you mind dropping in and repeating that whenever those mistakes are made. You know, every few hours.
barry – The hotspot is made up of multiple elements, as shown in the parts of AR4 Figure 9.1. The largest component is from GHGs, and while “as a result of warming at the sutface regardless of the cause” is correct in a sense (the GHGs intercept upward IR from the surface), it is misleading. The point is that the GHGs intercept upward IR, thus warming the mid troposphere and providing the major component of the hotspot. Man-made CO2 causes more upward IR to be intercepted, thus enhancing the hotspot, and this is the origin of the CAGW. The hotspot re-radiates IR. It is that re-radiated IR which (together with the atmosphere and ocean currents) spreads the energy to the rest of the globe. This whole mechanism – and therefore the hotspot – is central to CAGW.
Mike, the tropical mid-troposphere hotspot is meant to be a result of changes in the lapse rate through the atmosphere, not from IR. Wherever you got that notion, you’ve been misled.
Consequently, it is not meant to be a ‘source’ of atmospheric warming, whether caused by GHGs or anything else. It is a response to warming at the surface as an increase in the moist adibiatic lapse rate.
Even if IR changes were the cause, the idea that this zone of the atmosphere was the ‘originator’ of wider atmospheric warming would then have to assume that the greenhouse effect ONLY works in the tropical mid troposphere, and that CO2 everywhere else in the atmosphere doesn’t operate as a greenhouse gas.
But that’s clearly absurd, and IR is not the cause in any case.
The AR4 graphs are of historical forcings, not relative strengths on some equivalent basis (sorry if you already know that, but this item, too, is often misconstrued). CO2 forcing has the strongest response in the AR4 graphs because it has had the strongest signal of the forcings assessed (solar, volcano etc) over the period (from 1750, if memory serves).
Here is an explanation posted at WUWT.
Based on theoretical considerations and simulations with General Circulation Models (GCMs), it is expected that any warming at the surface will be amplified in the upper troposphere. The reason for this is quite simple.
More warming at the surface means more evaporation and more convection. Higher in the troposphere the (extra) water vapour condenses and heat is released. Calculations with GCMs show that the lower troposphere warms about 1.2 times faster than the surface. For the tropics, where most of the moist is, the amplification is larger, about 1.4.
This change in thermal structure of the troposphere is known as the lapse rate feedback. It is a negative feedback, i.e. attenuating the surface temperature response due to whatever cause, since the additional condensation heat in the upper air results in more radiative heat loss.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/16/about-that-missing-hot-spot/
There have always been some very fundamental problems with the AGW conjecture. Let me mention a few.
1 The AGW conjecture claims that it is a radiant greenhouse effect provided for by the LWIR absorption bands of so called greenhouse gases that keeps the surface of the Earth 33 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be without an amosphere. The 33 degrees because of the atmosphere is not in dispute but the mechanism is. The AGW conjecture cliams that there is no other mechanism that could cause what we observe but that is not so.
A real green house does not stay warm because of the action of heat trapping greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass decreases cooling by convection. It is entirely a convective greenhouse effect. Experiments early in the last century ruled out a radiative greenhouse effect. If CO2 had insulation properties there would most likely be some proctical engineering applications where CO2 is used as an insulator but no such applications exist. So there is no radiant greenhouse effect in a real greenhouse.
So too in the Earth’s climate system. As derived from first proncipals, the surface of the earth is kept 33 degrees C warmer because gravity reduces cooling by convection forming a convective greenhouse effect. The effect is a function of the heat capacity of the atmosphere, the force of gravity, and the depth of the troposphere and has nothing to do with the LWIR absorption properties of greenhouse gases. The convective greenhouse effect accounts for all 33 degrees that have been observed. There is no additional radiative greenhouse effect. It does not exist in the Earth’s climate system.
It is the convective greenhouse effect that explains the insulationg properties of the atmospheres on all planets in the solar system with thick atmospheres. A radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed anywhere in the solar system. The radiant greenhouse effect is nothing but science fiction hence the AGW conjecture is nothing but science fiction.
