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.
The entire Lacis paper is anyhow just a how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of pin exercise. It’s a complete PoS.
Taking models that don’t work within reasonably small excursions from reality, and extrapolating to what happens at ludicrously un-reachable physical extremes is a waste of time. Whether it argues for, or against, a failure to properly apply basic principals is irrelevant. I could offer many reasons why the extreme conditions would not obtain, but this just offers extra undeserved attention and implied credibility to models that don’t even work under believable, small perturbations.
principles, not principals.
CO2 heats both the surface AND atmosphere. The water vapour feedback is dependent on atmospheric temperature. Therefore, 8K of co2 forcing is not equal to 8K of emission forcing and not equal to 8K of solar forcing either.
I see the logic of Christopher’s approach but that approach is itself flawed in accepting any feedback from either the initial emission temperature or any change in that temperature.
If the whole atmosphere were radiatively inert the surface temperature would still be as it is because the enhancement above S-B is entirely attributable to atmospheric mass conducting and convecting as described here:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2017/06/15/stephen-wilde-how-conduction-and-convection-cause-a-greenhouse-effect-arising-from-atmospheric-mass/
I had thought Roy Spencer’s objection was to the idea that the feedback equations are part of any climate models in the first place. He wrote, “In any event, none of the forcing/feedback equations that approximate the climate system’s response to forcing are included in climate models. The models don’t even assume they are true…the forcing/feedback paradigm is not imposed upon the models in any way.” Have I misunderstood the nature of his objection?
RB, yes. The models must produce the Bode result, but Bode is not in the models where ECS is an emergent property. Roys objection in detail and Moncktons detailed response are posted at Roy’s blog. Well worth reading both for a deeper understanding of two different frames of reference. Both Roy (classic climate science feedback definition) and Monckton (but that misdefines Bode) are in my opinion correct. But when applying Bode circuit analysis to climate ECS, the Bode definition must prevail.
See also my long comment and analysis just posted below.
Mr Bork is of course quite right: the models do not incorporate Bode at all. However, the zero-dimensional-model equation is used diagnostically throughout climate-sensitivity studies (see e.g. Roe 2009, Bates 2016, and several papers by the formidable Dick Lindzen) to quantify the influence of feedbacks in contributing to equilibrium sensitivity.
We were very careful to calibrate the ZDM by informing it with official inputs from Vial et al., 2013, the paper that IPCC (2013) itself relied upon, and we obtained exactly the published interval of Charney sensitivities.
Even though the models are nonlinear and the ZDM is linear, it is plain that one can use the ZDM to give a very good idea of what final sensitivity the models would predict for any given alteration in the value of the feedback fraction.
The models, after all, are trained to reproduce past warming. Because they are assuming that the feedback fraction is far higher than it is because they are attributing up to three-quarters of past warming to feedback, they will also predict far too much warming – in fact, getting on for three times too much – in future.
Many thanks M’Lord.
Redoing the last calculation before the questions brings a very nice three way triangulated closure.
Start from observational TCR and ECS from energy budget methods (e.g. Lewis and Curry 2014). TCR ~1.3, ECS ~1.65. By the definitions of these entities, the difference between ‘immediate result’ and long term equilibrium is 1.3/1.65 => immediate is 80% of final equilibrium. Meaning the final result from ‘immediate’ is 1.25x immediate, not 1.4x as in Monckton’s post last calculation. Just redoing the remaining arithmetic in that paragraph, feedback fraction f is ~0.26, and the ECS is ~1.5.
This result triangulates almost exactly with two others:
1. Lewis 2015 redid Lewis and Curry 2014 using the newest Bjorn Stevens aerosol estimates and derived ECS ~1.5. See his guest post at Climate Etc for details. Note: Lewis and Curry 2014 is also posted and discussed there for those interested.
2. As Monckton’s previous post on his new paper noted, AR5 feedback fraction f works out to be 0.67. (This gives an ECS of 3.0, exactly the AR4 conclusion. Recall AR5 did not give a best estimate because of model/observation discrepancy.) I will summarize my longer comment on how to observationally adjust this AR5 f. First, the AR5 net feedbacks other than water vapor and clouds are about net zero. Second AR5 says the water vapor feedback about doubles the no feedbacks CO2 ECS which Monckton’s previous post estimated was 1.1. So water vapor alone is (1.1 * 2) 2.2, so its feedback fraction must be 0.54 by solving 2.2=1/(1-f). The only other feedback is clouds, a residual (0.67 – 0.54) 0.13
Now, observationally Dessler 2010(b) shows the cloud feedback is actually ~0. So f ~ 0.54. And observationally, the CMIP5 models produce about half the observed rainfall (several papers on this). So modeled wvf should be ~2x high, so observationally (0.54/2) ~0.27. Feedback fraction f=0.27 gives an ECS of 1.51 per the calculations in Moncktons last before the questions.
