By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Judge Alsup, in the California global warming trial, has accepted the amicus curiae brief from my eight distinguished colleagues and me. The brief now becomes an official part of the court documents. The judge may yet ask all parties to respond to it.
The initial reaction of the two California cities that brought the case against five oil companies, demanding that they should fork out billions to fend off sea-level rise, was to use the traditional totalitarian tactic of attacking our personal reputations. So much easier, that, than producing a scientific argument. The judge was unmoved.
A simple feedback amplifier circuit from Bode (1945, page 31). Note that the input and output signals are not deltas but entire values. Numerous climate papers cite the feedback math in Bode as the basis for climate feedback analysis.
Meanwhile, my account here at WUWT of the grave error that we have discovered right at the heart of climate physics has attracted 1000+ comments – not unprecedented, but rare. The high level of activity shows that the climate fanatics are worried – very worried.
But not worried enough to work out a credible line of attack. I have seldom seen so many feeble arguments in one place. On countless occasions, those who so often try to disrupt comment threads here with a melange of spiteful ad-hom attacks and half-baked pseudo-science (one of them even sent me a vile email offering gratuitous and profoundly offensive medical advice, though he was not a medic, a sure sign of extreme desperation on his part) found themselves attacking official climate science.
To these I felt like replying: “Comrade, do you realize you are criticizing the Party Line? Do you not know the penalty for that?” Instead, I suggested they should address their concerns to the climate clique, not to me.
Official climatology’s error is grave. It has hitherto been assumed that, while a change in temperature, such as the small warming from adding the non-condensing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, can induce a feedback response, the Earth’s far larger emission temperature somehow cannot.
The most significant objection to our argument came from Roy Spencer, who said official climatology defines a temperature feedback as an extra forcing induced by a change in temperature, but not by the original temperature itself.
That is indeed the definition. But merely because official climatology says white is black, we should not be too hasty in bidding farewell to white.
With respect, the question is not whether official climatology defines feedbacks in such a way as to exclude from the account the large feedback response to the Earth’s emission temperature, but whether in reality the emission temperature actually induces that large feedback response.
When I was in Moscow recently, presenting our result to members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Mojib Latif, an IPCC lead author, recommended a paper by several NASA authors, Lacis et al. (2010), who had run a general-circulation model in which they had removed all non-condensing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and had studied how the climate would evolve over 50 years.
Their conclusion was that after 50 years with no greenhouse gases the Earth’s albedo would have risen from today’s 0.293 to 0.418, and that mean surface temperature would have fallen from 288 K to 252 K, a drop of 36 K, of which 9 K, they imagined, was the loss of directly-forced warming from the non-condensing greenhouse gases and the remaining 27 K was the loss of feedback response to that directly-forced warming.
What would the emission temperature be if the albedo were 0.418? The answer, assuming today’s insolation, is 243.3 K. Yet Lacis et al. said the equilibrium temperature with no non-condensing greenhouse gases would be 8.7 K higher than that, at 252 K. That is manifestly a feedback response to emission temperature, albeit an unrealistically low one.
Since we shall want to compare the pre-industrial and industrial-era values of the feedback fraction f, we shall take the 287.5 K surface temperature in 1850 as the equilibrium temperature for the pre-industrial calculation. And, when we come to the industrial-era calculation, we shall bend the argument rather too far in favor of official climatology.
Lacis says one-quarter of the [35.5 K] difference between 252 K and [287.5 K] [i.e. 8.9 K] is directly-forced warming from the non-condensing greenhouse gases, while three-quarters of the [35.5] K [i.e. 26.6 K] is the feedback response to that [8.9 K] of greenhouse-gas direct warming. Thus, Lacis takes the feedback fraction f to be three-quarters, or 0.75.
Then the 44.2 K difference between emission and 1850 temperatures comprises 8.7 K feedback response to emission temperature; 8.9 K directly-forced greenhouse warming; and 26.6 K feedback response to direct greenhouse warming.
According to our corrected method, f is a lot less: 1 – (243.3 + 8.9) / 287.5, or 0.123. In that event, the 44.2 K comprises 243.3 f / (1 – f) = 34.0 K feedback response to emission temperature; 8.9 K directly-forced greenhouse warming; and 8.9 f / (1 – f) = 1.3 K feedback response to direct greenhouse warming. That seems a more reasonable apportionment.
Now for the industrial-era value of the feedback fraction. Lacis says that for “the entire terrestrial greenhouse effect” and also for “current climate” the feedback fraction is 0.75. Not much nonlinearity there, then. But many commenters worry about nonlinearities, so we shall go overboard to accommodate them.
For our corrected method, we begin by noting that from 1850-2011 the IPCC’s estimate of total net anthropogenic forcing was 2.29 Watts per square meter; that the Planck parameter is 0.313 Kelvin per Watt per square meter; and that, therefore, anthropogenic reference warming before accounting for feedback was 2.29 x 0.313 = 0.72 K. Yet, since 0.76 K warming was observed over that period, our industrial-era feedback fraction, to first approximation, is 1 – 0.72 / 0.76 = 0.05.
However, commenters have asserted that the equilibrium warming will be perhaps 40% greater than the 0.76 shown in the temperature record, because some of the warming will have gone into the ocean, and may return to warm the atmosphere in a few decades.
In that event, our industrial-era feedback fraction becomes 1 – 0.72 / (0.76 x 1.4) = 0.32, or more than two and a half times the pre-industrial feedback fraction. That should handsomely allow for the nonlinearities in feedbacks whose omission from the original calculation several commenters complained of. In reality, the nonlinearity will be far less than this.
Armed with the probably much inflated industrial-era feedback fraction 0.32, we can derive Charney sensitivity (equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 concentration) by noting that the CMIP5 estimate of the CO2 radiative forcing is 3.5 Watts per square meter, which, when multiplied by the Planck parameter 0.313 Kelvin per Watt per square meter, gives reference warming 1.1 K. Charney sensitivity is then 1.1 / (1 – 0.32) = 1.6 K, and not the 3.3 K that is the CMIP5 models’ current mid-range estimate.
Now for some questions which, in our submission, anyone who wishes to adhere to official climatology’s notion that emission temperature induces no feedback response must credibly answer.
Question 1: If, from Lacis’ model, the 8.7 K difference between emission temperature 243.3 K and equilibrium temperature 252 K with no non-condensing greenhouse gases is not a feedback response to emission temperature, then what on Earth is it?
Question 2: How is it that emission temperature of 243.3 K induces a feedback response of only 8.7 K (or 0 K if, notwithstanding Lacis’ result, you think emission temperature cannot induce any feedback response at all), and yet that the 27-times-smaller 8.9 K direct warming from the presence of the naturally-occurring, non-condensing greenhouse gases induces as much as a 26.6 K feedback response?
Question 3: Would it not be more likely that, as we find, the feedback response to emission temperature of 243.3 K is 34.0 K, while the feedback response to directly-forced greenhouse warming of 8.9 K is only 1.3 K, rather than Lacis’ 8.7 K and 26.6 K respectively?
Question 4: Since feedbacks are denominated in Watts per square meter of the temperature that induces them, how do the feedbacks know that they should not respond at all to the emission temperature of 243.3 K but that they should suddenly respond very strongly by quadrupling the 8.9 K directly-forced reference warming from the non-condensing greenhouse gases?
We have here made the most generous allowance for the points raised by commenters, and yet Charney sensitivity, at 1.6 K, is not a lot greater than the 1.2 K in the original article.
In my submission, then, there will simply not be enough global warming to require any mitigation measures at all. If we are right, this really is game over.
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” If we are right, this really is game over. ”
I so hope so.
With comments like this:
“DR. ALLEN: The blue line are observations of the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere. Now, oxygen is almost 29 percent of the atmosphere . . ”
we still have a problem with science illiteracy. I hope Lord Monckton et al, can help here, and hope someone else gets the Oxygen down to 21% where it has been hanging around for the past millennia!
“problem with science illiteracy”
or transcription
Oxygen can be found in many molecules.
Does he live (and measure O2 during the day) in an agricultural greenhouse?
In reply to Tom Wysmuller, the atmospheric burden of oxygen when Priestley first isolated it at Doctor’s Pond, Calne, Wiltshire was 20.67%. Today, after the life-threatening rate of conversion of oxygen to carbon dioxide caused by capitalism, the atmospheric burden of oxygen has plummeted to – er – 20.67%. The egregiously nitwitaceous George Monbiot, in the British Communist daily propaganda sheet The Guardian, once said that owing to conversion to CO2 the world’s oxygen was running low. Not in our lifetime, Comrade!
For those that are interested, there is a lot of discussion about this paper/brief on Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog. Some of the comments are very interesting.
Here’s the link: http://www.drroyspencer.com/category/blogarticle/
For California v. BP case documents see Columbia Univ. Law:
People of State of California v. BP p.l.c.
http://climatecasechart.com/case/people-state-california-v-bp-plc-oakland/
For the Brief of Amici Curiae Monckton et al. see:
CASE NOS. C-17-06011 and C-17-06012 BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE THE VISCOUNT MONCKTON, ET AL.
http://blogs2.law.columbia.edu/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2018/20180316_docket-317-cv-06011_amicus-brief.pdf
Do you have a link to your documents – the links from the other article are giving a 404 error.
SS, go into the WUWT search bar. Search Monckton brief. His previous post will come up ranks 1 or 2. Click on it, and the doc links should be there and good.
To: Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
I was attempting to write superlatives for your intelligence, tenacity, Bravery, etc., but I just couldn’t find the right thoughts. Just want you to know that the hordes of little people that employ critical thinking on CAGW consider you the Top of the World. We are blessed to have you on our side.
+ absolutely loads!
PLUS 10000%
Here! Here!
Dito.
Much appreciate the effort – and analysis – you bring to the field of combat!
Auto
The superlatives you are looking for are: “CONGRATULATIONS, Christopher, – well done, lad!” This is a game changer.
To Mr Hovland and many others: many thanks for your kind words. It can be a long and lonely road.
A-ha! Monckton is colluding with the Russians!
colluding with the Russians!
I started out playing Diplomacy then I was twelve, and it only got worse.
I have not only colluded with Russia, I have colluded as Russia.
I think I’m in trouble.
You haven’t known the true power of collusion till you’ve gotten Gandhi to nuke your enemies.
^¿^
Groan… 🙂
I am personally worried about the cooling cycle settling in: https://youtu.be/u081u7Wdf5M
You claim a sensitivity of 1.6, which would imply if CO2 doubles over the 21st century a rise of 1.6C – whihc would be well over 2C warmer than pre-industrial levels. On what basis do you claim this will require no mitigation?
