By Rud Istvan
A sound bite summary*
The climate consensus now has two derogation levels for those who disagree. Climate ‘contrarians’ like Bjørn Lomborg disagree about mitigation policies. Climate ‘deniers’ like Judith Curry disagree about the underlying climatology. The consensus does not any want any disagreement, since their science is ‘settled’ and solutions ‘clear’. They decline to engage (Schmidt/Spencer), disappear comments (Real Climate, the Guardian), refuse to host comments (LATimes), and loudly allege a fossil fuel funded ‘denier’ conspiracy (Grijalva). But they cannot avoid encountering skeptics. Following are some possible skeptical ‘silver bullets’.
There are basic consensus points that most ‘deniers’ “97%” agree with.
· Yes, climate changes. Millennially, we are in the Holocene interglacial, not the preceding ice age. Centennially, we are warming out of the Little Ice Age (LIA); London’s last Thames Ice Fair was in 1814. We are not yet back to Medieval Warm Period (MWP) warmth; Greenland farmers still cannot grow barley as the Vikings did back then.
· Yes, fossil fuels increase atmospheric CO2 while also greening the planet.
· Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas (GHG), and doubling its atmospheric concentration would by itself cause temperatures to rise between 1.1C and 1.2C (Planck effect given ‘grey Earth’, the most precise estimate using IPCC data being 1.16C).
· Yes, water vapor and clouds (to note only the big two) provide natural feedbacks, which in the case of water vapor must be somewhat positive.
Much more of the ‘settled’ science consensus cannot be correct.
· Erroneous attribution. Observed decadal warming from about 1920 to 1945 cannot be attributed to increasing anthropogenic CO2 (anthropogentic global warming, AGW) since it didn’t increase very much. The IPCC even said so in AR4WG1 figure SPM.4. Nor can slight cooling from about 1945 to about 1975, since AGW warms. Yet the consensus attributes ‘all’ warming from about 1975 to 2000 to anthropogenic CO2 (and other GHGs). That cannot be right–natural variability cannot have miraculously ceased in 1975.
· Overly sensitive models. Observed climate sensitivity from about 1880 to now is about half of what climate models estimate (both TCR and ECS). The newest observational estimates are TCR ~ 1.3 and ECS ~ 1.65. CMIP5 mean TCR is 1.8C and the mean ECS is 3.4C; the median ECS is 3.2C. Hot by twice.
· Climate models are now falsified by the 18+ year UAH and RSS ‘pause’, using Santer’s 17 year consensus criterion published in 2011.
· Unsurprisingly, derivative consensus sequelae have also not come true.
· Sea level rise (SLR) is not accelerating. (Most tide gauges are unreliable owing to isostatic adjustment or plate tectonics.) Satellite SLR altimetry since 1979 is higher than differential GPS vertical and motion adjusted long running tide gauges, and does not close (SLR~ sum ice mass loss plus thermosteric rise). DiffGPS adjusted tide gauges do close.
· No historical evidence for a sudden SLR ‘tipping point’ despite previous interglacial (Eemian) temperatures 2 degrees higher for several millennia. No evidence during the Holocene ‘optimum’ caused several millennia ago by Earth’s planetary precession. Papers finding otherwise are flawed, and at least one arguably comprises clear academic misconduct.
· No identifiable potential ice sheet tipping point. Greenland is bowl shaped; nothing can tip. East Antarctica is gaining ice. West Antarctica’s Ronne is stable. ANDRILL proved Ross is anchored, and has not ‘tipped’ before. Amundsen Embayment’s Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers are creeping, not tipping. Even if they did, they are not big enough to matter much. Most of their Amundsen catchment basin is not creeping, and its interior is slowly gaining ice mass.
· Barren ocean ‘acidification’ is half the rate predicted by AR4, since ocean is highly buffered. Fertile ocean pH has much larger seasonal biological swings.
§ -Corals may be in trouble from pollution and overfished reefs, but not from ‘acidification’. The main paper claiming otherwise overlooked toxic hydrogen sulfide, arguably comprising clear academic misconduct.
§ -Pacific oyster spawn at Netarts Bay was not affected by ocean acidification. The hatchery needed to be managed like the estuary it isn’t, where warm summer spawning water is naturally >1.0 higher pH from biological activity. The NOAA PMEL paper claiming otherwise evidences willful negligence (or worse) based on the ‘knew or should have known’ standard.
· Weather extremes are not increasing (cyclones, tornadoes, heat waves).