This is not coincidental. The ‘best’ ECS calculated using energy budget, or observed v. modeled via Bode f, is half of the AR4 ‘best estimate’. I agree with CMoB—game over.
As one who tried and failed to be an Engineer (Math!!!) I stand in awe of the result we have ourselves here from folks who Do understand the math. Which I take to be, quite simply, that there have been egregious mistakes made in climate calculations at a fundamental level, and which are now being exposed.
BTW, this comment on triangulating 1.5 ECS also automatically means my second long comment to Moncktons first post on his amicus brief (concerning attribution) was just wrong. My logical flaw was in hindsight basic stupid. His first post third equation and (implicit fourth) use only radiative values. I first thought,aha! AGW radiation values as he had explicitly assumed. Silly me, one of those values comes from the total temperature change, not just the AGW forcing. was AGW. (Faceplant). Monckton’s response to my silly comment was most kind—he would think about my ‘creative’ comment. Memo to self: think more, comment less.
ristvan March 27 at 3.24 pm
A handsome apology, no doubt graciously received by His Lordship. I am sure he appreciates the recognition of such a powerful and penetrating analyst as yourself. Certainly continue with the ‘more thinking’ but please do not revert to ‘less commenting’, you would be sorely missed. Thank you.
I am most grateful to Mr Istvan for all his contributions to this thread. He has done me the great compliment of thinking very hard about our result, and he has come to the view that, in substance, we are correct. It is clear that many others now share his opinion. I shall do my best to keep my mind as open as his, in case a real and substantial objection to our result emerges.
And many thanks to Wayne Findley for his kind words.
Ristivan – thanks for directing me to the discussion over at Roy Spencer’s blog. My take away is they agree that the models don’t have either sensitivity or feedback specified in the design but that these are emergent properties of a model. It would seem like the debate is how we extract the value of this emergent property. It’ll take me awhile to understand all that is in your post at 2:19 pm but thanks for that!
And that STILL assumes that all of the warming is caused by CO2. Which it is not, thereby making all these calculations an academic exercise in “worst it could be is nothing to worry about” scenarios.
True, the discussion on the amicus brief did not tackle the attribution problem, altho my mistaken comment stupidly tried (and failed). But to the extent that natural variation—and there MUST be some, see my many comments on previous threads, plus guest post Why Models Run Hot—- is in the data used for analysis assumed to be all AGW, then the ~1.5 ECS derived three ways above is a knowingly overstated upper bound. It therefore says, in the knowlingly overstated worst possible case there is still nothing to worry about. Game is still over.
“This is not coincidental. The ‘best’ ECS calculated using energy budget, or observed v. modeled via Bode f, is half of the AR4 ‘best estimate’. I agree with CMoB—game over.”
As I have noted here, the latest MoB calculations, which seem to form two sides of your triangle, are just a muddled version of the most primitive calculation possible – divide current warming by current forcing. He’s added in a fudge factor of 1.4, and you’ve re-fudged to 1.25 to improve the agreement. It is spurious. There is nothing there.
Net anthropogenic forcing to date is about 2.5 Watts per square meter. Since the ARGO data show athe present radiative imbalance to be 0.7 Watts per square meter, warming to date has been sufficient to account for 1.8 (or 72%) of the 2.5 Watts per square meter. We can, therefore, expect 100 / 72 = 39% more warming than has yet occurred. And this calculation assumes, generously, that all industrial-era warming was anthropogenic.
” We can, therefore, expect 100 / 72 = 39% more warming than has yet occurred.”
This is basically a direct reproduction of the calculation of Lewis and Curry.
But it’s all very conventional now. The “grave error” seems to have disappeared.
Mr Stokes seems more and more desperate. Earlier he twice said there was no wisdom in my factor 1.4. Now he says it is “conventional wisdom”. Seems to me he is accepting 1.6 K as an upper bound on Charney sensitivity.