If CO2 really affected climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened. CO2 appears to have no effect on weather or climate but it is required for life as we know it on Earth as it is plant’s supply of Carbon.
2. According to the AGW conjecture the primary greehouse gas is H2O but that H2O’s effect on climate is completely controled by CO2 and that H3O provides a positive feedback to CO2 which amplifies the effect on CO2 on climate. A major problem with this is that H2O is a net coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere as evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less then the dry lapse rate which is a cooling effect. According to some energy balance models, more heat energy is moved from the earth’s surface to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization then by both LWIR absorption band radiation and convection combined. The feedback would have to be negative for the Earth’s climate to have been stable enough for life to have evolved. If the feedback were positive the H2O warming feedback caused by more H2O in the atmosphere would continue to warm the planet until the oceans boiled over and our atmosphere were as thick as that on Venus. This part of the AGW conjecture just cannot be so.
3. The AGW conjecture tries to scare us all with tipping points that will render the climate unstable and spell doom to live on Earth. If we look in the paleoclimate record, CO2 levels have been more than 10 times what they are today yet no tipping point was ever reached. The precious interglacial period, the Eemian, was warmer than this one with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels yet no tipping point ever occoured. The increase in methane caused by permafrost melting did not cause the Earth’s climate to become unstable. The last ice age took place on schedule.
These seem to be very plausible problems that should at least cause serious thought as to the validity of AGW theory. What do subscribers to AGW rebutt with when faced with these arguments? I have listened to much of Prof. Richard Lindzen’s take on AGW, and find his arguments against alarm to be compelling and articulate. Strange how science itself can take on characteristics of religion and dogma under certain circumstances, but I suppose that’s just a human tendency and not all that shocking. I am just amazed that so much of the scientific community seems to be mute as to the endless fear mongering and accelerating hysteria coming from media and many politicians and activists on this issue. Are they really collectively convinced of the accuracy of AGW theory or are they just too intimidated by the momentum of it to question it openly?
What do they rebutt?
1. Scientific consensus.
2. I am lying because I am being paid by the oil companies.
3. I am not backing up what I say with references to “peer reviewed” papers from prestigious journals.
4. They refer me to the AGW literature, repeat the standard AGW arguements and ignore what I say.
In general it is hard to find one who can really engage in a scientific debate. I keep saying that there is no real evidence that CO2 has any affect on climate and I have yet to find anyone who can provide any such real evidence. I may not agree with Prof. Lindzen on everything but I am impressed with his common sense.
At first the AWG conjecture seems to make a lot of sense and many who cannot go into the details themselves are swayed by the consensus arguement and are in line with the political outcome. I myself beleive that Mankind’s burning up of our very finite supply of fossil fuels is not such a good idea and I would like to use AGW as another reason to conserve but for me the science was not there. Maybe it is because I have a science background and have often had to be a trouble shooter so being skeptical of “the facts” has been a part of my making a living. Having created so much simulation software I am skeptal with any simulation results that oftern turn out to be not much more that make believe. You can program a computer to provide any result you want. It is almost amayzing how much faith people put in simulation results just because they come from a computer. The biggest problem is not the mistakes we have uncovered but the mistakes that have not been uncovered. Yes, I have many war stories.
Much of the scientific community are too busy with their own specialities to challenge what “climate science experts” are coming up with. One reads publications by NASA and they sound very authoritative but I keep telling myself, but the climate system does not operate that way. I never bought the idea that CO2 is some supper natural gas having dominion over H2O and totally controls the Earth’s climate. I am not impressed with mention of the LWIR absorption chacteriztics of CO2 because I have dealt with that for decades. If the IPCC really understood how the climate system operated then they would have a single model but instead they have entertained a plethora of models with the hope that in the end one of them may turn out to be right. This averaging over different model results in nonsense. After more than 2 decades of study the IPCC has been unable to narrow the range of their climate sensivity of CO2 guesses because they really do not know.