· Polar bears are thriving thanks to curtailed hunting. No matter what happens to Arctic summer ice, the majority (~80%) of polar bear seal feeding is on spring ice during the whelping season.
· No climate extinctions. CAGW predictions are based on overstated models (like species/areal range S=cAz), GCMs cannot regionally downscale an A estimate, and endemic species (small initial A) have strong selection bias.
· Consensus mitigation solutions have no answers to contrarian objections.
· Renewables are expensive; that is why they are still heavily subsidized.
· Renewables are intermittent, so must be backed up by equivalent peak gas or spinning reserves prviding grid inertia to keep it stable; that is a large hidden cost beyond direct subsidies. This is why high renewables penetration South Australia suffered a blackout in 2016.
· CCS is much more expensive than nuclear, and (except in special circumstances) geologically impractical. The Kemper Mississippi demonstration plant is a failure both technically and financially. It will burn natural gas; no coal gasification and no CCS.
· Denying inexpensive coal generation to Africa and Asia hurts the neediest, hindering development. China’s new development bank will fund coal stations in Africa and Pakistan, while per consensus mitigation the World Bank won’t. China and India are not playing the UNFCCC COP21 Paris game.
· Lower sensitivity suggests adaptation is sounder than mitigation.
*Drawn partly from ebook Blowing Smoke: Essays on Energy and Climate (example, corals and oysters), and partly from previous WUWT guest posts (example, SLR and closure).
Could you elaborate on , particularly , the Planck effect given ‘grey Earth’ computation Or a link ?
I want to see how the equations attach to the computation of equilibrium temperature for balls of arbitrary uniform absorptivity=emissivity spectrum in our orbit presented at http://cosy.com/Science/warm.htm#EqTempEq .
Are they based essentially on how changes in CO2 change our ae spectrum as seen from outside ? IE :
d.ToA_spectrum % d.CO2What measurements go into the computation ?
That would certainly help clarify the connection to the classical non-optional physical radiative heat transfer calculations for those of us quants not in the field who understand things by being able to calculate them .
Bob, you can look that up yourself. Lift a finger. Judirh Curry’s blog had a bunch on this ~2010.
I do not owe you your own homework.
The closest I found to what you are referring to is http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookchap7.html , section 7.3 . It just confirms my observation of the theoretically and experimentally groundless basis of “climate science” . And there is no way this amateurish parameter fitting can explain the extreme bottom of atmosphere temperature of Venus , 2.25 times that of a gray , where gray means what it should mean : flat spectrum across all wavelengths , not just a crude approximation across the visible spectrum by people who appear not to know how to calculate with actual measured spectra , ball next to it ( energy density > 25x that supplied by the sun ) in its orbit .
And if you can’t explain Venus , you can explain nothing .
BA, you did not check out the Curry comment math circa 2010. Nor the more recent exchanges I have had with Monckton here over his irreducible equation and his more recent errata posts, now supposedly a paper in peer review. Nor have you read essay Sensitive Uncertainty, which covers in some detail the radiative physics you apparently claim I do not understand.
Venus is largely irrelevant to Earth. The armosphere is ~90x denser (bigger, thicker). Water vapor is largely lacking. Earth is a watery blue planet, Venus isn’t. It is much closer to the Sun, receiving much higher insolation ( function of r^2). Its has a rotation rate much slower, so the thermodynamics are totally different. Explaining Venus is IMO a waste of time in the CAGW debate. You can go there (dangerously close to Sky Dragonism). I won’t.
RI , I’m also quite sure you have never checked out any of the material , even my Heartland presentation of the most basic non-optional physics , linked at http://cosy.com/#PlanetaryPhysics .
The equations that apply on Venus apply on Earth ; they are universal .
As a quant APL programmer I was diverted into this endless debate by the amateurish level of even undergraduate math and physics I saw on display . It takes a handful of APL expressions to calculate the temperature of a sphere with a uniform spectrum , ie : color , at a given distance from the Sun given it’s power spectrum . Implementing the physics , my question is : what’s the next parameter to add ?
At this point I continue to run into a dead end and blank stare .
Can we even start to reach some mutual agreement on the most basic quantitative , experimentally testable physics of heat transfer ?
Can we even agree on the definition of gray as a flat spectrum across the whole spectrum so the absorptivity=emissivity spectrum drops out so that simply applying StefanBoltzmann to the total integral of energy impinging on the sphere gives the gray body temperature which is the same as the black body calculation ?