And he does not seem to have read the head posting, where the pre-industrial and industrial-era feedback fractions are compared. The pre-industrial feedback fraction required substantial correction owing to the error made by Mr Stokes, who assumes that emission temperature cannot induce a feedback response even in the presence of feedback mechanisms. The industrial-era calculation, using the zero-dimensional model equation (which many, including Lewis & Curry, deploy diagnostically) tends to confirm that the feedback fraction is indeed a great deal less than current official estimates in the region of 0.67 to 0.75. Game over.
Lord M,
“Now he says it is “conventional wisdom”.”
No, the methods are conventional. The factor 1.4 is a (rather variable here) guess.
“And he does not seem to have read the head posting, where the pre-industrial and industrial-era feedback fractions are compared.”
The point of my arithmetic here is that feedbacks aren’t actually used in the calculation of Charney sensitivity at all.
Suppose I have an input of 100. This input might be just a number, a voltage, or a temperature (referenced to some absolute of zero). If I want an output of 150, I can do this in an infinite number of way, all of which correspond to a “gain” of 1.5 in some sense. For numbers, I use a pure-number constant multiplier of 1.5. For voltage, we need a voltage “amplifier” or equivalent (making sure there is a power supply to support the output level). For temperature, we could, I suppose, engineer up a controller (a tracking oven) of some sort.
If we are considering first-order feedback, the gain G = A/(1-Af) and G=1.5 if: A=1.5 and f=0; or A =1 and f=1/3; or if A = 2 and f = -1/3; or an infinite number of other choices. Measuring input/output, WITHOUT implementation details, all are equivalent and nothing is learned.
With the electronics we know the details BECAUSE we put in the resistors ourselves. With climate, it is kind of necessary to show the proposed mechanisms and measured data.
Nick Stokes
“How can you have a “feedback” to a static temperature?”
Indeed. You can’t. It makes no sense to even try to quantify it.
This is the root of the matter.
But imagine that the temperature is not static?
That no state of the climate is, or ever can be static, but is always, both instantaneously and in its ongoing evolution, dynamic and changing.
This is why the issue that CM has addressed here is so fundamental.
And his position has received substantial support from the lines of RIstvan.
The first implication is the much lower – almost trivial – sensitivity of climate temperature to CO2.
But the scientifically much more interesting implication is that is a system temperature per se constitutes an input with consequent (inseparably associated) feedbacks – then there can be no talk of equilibrium and stasis – these terms make no sense in the context of the system possessing feedbacks.
From basic theory, an open dissipative system possessing friction (negative feedbacks) and possibly also excitability (positive feedbacks) is intrinsically chaotic-nonlinear.
Thus at any state i.e. temperature, the system is acted on by both excitability and friction.
So the system has to be in constant motion in terms of its state / temperature.
Stasis is a meaningless concept in such a system.
Welcome to the climate – thanks to Chris Monckton and RIstvan et al.
P2, to paraphrase the lead in to a song from My Fair Lady—by jove, I think you’ve got it! Regards.
This evening, sir, you did it! You did it! You did it!
You said that you would do it And indeed you did.
This evening, sir, you did it! You did it! You did it!
We know that we have said it,
But-you did it and the credit
For it all belongs to you!
ptolemy2 March 27, 2018 at 3:19 pm
From basic theory, an open dissipative system possessing friction (negative feedbacks) and possibly also excitability (positive feedbacks) is intrinsically chaotic-nonlinear.
Thus at any state i.e. temperature, the system is acted on by both excitability and friction.
So the system has to be in constant motion in terms of its state / temperature.
Stasis is a meaningless concept in such a system.
It depends on the nature of the system stationary state, if it’s a stable node or focus then any perturbation will return to the stationary state (either in a monotonic or oscillatory manner). Usually in a practical experiment you have to perturb it and observe the return to stability to determine the nature of the stationary state. Stasis is certainly not a meaningless concept.
“That no state of the climate is, or ever can be static, but is always, both instantaneously and in its ongoing evolution, dynamic and changing.”
Totally irrelevant. Plenty of feedback amplifiers, eg in telecoms, are never static. Constantly responding to signals. That has nothing to do with the functioning of the circuit, or the existence of an operating point.
The operating point of a circuit is determined by feedback. That feedback also influences the AC operation of a circuit. Probably especially so in circuits not designed to minimize the effect of the DC operating point on AC function.