It was roughly that much warmer around 9,000 years ago. Yet the world , Polar Bears, Eskimos, Humans rolled along without “mitigation” in place.
Mr. Bellman
The amount of CO2 warming, if any,
is unknown.
Anyone who states “+1.6″ degrees C.
is making a wild guess
that is not logical.
Evidence from weather satellite data
since 1979 suggests
+1.0 degrees C. is the worst case
— and claims of knowing this
transient climate sensitivity number
to tenths of a degree C.
are misleading ‘false precision”.
That’s no reason to accept wild guesses,
such as +3.0 degrees C., and panic !
The warming from additional greenhouse gases
should be mainly at night, in cool, dry latitudes.
A worst case would be to assume 100% of the
warming in the weather satellite era, since 1979,
was from CO2
And that worst case is about +1 degree C. of warming
from a doubling of CO2 (and it is just as valid
to say the “best case” is near zero warming from CO2).
In plain English,
if CO2 increases +3 ppm per year,
the average temperature
would rise a mere +1 degree C.
in 125 years
At +2 ppm CO2 increase per year,
it would take 200 years for +1 degree C.
And that’s assuming people are still using CO2
100 years from now.
Based on very little real science
supporting climate change beliefs,
there is no reason to fear more CO2.
Based on my 20 years of reading about
climate change, I know more CO2 greens
the planet and is very beneficial —
— optimum growth of plants used for food
by animals and people is double to triple
the current level of 400 ppm — so that’s what
I want to see in the future — 1,000 ppm CO2 —
400 ppm is not enough for optimum plant growth.
My climate change blog:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
“And that’s assuming people are still using CO2
100 years from now.”
should have been as follows:
“And that’s assuming people are still using fossil fuels
that emit CO2, 100 years from now.”
“Anyone who states “+1.6″ degrees C.
is making a wild guess
that is not logical.”
It was Christopher Monckton who was making that wild guess.
Bellman, what do you mean: “Our guess is much worse”…
Rainer Bensch
“Bellman, what do you mean: “Our guess is much worse”…”
I don’t know what it means because I didn’t say it.
All I did was quote Christopher Monckton’s figure of a sensitivity of 1.6C, based on “the most generous allowance”, which he says is not a lot greater than his previous figure of 1.2 ± 0.15C. I was then told that anyone who states a figure of 1.6C is making a wild guess and it is not logical.
bellman you didnt understand what you read. Monckton says 1.2K but he is showing that the critics arguments essentially only raise it to 1.6 – still mot an alarming number like 4.5K, the IPCCs upper bound. There is no way we could if we wanted to double CO2 by 2100 and the 2C danger zone won’t be reached even with business as usual. This is precisely why they’ve lowered the danger limit to 1.5C – it is in fact a left-handed forecast by the Paris accordists. They worry that we could never reach 2C and that would (will) be a black eye for this whole wasteful enterprise.
Where is the world going to get the enough CO2 producing material to double the current level?
And why would we not switch to Nuclear anyway?
You’ll have to ask Christopher Monckton about that. He was equating a sensitivity value of 1.2C with warming of 1.2C by the end of the century.
CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from about 280ppm to about 400ppm. That is not a doubling yet. We need to get to 560 ppm to be a doubling. A second doubling to 1120ppm is very unlikely.
“CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from about 280ppm to about 400ppm. That is not a doubling yet. We need to get to 560 ppm to be a doubling”
I’ve no idea how much CO2 will increase this century. But I was following Christopher Monckton’s lead in suggesting a sensitivity was equivalent to the warming over the next century. Specifically when he said in his last post “It is only going to be about 1.2 K this century, or 1.2 K per CO2 doubling.”.
He also claimed that the warming rate of 1.2 C / century since 1950 verified his sensitivity value of 1.2 C per doubling of CO2. I pointed out that this didn’t make sense as CO2 had only increased by about 30% since 1950.
In this article he seems to accept that is possible that sensitivity might be as high as 1.6 K / doubling, so I assume the same logic applies and he is now accepting that there might be 1.6C warming by the end of the century, but maybe he now thinks there will be a smaller rise in CO2 to compensate for the higher sensitivity. As I’ve said before, Christopher Monckton of Brenchley seems to claim a different prediction for 21st century warming every year, so I’ve no idea what he’s claiming warming will be this time.
The question should be, “How can we increase atmospheric CO2 to the 800-1000 ppm range?”
That would be a feat of global engineering worthy of Trump!
For those below -there is no evidence that the CO2 level was 280 ppm in 1850 or 1920 but there is evidence from measurements by scientists including some who were awarded Nobel prizes that the CO2 level was higher. There were at least two independent measurements using accurate instruments over some time period in the 1940’s that showed CO2 levels near 400ppm The calculation made by the good Lord is a waste of time. as it has been proven that CO2 in the atmosphere can have no effect on surface temperature which varies within a small range through changes to insolation, and cloud cover over various cycle of planetary position.
In reply to Bellman, in 2015 our paper in the Science Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences estimated that 1.2 K was a reasonable mid-range estimate of Charney sensitivity. Our present paper says exactly same. If one bends the numbers as far as possible towards high sensitivity, one obtains an upper bound of 1.6 K.
Well, for a start, the degree or so of warming since the 18thC has done the world no harm at all, and probably been hugelt beneficial
Not so. all my family, relatives, their animals pets from that time have died. That includes any polar bears they may have had
EO
Agree.
All my forebears – and domestic pets, fowl, etc. have gone to heaven.
As expected – I knew them all, even the chucks, so no problem.
I don’t think any of my forebears kept a poley bear – although an Amherst’s Pheasant may have been in the mix.
Auto
No “probably” about it. The Little Ice Age was not “good” climate by any stretch of the imagination. Crop failures, famine, disease, and death are the characteristics of “cold” climate periods. Only a Climate Fascist could think such things are “good” and that warmer climates, which have been a boon to human civilization, are “bad.” Oh wait…
Pre-industrial [CO2] is generally accepted as 285 ppm. So double that is 570 ppm. Taking into account where we are today (start 2018 MLO ~408 ppm), there is 162 ppm still to go to arrive at 2X pre-industrial.
Disregarding the argument over anthropogenic emissions versus atmospheric CO2 rises, let’s just assume CO2 rise continues upward as it has for the past 4 years, which is 2.6 ppm/year, and then also allow for an acceleration to 3.0ppm/year (a +0.4 acceleration), and also calculate for a deceleration to 2.2 ppm/year (a -0.4 deceleration).
Then if CO2 rises on average 2.6 (+/- 0.4) ppm/yr, the atmosphere hits 2X pre-industrial CO2 of 570 around 2080 (range: 2072 – 2091).
So the 2X CO2 is hit around 2080, i.e. 62 years from now. And that is IF the CO2 GHG theory is even correct, then global temps will be 1.6 K higher in 2080 than they were in 1850.
230 years of human progress lifting humanity from disease, starvation, and brutish living is certainly worth 1.6 K from the chilly mid-19th Century temperatures.
Joel O’Brien
And we have already achieved over 1 degree K of the 1.6.
Bob boder,
you’re assuming 100% of the warming since 1850 is entirely anthropogenic. Don’t be a moron.
Joel OB there is no evidence to support that Pre-industrial CO2 was 285ppm. It is a made up figure by some not vary mathematical person who ignored all actual measurements that where over that level. Go and look that the literature on the actual measurements, the instruments used and their accuracy. I have used some of these instruments and have calibrated them with made-up samples of industrial gases which seems that measurements with modern instruments fail to do.
“Pre-industrial [CO2] is generally accepted as 285 ppm.”
Yes, and then they compare that *proxy-derived* figure with modern *atmospheric measurements* to come up with the amount of “increase.” Which is essentially an apples vs. oranges comparison that is just one of many scientific incompetencies in the AGW house of cards.
“230 years of human progress lifting humanity from disease, starvation, and brutish living is certainly worth 1.6 K from the chilly mid-19th Century temperatures.”
Yes, and IF we could take credit for it, we should be patting ourselves on the back, not torturing ourselves over it like Opus Dei priests.
Why do you select the coldest period in the last 8,000 years as your prefered temperature starting point?
You would be better asking the warmists that question. They are the ones who use “pre-industrial times” as their starting point. It’s hardly our fault that they just happened to have picked the end of the coldest period since the last Ice Age — conveniently for them.
The climate was perfect
on June 6, 1750
at 3:16 pm
It’s been downhill ever since !
That’s basically the warmist “argument”.
Where on our beautiful planet was that Richard ? 😉
The fact that 2-3C of warming will be good for the planet.
Bellman, you had better go relearn the definition of ECS. Or you can read up on it in essay Sensitive Sensitivity in my enook Blowing Smoke. You have just confounded with TCR.
Almost all of us conflate ECS with TCR at one time or another.
ECS ought to be retired from the nomenclature.
TCR is a value that could possibly be measured and confirmed. The delta between TCR and ECS will be spread out over hundreds of years and probably fall within the noise level of the climate “signal.”
ristvan,
“Bellman, you had better go relearn the definition of ECS.”
You’re correct, I don’t claim to understand much of this and it’s an obvious simplification to assume a doubling of CO2 will instantly mean a rise of 1.2 or 1.6C or whatever the ECS is. It just means it will reach that temperature eventually.
But I do think you should address this to Christopher Monckton as well. He explicitly said a Charney sensitivity of 1.2C would mean there would be approximately 1.2C warming this century. Moreover he uses the coincidence of a rise of 1.2C / century in observed temperatures as verification of his figure.
DM, true. But there is a simple way to roughly deconvolute them. See long below.
David,
“TCR is a value that could possibly be measured and confirmed.”
The problem is, there isn’t just one TCR. You can work it out for a particular case – a compounding ramp doubling over 70 years is the normal convention. And so that TCR can be applied in other similar doublings over similar periods. But it doesn’t work for time periods that are quite different, as in our current half-doubling.
ECS is meaningless, there never has nor will there ever be equilibrium it is a fanatasy.
Just so us morons understand exactly what you guys (that never give us the meaning of acronyms) are saying; note the following from the IPCC site.
“Transient climate response
In particular, the global mean temperature change which occurs at the time of CO2 doubling for the specific case of a 1%/yr increase of CO2 is termed the �transient climate response� (TCR) of the system. This temperature change, indicated in Figure 9.1, integrates all processes operating in the system, including the strength of the feedbacks and the rate of heat storage in the ocean, to give a straightforward measure of model response to a change in forcing. The range of TCR values serves to illustrate and calibrate differences in model response to the same standardised forcing. Analogous TCR measures may be used, and compared among models, for other forcing scenarios.