Do people in this field even understand what a
dotproduct is so they can evaluate the experimentally testable equations at http://cosy.com/Science/warm.htm#EqTempEq ? And start discussing the problem in terms of unexplained variance from the actual equilibrium temperature calculated for our spectrum and the Sun’s instead of the retarded 255K meme which the computation I present generalizes to arbitrary specta ?Frankly all I see at the Harvard page , and all I’ve ever seen in these discussions , is essentially theory-less fitting of painfully crude scalar equations to the observed temperature “lapse rate” which are then used to justify a claim that something has been proved .
I was hoping for better . But that’s why I’ve initiated http://cosy.com/Science/ComputationalEarthPhysics.html focused on testable quantitative computational physics .
Sorry if I sound somewhat rough , but this disconnect from even undergraduate physics is the cause of the utter stagnation we’ve witnessed :
http://cosy.com/Science/AGWppt_UtterStagnationShavivGraph.jpg
Isn’t the proposed positive feedback due to any warming, whether it is caused by CO2 or something else? If so, doesn’t that imply there would be positive feedback to any cooling? If more heat causes more water vapor which causes more heat then less heat would reduce water vapor which would reinforce the cooling. Wouldn’t that make for a much more unstable climate than what we actually have?
K, you confound two concepts. Best untangled in detail in the climate chapter of ebook The Arts of Truth. Rising CO2 creates a primary positive forcing; a CO2doubling should based on basic physics create a warming of 1.1-1.2C. This is amplified by feedbacks elsewhere in the climate system. The only two feedbacks that can be significant are water vapor and clouds. IPCC and models say both are strongly positive. My analysis of all available evidence says water vapor is weakly positive, and clouds are neutral to weakly negative. In Bode feedback terms, the net result is NOT f=0.65, but rather f~ 0.25-0.3 corresponding to ECS ~1.6-1.7– matching observational ECS.
Actually it doesn’t. And looks to be quite a bit lower than the Planck level because of the immediate negative feedback at night, this prevents positive feedback.
And we know this has to be correct because actual temps are far below the modeled results, all because they bake too much feedback in the mass conservation section of the models.
https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/observational-evidence-for-a-nonlinear-night-time-cooling-mechanism/
“· Climate models are now falsified by the 18+ year UAH and RSS ‘pause’, using Santer’s 17 year consensus criterion published in 2011.”
wrong again.
1. There is no such thing as Model falsification.
2. Santer’s criteria was not about model testing.
3. Plenty of us disagreed with his test ( he only used a subset of models and averaged them… bad)
4. Both datasets HAVE BEEN IMPROVED and so it would be a mistake to ignore this.
5. There is no statistically significant pause in those datasets IF YOU CONSIDER STRUCTURAL UNCERTAINTY.
once again skeptics think THEIR SCIENCE is settled.
its never settled Rud, you neeed to be MORE skeptical, especially about your own conclusions.
“1. There is no such thing as Model falsification.”;
Thanks for telling us what we all know……. THEY ARE NOT SCIENCE
A model is either substantially correct.. OR IT ISN’T
NONE of the individual climate models is even CLOSE to being correct.. END OF STORY
You cannot take 100+ manically WRONG results and pretend that the average has any meaning whatsoever.
Oops, I forgot.. Mosh knows ZERO maths or science…. Frontman mouthpiece only.
There are only 2 brief warming periods, both El Nino events, in the whole of the satellite data.
El Ninos are nothing to do with CO2.
There is NO CO2 signature in either satellite temperature record, even after Carl’s bending over for the AGW religion.
“Both datasets HAVE BEEN IMPROVED”
In your opinion.. roflmao……. WORTHLESS, meaningless.
Mosh just said that the past 20 years of screaming, claiming they were right…and demanding policies to support it….
…was based on erroneous datasets
“There is no statistically significant pause in those datasets IF YOU CONSIDER STRUCTURAL UNCERTAINTY.”
There is NO SIGNIFICANT WARMING.. apart from the NON-CO2 El Nino events…
And probably not much warming at all, if you CONSIDER STRUCTURAL UNCERTAINTY and DATA FABRICATION/MANIPULATION…
Er. . . How do you know that the datasets have been “improved”? How do you know that your preferred (adjusted) values for temperatures recorded before you were born are “more accurate” than the ones that were actually recorded at the time?
It wouldn’t be because the models say so would it?
“How do you know that the datasets have been “improved”?”
Because he himself “improved” them by Mannipulating them using his patent secret AlGoreithims (which he cannot reveal because you would only try to prove them wrong) of course!
How else?
You’re a very clear writer, Mr. Istvan. Appreciated.
