Guest post by David Middleton
A very thoughtful column by Ross Pomeroy at Real Clear Science…
Is Climate ‘Lukewarmism’ Legitimate?
To many, prominent writers Matt Ridley, Ross Douthat, and Oren Cass are a baffling bunch. They are the visible proponents of the position that climate change is real, manmade, and occurring as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), yet it does not yet constitute a worrying or catastrophic problem. They are “lukewarmers.”
So what do we make of these climate change moderates, who do not hold the invalid, unevidenced opinions of those who deny the scientific consensus, yet at the same time, do not ascribe to the apocalyptic scenarios espoused by climate alarmists and the accompanying solutions to avert them?
As far as I can tell, lukewarmers’ views are legitimate. The mountains of evidence present in the most recent IPCC assessment report, comprising more than 9,200 peer-reviewed studies, cannot simply be cast aside as the product of a conspiracy or a statistical fluke of climate models. If lukewarmers accept the science, they are on solid ground.
[…]
To his credit, lukewarm New York Times columnist Ross Douthat agrees. “Every lukewarmer, including especially those in positions of political authority, should be pressed to identify trends that would push them toward greater alarmism and a sharper focus on the issue.”
In other words, they must recognize some level of evidence that will cause them to change their views. If they don’t, they have proven themselves not to be lukewarm moderates but dogmatic deniers.
“Every lukewarmer, including especially those in positions of political authority, should be pressed to identify trends that would push them toward greater alarmism and a sharper focus on the issue.”
This is not a one-sided question. It should also be asked, “What trends would push a lukewarmer towards lesser alarmism and a sharper focus on the issue.”
For this lukewarmer, there is a level of evidence that would cause me to change my views. This would be some level of evidence above…
Almost every catastrophic prediction is based on climate models using the RCP 8.5 scenario (RCP = relative concentration pathway) and a far-too high climate sensitivity. RCP 8.5 is not even suitable for bad science fiction. Actual emissions are tracking closer to RCP 6.0. When a realistic transient climate response is applied to RCP 6.0 emissions, the warming tracks RCP 4.5… A scenario which stays below the “2° C limit,” possibly even below 1.5° C.
Note that the 2σ (95%) range in 2100 is 2° C (± 1° C)… And the model is running a little hot relative to the observations. The 2016 El Niño should spike toward the top of the 2σ range, not toward the model mean. I am working on a more detailed post on this and “Gavin’s Twitter Trick,” that I hope to post later this week – So I won’t be responding to comments about the hotness of the models in this thread.
Ross Douthat had an excellent column on this in the New York Times (of all places)…
Neither Hot Nor Cold on Climate
Ross Douthat JUNE 3, 2017
LIKE a lot of conservatives who write about public policy, my views on climate change place me in the ranks of what the British writer Matt Ridley once dubbed the “lukewarmers.”
Lukewarmers accept that the earth is warming and that our civilization’s ample CO2 emissions are a major cause. They doubt, however, that climate change represents a crisis unique among the varied challenges we face, or that the global regulatory schemes advanced to deal with it will work as advertised. And they raise an eyebrow at the contrast between the apocalyptic, absolutist rhetoric with which these schemes are regularly defended and their actual details, which seem mostly designed to enable the globe’s statesmen to greenwash the pursuit of economic and political self-interest.
More specifically, lukewarmers look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s official projections and see a strong likelihood that rising temperatures will drag on G.D.P. without leading to catastrophe. They look at the record of climatological predictions and see a pattern in which observed warming hugs the lower, non-disastrous end of the spectrum of projections. And they look at the substance of the Paris accord, which papered over a failed attempt to set binding emission rules with a set of fine-sounding promises, and see little to justify all the anguish and despair over Donald Trump’s decision to abandon it.
[…]
Although, I do take issue with is this statement:
Lukewarmers accept that the earth is warming and that our civilization’s ample CO2 emissions are a major cause.
The Earth’s average surface temperature has warmed since the 1600’s and our CO2 emissions have played a role in that warming. Relative to the total carbon flux, our emissions are hardly “ample” and 20-30% doesn’t strike me as a “major cause.”
And I would also take issue with Mr. Douthat’s answer to his own challenge:
I’ll answer that challenge myself: My own alarm over climate change has gone up modestly since the Obama-era cap-and-trade debates, as the decade or more in which observed warming was slow or even flat — the much-contested warming “pause” — has given way to a clearer rise in global temperatures.
If you chart this spike against the range of climate change projections, it brings the trend up into the middle of climatologists’ scenarios for the first time in some years. Maybe that will be temporary and it will fall back. But the closer the real trend gets to the worst-case projections, the more my lukewarmism will look Pollyannish and require substantial reassessment.
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The 2016 El Niño spike didn’t bring “the *trend* up into the middle of climatologists’ scenarios.” The bottom of the 2σ range is the P97.5 case, 97.5% of the model runs resulted in more warming than P97.5. The model mean is the P50 case, 50% of the model runs resulted in more warming than P50. The top of the 2σ range is the P02.5 case, 2.5% of the model runs resulted in more warming than P02.5. A major El Niño spike should spike from P50 toward P02.5, not from P97.5 toward P50. For a discussion of this nomenclature see The Good, the Bad and the Null Hypothesis.
Lukewarmerism is well-grounded in science and economics. I suppose it could even be viewed as a climatological version of Pascal’s wager. Matt Ridley also has an excellent article on Lukewarmerism…
MY LIFE AS A CLIMATE LUKEWARMER
Published on: Tuesday, 20 January, 2015The polarisation of the climate debate has gone too far
This article appeared in the Times on January 19, 2015:
I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. That last year was the warmest yet, in some data sets, but only by a smidgen more than 2005, is precisely in line with such lukewarm thinking.
This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary, but it is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk. My middle-of-the-road position is considered not just wrong, but disgraceful, shameful, verging on scandalous. I am subjected to torrents of online abuse for holding it, very little of it from sceptics.
I was even kept off the shortlist for a part-time, unpaid public-sector appointment in a field unrelated to climate because of having this view, or so the headhunter thought. In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.
[…]
Update:
Marlo Lewis has provided a handy list of the range of opinions that come under the “lukewarmer” label. I subscribe to each of these in some form or to some degree:
“In general, I would describe a ‘lukewarmer’ as someone who:
– Thinks anthropogenic climate change is real but very far from being a planetary emergency
– Takes due notice of the increasing divergence between climate model predictions and observations and the growing body of scientific literature challenging IPCC climate sensitivity estimates.