The climate was not designed with simplifying the math as a major consideration.
We do know there is an “equilibrium.” We can glimpse it every time we swing by.
‘Between a Laugh and a Tear,’ with apologies to John Mellencamp.
One again I read the comments
— wondering if this is a record number
of comments for one article (here
and comments for the original article)
for this site,
— and I hereby declare two things:
(1) Climate science is not settled, and
(2) The current climate is wonderful,
and the Earth is greening again,
so (1) doesn’t matter
THE CASE
Judge Alsup knows the plaintiff and defendant equally desire consumers should pay more for the defendant’s products. Both openly advocate for carbon taxes, carbon trading and renewable energy levies to fund subsidies and grants etc.
Judge Alsup could have invited ‘sceptical science’ to join the tutorial. Happer, Koonin & Lindzen submitted a detailed amicus curiae brief and offered to participate in the tutorial.
Alsup clearly did not want tutorial data presented that may contradict data presented by the plaintiff or defendant.
The plaintiff’s case is improper.
Only three options were available to it:
1. In a court, seek injunctive relief to halt the sale of the defendant’s products in Cal.
2. By regulation, ban the sale of the defendant’s products in Cal.
3. By regulation, impose a nuisance levy on the defendant’s products in Cal.
Judge Alsup will dismiss the case upon commencement.
This is a Nuisance case (Cal. Civ. Code § 3479).
To prove loss or damage (loss under nuisance can be interference with a right), the plaintiff must plead the existence of a duty and causation.
The plantiff must, by expert witness, show an event causing loss or damage was caused by the defendant.
The event can only be an event occurring between 19xa and 19xb.
19xa is the date on which the defendant was made aware (or became aware) by a ‘qualified’ scientist that the combustion of their hydrocarbon products may cause a nuisance.
19xb is the date on which the plaintiff was made aware (or became aware) by a ‘qualified’ scientist that the combustion of the defendant’s products may cause a nuisance.
Any reasonable person would expect the University of Cal (University of Cal, Berkeley; Cal State University; Cal University of Pennsylvania) would advise the State of any risk of nuisance from the combustion of hydrocarbons given UC was involved in AGW research from its earliest days.
At 19xb, the plaintiff had but three options (set out above) which it failed to exercise.
Judge Alsup will likely dismiss this case based on the defendant’s dismissal motions.
There are however three further grounds for dismissal:
1. Invalidity by The Statute of Limitations (19xb).
2. The plaintiff was aware of the nuisance risk prior to the defendant or at a date so close as to make the assessment of a quantum of damages impossible.
3. The defendant is fractionally responsible for any nuisance and the plaintiff is unable to separate the defendant’s emissions from Worldwide CO2 emissions from coal and hydrocarbon combustion.
“Judge Alsup could have invited ‘sceptical science’ to join the tutorial.”
He invited both plaintiff and defence to present their “sides”. Chevron decided to have Boutrous as presenter.
You know Cal. and Chevron etc. are largely on the same page when it comes to the ‘science’.
Judge Alsup understands political and commercial priorities rule and he nervously referred to this in the tutorial.
“THE COURT: Well, I appreciate that. I hope we stick to that and keep politics and — you know, I know that there are — there’s politics sometimes involved in this, but I — let’s stick to the science, if we can”.
He could have invited others to present a tutorial; as many as he liked.
He knows the dispute is raging and that it goes right to the top including the USA’s repudiation of the Paris Agreement.
But the search for understanding was biased to suit the interests of plaintiff and defendant; politics and commerce over the peoples’ interests.
This case may greatly affect the people of Cal and beyond so we deserved a fair tutorial session.
Forrest,
Your ignorance there. None of the presenters were acimi curiae. And no amici were invited to present. From the intro:
“MR. BOUTROUS: Good morning, Your Honor. Theodore J.
Boutrous, Junior. I’m here representing Chevron here today, and I’ll be presenting the tutorial on behalf of Chevron.
…
THE COURT: So what I want to do is on the first part give each side an hour.
Plaintiff, you can go first.
You can go second, Mr. Boutrous.
…
MR. BERMAN: I’m going to call as our first speaker,
Professor Myles Allen.”
No amici there.
In this thread and the original thread on this topic Nick Stokes appears to believe that there is no such thing as DC feedback and that any DC signal must of necessity represent some equivalent of the bias voltage in an operational amplifier circuit.