Thanks. I have now spent 6 years trying to get the of it. Comment feedback has been invaluable since my first guest blog post 2011. Humbling often, but invaluable lessons.
No matter how big the megaphone, and no matter how clearly it projects the voices of truth, if the ears towards which it is aimed are plugged, then nothing gets through.
… just feeding off the illustration that illustrates this article in the WUWT topic list. … A better illustration would show a character standing at the other end of the megaphone with ear muffs on.
I have 2 issues with the GHGE itself.
(1) According to the story I’m told :- CO2 absorbs black body radiation emitted from earth and retransmits it isotropically at around 667 cm-1. So some of that radiation ‘rebounds’ to earth and GHG causes “forcing” or “down-welling. It warms the earth.“. That story is impossible because: a typical CO2 molecule in the lower atmosphere undergoes 1 collision per nanosecond (1 billion per second), but the average lifetime from absorption to re-emission is 0.2 seconds. So all the energy (given to CO2 by absorption) will be ‘thermalized’ : shared with other molecules in the atmosphere.
Will Happer: “A CO2 bending mode transition, with a wavelength of 15 microns and about 1/30 the matrix element should have a lifetime of order 16 (30)^2 (15/.6)^3 ns = 0.2 s.” – Dear Prof. Happer.
I’m not saying no heat (LWIR) can make it back from the atmosphere to earth. Just saying it would seem to as black body rather than quantitized electronic transitions.
(2) Will Happer also says that “Using Voigt profiles increases the radiative-forcing increment from doubling CO2 by a factor ~ 1.4 [~40% more forcing] But far wing absorption from Voigt profiles does not exist! Need experimental measurements.” — Will Happer, UNC 8-Sep-2014
No wonder the models are wrong.
“According to the story I’m told :”
You were misinformed. Standard theory is that the heat absorbed is thermalised. But the CO2 molecules radiate too, thermally, and the absorbed heat maintains the balance. And that radiation is not black body, it is per quantized transitions. In fact, by Kirchhoff’s Law, basically the same spectrum as governed absorption.
(1) But CO2 loses the energy it absorbs (from LWIR) to other gas molecules. Mostly to O2 and N2. So CO2 may well radiate but individual molecules will have little energy to do so. If it’s quantized too: that’s a specific amount of energy lost. It’s not clear to me that many CO2 will have that spare energy to lose. Or are you saying they all radiate via electron transitions (O2 and N2 too)? Alternatively CO2 having just radiated, perhaps picks energy back up from collisions with O2 and N2.
Of course, given the zillions in funding they’ve had over the past 3 decades, climate scientists have done all the experiments in the lab and field? Not according the Will Happer. He said “Need experimental measurements“.
Considering this is such a key part of the story, I find it depressing how little effort scientists put into explaining exactly what happens. It’s as if scientists and politicians are engaged in a joint, unspoken, conspiracy to keep the public as ill-informed as possible.
In the light of a deficit of “experimental measurements“, is it about time we stopped funding modelers and started funing experimentalists? Or, at the very least, set aside a specific amount of the climate research funding for experimentalists?
(2) Do you accept Happer’s point about misleading Voigt profiles?
Mark,
Exchange of energy by collissions is bidirectionally: higher energy (“warmer”) O2/N2 molecules may excite a CO2 molecule to emit a photon at its specific wavelength, even if the emission-collission ratio in average is only 1:10,000.
The emission spectra were exactly meausured in laboratories for lots of GHG/air mixtures at different (air) pressures, that gives the (theoretical) emission / backradiation if you calculate the layer by layer results from ground level to 70 km height.
Both the influence of CO2 on emissions at the top of the atmosphere (by satellites) and the increase in backradiation were measured. The latter at two ground stations: one at Barrow, Alaska and one in Oklahoma:
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
“Or are you saying they all radiate via electron transitions (O2 and N2 too)? Alternatively CO2 having just radiated, perhaps picks energy back up from collisions with O2 and N2.”
No, none of that. Thermalisation just separates the processes. CO2 molecules radiate as expected at their temperature. That is independent of their history. The energy lost is regained (for that molecule) by collisions with N2 etc. The energy that those molecules supply essentially comes from what was thermalised by past GHG absorptions. There is a discussion on a thread where this post seems well-informed and emphasises the balance.
As to Happer and Voight, I’d need to see it in writing. You have linked to a hour-and-half lecture.
Rud Istvan writes. “Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas (GHG), and doubling its atmospheric concentration would by itself cause temperatures to rise between 1.1C and 1.2C (Planck effect given ‘grey Earth’, the most precise estimate using IPCC data being 1.16C).”.