– Regards the usual pastiche of remedies — carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, renewable energy quota, CO2 performance standards – as either an expensive exercise in futility or a ‘cure’ worse than the alleged disease (depending how aggressively those policies are implemented).
– Is impressed by — and thankful for — the immense albeit usually unsung benefits of the CO2 fertilization effect on global agriculture and green things generally.
– Recognizes that poverty remains the world’s leading cause of preventable illness and premature death.
– Understands that plentiful, affordable, scalable energy (most of which comes from CO2-emitting fossil fuels) is essential to poverty eradication and progress towards a healthier, safer, more prosperous world.”
Update 2:
The main point of my article was to draw attention to how ad-hominem, vicious and personal the attacks on lukewarmers now are from the guardians of the flame of climate alarm. Though I had a huge and overwhelmingly positive response, I could not have wished for a better example of my point than some of the negative reactions to this article. An egregious example was the death threats I received from a Guardian contributor and Greenpeace “translator”, Gary Evans.
On 21 January The Guardian published an article by Dana Nuccitelli, specifically criticizing me. The article was illustrated with a picture of the severed head of a zombie. Beneath the article appeared the following comment from “Bluecloud”:
“Should that not be Ridley’s severed head in the photo?”
[…]
Other Lukewarmers like Dr. Pat Michaels, Chip Knappenberger, Dr. Judith Curry, Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy are routinely subjected to similar ad hominem attacks from the “guardians of the flame of climate alarm.”
So… If you are a fellow Lukewarmer… What evidence would push you toward alarmism? What evidence would push you toward rejecting human impacts on the climate as being less than a rounding error? (Note: I view the impacts as only being slightly larger than a rounding error).
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“What evidence would push you toward alarmism?”
I consider myself a lukewarmer, however; while the effect of incremental CO2 on the equilibrium surface temperature is finite, it’s definitely not a significant contributor and at most is a minor second order effect.
‘Evidence’ in the form of trends, real or imagined, is insufficient to change my mind as the constraints imposed by the laws of physics are immutable and those constraints require the sensitivity to be less than the lower limit claimed by the IPCC. Any ‘data’ evidence to the contrary is either mischaracterized, misinterpreted or maladjusted.
The ONLY thing that would change my mind is the discovery and validation of new laws of physics that override the constraints imposed by Quantum Mechanics, the SB Law and Conservation of Energy.
The new laws of physics you seek have already been done – see classic K-T diagram. Heat transfer from cold to hot, radiative fluxes added by simple math and result used to compute temperatures via SB. All the new, exciting and innovative distortions of previous scientific knowledge you could possibly want contained within CAGW. You just have to BELIEVE it ! Simples !!
RB,
The problems aren’t with using arithmetic to add radiant fluxes or considering that the transfer of energy by photons is independent of the temperature of the emitting or absorbing bodies (which BTW is NOT heat transfer from cold to hot).
Adding radiant fluxes is perfectly valid since one Joule is no different from any other, thus superposition applies. The cold heating hot argument is bogus since it only applies to a 2-body system and not to the sum of absorbed energy emitted from multiple sources (in this case, the Sun and the atmosphere).
SB is an immutable law of physics and using it to convert equivalent emissions into an equivalent temperature is also valid. The ONLY average temperature with any correspondence to reality is the equivalent SB temperature corresponding to average emissions.
Besides, when these principles are properly applied, the calculated and verifiable sensitivity is between 0.2C and 0.3C per W/m^2 and not between 0.4C and 1.2C per W/m^2 as claimed by the IPCC.
The get the wrong answer because they DO NOT apply these techniques to derive the sensitivity and instead just assume a very high one. This high sensitivity came along with the establishment of the IPCC which required a sensitivity that large in order to justify their creation. They haven’t corrected it since because to do so eliminates their reason to exist and if there’s one thing bureaucracies are really good at, its self preservation.
The real problem is a conflict of interest where the IPCC has become the arbiter of what is and what is not climate science by what they publish in their reports, yet they require a significant anthropogenic component in order to justify their existence.
I think it is possible that the additional CO2 has slightly warmed the planet. However I start from the position that we know so little about the climate that making any definitive statements on either side is ludicrous.
One we can explain the various cycles properly and in detail, once we can use first principles to build accurate models, once we can explain the LIA and the MWP and so on – then I will listen, but otherwise we are simply mking observations and guessing.
As I have said before, the alarmist package involves three assertions:
As David points out lukewarmers dispute that 100% of observed warming is from burning fossil fuels, but think that humans make more than o%. I think it less than 20%, but the point is these are all opinions since no one has successfully separated natural and man made warming in the real world.
As Matt Ridley points out, lukewarmers dispute the notion that warming now or in the foreseeable future is dangerous, as Richard Lindzen has also mentioned. I agree, with the proviso that we should be at least preparing infrastructure and energy resources to meet storms already experienced.
Finally, the third leg, that governments can moderate future warming by reducing emissions, is a stretch too far for me, and I gather for most lukewarmists, even true believers like Jim Hansen.
The problem for lukewarmers is that the alarmist/activist stool falls down with only one leg missing. And dissenting on any of the three claims gets you labeled a denier.
Not sure how you would classify Richard Lindzen when he says this (at the end of a recent presentation:
I haven’t spent much time on the details of the science, but there is one thing that should spark skepticism in any intelligent reader. The system we are looking at consists in two turbulent fluids interacting with each other. They are on a rotating planet that is differentially heated by the sun. A vital constituent of the atmospheric component is water in the liquid, solid and vapor phases, and the changes in phase have vast energetic ramifications.
The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and reemission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds and other features, and such changes are common. In this complex multifactor system, what is the likelihood of the climate (which, itself, consists in many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomaly) is controlled by this 2% perturbation in a single variable?
Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic. Instead, you are told that it is believing in ‘science.’ Such a claim should be a tip-off that something is amiss. After all, science is a mode of inquiry rather than a belief structure.
Can’t think of anything to add or subtract.
I would say it’s mostly about the ocean and secondary to the ocean, it’s mostly about the clouds.
Lots of lukewarmers believe clouds play much larger part of the global climate, than the alarmists do.
I’m a lukewarmer I guess.
Without doing much of anything, we appear to be on track to stay within 2c, therefore I would ask for some solid science as to why we need to do more.
I would also ask them to categorically state that they think they have oceans cycles licked and not mention them with hand waves after the fact.