What I say is that there is no feedback from the DC operating point, only perturbations about the operating point. People want to fuzz DC to describe slow changes, maybe once only. Those are still perturbations.
Nick,
Should we not expect a delta in output from variable perturbations? Meaning, each perturbation much yield a specific outcome.
Essentially, this means climate equilibrium calculations that fail to factor pre-industrial CO2 are fundamentally flawed.
The DC operating point of climate is 0°K.
You can add offsets or use different reference points for convenience.
The short version a 273°K climate is not the same as a 200°K climate.
The operating point matters.
“The DC operating point of climate is 0°K.”
A bit awkward if there is a cold snap.
All based on flawed premises…in reality no observed hot spot where the theory of CO2 induced warming is supposed to be and no consistent temperature change anomoly in all areas of the globe despite a global rise in CO2. fiddling the equations is redundant.
Monkton says “Their conclusion was that after 50 years… mean surface temperature would have fallen from 288 K to 252 K… 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.”
50 years is not long enough to reach equilibrium. The oceans would take thousands of years to cool to equilibrium.
Lacis’ graph shows the climate having reached equilibrium after just ten years, since all the relevant feedbacks are of short duration. Any effects that only arrive after thousands of years are not policy-relevant.
The oceans aren’t heated by greenhouse gases since IR can’t penetrate beyond a few microns of the surface. Increased evaporation, which would cool rather than heat the ocean if any noticeable effect occurred is likely the only result.
“I have seldom seen so many feeble arguments in one place. ” – That is because you struck a nerve. You hit the main root of the AGW tree and without it all the leaves are withering. Great work sir.
As I keep saying, though no one is listening, if the feedback occurs with any drivers, as it must, if it is genuine feedback and not just to do with CO2, which is what the climate modellers claim, then Pinatubo would have caused more and deeper cooling than it did, and the Paleo climate would have been so unstable as to completely fail to match the geological record.
I know a geologist specialising in that field and he shrugged and said ‘CO2 can’t do what they claim,. or the world wouldn’t be here now as it is, it would have frozen or boiled in past climate events’
Much as I like Lord Monkcton, I do wish he would refrain from so much well crafted
bullshitobfuscation..It isn’t that complicated to express the thing in a simple paragraph.
Mr Smith thinks it possible to knock down half a century and more of misguided climate science in just one paragraph. Well, of course one can: the abstract of our paper, cited in my first article on the subject here at WUWT, did just that. But it is also necessary to nail shut the numerous rat-holes through which official climatology would otherwise try to wriggle. That takes a little longer.
“the feedback response to emission temperature”
Oh that’s just the Sun warming the oceans and making water vapour, they do that just fine without the non-condensing greenhouse gases.
Quite right, Yogi: and the sea-ice melts as well, giving a surface-albedo feedback, which again is perfectly capable of occurring in the presence of emission temperature on its own.
“If we are right, this really is game over.”
Unless the referees are gaming the game.
I think all we have seen is calculations of sensitivity and beliefs in some kind of feed backs. However, I have not seen any MEASUREMENTS of any amount of temperature increase caused by CO2. What will happen to the doubling theory if we start cooling (maybe we have already -NASA is infilling and modifying temperatures.
Worried this exercise has been costly for the Lord & Co.
If there’s a need for donations, I’d like to think WUWT would host a 48-hour event similar to that hosted for Peter Ridd.
Doesn’t matter how much is raises (although I’d hope a lot) it’s the principle of looking after ‘one of our own’ doing the hard yards for many here.
Warren
Agreed. And a darn good idea.
I suspect their being self-funded is part of the strength of the paper. I’m not sure that being funded by WUWT is any less ‘evil’ than being funded by ‘Big Oil’ in the eyes of the AGW enthusiasts.
Mr Blair has made a most generous suggestion. There will come a point, assuming that we can get the underlying paper safely through peer review, when we shall need help in publicizing what we have discovered. Perhaps we may come back to WUWT then to ask for help.
Anthony’s “once a year” decree is (with the greatest of respect) is restrictive and may exclude one-of-our-own in great need.
Once a year for a non-core matter and once for a core matter would be good.
If Anthony won’t change his mind on this then he should reserve 2019 for you!