Equilibrium climate sensitivity
The �equilibrium climate sensitivity� (IPCC 1990, 1996) is defined as the change in global mean temperature, T2x, that results when the climate system, or a climate model, attains a new equilibrium with the forcing change F2x resulting from a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration.”
The following paragraph was immedistely preceding what I posted above from the IPCC site. The 2 paragraphs seem to contradict each other.
“The �transient climate response�, TCR, is the temperature change at the time of CO2 doubling and the �equilibrium climate sensitivity�, T2x, is the temperature change after the system has reached a new equilibrium for doubled CO2, i.e., after the �additional warming commitment� has been realised.
The temperature change at any time during a climate change integration depends on the competing effects of all of the processes that affect energy input, output, and storage in the ocean.”
Ristvan wrote, “See long below”
Here’s the link to it: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/27/judge-in-exxonknew-case-accepts-amicus-brief-exposing-climatologys-grave-error/comment-page-1/#comment-2776165
We believe the mid-range estimate of Charney sensitivity is 1.2 K. As for 1.6 K, it is very much an upper bound, illustratively demonstrating that even allowing for strong nonlinearity in feedbacks there will not be much warming.
To demonstrate that 2 K warming over 200 years is dangerous, you would first have to state what the ideal surface temperature interval is. in general, for life on Earth, warmer is a lot better.
“As for 1.6 K, it is very much an upper bound…”
But last time you said the upper bound was 1.35 K.
“To demonstrate that 2 K warming over 200 years is dangerous, you would first have to state what the ideal surface temperature interval is.”
Why? I don’t have to know the ideal speed of a car is to know that driving at 200mph is dangerous.
As an aside, given all the discussion above, do you stand by tests 3 and 4 from you last post? Where you use a warming rate of 1.2C / century to verify your sensitivity figure.
You only ‘know’ that driving 200mph is dangerous because you already know the operating parameters of your car. 200mph is normal for NASCAR. And for many planes 200mph is dangerously close to stall speed.
The same it true for world avargae temperature. The Climate Faithful declared 2 degrees above pre-industrial as the dangerous ‘do not cross’ point, but they have nothing to back that up with. In fact it’s clearly bull, as the world HAS been warmer then that in the past. And once it started to look like we might not get that much anyway they tried to move the goalpost to 1.5.
Color me unimpressed.
~¿~
“in general, for life on Earth, warmer is a lot better”
Now THERE is a point the judge should have included in his questions, and he should have been soundly beaten over the head with the answer until it sunk in. It always amazes me when people talking about shrinking glaciers as a “bad” thing.” Perhaps they would prefer them swallowing up Manhattan…
Certainly, a little warmer is better for food production relative to population change. A lot better.
Yes, we think a realistic upper bound is 1.35 K. But, if we really bend the numbers, we can push that up to 1.6 K, which is in our view unrealistically high. Interesting, though, that Bellman says nothing of the far larger variation in official estimates of Charney sensitivity, ranging from 1.5 to 11 K per CO2 doubling. Is a double standard being applied here? If so, why?
Maybe you should have made that clear in this post. What you actually say is that you’ve made allowances for points raised by commentators. Some might interpret that as meaning you were being open minded and accepting the possibility of a mistake.
I said nothing about the IPCC estimates becasue we were discussing your claims, and because I don’t pretend to be an expert on any of this. In suggesting double standards, I think you may be misunderstanding my point. I wasn’t objecting to you increasing the upper bound, I was trying to point to the unrealistically tight bound given in your first post.
The IPCC look at multiple methods for determining ECS and come to the conclusion that there is still great uncertainty. They say that it is likely that the actual ECS is between 1.5 and 4.5 C, and very unlikely to be less than 1 or more than 6. You claim to have proven that the actual value is likely to be between 1.05 and 1.35C. The IPCC state a likely range of 3 degrees, you a likely range of 0.3 degrees. I’m not sure why you want me to attack the IPCC for insisting the science isn’t settled.
Is that 2C well over the pre-industrial levels of the Medieval Warm, or Roman Warm, or Minoan Warm Periods? Or any that predate those? Was it more than the long “Climate Optimum” Period, or the periods that melted vast ice sheets?
A very interesting development, Will we see Collapse of stout Party or can we look forward to a Judgement?
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/06/facts-are-facts-and-science-science.html
Monckton of Brenchley March 25, 2018 at 3:13 pm said (Previous thread – the comment below was submitted there but comments were closed) “…. That’s not quite the same as building a feedback amplifier with a gain block whose gain factor can be set to unity. ….. “
In fact, it’s EXACTLY THE SAME THING! It’s A=1; a piece of wire in this case. The feedback is not across the amplifier, but from the amplifier’s output, THROUGH A SUMMER, then to the amplifier’s input. This is NOT NEW – it’s obvious. And the same is true if the gain is A=10 or A=1/2 or A=-5 for examples (even for A=0). The new gain with feedback is A/(1-f). Your equation is 1/(1-f) after all.
You DO have to be careful about drawing a proper flow graph else sometimes terminology is confused and the A gets mixed with the f (usually called beta in EE) as a loop-gain. That’s why I wanted to see your flow graph or circuit.
Historically, feedbacks were originally positive to coax more gain out of feeble vacuum tubes (valves) – so-called regeneration. By the time Black and Bode were writing, they WERE mainly concerned with negative feedback around higher gain circuits to improve frequency response and reduce distortions. That’s why it may look like there is always an amplifier, but the math does not care of course.
{Note: In terms of the diagram above A=mu and f=beta, The diagram is confusing relative to what we do today. There should be arrows on the flow-graph paths, and the path including beta is right-to-left.}
What is not obvious to the uninitiated is the amplifier is assumed to have a infinite input impedance and zero output impedance. The amplifier is therefore capable of providing a power gain even if its voltage gain is unity. The only active element in the climate is the sun (ignoring heat generated in the earth internally as it is totally swamped by the suns energy). The miss named water vapor ‘feedback’ is passive making the addition of an amplifier just wrong.
If you wanted to create an electrical equivalent model it could only contain passive elements. Adding an amplifier to the model is adding energy even if it doesn’t seem obvious at first.
Yours is a common objection. For reasons I won’t go into, I don’t agree with it. But I’ll give you a non-amplifier analogy, with only passive elements except for the element that corresponds to the sun.
Consider a parallel RLC circuit driven by a sinusoidal current source (read the sun–yes, yes, I know it’s not sinusoidal) whose frequency is near the circuit’s natural frequency. As you increase the resistance (read CO2 concentration) the inductor current (read radiation from the earth’s surface) increases even though the source current has not. And the inductor current exceeds the source current.
Like the inductor exchanging current with the capacitor but losing some each cycle to the parallel conductance that has to be made up by the current source, the surface exchanges radiation with the atmosphere but loses some to space that must be made up by the sun.
The parallels aren’t exact, but that’s the way of analogies. Hope this helps.
You would have to justify an active element in a system that is unarguably passive.
I was thinking more along the line of a capacitor with 2 variable resistors connected. One resistor would be the energy input from the sun (V+) charging the capacitor, the other resistor would be the energy leaving the system (V-) controlling the rate the energy leaves.
Greg F.:
In our context the circuits that include the amplifiers are simply being used as analog computers. So long as the equations the analog computers implement are correct, the output is correct. Whether the computer includes active elements is no more relevant than whether a digital computer performing the same calculation includes active elements.
If you’re going to allow me variable resistors, though, a passive DC analogy is a DC current (read radiation) source (the sun) driving a capacitor (the earth) shunted (radiation out) by a resistor whose resistance somehow depends (feedback) on capacitor voltage (temperature).
Mr Hitchens appears to be agreeing that emission temperature induces a feedback response.
I am saying nothing about feedback to emission temperature. Nor have I previously affirmed or denied such (except to suggest that feedback ideas are probably being misused in climate science). I am only talking about the unambiguous math and electronics, and have stated facts (such as the A=1 case), that are EVIDENT to any practitioner, or to the casual readers here who are actually paying attention.
And actually, while my name is Hutchins, and not Hitchens, it is an honor to be even mistakenly called by the name of the greatest British author/orator of the last 50 years.
Mr Hotchkiss thinks he is saying nothing about feedback response to emission temperature when he asserts that there will be a feedback response to an input signal even if that input signal be unamplified.
Bernie, Joe, Greg, for some reason your disertations and exchanges on this technical topic read like poetry, like the flow of electrons cunningly induced to do your bidding. I sensed a rythm and cleverly placed anaphora.
I’m a mining and metallurgical engineer so the electronics was largely a foreign language, but I did learn a bit about the subject through reverse engineering of the analogies you drew with the sun/ earth climate system, which, in turn, I became a student of over a dozen years ago by reading and participating at this and other fine blogs, mainly on the sceptical side. On the ‘settled’ side you become a member of a congregation – not much of an education to be had. You must all be great teachers.
Thanks for the kind words. In my case, though, although some of my mentees were grudgingly complimentary in hindsight, the truth is that the reviews were ambivalent. One who fifteen years later said I was the best lawyer he’d ever dealt with, for example, also said all my mentees hated me.
Personally, I think he was being harsh; time may have airbrushed the experience, but my recollection is that only most of them hated me.
Assuming the processes affecting temperature were the same in 1850 as currently is difficult to assail. If feedback is operating now, it was operating then.
Any additional AGW feedback above and beyond natural feedback is significant?
To engine blocks or the atmosphere?
Oo oo oo … I know this one! Near supersonic hand-waving?
In my judgment, Lacis et al. (2010) seemed fatally flawed before you even took a stab at it. And while my understanding of basic definitions leads me to see a fatal flaw in your approach, I still appreciate the potential effect of your efforts.
Maybe later, I’ll take a stab at responding to your four questions. This might reveal either my delusions, at worst, or, at best, my attempt to resolve flaws I think that I’m seeing.
I’m not steeped in all the technical know how. Consequently, my understanding can be fragmented and incomplete, but when I see what I think are gaping holes, I try to avoid falling into them. One such “hole” seems to be the allowed comparison between emission-temperature determination and any near-surface-temperature determination — I just don’t see how this is acceptable.