I would also ask them to initialize new models with what they know about the current ones running hot. They know its happening…
Stop linking weather events to climate change.
I guess, I ask for a dose of reality and then I remain open to be convinced something more drastic is needed, using models (backed up by science) that are keeping in touch with reality by something other than a mathematical coincidence.
I would ask them to be open to Nuclear energy as being part of a solution, where appropriate (no Tsunami or earthquake active zones). Currently the climate change is unduly negative on Nuclear, because they refuse to accept it as a solution, as its a dirty word…
I’d ask them to be objective about cleaner coal stations and ask them to stipulate where coal needs to get to before they think its acceptable.
I’m totally not a lukewarmer as far as CO2 is concerned. Yes, mankind does affect the environment in a limited way with various forms of pollution.
I am a Lukewarmer but more than that I am also Realist. I mean that in the sense that being from a science background I know for a fact there is a huge risk that one day we are likely going to get hit by a dam big meteor. Now if I was a climate activist I would arguing we have to get off this planet because our death is a certainty. The reality is there is nowhere safe in the universe and whatever you do will have new risks.
The same reality exist on global warming many of the effects are slow and easier to plan to deal with rather than try and deal with directly especially since there is zero chance of getting emissions inside what they say is required. So you have new risks emerging such as social unrest and inequality divisions opening up. The divide between 1st and 3rd world have never been so wide and getting worse.
The implementation of CAGW policy is never going to happen the world will go to war well before that point and the German election result should have made that very clear. The shear uncompromising attitude of the CAGW supporters has guaranteed it will fail because no lasting solution to any problem has ever been done by force.
Watching the whole CAGW play out across the world is like a a slow moving train wreck. The result is never in doubt just who and how much gets smashed in the process is all that is being decided.
Excellent post, maybe we should rename the categories as “realist” and “unrealist.” I’m with LdB and the realists, CAGW alarmists are (you guessed it) the unrealists. They take unreal data, adjust it further from reality, and propose unrealistic “solutions”. What evidence would push me toward them? After I took the lsd, I would begin to consider the alarmist position after I read that one prominent alarmist, just one, pointed out the hypocrisy of the rest of them, published by the MSM.
That would be logical… But both ends of the spectrum already claim to be climate realists.
DM: Thanks for reading, you’re right of course. So I stand with the (mostly) hypocrite-free realists; the “other” realists are awash in people who demand the rest of us do what they will not do. I know, it doesn’t solve anything, but I sure do appreciate you folks letting me post it.
I am a mild lukewarmer who hopes lukewarm is real and sustaining. It has to be obvious that human kind now at 7.5 billion people on the planet will tend to cause more heating than it would cooling, all things being equal.
However, the long term trend in earths climate is an ice age, and we are in an interglacial that has been getting progressively cooler since the higher warmths of the Holocene Optimum. All previous interglacials came to an abrupt end and this one will not be different. The return to ice age dynamics may have already begun in the dark ages, or the LIA, probably with the assistance of volcanic events. If the downward trend in temperatures continues over time as it has over the last 5000 years, then our brief fling with an earth optimum to human civilization may be coming to an end while we retreat into ice house conditions over the next century. I view warming as always better than cooling, since significant cooling will never support a planetary population where we are presently.
I don’t understand why there is any alarmism from perhaps .7 degree warming that has maybe been partly caused by humans in the last 150 years. Especially when considered against recently coming out of the LIA when life was brutal in the cold, and a much stormier climate change of all types was the norm and much more severe than today due to a much larger temperature gradient. If we accept that adverse climate change has always been with us, then we now need to drop the term climate change, since that is just a play on emotion. Like a cookie monster is to a toddler.
If we are to follow any precautionary principle then it must be one of vigilance of global cooling. A decadal series of volcanoes in various parts of the world would be sure to stress humanity far more than an equal amount of warming which could be mitigated for survival of the human race. Any major disruption of our food production, most of it in the northern hemisphere would cause global calamity, the likes of which the world has never known and would be a direct assault on civilization, immediately. Global warming is better than the alternative and staying static for long is not in the earths temperature record.
I think of a lukerwarmer as someone who thinks there could be some warming from rising CO2 levels [which in the future might be measurable]. But I don’t think a lukerwarmer is predicting that it will warm in distant future [+50 years]. I don’t expect average temperature to lower by 0.5 C within next couple decades. Or still seems to me we are still recovering from the Little Ice Age.
But if we get significant evidence of what could cause cooling, it’s possible I change my mind- but even the approaching solar min, doesn’t change my view that we could see a drop in average temperature by as much as 0.5 C within 20 years.
Alarmism over climate? Rapid onset of an ice age disrupting Northern Hemisphere agricultural production is the only climate event that alarms me.
Why do we continue to argue about the AGW hypothesis with temperature data? The AGW hypothesis includes specific positive feedbacks (water vapor) and warming patterns (latitude and altitude) that are not happening. The hypothesis is invalid. The fact that global temperature isn’t matching the predicted values is a given. If anthropogenic CO2 is contributing to a warming climate in a significant manner, than the current hypothesis is not describing the function and needs to be withdrawn.
If you want to be an AGW lukewarmist describe how CO2 is having a significant role without positive feedbacks, do so with a decent and defensible handling of winds and clouds, compare the modern rise in CO2 from past rises, adjust for land-use changes, determine the spatial error in climate datasets, and incorporate the benefits of rising CO2 in your analysis of its costs.
AGW lukewarmists generally don’t think that CO2 is having a significant role.
It should be easy enough to set up modern versions of Arrhenius experiments (that he himself repudiated later). Correct them for errors and set up a test atmosphere in a very large tank. Vary the concentrations of CO2 and warm the test atmosphere by shining infrared through it from below to and infrared transparent roof so the ‘absorption’ can be measured at each CO2 level. The experiment could even have pools of water at 15C to show how rapidly they warm or cool with downwelling infrared if there is any.
As setting up this type of experiment is relatively trivial and yet it has not been done makes it appear the both the lukewarmers and the catastrophists do not want to have their pretty hypothesis killed by observational fact.
Such an experiment would actually support the alarmist position. However, the atmosphere is a wee bit more complicated than a tank of air.
David,
I don’t think it would support the alarmist position – if it did it would have been done and reported by now. When an exceedingly simple experiment is avoided the immediate reason that springs to mind is that the proponents of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis are aware it would be falsified by experiment and therefore will not proceed with it.