I think that you forgot to write that this value is based on the radiative forcing values of CO2 being 3.7 W/m2, which means using the formula of Myhre & al.: RF =5.35 * ln(CO2/280). I have reproduced this calculation and I got a formula RF = 3.12 * ln(CO2/280) giving ECS = 0.6 degrees Celcius. Science is not settled.
Link: http://www.seipub.org/DES/paperInfo.aspx?ID=17162#Abstract
So, what’s the plan? Tax the whole world?, everyone who emits CO2? Is it a giant power and money grab? Who benefits? What percentage of people are believers? Will they put up with it?
Windchasers: “A lack of statistical significance does not mean that it’s not warming,” this sentence is a complete nonsense…
Actually, he is correct. It could be warming and the measurements used didn’t reflect that, etc. Lack of statistical significance is highly dependent on what input values are used. More importantly, a lack of statistical significance does not prove it IS warming. It just says we don’t know. It seems Windchasers is saying we do not know.
I agree with Windchaser that we don’t know.
““A lack of statistical significance does not mean that it’s not warming,” this sentence is a complete nonsense…”
True, and altered data and obfuscated historical trends do not prove it is.
“Yes, water vapor and clouds (to note only the big two) provide natural feedbacks, which in the case of water vapor must be somewhat positive.”
I don’t agree with this assertion at all. Feedback from water vapour has to be negative because it increases cloud cover, which cuts solar radiation. The more water vapour in the atmosphere, the more cloud. The more cloud, the less heating from incoming solar radiation.
In my opinion, this reduces the effective equilibrium climate sensitivity to CO2 increases to zero.
Hivemind, I can empirically show you that is incorrect. Yes, water vapor can increase clouds. It can also decrease important cirrus clouds if it results in stronger thunderstorms– the Lindzen adaptive iris paper. Is not so simple as you might imagine.
Talking truth about average outside air temperature anomalies? As if anthropogenic fraction of a trace gas were a control knob? How about talking truth about Richard Branson’s wealth anomalies with penny precision – as if the red wooden penny were the control knob. Futile beyond further parody.
For Earth to be a greenhouse, it would need a firmament. But there is none. On the contrary, the atmosphere is in direct, uninterrupted contact with near vacuum in close to absolute zero temperature (-271 °C). Why should the average temperature anomalies be presumed constant when even the atmospheric volume is a puzzling variable according to NASA. https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/15jul_thermosphere. How does all that fit with the equation pV=nRT?
And similarly in the oceans, there is plenty of “fossil carbon” in the interface, rapidly eroding Seven Sisters’ chalk cliffs (CaCO3) are hardly an anomaly. Why would atmospheric “fossil carbon anomalies” be only manmade?
The greenhouse phenomenon of the Earth is a reality. The outgoing LW radiation into the space is about 239 W/m2 and it means a Planck temperature -19 C. The surface temperature is about 15 degrees. The measured LW radiation by the Eatrh surface is about 395 W/m2 corresponding nicely the temperature 15 degrees. There is a energy flux reduction from 395 to 239 = 156 W/m2 in the atmosphere. This energy flux does not disappear without having an effect. That effect is needed to maintain the temperature profile in the atmosphere and to keep the surface temperature in 15 degrees.We need stronger scientific evidences than denying the greenhouse phenomenon in the battle with IPCC.
I gave one bullet by repeating the calculations of Myhre et al. and I showed that I got a different result. Why you guys do not repeat it by yourselves?
Mars is estimated to hold about 8-times more CO2 in absolute terms than Earth. How does you equation work there? Why does dry ice fall from the Martian sky?
Let me guess: Earth has magnetosphere. It retains atmospheric gas substance amount relatively stable. The following scientifically proven equation can be applied:
pV = nRT
p is the pressure of the gas,
V is the volume of the gas,
n is the amount of substance of gas (in moles),
R is gas constant, equal to the product of the Boltzmann constant and the Avogadro constant,
T is the absolute temperature of the gas.
Unless mankind starts multiplying the amount of substance in the atmosphere (Venus has about 90 times more), mankind can affect the temperature only temporarily and locally.
Other phenomena are available. (Nikolov et al)
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/new-insights-on-the-physical-nature-of-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect-deduced-from-an-empirical-planetary-temperature-model.php?aid=88574
Thank you Schrodinger’s Cat. Interesting development.