It seems to me that emission temperature encases all processes that determine it — it is a measure, after the fact, of all these, NOT an active, isolated temperature, in and of itself, that can act as a causative agent. The emission temperature is itself a sort of average, even more, a sort of average through all VERTICAL layers of the atmosphere, which makes it NOT comparable, in the least, to just a surface temperature that the global average temperature IS.
It makes no sense to me, then, to say that the emission temperature can force anything — it is NOT an isolated, localized agent that exerts a unified physical motive on anything — it is a measure, after the fact of all other physical motives that determine IT. Thus, to say that it induces anything is to say that it induces something of itself, or the emission temperature induces itself to be what it is, … which seems like circular confusion.
Mr Kernodle wonders how one can equate emission temperature, which now obtains in the mid-troposphere, with surface temperature. Simple: in the absence of any greenhouse gases or feedbacks, emission temperature obtains at the surface.
Temperature feedbacks are denominated in Watts per square meter per Kelvin of the temperature that induced them. If Mr Kernodle thinks this is inappropriate, his beef is with official climatology, not with me.
Yes, of course, my beef is with official climatology — that is, pretty much, my point. I am not expressing any beef with you. (^_^) I think that your efforts to use “official climatology” logic against itself is pretty cool. There’s a weird sort of genius in that.
Let’s say, for example, that my beef is with Lacis et al.
I have focused on the Lacis et al article, to arrive at the following sorts of impressions:
Lacis et al (2010) SCIENCE
https://www2.bc.edu/jeremy-shakun/Lacis%20et%20al.,%202010,%20Science.pdf
The difference between the nominal global mean surface temperature (TS = 288 K) and the global mean effective temperature (TE = 255K) is a common measure of the terrestrial greenhouse effect (GT = TS – TE = 33 K).
A “common measure”, perhaps, but a very suspicious one, I think.
Global mean surface temperature is a measure determined for (and within) a few meters of Earth’s surface. Global mean effective temperature is a measure determined for (and within) the ENTIRE Earth-surface-atmosphere aggregate SYSTEM, which includes ALL LAYERS of height in the atmosphere, … NOT just a layer within a few meters.
These two temperature measures, then, are NOT the same measure. Global mean surface temperature is NOT the same category of measurement as global mean effective temperature. Comparing them is erroneous. This comparison compunds itself into a chain of further errors.
Assuming global energy balance, TE is also the Planck radiation equivalent of the 240 W/m2 of global mean solar radiation absorbed by Earth.
This statement seems incomplete or nebulous. I think that it would be better phrased like this: “Assuming global energy balance, TE is also the Planck radiation equivalent of the 240 W/m2 of global mean solar radiation absorbed by the Earth-surface-atmosphere aggregate system.”
Earth’s surface (dirt/water, just above or below), whose m2 is the defining surface for THAT particular measure of solar input, for THAT particular surface area, … is NOT the same reference surface for global mean effective temperature, whose defining surface is HIGER UP in the atmosphere. Consequently, using the original statement about 240 W/m2 (as written by the authors) sublty leads readers to conflate the two separate surfaces of (1) global mean SUFACE temperature and (2) global mean EFFECTIVE temperature — incorrectly collapsing them into the SAME m2, which erases the geometrically defined existence of atmospheric thickness determining the reference surface for global mean effective temperature. The global mean effective temperature has the surface of a sphere that is the radius of Earth plus the radius of the height where average emission is postulated.
If you deny the thickness defining that additional radius (calling it “insignificant”), then you must deny the existence of the atmosphere that you are postuating as accounting for the difference in the temperatures of the surfaces that you are erroneously conflating. The atmosphere itself must then be “insignificant”, which then defeats the whole point of explaining why the atmosphere IS significant.
Besides direct solar heating of the ground, there is also indirect longwave (LW) warming arising from the thermal radiation that is emitted by the ground, then absorbed locally within the atmosphere, from which it is re-emitted in both upward and downward directions, further heating the ground and maintaining the temperature gradient in the atmosphere.
To me, this says that Earth’s atmosphere produces ADDITIONAL energy ON TOP OF the energy it already receives from the sun — it uses the sun’s energy to make more energy than this energy already is. By this logic, the above sentence (as earlier) seems incomplete. It would seem to be better phrased something like this: Besides direct solar heating of the ground, there is also indirect longwave (LW) warming arising from the thermal radiation that is emitted by the ground, then absorbed locally within the atmosphere, from which it is re-emitted in both upward and downward directions, further heating the ground and maintaining the temperature gradient in the atmosphere, …
I see a catastrophic collapse of logic in a fit of circular reasoning, never recognized by the authors.
Because the solar-thermal energy balance of Earth [at the top of the atmosphere (TOA)] is maintained by radiative processes only, and because all the global net advective energy transports must equal zero, it follows that the global average surface temperature must be determined in full by the radiative fluxes arising from the patterns of temperature and absorption of radiation.
No, it does NOT follow that global average SURFACE temperature must be determined in full by the radiative fluxes as described by the authors. It only follows, if you follow absurd arguments that conflate defining surfaces to deny the very importance of the entiry whose importance you are trying to explain (i.e., the atmosphere).
NOTE: This is as far as I was willing to go in my attempt to assess the various claims of the “paper”. The researches most certainly appear competent in their manipulations, but I view them as having lost touch with the fundamental meanings of what they were doing.
The thin spherical-shell of Earth’s atmosphere is where the 0.04% volume exists that supposedly is the “control knob” of climate change. Acknowledging the existence of this thin, spherical, volumetric shell to assert an effect of a 0.04% portion of the volumetric shell, and then proceeding as if the altitude addition to Earth’s radius to get to this shell is zero (come time to calculate an effective temperature) is contradictory. The volumetric shell of the atmosphere CANNOT exist without the radius-addition to Earth’s radius that geometrically defines it. A global mean effective temperature CANNOT have the proper reference surface without the radius-addition to Earth’s radius that defines it.
If the 0.06% radius-addition to get to the reference surface where global mean effective temperature exists is treated as zero, then the thickness of the atmosphere must be treated as zero too. This line of reasoning, according to fundamental definitions, completely fails. The resulting collapse of the mean-EFFECTIVE-temperature surface onto the mean-SURFACE-temperature surface … collapses the atmosphere itself, … to ZERO! There is no longer any atmosphere at all to consider. It has been defined out of existence, and a logical conundrum now exists. Yet many people seem oblivious to this, including Lacis et al, of course.
Okay, maybe I have one beef with you, brought up by your earlier reply, Simple: in the absence of any greenhouse gases or feedbacks, emission temperature obtains at the surface.
I thought that emission temperature of Earth was determined WITH “greenhouse gases”, and so, as it is now calculated, it CANNOT “obtain at the surface”. We are talking about a planet that ALREADY has “greenhouse gases”. The calculations are for Earth, as is. Take out the “greenhouse gases”, and you still have an atmosphere of gas that adds to the confusion of where exactly the “surface” is to do all the calculations. Do we ignore non-greenhouse-gas atmospheric mass of a planet? If the GHG don’t exist, then we deny that the atmospheric mass exists?
I still think that there might be some oversights here.
There are three levels of climate science skepticism,
in my opinion:
(1) Proving the IPCC wild guess theories are wrong,
(2) Proving your own theory is right
(3) Predicting the future climate, with success
It is actually tough just to accomplish (1),
because you oppose so many government
bureaucrats with science degrees,
the mainstream media,
and high level politicians.
Trying to accomplish (1) and (2)
is a great deal more difficult than (1) alone,
(accomplishing (2) has had a 100% failure rate,
so far as I know).
I believe Mr. Monckton and his team
are attempting to accomplish (1) and (2).
But I have not seen
“the amicus curiae brief from
my eight distinguished colleagues and me”
and don’t know of a link to it.
I hope Mr. Monckton succeeds.
The entire Climate Change Scaremongering
Scam is based on predictions …
that have been grossly inaccurate for the
past 30 years — so why would the same
people suddenly be able to predict the
future climate when it’s obvious the
climate physics (CO2 controls the climate)
in their models has been wrong for decades ?
I will predict that no California judge
is going to make waves on climate science,
unless he plans to move to a red state real soon !
I think Mr. Monckton understands
but am not sure,
that modern climate “science”
is mainly politics,
so anything goes with the
“science” statements
made by government bureaucrats
with science degrees.
Any scary prediction
is parroted by the mainstream press.
“Adjusting” climate history
is ignored by the press.
The huge amount of wild guess
grid infilling is ignored by the press.
If a government bureaucrat wants to claim
water vapor positive feedback
was “sleeping” for 4.5 billion years,
and suddenly woke up in the last century,
because positive feedback only happens
with man made CO2 …
well … no one in the mainstream press
would challenge that claim.
The coming global warming catastrophe
fairy tale is built on a foundation
of bizarre unproven theories,
and wild guess (wrong) predictions
of the future climate — that’s politics,
not real science.
Mr. Monckton seems to be addressing
the shaky science, to a tough target
— a Democrat judge in California,
… when real science actually does not matter
in the world of modern climate “science”.
The global warmunists have made a lot of
wrong climate predictions in the past 30 years
— communicating those wrong predictions to a
judge who may have no idea about them,
because he only reads the mainstream press,
is the first step to attacking mainstream climate “science”.
You don’t have to prove a new theory is right,
to prove the past climate predictions were way off,
— just demonstrate that if the
climate computer games … er models …
did not assume a huge water vapor positive feedback,
then the predictions would have been much
closer to the warming that actually happened.
You have to destroy the credibility
of the mainstream climate theory
before anyone cares about a new theory.
My climate blog designed
for people with common sense
who do not have science degrees.
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
Mr Greene,
You make several good points. However, the CAGW / CCC crowd doesn’t make predictions – they make projections. Yes, that seems to be a self-serving distinction, but it is well explained by the Drs Meadows in the first part of Limits to Growth.
Secondly, and again, Judge Alsop is not a California judge. He is a US judge. I know that the US way of doing these things is confusing, but we have at least 2 separate judiciaries, and Judge Alsup is in the Federal one.
Lastly, Judge Alsup is a trained engineer (IIRC), so science isn’t magic for him
Jim, re predictions versus projections.
Here’s an even better distinction, from the horse’s mouth, the IPCC. The page I reference is a Google cache, the original seems to have been disappeared.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc_definitions.html&gws_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=vpyKWqW3EcHJgAbUsKCIBQ)
Projection
The term “projection” is used in two senses in the climate change literature. In general usage, a projection can be regarded as any description of the future and the pathway leading to it. However, a more specific interpretation has been attached to the term “climate projection” by the IPCC when referring to model-derived estimates of future climate.