They have to show that the CO2 warms the surrounding air at a concentration of 400ppm and that downwelling infrared from the CO2 (that which is left after warming the surrounding air?) also heats the water at the base of the tank. A large CERN style chamber should be enough to allow some convection.
The experiment will not be run as it would falsify the CAGW hypothesis.
I wish it was that easy…
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/10/hey-school-teachers-those-greenhouse-effect-experiments-are-junk/
As a lukewarmer and operational meteorologist for 35 years, it seems anti scientific method/skepticism to be anything but a lukewarmer.
I could type pages of reasons that both sides provide to support their one sided views…….many of them excellent points……..except they mostly suffer from placing the greatest weight on factors that support their view.
The alarmists clearly suffer from this the most. To not acknowledge the Medieval Warm Period, Roman Warm Period and Minoan warm period as significant(and previous cyclic warmings), global events is blatant denial of previous natural global warming.
To not dial in the enormous agricultural benefits of increasing CO2 on our greening planet, with its booming biosphere is more denial because it proves that CO2 is a beneficial gas(even if it is also a “greenhouse” gas too).
Global climate models have been too warm and warming the higher latitudes decreases the meridional temp gradient, so the atmosphere does not need to work as hard to balance the heat disparity.
What often happens though, is that when you see one side spinning the facts and science(using every natural drought and hurricane) or even lying about and discarding realities that really count, you distrust EVERYTHING from those sources.
On the other extreme side, tunnel vision also takes over. Meteorology 101 tells us that increasing the temperature of the atmosphere 1 degree, will allow it to hold something like 4% more moisture. The physics of CO2(which some don’t believe in) tell us that increasing it, will lead to X amount of atmospheric warming.
A warmer ocean temperature, should provide some hurricanes with a bit more fuel, even if we have not seen a trend that shows it happening in the real world yet.
The global temperature is 1 deg. C warmer than it was and ocean temperature .5 deg. C warmer than it was over a century ago, regardless of data adjustments, what source you use, theories and models……………and nobody, anywhere has the franchise on climate science knowledge or is smart enough to separate out the fingerprint of how much was caused by humans and how much was natural.
The higher the confidence in it being almost all from one or the other, the less open minded the scientist.
It’s certain that climate science is being used as a political tool, as evidenced by ridiculous, non scientific agreements like the Climate Accord and Al Gores junk science movies/statements being sold as “Save the Planet” marketing schemes.
Seeing stuff like that drives a skeptic, even farther to the other side to show how scientifically fraudulent these sources are. If your case agrees partially with these extremists, for instance, it may not have the same impact as if you just try to blow them up completely by showing the opposite of what they state and proving them wrong on as much as you can.
So us lukewarmers are asked: what would make you an alarmist?
Are alarmists asked the same question in reverse? I am aware of one example. The Royal Society were asked about 2-3 years ago: how many years does the “pause” have to last before you accept that your climate prediction models are wrong? Answer given: 50 years (that’s another 50 years, so 67 years altogether).
The smart alarmists just erased the “pause”… Kind of like Cadet James T. Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru training exercise.
That’s interesting Andrew. Did the Royal Society provide any scientific basis for that statement? I’m guessing not. Probably their answers on this valid scientific question were provided by the communications department after consulting as to what was politically appropos. Everybody duck and cover!
What about the idea that climate sensitivity is on the low end of the spectrum (lower than “consensus”) ? Is that a form of “lukewarmism” ? It seems like a lot of folks might fit in that category. With the implication that any warming will not have catastrophic effects and that any cost of attempted mitigation would far exceed any benefits.
With this definition, the difference between “skeptics” & “lukewarmers” might not really be significant.
Generally speaking, Lukewarmers are skeptics.
You have to love how the 1998 El Nino is now barely similar to the years that followed in the Zeke graph… and follows exactly the models’ predictions.
Soon it’ll be drowned as if it barely happened. That’s science.
As I said up above. The temperature series depicted is so mal-adjusted that it bares very little resemblance to reality. That make to whole graph more than a bit of a joke.
Poor human race! At this rate, the boiling point of water will be 100F by 2100.
Not if rising sea levels force us to live at higher altitudes…
/sarc
If sea levels rise 10 feet, and we move up in elevation 10 feet, then atmospheric pressure where we are would be unchanged.
Another way to put it is that atmospheric pressure at sea level remains the same, regardless of where sea level is.
Let me apologize for being half right in my previous statements.
My statements above are true for instances when the water entering the oceans are coming from acquifers that don’t subside as they are being drained, micro-comets and thermal expansion.
In such a situation, the top of atmosphere will rise as the oceans rise.
However, when water is coming from melting glaciers.
Using the simplifying assumption that the volume of water equals the volume of ice it came from.
Under this assumption, as ice melts, the oceans rise, but the top of atmosphere doesn’t change. As a result, the atmospheric pressure at any point above sea level doesn’t change as the seas rise.
Since ice does take up a bit more room than water, when it melts, top of atmosphere would actually fall a little bit, As a result, the atmospheric pressure at any given spot above sea level will drop by an extremely small amount.
In conclusion, what happens to atmospheric pressure at any given spot above sea level depends on the relative mix of water from glaciers vs. water from other sources.
A huge fraction of the anthropogenic CO2 was released within just the last two decades. What would push me to alarmism is if we saw a corresponding spike in temperatures, with a rising oscillation, because I understand it wouldn’t simply be a smooth upward curve.
Instead we see spikes driven by ocean heat release, and a relatively stable temperature profile. The global temp may even drop back down below what it was before this most recent El Niño spike. Who knows?
But the theory of the CO2 control knob looks well and busted. It should be scrapped.
Don’t we all understand that the oceans heat/cool the atmosphere and not the other way around? The ocean heat content is driven by solar influences. Isn’t it clear from the data that the satellite-based temperature record can be explained by the AMO. A quick look at the data from Woodfortrees (I don’t know how to post a graph) shows the relationship. There is a natural experiment in the works. As the AMO rolls over into a cool phase, the earth’s atmospheric temperature should decline. by about as much as the satellite data shows it warmed from 1979 to today.
Obviously, there are lots of ocean currents, so there is more going on than just the AMO. The ENSO process can clearly be seen in the satellite data. However, I am willing to hypothesize that the coming cool phase of the AMO will drive the satellite data. This is a very simple test.
Given the structure of the earth’s surface, which is dominated by water heated by the sun, I am amazed that so much of the scientific community has focused on changes in CO2 as a climate driver.