The following observation at the end was particularly enjoyable:
The equilibrium surface temperature of a planet is bound to remain stable (i.e., within ± 1 K) as long as the atmospheric mass and the TOA mean solar irradiance are stationary. Hence, Earth’s climate system is well buffered against sudden changes and has no tipping points;
The deeply puzzling thing about this is why those who claim to be most worried about warming and CO2 emissions do not advocate proportional and effective action to lower these emissions.
You see it most clearly in the Paris affair. You see it also on China, where the line appears to be, give China and India a free ride to raise their emissions. Never mind that China is double the US already, and heading north. If you raise this point, the argument shifts in a flash to something like, well, its only fair. For a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the alleged physics driving warming.
The argument seems to be, its only fair that China and India should destroy civilisation. But its also only fair that the UK and the US should deindustrialise though that will have no effect on the physics.
People here sometimes say its because warmism is religious – which I find less than convincing.
But what I do wonder is whether anyone actually believes in global warming. They certainly do not act as if they do.
This is a very good summary of the contentious issues. I realise it is about sound bites but some of the topics cannot adequately be dealt with in a single sentence or word.
Clouds for example may turn out to be a major factor in the earth’s thermostat mechanism. The role of water vapour is probably very complex. These may not lend themselves to the sound bite treatment.
Nevertheless, most of the sound bites give an accurate account of reality as far as we know. There are some that would benefit from major debate outside of the sound bite summary
The GHGE is a good example. IR spectroscopy and black body radiation are well understood examples of settled science but what actually happens in the atmosphere seems to me to be a pile of assumptions with little supportive evidence.
I cannot help feeling that the several pieces of settled science are used as a vehicle rather like the Trojan Horse to give credibility to the GHE whilst ignoring a whole host of inconvenient questions. Some of these have been touched on in the above comments.
SC, agree fully. That is why I try to find the easiest warmunist balloons to pop. Not everything, just the biggest most damaging targets.
Article forgot the third set, the ones that know the “consensus” comes from an intentionally flawed survey that doesn’t specifically ask if we’re all going to incinerate because of CO2 but whether “a future in which uncontrolled warming destroys economy, causes famine and kills hundreds of millions is bad”.
See, the current IPCC was created to ASSUME that CO2 was going to cause uncontrolled warming. Two problems, CO2 can’t cause uncontrolled warming because it has no real control over climate, just temperature and secondly the warming that CO2 causes is automatically controlled by CO2’s nature and clouds.
So where’s the global warming? There isn’t, if we were warming there’d be more clouds.
“settled science” is not a scientific term. That’s one of the biggest problems. I’m sitting here thirty years on of watching this shitshow of retarded political incompetence at the international level and they STILL haven’t made an actual atmospheric model to prove CO2 makes any difference at all – it’s all assumptions.
See, the whole “weather weirding” thing makes sense, increased lower altitude CO2 causing more heat retention in the CO2 causing increased air circula… wait a minute – doesn’t that negate localized ground/sea level heating if the circulation is increased? Lol, yeah. It does.
Nature and Physics don’t care about your assumptions. They’re free to react instantly on their own timescale and the atmosphere can lose 100% of the daily heat input in HOURS not months. If CO2 caused some kind of uncontrolled feedback loop then everybody in Algeria would be dead from heat exhaustion about 40 years ago.
“· Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas (GHG), and doubling its atmospheric concentration would by itself cause temperatures to rise between 1.1C and 1.2C (Planck effect given ‘grey Earth’, the most precise estimate using IPCC data being 1.16C).”
“· Yes, water vapor and clouds (to note only the big two) provide natural feedbacks, which in the case of water vapor must be somewhat positive.”
Rud, thanks for this post. I know that elsewhere you have affirmed and posted about thunderstorms to illustrate the inability of the models to accurately represent what the atmosphere will do with heat.
But as I see it, as do other commenters above, these statements in your current post cede too much to a misconception of how the atmosphere actually works. The statements themselves seem reasonable for still air, or perhaps even with layered horizontal movement with little vertical mixing. But the atmosphere is best described not simply as a static radiative insulating barrier, but as a heat engine. (e.g. NASA, web article “Cimate and Earth’s Energy Budget”, January 14, 2009) It circulates with impressive horizontal and vertical motion, on global and local scale, driven by heat itself, using buoyancy as the mechanism. Precipitation rates make it obvious how much power can be involved: a one-inch-per-hour rainfall rate implies upward local heat movement of 16,000 W/M^2. The prevalence of hail at altitude in convective weather makes it obvious how strong the updrafts can be.
So I offer this sound-bite-sized comment on the “consensus”: The climate is the composite result of a high number of localized high-power heat movement events, which the models cannot possibly simulate with any authority. Watch a thunderstorm.