Forecast/Prediction
When a projection is branded “most likely” it becomes a forecast or prediction. A forecast is often obtained using deterministic models, possibly a set of these, outputs of which can enable some level of confidence to be attached to projections.
They have also “weaponized” ignorance and delusions and put them in support of their processes by which they make their projections.
Judge Alsup is a Federal judge in the 9th circuit. Getting a sane judgement at the trial level in that court is amazing. The 9th circuit is usually a court where insanity rules. I’m sure the warmists expected an easy victory at the trial and appellate level.
A train engineer, Jim?
You engineers are worse nitpickers than me !
My brother is a retired engineer.
I almost became an engineer too.
You say “science isn’t magic for him” (the judge)
But the “science” of climate change IS mainly magic !
“We don’t know” is the real science of climate change.
The alleged coming climate change disaster
is mainly politics, not real science,
and politics is something a judge should be
aware of — if he angers the global warmunists
they will character attack him like we’ve never seen.
The judge must be smart enough to know
the “wrong” decision could ruin his life in California !
“California Judge” means he lives in California,
and I’m sure you knew what I meant, but just
like to argue !
The judge may have an engineering degree
from long ago … but did he ever work
as an engineer?
I spent two years
studying engineering at the
Rochester Institute of Technology
and hated it — finally I switched to Finance
at another school and remember not
one thing about Mechanics and
Differential Equations, etc. one year later
— why should the judge be different?
It is really silly to argue about terminology
when the computer games are used
as props in the high theater
of modern climate change “science”.
The projections / simulations /
or whatever you want to call them,
are used as predictions.
CO2 controls the climate they say (unproven guess)
CO2 levels are rising x ppm per year (measured well)
CO2 doubling causes + 3 degrees C., +/- 1.5 degrees C. (wild guess)
Therefore rising CO2 will cause runaway warming.(a fairy tale)
You say computer game projection,
some people say computer game simulation
but ordinary people interpret it
as a computer prediction by the “best”
climate scientists in the world.
‘
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.co
Born in Jackson, Mississippi, Alsup received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics. (not quite as good but still helpful).
“… real science actually does not matter in the world of modern climate “science”.
Pretty much nailed it there. We long ago reached the point where the debate was going to be won by whichever side can shout louder and longer than the other. The only rapid resolution can be by the climate itself significantly changing … and if it warms, then the warmists will win REGARDLESS of the cause.
Skeptical Lefty
I think there is great wisdom in your comment.
If this climate change cult was based on real science,
the skeptics would have won the debate
decades ago.
Tip:
When copying and pasting, edit your formatting so it doesn’t look like a poetry entry. Hard and annoying to read
“The entire Climate Change Scaremongering
Scam is based on predictions …
that have been grossly inaccurate for the
past 30 years — so why would the same
people suddenly be able to predict the
future climate when it’s obvious the
climate physics (CO2 controls the climate)
in their models has been wrong for decades ?
>>>”Grossly inaccurate”? Global is rising. Ocean temps are rising. Sea level is rising. Ocean is acidifying. Arctic ice and glaciers are melting. There are more high-intensity precipitation events. Plant phenology is changing. The seasons are changing. Droughts have increased, while some area are getting more precipitation. So where are the gross inaccuracies in the models?
>>>>And even if the models from 30 years ago weren’t accurate, so what? That was 30 years ago. Models have gotten much better, and they continue to improve, even the process is improving an becoming more transparent. No one would deny they aren’t perfect, but making projections 80 years in the future is never going to be perfect. Does that mean it’s not worth doing? It’s worthwhile if it means being able to plan for change and minimize loss of life and property.
“I think Mr. Monckton understands
but am not sure,
that modern climate “science”
is mainly politics,
so anything goes with the
“science” statements
made by government bureaucrats
with science degrees.”
Modern climate science doesn’t have to and shouldn’t be about politics. Deniers insist on it, though. Conservatives were targeted by the industrial propaganda. Exxon alone funneled over $30 million dollars to conservative think tanks and their offspring, often expressly for work on climate change. Most of the major contrarians are or have been affiliated with these organizations, and several of them are mentioned in Exxon memos.
Any scary prediction
is parroted by the mainstream press.
>>>>Yes, the press is a problem. What’s new?
“Adjusting” climate history
is ignored by the press.
>>>>No one can adjust climate history. Sometimes data is adjusted, for reasons that are not only legitimate but necessary for the sake of scientific accuracy. Climate scientists know this, it is obvious when you deal with the data. Effects of urban heat islands, for example, have to be removed.
The huge amount of wild guess
grid infilling is ignored by the press.
>>>> Not wild guess, a statistical process. So many of your assumptions would be gone if you understood the methodology better. Models are so despised that people don’t want to learn about what they are despising. It’s truly a bizarre situation, and there doesn’t seem to be any solution. Excellent propaganda strategy: divide and conquer. (There’s propaganda on the left, but it doesn’t aim to kill people’s trust in science.)
Engineers who want to see if a certain “performance parameter” X is sensitive to a particular “component” Y often use “Classical Sensitivity” given as:
http://electronotes.netfirms.com/Sensitivity.jpg
which is probably self-explanatory. If S is 1, we break-even. If S is perhaps 1/2, our performance is not so sensitive. If S is say 10, or worse if it is proportional to X, we are perhaps in trouble.
Consider the gain G that results with a feedback f. That is, G = 1/(1-f). In this case, S = f/(1-f) = Gf. The larger G, the larger is S. More details here:
http://electronotes.netfirms.com/AN430.pdf
(g is used for f there). This result is SIGNIFICANT and encouraging as a gain of less than 1/2 has a sensitivity lower than break-even.
Sorry – last sentence was not clear enough: it is feedback gain f that is less than 1/2.
Maybe San Francisco and Oakland can sue the cities of Los Angeles County that produce oil…..Then they can all waste even more taxpayer money.
Milord, one comment about your use of Lacis et al., 2010 model. Their model assumes absence of non-condensing GHGs at a starting temperature of ~ 15°C. As the world cools down and reaches 0°C a little known condensing GHG named water vapor condenses out of the atmosphere. While this effect can be considered a feedback, it is not one you are going to encounter in a warming world starting at ~ 14°C. So be careful with those feedbacks from Lacis et al., 2010 model.
Not so. The vapor pressure of water is not zero at 0o C.
With less water vapour the tropics would get burning hot daytime.
Javier thoughtfully raises an interesting point. However, Lacis et al. make it explicit that an Earth wilh albedo 0.418 is a waterbelt Earth, and that something like one-tenth of today’s water vapor would be present, inferentially owing to the temperature feedback response to emission temperature.
“Question 1: If, from Lacis’ model, the 8.7 K difference between emission temperature 243.3 K and equilibrium temperature 252 K with no non-condensing greenhouse gases is not a feedback response to emission temperature, then what on Earth is it?”
It’s a measure of the difference between the outcome of a thought experiment and a modelled outcome. How can that be any kind of Earth response, feedback or otherwise? How did it know that you were going to do that thought experiment? The difference measures the approximations you made in the thought experiment.
The original snowball earth thought experiment said – take out GHGs from the air, including water vapor and clouds, so the atmosphere is IR transparent. Repaint (or whatever) the Earth surface so overall albedo remains as it was. What will be the radiative equilibrium temperature? Answer – 255K. There isn’t any talk of feedback there. It just compares present state with another state.
What you are doing here is to apply a similar experiment to yet another state – that which arises after 50 years in Lacis’s model. You say, what if we now further remove the small remaining water vapor and the clouds, still keeping albedo fixed, but at the new higher level of 0.41. You get a colder temperature. Then you want to attach physical significance to the difference.
But that brings in whether your thought experiment was reasonable. And it isn’t. The Lacis state has a small wv but a lot of clouds, and they, by blocking IR, add a lot of warming. So how do they get a temperature lower than 255K? The deal in the original snowball was that clouds were just removed, but albedo fixed. The IR warming removed was roughly balanced by the fixed albedo (had it been allowed to rise, the cooling would compensate). And that balancing worked in Lacis – the albedo went up, clouds hindered IR, and the temperature was still close at 252 K. In this new Monckton thought experiment, the higher albedo is retained, but the IR warming lost. That is why you get a lower temperature. It’s a matter of thought experiment design (not very good) that creates the difference. And as said, there is no reason at all why that should signify something about the Earth.
Mr Stokes appears to consider the notion of an emission temperature, governed by insolation and albedo, to be a poorly-constructed thought experiment. In that event, he should take the matter up with official climatology, which, in paper after paper after paper, refers to emission temperature and to the difference between it and today’s temperature, and to the apportionment of that difference.
The fact remains that the emission temperature itself induces a feedback response, given that feedback processes, such as the water vapor and surface-albedo feedbacks, are present.
The climastrologist theoretical constructs like “blackbody emission temperatures” only become “meaningless” when they support the arguments of those that challenge the AGW catastrophist nonsense. When they are used to construct the AGW psuedo-science, they are unassailable “science.” /sarc
“Mr Stokes appears to consider the notion of an emission temperature, governed by insolation and albedo, to be a poorly-constructed thought experiment. In that event, he should take the matter up with official climatology, which, in paper after paper after paper, refers to emission temperature and to the difference between it and today’s temperature, and to the apportionment of that difference.”
The focus of climatology on the thought experiment of removing GHGs is exaggerated here. But it is a reasonable thought experiment, because it compares a well defined system (GHG-free Earth) to present. Clouds are removed, with both their warming from IR hindrance and cooling due to albedo, taken to balance. Lord M’s thought experiment is less good, because it takes the result of a different approach of Lacis, which actually calculates the effects on wv and clouds, and removes the warming effect (IR) while keeping the albedo enhancement.
Mr Stokes says here that the thought experiment is reasonable, when elsewhere he has said it was poorly constructed.
I am trying to understand the results in Lacis et al paper. They don’t make sense to me. An albedo of 0.46 is extremely high. Such an albedo can only be caused by a massive cloud cover. Just to show that, imagine that all the land were covered by snow at 100% reflectivity. Snow won’t cover the oceans except near the poles. Given that the total snowed-on area is at most about 40% of the total surface, a cloudless planet would have at most an albedo of 0.4. So, the implication of Lacis et al result is that there has to be a substantial cloud contribution to the albedo. But the average temperature has dropped to -20 to -15 C. At those temperatures there are no clouds. Any water vapour will immediately snow out or, near the very cold ‘tropics’ as rain. As I said, it doesn’t make sense to me.
” Such an albedo can only be caused by a massive cloud cover.”