Over the longer term, I believe the series of articles by Javier over at Judith Curry’s blog, as well as others, capture the dynamics of climate quite well.
As an Econometrician, I am not sure I understand the lukewarmist position. The null hypothesis is that the observed temperature changes are driven by natural forces. I know of no data that causes the rejection of the null hypothesis. I, therefore, continue to accept the null hypothesis.
Nelson
I don’t think that the null hypothesis is that humans have no effect on climate change.
The AGW hypothesis is that humans are responsible for >50% of the climate change since 1950. So, the null hypothesis would be that >50% of the climate change since 1950 is natural.
I think that this null hypothesis still holds.
However, there are Lukewarmers who think that the AGW hypothesis holds.
Again a logical fail. This is what Hansen seeks to do.
It is an assertion that humans are responsible for 50% of the warming since 1950, devoid of hard evidence. The assertion is based simply upon the assertion that we cannot think of any other reason for the warming apart from CO2
Since humans were not responsible for the Holocene Optimum, Minoan, Roman, Medieval warm periods (even if these are restricted to the Northern Hemisphere there is no explanation as to how they could be so confined), or for the warming out of the LIA, or for the 1860 to 1880 warming, or for the 1920 to 1940 warming, the null hypothesis is that temperatures change, the temperature changes by natural phenomena, and all change of temperature is of natural origin unless the contrary can be established.
What was the reason for (i) the Holocene Optimum, (ii) the Minoan Warm Period, (iii) the Roman Warm Period, (iv) the Medieval Warm Period. Further, if it be alleged that any of these events is solely a Northern Hemisphere event, what is the process and reason for that event being limited solely to the Northern Hemisphere?
Until one can answer this, everything else is simply conjecture. Conjecture is not science.
Should have read:
If you can not reject the null that all observed climate change (temperature change) is from natural sources, what sense does it make to test that 50% is from natural sources? The right statistical answer is that the AGW hypothesis as you state makes no sense. It is intellectual gobbledygook.
Look, I certainly understand that radiative physics points to an increase in temperature from an increase in CO2. The problem is that in a free convective atmosphere the simple radiative physics doesn’t hold.
Given how noisy the temperature data is, one can not show a statistically significant role for CO2 induced warming. The guessing game that people play in trying to assign some percentage of the change in observed temperature is foolish in my view. I also think that trying to construct a structural model of the climate is foolish. The economics profession long ago gave up structural models for time series models. I believe that is the right approach for climate as well.
I also think I am on solid ground when I say that spectral analysis of temperature data shows no role for CO2 in explaining observations.
If the La Nina that is currently developing holds forth, we will likely have a 20+ year record of Satellite data that shows zero warming. My educated guess is that the negative phase of the AMO coupled with low sunspot activity will put to rest concerns about CO2 induced warming. The focus, in my view, should be on the beneficial effects on plant growth from CO2 fertilization.
I am much more concerned about earth’s declining magnetic field and the potential for a shift in magnetic poles than any CO2 or sunspot activity effects. The fact that most people are unaware of the potential for disruption from such an event is concerning.
I don’t really disagree with anything in your comment other than your concern about the magnetic field and polarity reversals.
David. You seem to be confusing opinion with science. Firstly, whatever AGW opinion is, it is diverse and constantly varying, apparently in response to repeated refutation on scientific bases. You 50% number is some sort of approximation on a moonshot of approximations. Nothing to do with science. It may be your choice to use it as some kind of reference but it has zero scientific credibility. Perhaps you see yourself as a mediator. Half a crock of crap is still carp!
The null hypothesis doers not start at some kind of a guesstimated saw-off. It is null. Refute that or accept it with supporting evidence.
P.S.-There isn’t any!
That’s their stated hypothesis. The null hypothesis to their stated hypothesis would be that humans are responsible for <50% of the warming since 1950.
They haven't been able to knock down that null hypothesis.
Regarding the null hypothesis that 100% of the warming since 1850 or 1950 is "natural," that null hypothesis has already been knocked down.
http://33ooeh42hzcia809132by241.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/graph-big-box-homepage-copy-copy.jpg
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/25/almost-30-years-after-hansens-1988-alarm-on-global-warming-a-claim-of-confirmation-on-co2-forcing/
What was observed? A ~20 ppmv increase in atmospheric CO2 correlated with a 0.2 W/m^2 increase in radiative forcing at the Earth’s surface.
Total insolation at the Earth’s surface ranges from 40 to 340 W/m^2 per year.
Assuming a linear relationship of .01 W/m^2 per 1 ppmv CO2… A doubling of pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 from 280 to 560 ppmv will increase radiative forcing by 2.8 W/m^2. This is about 2/3 of the IPCC’s estimate.
The total warming since 1850 has been about 0.7°C. Over the same period, CO2 increased by about 120 ppmv (~1.2 W/m^2).
0.7°C ÷ 1.2 W/m^2 = 0.6°C/Wm^-2
0.7°C ÷ 120 ppmv CO2 = 0.006°C/ppmv CO2
This means that a doubling of pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 can lead to a maximum warming of 1.68°C… less than half of the so-called consensus estimate.
Since my “back of the envelope” calculations assumed a linear, rather than logarithmic, relationship and that all of the warming since 1850 was GHG-driven, the actual climate sensitivity can be no more than half of my estimate… ~0.8°C per doubling of pre-industrial atmospheric CO2.
This essentially means that the human impact on climate change is insignificant… but >0.
IMO the null hypothesis is that nothing out of the ordinary is happening in Earth’s climate now, hence no special explanation is called for.
That might be a distinction without a difference, since in any case natural variation must be dominant. My formulation allows that there might be a human influence, but that it’s negligible or undetectable, whether to warm or cool on balance.
Part of the problem with the lukewarmer position is that it implicitly fails to distinguish between “it rained yesterday but is sunny today. Absent human intervention, it would have been sunny yesterday and rainy today” on the one hand, with “humans are making the climate increasingly inhospitable for life” on the other.
If the climate is within natural variability, than the possibility of human influence is meaningless. Our contribution irrelevant.
Secondly, I want to see some humility. It seems more likely than not that the earth has been getting slightly warmer over the last century plus, but given how paltry the data is going back even a few decades, it is pure hubris to state that as fact. 150 years ago, 99% of the earth wasn’t within 100 miles of a thermometer and 99% of the area that was was not recorded with the accuracy necessary to prove the amount of warming claimed. Go back further than weather satellites, and I want to see great big error bars or I want you to sit out the conversation. The data is simply not there.