I keep saying that there is no real evidence that CO2 has any affect on climate and I have yet to find anyone who can provide any such real evidence. I may not agree with Prof. Lindzen on everything but I am impressed with his common sense.
Richard Lindzen believes increasing CO2 in the atmos raises temps at the surface.
I hope one of you experts on this site can answer a question that has been buzzing away recently in the back of my mind. I am not an expert on any of the science but I have read many times that H2O is amore powerful GHG than CO2. I too have laughed at AGW alarmists using pictures of power station cooling towers with their steam clouds to show evidence of dangerous global warning. But it has occurred to me that since burning fossil fuels does generate lots of H2O from stuff that used to be under the ground it could be a problem. Has anyone done the sums?
This is a PS. I read that if Germany is to meet its Green energy targets it will need a windmill every 2.7km across the entire country. Apart from the obvious impact on the environment it occur to me ta converting all that kinetic energy to electricity on that scale will significantly reduce wind velocity and could have a significant effect on climate. More sums?
And then if we cover vast areas of earth with solar cells, the sun won’t heat the surface under the solar panels and the electricity so generated will be dissipated elsewhere, mostly as heat. Potentially significant?
Water condenses. So we can’t really change the amount in the air. If you burn CH₄ the water will be gone in about ten days. The CO₂ will last for decades.
But CO₂ is still important, since it affects a different part of the spectrum, impeding IR that water would have let through.
But we are continually burning CH4 24/7 some 365 days per year. Hence the water vapour is continually being replenished and never has time to be gone. How much extra water vapour do we pump into the atmosphere each and every day, 365 days a year, by burning CH4, petrol, diesel, jet, and irrigation for farming etc?
As regards your second paragraph, I am not suggesting that CO2 has no role whatsoever, but the gap in the IR window between water and CO2 is very small, and it corresponds to a cold radiant temperature such that CO2 may not be as important as suggested.
Thank you Nick but that doesn’t sound complete. The H2O doesn’t disappear. Surely it disperses in the atmosphere in exactly the same way as water vapour rising from the sun warmed sea and land to become a GHG? And since it was previously bound in a fossil fuel in the ground, it is indeed increasing the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. I might have confused my question by referring to the cooling towers. My question is about the water vapour from the chimneys.
Perhaps the sum to do is to calculate the rate at which H2O is produced by combustion in say a 1 GW gas fired power station and then calculate the area of ocean required to produce the same rate of water evaporation for some typical solar insolation rate.
Another thought, perhaps someone has studied cloud formation in the vicinity of large power stations.
I’d offer you a bottle of bubbly but it doesn’t travel well over the internet.
Richard
“Hence the water vapour is continually being replenished”
OK, let’s compare. Average rain is about 1m. That means about 500 teratons water evaporate every year, naturally. We burn about 10 Gtons C, and in doing so would produce a similar amount of water. That is 1 part in 50000 of natural evaporation. Since that is constantly being precipitated, nothing accumulates. So we might amplify humidity by 1 part in 50000.
Nick, I think that answers my question. 1/50000 is an insignificant amount of H2O and presumably your figure is total so the amount from power stations is even less. I’ll leave you to argue about CO2 vs H2O, which was not part of my question. Thanks.
Thanks, Nick.
I haven’t checked your figures but I understand the point you make.
Water vapour cools the surface both by absorbing incoming IR from the sun during the day and evaporation from the surface.Perhaps someone better at maths than me could verify or mock my back-of-the-envelope calculation that the energy involved in a years worth of evaporation and condensation within our atmosphere could power all the cities in the world for 5000 yrs.
According to some energy balance models, more heat energy is moved from the earth’s surface to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization then by both LWIR absorption band radiation and convection combined. The cooling effects of H2O are further exemplified by the fact that the wet lapse rate is singificantly lower than the dry lapse rate and is hence a ccoling effect.