But, the static condition is purely radiative. And while that does change during a 24hr solar day under clear calm skies, it is the limit of atm performance.
Everything else is just modifications to this.
And this alone explains everything we need to know. Even this is a heat engine, that regulates surface temps with water vapor.
‘Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas (GHG), and doubling its atmospheric concentration would by itself cause temperatures to rise between 1.1C and 1.2C (Planck effect given ‘grey Earth’, the most precise estimate using IPCC data being 1.16C).’
‘precise estimate’
Mere conjecture. But even if true, we have empirical evidence that natural variability overwhelms it. Note that we do not need to know the causes of variability. We can see, from facts, that Man’s emissions of CO2 at current levels DO NOT CONSTITUTE any sort of a threat to weather.
There always exists the inability of global warmists to understand power generation or
transportaion. Carbon emitters are in decline , not because of any dangers of emissions, real, or imagined, but due simply to elementary economics: due to lower battery prices and especially expected further large reductions in those prices , electric cars are the future. The near future. Ditto for the molten salt uranium/Thorium nuclear reactors, which can produce poer cheaper than any othe technology. I view the whole business of arguing the dangers of carbon emisions as an irrelevant and pointless activity
Yes…evidence abounds that the world is rushing to nuclear with open arms.
What about the fact that man only ands a very small amount of c02 to the carbon cycle??? This being true, IF c02 doubles from a most lilely cherry picked low, man will have little to do with it? What about most of us agree the data from the 20th century has beeno savaged??? And that adjustments since 1989 have exponentially increased. Come on!!! Most skeptics argue these obvious points.
What about the fact that man only ands a very small amount of c02 to the carbon cycle??? This being true, IF c02 doubles from a most lilely cherry picked low, man will have little to do with it? What about most of us agree the data from the 20th century has beeno savaged??? And that adjustments since 1989 have exponentially increased. Come on!!! Most skeptics argue these obvious points.
ripatheism,
Wrong argument: adding CO2 to a more or less fixed carbon cycle (most of the CO2 movements in/out the atmosphere are seasonal) increases CO2 in the atmosphere. As long as the temperature change over the seasons is the same, the same quantity of CO2 is absorbed by vegetation during the warm seasons and released by the oceans and reverse in the cold seasons.
The extra CO2 is not removed by temperature controlled processes, it is removed by the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere. That is a much slower process than the effect of temperature changes over the seasons. It takes about 35 years to remove half of any extra CO2 above the long term equilibrium between the ocean surface and the atmosphere.
It is not a good argument at all, as the “consensus” about the cause of the CO2 increase -human emissions- is rock solid and using that as argument is shooting in your own foot…
See further: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
I am not aware of any adjustments in the CO2 data at, with the exception of errors found in the calibration gases; the original calibration gases were CO2 in nitrogen, which did give a difference in the measurements. When that was discovered, all equipment was recalibrated with CO2 in air and the older data were recalculated with the new calibration.
Jaakko,
The biosphere is a proven sink for CO2, at least since 1990:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5462/2467.short and
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
The oceans are a proven sink for CO2:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/mean.shtml
Over the seasons, some 60 GtC goes in and out of vegetation due to seasonal temperature changes, mainly in the NH. Over the same seasons some 50 GtC goes out and in the ocean surface in countercurrent to the CO2 fluxes to/from vegetation.
The net result is a global seasonal amplitude of +/- 10 GtC (+/- 5 ppmv).
The net change after a full seasonal cycle is 4.5 +/- 3 GtC/year (2.15 +/- 1.5 ppmv/year).
Human emissions are about 9 GtC/year (4.5 ppmv/year), about double the year by year increase and larger than the net natural variability.
It doesn’t matter if you take only a sample in a laboratory to measure the equilibrium: 3 million on the spot (even continuous on commercial seaships nowadays) seawater samples confirm Henry’s law that shows about 16 ppmv/K change in equilibrium. Not by coincidence the same equilibrium that is found in pre-industrial times in ice cores CO2/temperature graphs.
Thus it makes no difference for the equilibrium if you take a single sample or the full dynamics of the oceans, including the large in/outs (*)… The only difference is in the lag times: between months (seasonal to year by year). decades (MWP-LIA), centuries (glacial-interglacial transition) to millennia (interglacial-glacial transitions)…
(*) Short term fluctuations are dominated by vegetation, long term by the oceans. The difference can be seen in the concurrent change of CO2 and δ13C: if that is opposite to each other, vegetation is the main reactant. If the changes are in parallel, the oceans are the main reactant.