And that’s even before getting to some kind of calculation as to human contribution (which itself needs great big error bars considering how poorly we understand the climate).
And on to the “conspiracy” ad hominem. People act in concert all the time without there being a formal conspiracy. Give a group of people scant data and a financial incentive to find something and most will find it. That’s human nature. The claim t”conspiracy theory!” is a canard by cowards trying to avoid real discussion.
This summation should be in bold type on the front page of this website and sent to every media outlet with a particle of interest and integrity. And then put it up in the schools.
As a frequently labelled denier, but really a luke warmer I set my metric for alarmism a long time ago (about 6-7 years ago in fact). I want the global temperatures to be above the model mean for a few years. I can’t rely on the surface temps, so I chose the higher quality satellite data.
Now, if they change (lower) the model means, then that is different of course, but I mean the ones that are showing 2100 to be on the 3 deg + range).
So no science involved in your analysis whatsoever. Understood. Just don’t pretend to be anything but a full blown Warmist.
A lukewarmer is someone who only partly Believes, because straddling the fence feels safer to them. Sorta like someone going to church on religious holidays, to keep their foot in the door, and “just in case”.
Amen
We make those sort pay more, and I don’t just mean the coins on the plate.
Exactly! Not interested in the science. Just trying to get along with the monster under the bed. Even when it isn’t really there.
It really is fascinating how even those on “our side” need to stake out extreme positions and denigrate anyone who disagrees with them.
There are so many reasons for not being persuaded by the radiative GHE, AGW (other than on a micro climatic level caused by land change usage) and CAGW, that one would have to write a book to address the issues. This enables people to have quite different and varying views as to why do not accept, or why they partially accept AGW.
I am a sceptic which means that I am sceptical of almost all arguments in support of AGW, and sceptical of almost all arguments against AGW. But I believe in applying the scientific method including the application of the null hypothesis, and I have seen no evidence that persuades me that the null hypothesis has been displaced.
I do not dispute the radiative properties of CO2, but that does not mean that it is a GHG. That is something that can only be determined by observation as to how it works when added to Earth’s (convective) atmosphere, and presently there is no observational evidence which has been able to isolate the warming signal to CO2 (if there be any at all). That is why I do not understand any lukewarmer who signs up to man being responsible for any warming whatsoever.
In fact I remain completely unconvinced that there is any climate change. Temperature is of course but one property that goes to make up climate, and the various and many parameters that go to make up climate are never in stasis, and are constantly varying/meandering between upper and lower bounds. One of the central issues is what is meant by climate and what does this encompass, and I consider that this is something that has not been rigorously examined, identified and determined.
I do not accept the rationale that climate can be assessed as the average of weather over a period as short as 30 years. That is a blink of the eye, and why should such a short period be the bench mark? From a global perspective, there may only be 3 types of climate, ie., those when the world is largely ice free, interglacials and glacials.
Are we today simply observing the type of climate that is typical in an interglacial? Of course, during the course of the Holocene, there have been some cooler periods and some warmer periods, but heck that is simply what one would expect in an interglacial.
Whilst I accept that the globe has warmed since the LIA, I remain wholly unconvinced by the evidence that the Northern Hemisphere is any warmer today than it was back in the 1930s/1940s. In fact, i consider that there are multiple lines of evidence that suggest that within the margins of measurement errors (including our approach to the assessment and reconstruction of data) that the Northern Hemisphere is any warmer than the 1930s/1940s. There is simply too little historic data and the coverage too sparse in the Southern Hemisphere in order to make any reasonable assessment of change in the Southern Hemisphere. Given the known problems with our data sets/the temperature reconstructions, I fail to understand how anyone can be reasonably persuaded that today is any warmer than the highs of the 1930s/1940s. That carries immense significance since some 95% of all manmade CO2 emissions have taken place since 1940.
We are not even in a position to judge to what extent man is responsible for the rise in CO2 since we do not sufficiently understand or know the ins and outs of the carbon cycle. I consider that the evidence as a whole presents a strong case that man is responsible for much of the rise in CO2 levels, but even that is not beyond reasonable debate. For example ants and termites are responsible for the emission of CO2 and since we do not know how their numbers have changed these past 100 years, we cannot rule out even such lowly creatures from having had a significant impact.
I consider that there has been a lamentable failure to properly identify what is the ideal quantity of CO2 for the biosphere of this planet, and what is the ideal temperature for the biosphere. I consider that the balance of evidence suggests that this planet has too little CO2, and that it is presently too cold. I consider that the balance of evidence strongly suggest that a warmer world is a better world, and that the biosphere would greatly benefit from the globe being several degrees warmer. In my opinion, this is an area where there has been far too little research and consideration, and for some unknown reason, it has been accepted that 2 degrees C poses a real threat without there being hard evidence substantiating such claim.
Whilst I consider lukewarmers to hold a reasonable position, and one which may be right, I consider their position, as far as they accept that manmade CO2 has and is causing warming, to be unscientific.
An excellent summary, Richard. This covers most of the essential scientific issues in a careful and considered manner and is wholly accurate. I would disagree with your final comment however and think the lukewarmers hold not only an unscientific position but an UNreasonable one and also perhaps a dangerous one. The AGW nonsense is so full of unscientific BS that it somewhat undermines efforts to attack it when part of the “other side” have their own steaming dollops.
Unscientific!
Could there be a greater insult to a complex, unproven hypothesis that calls for the overturning of the economic model that has propelled the world to never before known levels of well being and promises to do much more for all?
Unscientific says it all!
Lukewarmism cannot be legitimate. If it were there would be multiple scientific responses to the challenge laid out many times here by me and others.
Every lukewarmer who believes in the influence of CO2 and manmade emissions has a great opportunity here to explain how rising CO2 caused a negative, then positive, then flattish rate of temperature:
http://climate4you.com/images/NCDC%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1958%20AndCO2.gif
I respect Middleton but I won’t respect a non-convincing vague answer or non-answer while I’m supposed to think of lukewarmism as legitimate and superior. If lukewarmists cannot explain this glaring discrepancy in agw theory then it is not legitimate science, it is simply a prevailing popular opinion – ie groupthink.
You all should realize there is no legit AGW answer to my challenge. From there all you need is the sense and courage to admit what the warmists won’t, that CO2 has nothing to do with driving increasing temperatures.
I don’t think “superior” factors into the equation.