Cloud cover has increased. But two thirds of the surface is ice.
This is a thought experiment, but perhaps one without sufficient thought.
But, with no clouds, there is enough solar insolation going into the equatorial/tropical ocean to stop that part of the ocean freezing.
Nick, how does the equatorial tropical ocean freeze with circa 1200 W/m2 going into it 12 hours a day?
Richard V,
In fact in the Lacis computation, about 1/3 of the ocean remained liquid after fifty years.
1200 W/m2 is close to daily peak. It doesn’t last 12 hours.
if all non-condensing greenhouse gasses were removed, plant life would die, the earth’s land surface would be like the desert, so a high albedo is reasonable. But 70% water surface, what is albedo for water and how much is in the tropics?
“Question 4: Since feedbacks are denominated in Watts per square meter of the temperature that induces them, how do the feedbacks know that they should not respond at all to the emission temperature of 243.3 K but that they should suddenly respond very strongly by quadrupling the 8.9 K directly-forced reference warming from the non-condensing greenhouse gases?”
This just brings back the nutty misconception of feedback that Roy Spencer and others have noted. 243.3K, or equivalent, is the existing state. Well, it isn’t really, but let that pass. Somehow, it came to be. It is like the DC state of an amplifier. It just is, and you don’t use notions of feedback in describing how it got there. Feedback applies to perturbations of that state. If you apply it to a state variable, you are expressing the feedback to a change from that state value to 0. In this case, a fluctuation from 0K to 243K. And this is not meaningful for climate in any way.
Nick –
Is this really a problem of assuming a linear equation back to the point (0,0) and then taking the overall slope to represent the local derivative (or ratio of deltas)? Who would do that? But I do engineering, not climate! What am I missing?
Bernie
Bernie,
I don’t think anyone does that with 0 K. Lacis et al do something like it with their removal of CO2. They say 8K of the 32K difference would be the effect of CO2 (I presume they calculated that, and CO2 here is short for non-condensing GHGs), so 24K is feedback. They don’t claim that it is linear feedback, or represents local derivative.
Nick –
Really – in the original post Monckton said:
ΔTeq = ΔTref / (1 – f ). (1)
showing feedback amplifying as 1/(1-f) ; seems correct.
And the same as:
f = 1 – ΔTref / ΔTeq. (2)
But then as
f = 1 –Tref / Teq (4)
This to me is substituting a linear slope for a local slope (derivative).
and above, here (regarding Spencer): “climatology defines a temperature feedback as an extra forcing induced by a change in temperature, but not by the original temperature itself.
Can both be right? Help.
What am I missing? Thanks — Bernie
Bernie
“What am I missing?”
What I was missing is that it all goes round in circles and gets to a very elementary result I’ve written that out below.
Umm, so there is a change then!
=============
Feedback operates on both the AC and DC components of the signal. The DC component is the “static” portion. Thus you have feedback on a static signal.
Feedback also operates on the AC portion of the signal. However, the feedback is proportional to the total AC and DC signal, not just to the AC component.
It is like the DC state of an amplifier. It just is, and you don’t use notions of feedback in describing how it got there.
===============
that is nonsense. ignore the DC state of the amplifier at your peril, because it most certainly will feedback into the amplifier unless you protect against it.
Look at any audio amplifier. Almost universally you will find a capacitor in series on the input to specifically filter out the DC component. The reason is simple. The amplifier doesn’t know AC from DC. It doesn’t care.
What it knows is power. Power in X gain = Power Out.
And if you have gain of 10 thousand and a tiny little AC component, all is well. But add in any non-zero DC component to the signal, and your 10 thousand gain, suddenly you have fried your amplifier. Thus audio amplifiers are designed to eliminate the DC signal.
You need the DC state to be stable. But that again is talking about changes. But there is no feedback to the DC operating point. What could it be?
“But add in any non-zero DC component”
If it is added in, it isn’t DC. Feedback is response to a change. It can be a once only change, but has to be a change. And it is to the amount of the change.
Nope! Take an Op-amp set it up with a gain of 10,000, power it with a typical 15Volts, input a non-zero DC component and the output will be 15V (ideally, a 741 will give about 14V).
Phil.
March 27, 2018 at 6:43 pm
Worst case for the 741 is worse.
Nick, stick to your area of expertise – climate pseudoscience talking points. Your flailing around with amplifiers is truly buttock-clenchingly embarrassing. Just stop.
To better understand the point that Nick is seeking to argue, one should look at Dr Roy Spencer’s blog. He has two articles on this, first his critique of CoB’s paper, and then CoB’s response to that critique.
Do us a favor Nick. Don’t ever try to design an amplifier. The equation for an inverting amplifier with feedback is:
Vout/Vin = – R2/R1
Where:
R1 is the input resistor
R2 is the feedback resistor
This equation applies to DC and AC. Notice no need for frequency to calculate the gain.
The issue of “DC bias” comes in here, a holdover from (tube and transistor) circuits that operated usually on a single polarity supply. In such cases, AC coupling (capacitors in/out) were usually essential. With today’s op-amps and bipolar supplies, the only issue is usually with DC offsets in amplifiers of very high gain (like hundreds). As always, capacitors solve the problems.
Technically you need to have frequency-times-gain produce that is well within the “gain-bandwidth-product” curve, typically 10^6 to 10^7. These “R-only” feedback circuits are rather trivial. They get interesting when we add compactors for actual frequency sensitive “filters”.
“The issue of “DC bias” comes in here, a holdover from (tube and transistor) circuits”
Yes. And the atmosphere is more like those than an op amp. In fact, quite like a tube. There is a “idle” plate current which is solar flux, and a grid bias voltage which corresponds to GHG concentration, and modifies the plate current. That is the operating point. You can perturb the bias voltage, but it makes no sense to think of its absolute value as a signal that can generate feedback.
Bernie your missing the point. Nick is under the impression that feedback doesn’t apply to DC. The example was to demonstrate it clearly does. I wasn’t talking about DC offsets. I was talking about using feedback to modify the DC value.
Back in the late 90’s I was designing hand held instrumentation. It was mixed signal which sometimes required a couple of voltage references with high temperature stability (3 ppm/C). These were pricey parts (Analog Devices if I recall correctly). I would use an op amp with the voltage reference as the input to generate the second reference voltage. The simple calculations were more than adequate for the job. I might add the analog sections of the circuits all ran on 5 V supplies.
At the other end of the spectrum I designed a 1 gHz equivalent time sampling system. Again back in the 90’s. I am familiar with how the gain-bandwidth-product has to accounted for when dealing with high frequencies.
The simple example above assumes infinite open loop gain. If one wants to be anal about it one could include the finite open loop gain for a more precise calculation. This would in most cases be swamped by resistor tolerances and thermal drift.
Outside of professional audio equipment I rarely encountered bipolar supplies. Don’t know how it is now but back when I was a young buck consumer audio equipment almost always had single 24 V supplies (not including power amps). The low level amplifiers were biased at half the supply voltage and coupled with capacitors. It’s simple economics, I would be surprised if it has changed.
“Nick is under the impression that feedback doesn’t apply to DC.”
I said feedback can’t be generated by something that doesn’t change. You keep talking about DC that does change.
“I wasn’t talking about DC offsets.”
I was.
“The low level amplifiers were biased at half the supply voltage and coupled with capacitors.”
So what was the feedback response to those biases?
And all this time I thought GHG’s were transparent to incoming solar.
This is not a hard concept Nick. See previous example of voltage reference (DC) that doesn’t change using a feedback amplifier to generate a second voltage reference (DC) that doesn’t change. The difference between the first and second voltage references is a function of the gain which is determined by the feedback.
Nick keeps digging. When I said “The low level amplifiers were biased at half the supply voltage and coupled with capacitors.” Nick responds.
For the simple inverting amplifier R1 is in series with a coupling capacitor. Since the capacitors impedance at DC is infinite (except for some leakage) the gain at DC is shall we say, almost zero.
“I thought GHG’s were transparent to incoming solar”
The solar flux is the flux Q of heat that arrives from the Sun and leaves as IR.
“using a feedback amplifier to generate a second voltage reference (DC) that doesn’t change”
You seem to be describing the stage at which the second voltage was brought to the desired value. That is a change. Once there there is no feedback to that value. Only changes.
In any case, there is nothing like this in any climate feedback notion.
“the gain at DC is shall we say, almost zero”
But you didn’t answer the question.
Nick Stokes
March 27, 2018 at 9:45 pm
I said feedback can’t be generated by something that doesn’t change.
This is so mind boggling wrong it is a wonder. If the output = G * (A+B) even if B doesn’t change it contributes to the output.
Mr Stokes does himself no favors by describing mainstream feedback theory as “nutty”. My co-authors include three specialists in feedback mathematics. They, as well as our test rig and that of a government laboratory, show very clearly that a feedback response will arise in the presence of an input signal (here, emission temperature) and a non-zero feedback fraction (here caused by the presence of the water-vapor and surface-albedo feedbacks).
Above at March 27, 2018 at 3:10 pm I gave examples where someone has an “input” of 100 and an “output” of 150. Three mindless calculations showed that you could postulate networks (with values of A and f) with no feedback, with positive feedback, and with negative feedback, all three of which gave the exact SAME input/output results. Such a result means that you can’t get the feedback parameters back from the input/output values. The gains with a non-zero feedback are no more significant than those achieved, for example, from the ratio of two resistors.
The signals can be AC or DC – no matter.
You CAN of course “ascribe” a temperature (or the number of jelly donuts in a box) to any input number. That is, in the sense of a “test rig” (analog computer).
I think the fundamental problem with Nick Stokes view March 27, 2018 at 9:45 pm
“I said feedback can’t be generated by something that doesn’t change.”
He does not seem to understand that feedback DOE apply to something that does not change, changes slowly or changes rapidly. It DOES NOT matter to the feedback circuit or process. In fact, there are many feedback circuits used in electronics that are designed to use a non-changing input. The circuit can be used for among other things to detect an error. The only time the input changes is if there is an error. In case of error, the output has very large change which is used to “flag” the specific error.
I asked a simple question above. Take the snowball earth at 255K. It is actually just a grey-body emitter. It has an “emission temperature” 255K. What (and where) is the feedback to that emission temperature. No-one has answered.
In answer to Mr Stokes, it is not very grown-up to describe mainstream feedback theory as “nutty”. Of course the emission temperature is a pre-feedback temperature: it is the input signal, dependent solely upon insolation and albedo. However, there are feedback processes in the climate system that act upon the input signal, amplifying it, just as they will also amplify the additional 8 K of temperature once the non-condensing greenhouse gases are added.