Ferdinand. I’m not contesting Henry’s law, but only it’s use for explaining causalities at planetary level. The tendency to present mankind as the only meaningful planetary variable makes the gigatonne argument sound more like circular reasoning than science.
Jaakkoo,
Indeed one need to be careful in the use of laboratory results on complicated systems, like the total ocean – atmosphere cycle.
On the other hand, the ice core data show a near-linear relationship between CO2 in the atmosphere and the ocean surface temperature – with a lag – which is in the same order as the change in CO2 equilibrium with the atmosphere for a temperature change of seawater per Henry’s law.
Also recent, more accurate measurements show surprisingly small year by year variability in the natural carbon cycles and a net sink rate which is directly proportional to the extra pressure in the atmosphere over the equilibrium pressure for CO2 at the weighted average seawater surface temperature…
Thus it seems that Henry’s law is at work at every scale and period over at least the past 800,000 years…
It took a fairly substantial search to find out that CCS stands for Carbon Capture and Storage. Is there some reason some authors use obscure acronyms without defining what they mean? Are they just trying to look smart or what?
Aside from that, CO2 sequestering or what ever you want to call it, is complete and total folly reminiscent of cargo cults arising on Pacific islands after World War II.
It helps when you are searching for the meaning of acronyms if you put the topic associated with it in the search box with it. If you type “CCS climate change” into Google, Carbon Capture and Storage comes up at the top. Google and other search engines do better if you give them a context. (Usually)
Sheri … at 12:24 pm
It helps when…
I finally did do that, but that misses the point. Putting up obscure acronyms expecting your readers to know what they mean as easily as they would any common word like cat or dog is counter productive. There seems to be some primal urge to use jargon. It certainly isn’t the urge to communicate clearly.
Neither is it proper writing practice. Acronyms need to be identified properly at first usage: [complete title (acronym).
Or a member of an exclusive club. And the reader ain’t included.
complete title (acronym)
Agree…any acronym should be identified at first usage.
Folks aint psychic.
BTW…I usually just ask?
Understandably, since these of WUWT are mostly a physical/chemical analysis, there is a longer more biological list that needs to be added. The west US coast oyster situation is part of a larger problem, maybe starting when there was a serious attempt to put oysters on the endangered species list. They are now a government financed small industry to restore reefs so as to sequester nitrogen, carbon dioxide and who knows what all. Too many of the ones I am familiar with have not done their homework.
Connected to the more physical look at Google Earth, click on oceans, it was originally a box on “Dead Zones,” which are no more dead than the ocean is becoming acidified. Fish skeletons all over the place. For example, the Baltic has been long known to have anaerobic problems (Segerstråle, 1957; Lomborg, 2001). Another one currently coming to fore about exotic species, which can be a real problem, but is again crisisfied. (Need a better word there).
Check– http://issues.org/33-4/the-science-police/ Vellend just had an article in American Scientist, to their credit. OOPS, exotic species do not automatically cause de-diversification. It may be that they add to the pie, but do not replace parts of it. We will see.
We had a janitor in our department circa 1980 who saw the problem coming.
Lomborg. B. 2001. The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the real State of the World. Cambridge Univ. Press.
Segerstråle, S. G. 1957. Baltic Sea In. J. W. Hedgpeth, Ed., Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology. Mem. Geol. Soc. Amer. 67(1):751-800.
Funny how almost every innocent question about climate change opens a big can of worms.
Thinking about Rud’s post, I wondered about the distribution of water vapour in the atmosphere, particularly around the effective radiation altitude.
https://eos.org/research-spotlights/the-forgotten-water-vapor-at-high-altitudes
It seems that recent studies show that we don’t know as much as we thought we did. Then it seemed that every study about water vapour distribution that I looked at was, surprise, surprise, based on models. I gave up at this point.
Is it still true that even though worldwide water vapor has increased, worldwide relative humidity has decreased? If yes, then what’s going on there? If more water vapor is going into the atmosphere overall, then how is it that at given temperatures, the air is holding less of it than it could at those temperatures? This is confusing to me.
“Silver bullet” talking points are nice, but as long as the discussion accepts the factually incorrect notion of only a “slight cooling from about 1945 to about 1975,” we are not talking about geophysical reality. What has been done institutionally to the historical climate record would lead to condemnation or much worse in other fields of human endeavor.
[snip]
Reply: Looks like an imposter, invalid email. ~ctm
Reply: Looks like an imposter, invalid email. ~ctm
What, it wasn’t a 127 line paragraph?