Most Lukewarmers don’t assert that CO2 is the primary driver of climate change. Rising CO2 didn’t *cause* “a negative, then positive, then flattish rate of temperature” change. For that matter, CO2 stopped rising and possibly fell during the late 1940’s to 1950’s.
CO2 just modifies the equation.
Agree with David.
To assume that increasing CO2 has zero effect on warming, is to not believe convincing evidence in physics of its ability to absorb infrared radiation in the atmosphere at certain bands/lines in the wavelength spectrum.
The amount can be debated based on it being a logarithmic function, the overlap with H2O and level in the atmosphere that some bands might be saturated but the evidence of the effect is very compelling.
I have heard a couple of theories for why this would not warm the atmosphere but those don’t make any sense to me.
Just because we warmed before, similar to this does not mean that we are doing it exactly the same way for the same reason this time. If you can’t show the physical process that applied before and how its effecting the planet exactly the same way this time, then its not enough proof to rule out the possibility of other factors this time.
Ocean cycles or sunspot activity or galactic cosmic rays are great theories that have merit and for sure something caused those previous warmings……….and they really did happen but in the absence of tying the physics together to account for all of the warming then with all of the warming now, it is impossible for me to ignore the well known physics of CO2.
I am confident that the last 40 years have featured the best weather/climate and CO2 for life on this greening planet since at least the Medieval Warm Period. If we asked life to testify, most of it would be asking for more CO2.
However, humans that live along coasts have the most at risk, should the warming continue. I have been surprised that sea levels have NOT accelerated higher. Maybe the increased evaporation from the oceans into an atmosphere that holds 4% more moisture has increased rains, that are going into the booming biosphere and increasing soil moisture on a global scale that is acting as a negative feedback.
This is based on the slight, mostly beneficial warming so far. If we warmed another 1 deg. C in the next 80 years, along with another 120 ppm CO2, most life would not complain and world food production/crop yields would continue higher.
Will that accelerate sea levels a bit?
Not sure but 1 inch/decade right now, equates to around a foot in 100 years and that is slow enough for adaptation. I also don’t believe the crapola that today’s CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere for a century.
Predictions of the rate of decline for Arctic sea ice and accelerating sea levels, like global climate model temperature projections, have under performed so far.
However, to ignore the decades long trends in those metrics, which still have not been broken, despite periods of no trend or briefly, counter trend is to ignore fundamental trend analysis.
One difference between an “alarmist” and a “lukewarmer” might be the expectations of the steepness of the slope of those trends.
With regards to taking actions to cut CO2 emissions, it might end up being the dumbest idea in human history, considering the cost and the massive benefits that increasing CO2 is bestowing to life.
Benefits are 10 times the negative consequences to life right now. If the negative consequences, (based on my lukewarmer speculative scenario) get up to being equal to the benefits in 50 years, why would we spend trillions of dollars now, in case that might happen?
“To assume that increasing CO2 has zero effect on warming, is to not believe convincing evidence in physics of its ability to absorb infrared radiation in the atmosphere at certain bands/lines in the wavelength spectrum.”
That’s only half the story. CO2 does what it does in the atmosphere, but when it does what it does, there could be negative feedbacks which could completely negate CO2’s effect on net heat of the Earth’s atmosphere. CO2 is not acting by itself, it has to play ball with the rest of the atmosphere.
Noone can say definitively that CO2 creates a net increase in the temperature of the Earth’s climate, just by being present.
BTW, talking about the benefits of CO2 to plant life is a distraction from the debate and probably gives some people the idea that if increased CO2 increases plant growth, then it must be doing other things in the atmosphere, too. These are different phenoneon, which are conflated together too often.
As for CO2 enhancing plant growth. I’m a believer because the evidence is obvious. That can’t be said for CO2 and Earth’s temperature.
Sorry David that really falls under the ‘non-convincing answer’ – but you’re a great post writer!
I’ll see if I can work up a graphical depiction.
Mike, use ‘the physics’ you hold dear to explain how while CO2 rose for 30 years temps declined.
CO2 didn’t rise during the first half of that cooling period, despite increasing emissions. MacFarling Meure et al., 2006 found possible evidence of a mid-20th Century CO2 decline in the DE08 ice core…
From about 1940 through 1955, approximately 24 billion tons of carbon went straight from the exhaust pipes into the oceans and/or biosphere.
The mid-20th century cooling simply overwhelmed the effects of CO2 emissions. The cooling was so pronounced that the atmospheric concentration may have even btiefly declined.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/07/a-brief-history-of-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-record-breaking/
Bob, all you have proven is that CO2 is not the only driver of climate and that there is at least one driver that is more powerful than CO2. Despite your desire to believe otherwise, you have not proven that CO2 has no role in the climate.
“Bob, [1] all you have proven is that CO2 is not the only driver of climate and that there is at least one driver that is more powerful than CO2. [2] Despite your desire to believe otherwise, you have not proven that CO2 has no role in the climate.” – MarkW
[1] Certainly glad to see you agree there is a driver greater than CO2.
[2] I never claimed it had no role in the climate. It is a response to temperature change, not a driver of it. CO2 enhances leaf area which indirectly is important to climate but not in driving temperature.
So much great stuff in this post and comments. I would just add:
1. There may be nothing worse than thinking you know something when you don’t actually know that specific thing. Socrates is supposed to have said that skilled carpenters tend to think they know everything–especially what to do in politics. Skilled modellers?
2. I gather from the many smart people or experts here: effect of man-made CO2 on temps almost certainly not zero. Very likely to be less than 50%, likely to be no more than 30%.
3. Regardless of what this exact number is, what are the alternatives? Life without fossil fuels? As they used to say on rude blogs: bwahhahahaha. Bring on nuclear plants at a realistic cost, methane hydrates.
4. New study suggests increase in CO2 will help produce more plants, bigger, etc., but nutrition in plant food will decline, as it tends to do whenever output per plant is increased by selective breeding or whatever. Is GMO food the solution?
5. We spend a lot of time on small things: I like the suggestion that temps only went back up to the mean of the models because of El Nino in 2015-16; by rights it would have been predicted that observations would have been even higher, so models that don’t include El Nino are still running too hot. I look forward to ten more years of data, and more posts.