The feedbacks respond to the temperature as they find it – all 243.3 K of it, in the Lacis example.
Suppose you do have the state that your thought experiment sees – 243K or whatever, and no GHGs at all. The temperature really is 243K. What is the feedback to that temperature? How does it manifest?
There is another simpler proof – called Earth’s geologic history. All we need to do is look up what the previous relation was between CO2 and temperature during the Jurassic, Cretaceous and Triassic periods etc, and compare to the current Quaternary period.
The Wikipedia pages on them have all sorts of info on these geologic periods including what the global temperatures and atmospheric compositions were. For example, on the right side of the Wiki page for the current Quaternary period :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary
It states that CO2 levels are 250ppm and global average temperature was/is 14 degrees C. 250-280 ppm was the pre-industraial level of CO2.
Going backwards – Look at the CO2 levels and temperatures :
Cretaceous : 145–66 million years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous
CO2 = 1700ppm (6 times pre-industrial level)
Temperature = 18C (4 degrees above today)
Jurassic : 201.3–145 million years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic
CO2 = 1950ppm (7 times pre-industrial level)
Temperature = 16.5C (3 degrees above today)
Permian : 298.9–251.902 million years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian
CO2 = 900ppm (3 times pre-industrial level)
Temperature = 16C (2 degrees above today)
Carboniferous : 358.9–298.9 million years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous
CO2 = 800ppm (3 times pre-industrial level)
Temperature = 14C (0 degrees above today)
Silurian : 443.8–419.2 million years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian
CO2 = 4500ppm (16 times pre-industrial level)
Temperature = 17C (3 degrees above today)
Clearly, the geological record shows CO2 levels have NEVER had any correlation to temperature in Earth’s past (or very little at best). The Carboniferous had CO2 levels 3 times higher than today, but had the same temperatures. The Silurian had CO2 level 17 times today but temperatures were only 3 degrees higher than today.
The issue with going that far back into earth’s geologic history is that the oceans / ocean currents were entirely different than they are today. Wind patterns (trade winds, etc) were also entirely different. Indeed, even the location of the continents was different. This makes comparisons of what will happen to the climate difficult if not impossible.
Not to mention differences in solar output.
Yes, but Warmunist dogma is that CO2 is the only variable that affects global mean temperature. Pointing out the real reasons for era to era temperature change does not vitiate ggm’s argument. You are correct, but you are irrelevant.
Bellman, how exactly will a drop in solar output of 1% or less compensate for CO2 levels as much as 10 times higher than today?
“Yes, but Warmunist dogma is that CO2 is the only variable that affects global mean temperature.”
I’ve no idea what a “Warmunist” is, but but I’m pretty sure climate scientists don’t claim CO2 is the only variable.
“Bellman, how exactly will a drop in solar output of 1% or less compensate for CO2 levels as much as 10 times higher than today?”
I never said it would, I was just mentioning another reason why you cannot compare the world of 500 million years ago to the present climate.
But I’ve seen many people claiming that a much smaller drop in output will cause an ice age even with increasing CO2.
It still shows that CO2 doesn’t “drive” the Earth’s temperature. And that CO2 will never cause a “runaway greenhouse effect.” Which is more than sufficient to dismiss fears of “catastrophic” warming from the minuscule human addition to CO2 emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere.
ggm
the “official message is geologists are not real scientists
only climate modelers who play computer games
are real climate scientists
the old days don’t count — climate change was natural then.
In 1940 natural climate change died and aerosols took over.
then CO2 took over from aerosols in 1975.
when all the aerosols fell out of the sky
get with the fairy tale, ggm
— real science has no place
in modern climate “science”
There is no verification of data accuracy.
There is no possible way to falsify predictions
of climate 100 years into the future
this is a climate religion based on faith,
and some members are scientists
who see “job security” resulting from
scary climate predictions !
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, thank you for this followup essay. I think it is valuable to do the computations with several sets of assumptions from works by people promoting the idea that CO2 will produce dangerous warming.
Many thanks to Mr Marler for his inkd words. My rule is to use as much of the argument of the Forces of Darkness as possible, so as to narrow and then focus upon the region of disagreement. It has come as quite a shock to both sides of climatology to discover that emission temperature induces a temperature feedback response.
climatology defines a temperature feedback as an extra forcing induced by a change in temperature, but not by the original temperature itself.
=======================
The Laws of Nature do not bow down to the Laws of Man. You cannot restrict the workings of Nature through a definition. Nature cannot distinguish if temperature is due to the Sun, GHG or a change in GHG. If one is subject to feedback, then all are subject to feedback.
As compared to empty space, the Sun is a forcing of 255K – CBR = 255k – 3k = 252K. This will evaporate water, which will restrict some of the Sun’s energy from leaving the Earth via the greenhouse effect. This will necessarily increase the surface temperature of the Earth until the radiative balance is restored.
The 252K warming of the earth’s surface is no different than a warming of the surface due to increased CO2.
The Earth cannot distinguish one cause from the other. Both will evaporate water, which will increase the surface temperature further. Thus both are subject to feedback.
ferdberple
A good comment as usual.
But you are talking real science.
Which you do well.
The climate cult operates with junk science,
where anything can happen, better yet,
anything can happen in the future
(as long as the predictions scare people,
which makes them easier to control).
CommieBob: I have always thought that the problem with the feedback theory is that if there were positive feedbacks that exceed the negative feedbacks, not only would the system be unstable, but it would at some point in its history runaway because of some random outside event like a VEI9 eruption. E.g. Hansen’s Venus threat.
The things we know about the Earth’s climate system: are that (1) it now has two states (e.g. glacial, and interglacial); (2) it transitions between those two states quickly but infrequently; and (3) while it is in a state it is quite stable.
All of the explanations for the state transitions I have seen are astronomical and connected to the Earth’s orbital parameters. Javier had some very extensive posts about this on Judy Curry’s blog. Any valid model of the climate system must include sufficient negative feedbacks to cause the observed intra-state stability.
“if there were positive feedbacks that exceed the negative feedbacks, not only would the system be unstable”
assuming an infinite gain amplifier (op amp), yes. But the thing is that the Planck feedback (Stefan-Boltzmann), operates as a large negative feedback, and the positives don’t outweigh that, normally.
Mr Berple, as so often, has hit the nail on the head. He is quite right: it is not legitimate for IPCC and suchlike profiteers of doom to eradicate the feedback response to emission temperature by specifying definitionally that a feedback response only to a change in temperature.
If the system is linear, it makes no difference. If the system isn’t linear then they can’t invoke that particular math.
It’s grade school math. 2a + 2b = 2(a + b) If that isn’t true then it isn’t a linear system.
OK, the climate isn’t linear but we use linear math approximations for all kinds of things that aren’t linear. The trick is to know when we can get away with it. Can the climate scientists justify their use of that analysis? I haven’t seen that.
The other thing they do is assume positive feedback. Folks avoid that because it invites instability. In that case you will do a stability analysis (eg. root locus). I also haven’t noticed them doing anything like that.
As far as I can tell, the use of feedback analysis by climate scientists is based on unjustified assumptions.
“Can the climate scientists justify their use of that analysis?”
It isn’t their analysis. It’s Lord M’s. As for the non-linearity, it isn’t much to do with normal climate. It is a thought experiment where we envisage non-condensing GHg’s entirely removed, whereupon wv drops to 10% of existing levels. Just the non-linearity of Clausius-Clapeyron is enough to rule out linear analysis here.
“As far as I can tell, the use of feedback analysis by climate scientists is based on unjustified assumptions.”
Please quote what climate scientists are actually saying, and what their “unjustified assumptions” might be.
It is a thought experiment where we envisage non-condensing GHg’s entirely removed, whereupon wv drops to 10% of existing levels.
============
why only remove the non-condensing GHg’s? Remove the sun. Now we are at zero forcings. Now add the sun back. What will the earth’s temperature be:
Well according to radiative theory, the grey-body temp of the earth is 255K. This is without an atmosphere. Now we add back the N2 and O2. We have an atmosphere, but N2 and O2 have no radiative affect on temperature, so our temperature is 255K
However, at 255K average temperature we will start to get water evaporation/transpiration in the atmosphere. This will create a radiative imbalance via the greenhouse effect and the surface temperature will have to rise to reestablish the balance. This increase in temperature due to increased water vapor is called feedback.
The logic fault in the climatology view, is to take the pre-industrial temperature of the earth, and treat this as though it was zero, and try and compute the change in temperature based on the change in CO2.
However, this is a false assumption. As the ubiquitous LM741 Operation Amplifier shows, feedback is a function of the total AC and DC inputs to the amplifier. It is not simply a function of the AC component.
Climatology has made the mistake of treating feedback as though there is no DC component to the system, as though the existing, pre-industrial temperature of the Earth was 0K, and the feedback only operates on the change.
In effect, climatology assumes that only the AC component is subject to feedback. The climatology point of view is false. Feedback doesn’t work that way. Study the LM741.
Here’s a link to Hansen et al (1984) in which Bode’s feedback analysis is invoked. As far as I can tell, they don’t justify their use of that analysis. The major unjustified assumption is that they can apply linear analysis without either proving that the process is linear or that linear assumptions provide an adequate approximation. Perhaps you are clever enough to find that. As it stands, I find it somewhat difficult to quote something which they omitted to say.
The alleged increase in atmospheric water vapor that rising CO2 levels will supposedly cause, without which the “C” in “CAGW” is non-existent. As is the related threat, the “need” for “action,” and the “need” for more “study.”
CommieBob makes an interesting point about linear approximations to nonlinear systems. We were naturally careful to make sure that the explicitly linear zero-dimensional-model equation was capable of reproducing exactly the interval of Charney sensitivities predicted by the explicitly nonlinear general-circulation models, provided that one informed it with official inputs. It worked jsut find.
I believe you are correct for a number of reasons. We have 70 years of data since we started putting co2 heavily into the atmosphere. The atmosphere should not respond differently to the CO2 in the future to how it has responded for 70 years. Unless the climate gods believe that one-time events somehow corrupted this period we can assume the 0.5C (by satellite) change in temp is the 70 year response to a rise of 50% in CO2 levels. The mid-range CO2 estimate of the IPCC is way too high in my opinion as it presumes that we put out 400+ ppm of co2 in the next 70-80 years or 2 to 3 times on average our current level and if we ramp up meaning 4 to 6 times the current co2 output levels. Given the increasing efficiency, that is unlikely tripling of the world population, and simple leveling off of energy needs that are common as countries mature it is inconceivable to me we would be producing 4 times the co2 in 2100 as we do today and done nothing to change.