I don’t see how the lower wet lapse rate infers a cooling unless you understand that the lowering of the lapse rate is a consequence of heat being stolen from the surface by evaporation to progressively return that stolen heat to the atmosphere as it condenses with altitude. In other words in a humid atmosphere there is a potential temperature increase of say 3.4C/km with height of the difference between the wet lapse 6.6C/km on the up and dry 10C/km on the down. The same amount of surplus solar energy shining onto a humid tropical rain-forest would be spread much further and faster around the globe with winds averaging out that PT increase of 34C at 10km to 17C together with a cooling of the surface from which it came. Whereas in a desert at the same latitude the surface would only cool by convection, conduction and radiation and get much hotter at the surface with no potential temperature increase with height. i.e. goes up at 10C/km and comes down at 10C/km.
So turbulence and wind with moisture around spread the sun’s energy further and faster than otherwise. Water in all its forms is a great equaliser of the tropical to polar gradient.
So logically the more forest, greenery and water there is around the more equable the global climate.
The lapse rate is a measure of the insulation properties of the atmosphere, in other words how the atmosphere attenuates temperature with altitude. The hugher the lapse rate the greater the insulating properties of the atmosphere and hence the greater will be the surface temperature. In general the Earth radiates to space as an equivalent 0 degrees F black body radiating at an equivalent altitude of 17k feet which just happens to be at the mass versus altitide midpoint in the atmosphere. The surface temperature is found by following the lapse rate down to the surface. The higher the lapse rate, the warmer will be the surface. Hence a decrease in the lapse rate resutls in cooling and an increase in the lapse rate results in warming.
No tropical hot spot, no warming over and above ENSO impacts according to Christy et al
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/wwww-ths-rr-091716.pdf
That manuscript was not independently reviewed. Here is a list of peer-reviewed papers on the topic.
https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/papers-on-tropical-troposphere-hotspot/
willhass ….very true…. looking at the result rather than the process. Ultimately it’s the mass of an atmosphere
that determines its surface temp. However a condensing gas like water vapour has the power to speed up heat transfer within the atmosphere by replacing/stealing sensible heat and replacing it with latent heat to be revealed far from it’s source.
“The tropical hotspot” wold occur with ANY amount of global warming caused by the greenhouse effect, and is actually a negative feedback due to convection from.the earth’s surface. NO discernable hotspot would imply that there has been NO global warming, and any surface warming measured must have resulted from data error.
1. The tropical hotspot is meant to occur with warming at the surface no matter the cause. It keeps getting portrayed as a signature only of greenhouse warming, which is not true.
2. No discernible hotspot along with surface warming would imply that this notion of heat transfer in the atmosphere is wrong. It would have no impact on the basic premise of the greenhouse effect.
3. Different data sets yield different results regarding the hotspot. One has to be quite selective in the data set used, and the methodology, to say outright that the hotspot doesn’t exist. Neither its presence nor its absence is completely verified.
When I restricted the hotspot to warming due to the greenhouse effect, I was specifically thinking of Trenberth’s model.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/08/correcting-trenberth-et-al/
Note tthat 67 watt figure absorbed directly by the atmosphere. If there were warming by a star only in the infrared range absorbed by an atmosphere, the atmospheric radiation will increase by a specific amount, with no effect on hotspots- suppose the amount absorbed by the atmosphere increased to 70 watts. That would increase surface temperatures, but it would increase temperatures in the atmosphere by an equivalent amount, resulting in no change in the relative hotspot other than scale. In the sense that all circles look alike except for scale, , the temperatures for the changed climate would increase, but the shape would stay the same.
Heat transfer in the atmosphere is all about how fast energy is moved from the tropical or summertime solar surplus to cooler areas of the globe. Evaporation with its latent heat facilitates this process hugely.
Water vapour is the “Robin Hood” gas in all of this, robbing from the energy rich to give to the energy poor.
The northern hemisphere would be 15-25C. warmer without the cooling from evapotranspiration.
Nitrogen and oxygen hold on to all that redistributed heat and allow us to live in a more moderate climate but of course the main player in moderating extremes is the ocean.