I’m old. I live in Minnesota. It’s certainly getting warmer around here. I’ve lived long enough to see it. In Saint Paul, they used to build ice castles for the Winter Carnival. I’ve seen pictures of the late 1800s castles – they were enormous and elaborate. When I was paying attention in the 1960s and 1970s, I kept hearing about the troubles they had with the castles melting. The planned 2017 ice “castle” is despicably small. They’re talking about a giant castle for 2018 (the first since 2004), but “Recent warm winters have the Winter Carnival folks exploring options for building a massive ice structure, Bump said. They looked at an “alternative panel system,” which didn’t work out, she said.” http://www.twincities.com/2016/12/29/st-paul-winter-carnival-ice-castle-2018-super-bowl/
There’s no way I can ignore local warming. It’s happening. Global warming is a harder thing to experience, but since we are no longer in a Little Ice Age, I’ll accept it. Anthropogenic? So far, the climate models have done little to persuade me.
The one common factor I have found for all these catastrophes-to-be is the cure. Put the Left in charge, give them money, and do what they say. Shut down our industries, live humbly, and abase ourselves for our sins against Gaia. They said that for the coming Ice Age, for Acid Rain, for Ozone Holes, for Global Warming, and now they are saying Climate Change, because people are starting to snicker behind their hands when they say “warming”.
It’s politics and religion, it is, and the people working it for everything they can are hucksters and useful idiots.
That’s right winters east of the Rockies are getting warmer and the summers are getting cooler. It would appear that the winters are warmer than the summers are cooler – hence the averages are up. Here’s a map of the United States that shows the declining maximum temperature trends:
http://oi67.tinypic.com/10er3ps.jpg
The key doesn’t show it, but TMax in most of those states in the Mississippi River valley have shown a negative trend since the 19th century.
Source:
NOAA’s Climate at a Glance
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/
Your problem could just as easily be UHI as global warming.
used to be somewhat a lukewarmer but now…don’t even think can be considered that.
time will tell if I am wrong or not.
AR5 admits a pause. Gavin has a solution for that…3 new GISS versions that turn it into a rise 😉
While that happens in my face, I’m highly skeptical.
Yup! So unnoticeable they have to lie about it. And yet it’s dangerous! What a joke!
David,
This and other recent posts (e.g. Larry Kummer) contrast model ensemble projections with global average temperature sets. Most notably, were it not for the recent El Nino, the apparent agreement between the two would not look nearly as good as it does. Yet, whenever we have cold weather, the alarmists are quick to point out that weather is not climate and we should ignore the snow on the ground outside the conference venue. So, the most important take away is that we have to wait at least a couple more years to see if we appear to be at one of the innumerable steps, or if temperatures return to the trend (hiatus) that we appeared to have prior to the most recent El Nino.
Secondly, as I’ve tried to point out before, averages hide a lot of information, as in, “The Devil is in the details.” If we had a cold equator and hot poles, one could get the same average global temperature. I’ve just finished reviewing the chapter on models (IPCC AR5) and note that the claim for the quality of models has a very high correlation coefficient for GLOBAL average temperatures. However, the correlation coefficients for precipitation patterns only account for less than 72% (CMIP5) of the variance of the spatial patterns. I would then expect that the regional temperatures would be about the same. In summary, it isn’t just important what the projected average global temperatures are, but whether projected regional average temperatures are reliable.
The lukewarmers are total losers.
They think CO2 controls the climate, which is wrong, but at least they
usually reject the bogus water vapor tripling the effect of CO2
positive feedback crackpot global warming theory.
They are in the middle of the road, and will get run over by traffic on both sides!
CO2 has never controlled the temperature, and if there is any effect at all,
it is harmless — most likely too small to notice in a lifetime
Lukewarmers are not paid to believe CO2 controls the climate.
That would be a good excuse.
Lukewarmers generally know enough about science to realize the lack of correlation between
average temperature and CO2 levels in most decades since 1940.
Being dumb is not an excuse.
So if the lukewarmers are not paid to believe, and know enough science not to
be tricked by climate models that have made wrong predictions for 30 years,
then what is their problem?
The problem is they are losers trying to be liked by everyone,
both global warmunists and skeptics.
Anyone who thinks the causes of climate change are well known (CO2) is a loser.
Anyone who thinks computer games can predict the average temperature is a loser.
Lukewarmers, therefore, are losers.
They just can’t say “I don’t know” or “No one knows”
when asked about the future temperature,
even though both are the correct answers!
Climate blog for non-scientists
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Judith Curry and most other skeptical climate scientists would technically fall into the Lukewarmer category.
The fact remains that there is no statistical validation for the Lukewarmer category. I have a great deal of intellectual respect for the names listed but that doesn’t mean that they can statistically prove their assertion about the contribution of CO2 to the observed temperature data. I hold lots of beliefs that I can not prove. It doesn’t make them right or wrong, just unproven.
Lindzen, Spencer and Curry have all statistically demonstrated their assertions of climate sensitivities ranging from 0.5 to 1.75 C.
@richard Greene
Losers with PhDs? A very SPECIAL club I fear. Being wrong in a CLEVER way takes some skill, it’s a sort of Emperor’s Clothes Lite. Still naked but it’s the way you walk that does it.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
You mis-state the strength of your position.
Not being able to discern a CO2 signal in the very noisy temperature signal is not evidence that there is no CO2 signal.
Richard Greene
September 25, 2017 at 11:30 am
The lukewarmers are total losers.
They think CO2 controls the climate, which is wrong, but at least they
usually reject the bogus water vapor tripling the effect of CO2
positive feedback crackpot global warming theory.
Well I don’t think CO2 controls climate.
I think the greenhouse effect theory is pseudoscience.
Mars has 28 times more CO2 per square meter as compared to Earth and
CO2 of Mars causes no “greenhouse effect” warming- sublimation of
CO2 at poles- different issue.
Now Mars has about 25 trillion tonnes of CO2 in it’s atmosphere.
If 25 trillion tonnes of CO2 or N2 was added to Mars atmosphere, it
seems there could be some warming.
Or 50 trillion tonnes of N2 could have less warming effect than
50 trillion tonnes of 50% mix or 100% CO2.
Or I think it would have enough of effect that it could be measured.
I don’t think the effect of CO2 in Earth has been measure but the upper
limit seems to me, that if CO2 increased from 400 to 800 ppm that this
might cause 1 C increase to Earth’s average temperature.
Probably more likely it’s closer to 0.25 C than 1 C
And if global temperature increase by 2 C before 2100, I think this would
mostly be good news- but it won’t happen. As there is no reason or evidence
that it could.
“They think CO2 controls the climate”
When you have to lie about what others are saying, you have lost the argument before it even began.