If you assume co2 levels climb another 50% by 2100 (200ppm) which is what I believe is far more likely then temperatures would go up another 0.5C. If we double co2 we get another 1.0C. Neither of these is anywhere near enough to sustain this debate or the extravegant worries and hyperbolic messaging.
Further I did a simple model of the atmospheric temperature from 1880-today-2100 using 4 inputs. A 0.23C sinusoidal PDO/AMO positive and minus cycle which is like a ringing effect of unknown causes but probably something to do with a combination of the sun, earth, oceans and earth oscillation. A 1.2 TCS for CO2 which is about 1/2 the IPCC (and consistent with your worst case). and small effects for solar and aerosol forcing.
The result of my simple model was a near perfect fit to observed data (unadjusted date) over the last 135 years. Far better fit than the IPCC models and this model predicts a 0.3C increase in temperature by 2100 peaking about 0.4C in 2015 and then declining.
It is interesting that I could not get my model to converge using “adjusted data” no matter what fitting I tried to do.
These are two independent common sense ways to confirm that temperature rise by 2100 < 0.5C greater than today. I believe if co2 is closer to my 610 or so level in 2100 your model would produce a similar 0.5C change.
It is very clear that IPCC models have grossly missed the 70 year temperature change since 1945. That's why they no longer show graphs of model output. It has become very apparent they are wrong.
Things are not even as you suppose because all you’re doing is (once again) generously assuming all of the temperature change has been “caused by” CO2 level changes. When natural climate drivers are considered, this is clearly not the case, and the supposed effect is probably not significantly different than zero. What you have assembled is a worst-case scenario, and it’s still a big yawner.
” Unless the climate gods believe that one-time events somehow corrupted this period we can assume the 0.5C (by satellite) change in temp is the 70 year response to a rise of 50% in CO2 levels.”
Your figures seem a little off. Maybe your results need reevaluating.
We don’t have 70 years of satellite data, and CO2 levels haven’t risen by 50% over that period.
Satellite data shows warming at the rate of 1.3 or 1.9 C / century depend on which set you use, hence UAH shows almost 0.5C warming over the last 38 years, and RSS over 0.7C.
CO2 has risen about 31% over the last 70 years, and 21% over the satellite era.
I am really struggling here. How can you have a “feedback” to a static temperature? If the temperature is static and doesn’t change then how can there be any kind of “feedback” which causes it to rise or fall?
Generally I would call myself a sceptic of the predictions of catastrophic global warming – but I think Roy Spencer’s reply to Monkton’s theory makes much more sense to me.
How can you have a “feedback” to a static temperature?
===============
simple. Your input is 1 watt. This is tied to the output providing 1 watt. However, you also have 100% feedback of 1 watt which is added to the output, giving you an output power of 2 watts. This is the steady state of the system.
Now you add 1/2 watt to the input. This increases the direct output by 1/2 watt, and also increases the feedback by 1/2 watt. This feedback adds an additional 1/2 to the output, giving a total output of 3 watts.
Climate science is interested in the addition of 1/2 watt to the input, how this produces an additional 1 watt on the output. However, they have ignored how this feedback handles a non zero steady state.
They have assumed the circuit operates like a stereo amplifier, which uses capacitance to eliminate the DC component. The steady state power of such a system is 0W. However, the earths climate is nothing like that, because the Earth’s temperature is not 0K.
Umm, so there is a change then! “now you add 1/2 watt to the input”. That is a change is it not?
I think some of this is down to the way LM has described the experiment. You cannot have feedback to a static temperature. What he appears to be saying is that if there is a change, then the feedback will be to the change as a proportion of (start temperature+change) not a just a feedback to (change) – if you get my drift!.
That is just erroneous, because feedback can be measured.
If you raise the temperature of the air by +1C and, over time, you find it settles at an equilibrium temperature of +2C then you can describe this as positive feedback that doubles the change. Alternatively you could talk in absolute temperatures and say that the feedback is +2C for an initial change of +1C from 287K to 288K that settles at an equilibrium temperature of 289K. The feedback is the same as the first case, just it is more long winded to describe!
FB, the long walk with your dog did in fact produce clarity. Excellent comment. And I agree with your quibble that starting point is not 0K, but rather the ‘temperature’ of the CMB radiation, 2.7K. Well done times 3 now.
Ferd – you appear to be confusing feedback with gain. You can amplify a DC signal but if
also apply feedback (even the smallest amount) then the system will be driven to infinity.
This of course doesn’t happen with real amplifiers because of saturation effects — and so
once the amplifier has saturated the instantaneous gain becomes zero.
Mr Berple has it right. If the input temperature is nonzero, and if the feedback fraction is nonzero, there will be a feedback response even if the input temperature is otherwise unamplified (or, as TLM puts it, static).
@TLM “You cannot have feedback to a static temperature.” – What?!
So, since the solar input is relatively stable, you can’t have feedback, but if it were to change, THEN you can?! Whether the “blackbody” induced radiative temperature is steady, increasing, or decreasing, the supposed “feedback” will operate on the whole of it, not merely the amount by which it “varies.” Do you suppose the energy received daily from the Sun to be non-existent by virtue of the fact that it is relatively stable?! And why wouldn’t the radiation resulting from this steady daily input energy not induce the same “feedbacks” as an addition thereto supposedly caused by adding some extra CO2 to the existing atmosphere?! Does the water vapor wave on IR coming from the surface if it is from solar origin, patiently awaiting the IR supposedly “added” by “back radiation?!”
The logic – it’s MIA!
I think Roy Spencer’s reply to Monkton’s theory makes much more sense to me.
===============
Take a look at operational amplifiers. They provide concrete proof that DC feedback exists and the the climatology definition for forcings is the problem.
Climatology assumes only AC is a forcing. However, a DC signal is simply an AC signal with a very long wavelength.
I’ve never like argument by analogy for the obvious reason that the analogy always breaks down at some point, but… in your op amp analogy, what is the input, what is the output and, most importantly, what is the power supply? This question was asked by someone in the comments to Lord Monkton’s original post and I didn’t see any response.
Surely the output amplitude has to be provided by the power supply and modulated as an analogue of the input signal? If solar energy is both input signal and power supply, doesn’t the analogy break down immediately?
If solar energy is both input signal and power supply, doesn’t the analogy break down immediately?
============
Keep in mind we are not using Nature to model an op amp. We are using an op amp to model nature. By trying to power an op amp with the sun, you are trying to make nature model an op amp.
The power supply is external to the circuit. It is the potential of the system. The minimum and maximum. In Nature this is 0K and Infinity. Our op amp use 0 and 15VDC as an imperfect model of nature.
Ferd – again you are confusing gain with feedback. You can amplify a DC signal but if there is
any feedback the output will be infinity which is not realistic.
I’ve never like argument by analogy
Using electrical circuits to model other realms is very old (at least 50 years). They are called analog computers. Their reputation is excellent.
Germonio
March 27, 2018 at 9:46 pm
Ferd – again you are confusing gain with feedback. You can amplify a DC signal but if there is
any feedback the output will be infinity which is not realistic.
Feedback has a sign. It matters.
Germonio March 27, 2018 at 9:46 pm
Ferd – again you are confusing gain with feedback. You can amplify a DC signal but if there is
any feedback the output will be infinity which is not realistic.
Not if you’re using an OP amp, which ferd was, in which case the maximum output will be the power supply voltage, not infinity. In the case of the earth the maximum output will be the solar input!
“How can you have a “feedback” to a static temperature?”
Indeed. You can’t. It makes no sense to even try to quantify it.
Its already built in
Indeed. You can’t. It makes no sense to even try to quantify it.
=============
nonsense. The front wheels in a car have maybe 3 degrees of caster. This provides feedback while you are driving, so that the steering wheel tries to return to center.
Once you are in a turn, without moving the steering wheel left or right, that feedback continues, trying to move the steering wheel back to center.
Not all vehicles have steering feedback. In these vehicles, once you turn the wheel it stays there.
Nick, just stop. You are becoming embarrassingly hysterical about this point. Consider a thermostat.
Of course you can, because that is the very definitional requirement for unchanging temperature!
Temperature is a measure of average heat flux. If the temperature is unchanging – static – then the heat input(gain) is equal to heat output(loss) i.e Thermodynamic equilibrium.
The magnitude of the output(loss) is dependant – in this case – on the particular atmospheric composition* which provides the “feedback” that results in the final measured temperature.
*With or without “non-condensing greenhouse gases”
“This provides feedback while you are driving“
Exactly. What is the feedback when the car is in the garage?
Feedback is feedback to a change.
“Consider a thermostat.”
Yes. With a thermostat you can adjust the operating point, and negative feedback will stabilize the temperature at that point. Suppose you have it set to 300K. What feedback relation to you plug 300 into?
” because that is the very definitional requirement for unchanging temperature”
No, the requirement is that it be unchanging. Suppose it is 300K, unchanging. So what kind of response do you get to that temperature? What could it be? You only have one number. 300K, unchanging.
Whoops! The word “equal” is wrong above!
What I mean’t is that the relationship (Input/output) is unchanged.
If the temperature is unchanging, then the flux has a constant rate.
Scott: “What I mean’t is that the relationship (Input/output) is unchanged.
If the temperature is unchanging, then the flux has a constant rate.”
“Flux” and “rate” by definition refer to changes, even if the change is in equilibrium. It seems to me you might be talking about a system or cycle of feedbacks that keeps something at a given temperature than the theoretical X at a given T. Could that be the difference in perspective?
I agree with Nick that there can be no feedback without change. One could imagine a complete cycle of feedbacks resulting in no net change, but it would be like an Escher staircase, its own system, and therefore not possible in reality.
Now I’m thinking Rube Goldberg, and what perpetual motion machine he might conjure up.
In answer to Mr Stokes, the conditions precedent to a feedback response are that a temperature (whether amplified or not) is present and that feedback processes are present.
“In answer to Mr Stokes, the conditions precedent to a feedback response”
Well, I’ve asked elsewhere – what about snowball Earth – clear atmosphere (no GHG or clouds). It could be the conventional one (255 K albedo .31) or the MoB post-Lacis one (243 K, albedo 0.42). Each has an emission temperature, which is also the steady actual temperature. What is the feedback to that emission temperature?
Does this mean I should keep my woolly jumper?
Depends on where you live. South Florid, no. Temperate zones, yes.