If CMoB is right about this, as I hope, it would create a flip-flop in public opinion whose tremendous thud would resonate for centuries. The lab coat would be seen as the emperor’s latest clothing, for one, and the presumption of Green “good faith” would be inverted. This propect is part of the reason for mainstream incredulity about it:
“When the truth is found / to be lies …
Then an avalanche of answers must be found too fast.”
IOW, Ye shall know the truth / and the truth shall / make you / free / k
And they don’t wanna freek.
Hence one reason why some have felt the need to defend the indefensible , its a house of cards they have built not settle science at all.
“When the truth is found / to be lies …
And all the joy within you dies…
That’s the correct next line. The 2nd line I used was from a song by the Lovin’ Spoonful. It “logically” follows from the first.
I have realised that all this fuss about feedback and Lacis is irrelevant. The alleged grave error of climate science is supposed to lie in the Charney sensitivity, which Lord M now calculates as 1.6K/doubling. But in fact his calculation that leads to this, when sorted out, is trivial, orthodox and in no way reveals an error.
I’ll use some typing-friendlier notation. The observed quantities are
Q = IPCC forcing = 2.29 W/m2; T = equil ΔT = 0.76*1.4 (with Lord M’s ECS/TCR factor)
so
λQ = λ0*Q = 2.29/3.2≅0.72 is the reference T
CS_ref = λ0*ΔQ0 = 0.3125*3.5 ≅ 1.1
f = 1-λQ/T≅0.32 is Lord M’s calc of feedback
Then he writes
CS = Charney Sensitivity = CS_ref/(1-f) = CS_ref*T/λQ
= λ0*ΔQ0*T/(λ0*Q)
= ΔQ0*T/Q = 3.5 * 0.76 * 1.4 / 2.29 = 1.626201
Exactly the same arithmetic as Lord M’s, reorganised.
Look at the terms here. 0.76 K is the observed warming. 2.29 is the IPCC forcing. 3.5 is the forcing in W/m2 corresponding to CO2 doubling, and 1.4 is Lord M’s estimated ratio of equilibrium T to current T. People have done that calc thousands of times. But it is all that this amounts to.
And Charney Sensitivity was the alleged repository of grave error. The peroration of the earlier submission went:
“Conclusion: The anthropogenic global warming we can now expect will be small, slow, harmless, and even net-beneficial. It is only going to be about 1.2 K this century, or 1.2 K per CO2 doubling. If the parties are not able to demonstrate that we are wrong, and if His Honor accepts that we have proven the result set out publicly and in detail here for the first time, then the global warming scare was indeed based on a strikingly elementary error of physics.”
There is nothing there.
To show how this works, I have posted a spreadsheet here. Here is a snapshot:
Column B has the basic data needed, as set out by the head post. I have set the Planck constant separately, because it doesn’t actually contribute to the Charney Sensitivity CS, as you can tell by changing its value.
Col C, in mauve, sets out the arithmetic as done in the head post, showing the rounded numbers. But in Col D, the exact arithmetic is done. D5 has the Charney Sensitivity, derived the roundabout way
Row 7, in red, shows the direct CS calculation. As you see, it is exactly the same. And all it does is take the warming 0.76K, multiply by the estimated ratio 1.4, multiply by the power forcing per doubling 3.5 W/m2, and then divide by the forcing. That’s the direct entry-level calc.
As you see, the result is proportional to whatever you assume about the ratio of ECS to TCR, remembering that this is not standard TCR, but corresponds to about 40 years of real warming. Many people would say 1.4 is too low.
Mr Stokes appears to be agreeing (subject only to the factor 1.4, which he thinks too low) that Charney sensitivity is, after all, below the 2 K lower bound in the CMIP3 and CMIP5 models. That’s a good start.
The point made in the head posting is that there is some coherence between the revised feedback fraction for the pre-industrial and industrial eras, and that fraction is a long way below the current official estimates.
“Mr Stokes appears to be agreeing”
No, I don’t think you can get anything useful this way. When you unravel the rigmarole, it is just the most primitive calculation possible. Divide the temperature rise by the accumulated forcing. That goes wrong for ECS because warming stuff takes time. Specifically
1. The temperature is far less than it will be when the warming flux from that amount of GHG has had full effect, and
2. Present forcing is the maximum over the recent period. For most of the time it was less (it grew from zero). Since it is in the denominator, this undercounts the sensitivity too.
So there is an attempt to compensate this by guesswork – the factor 1.4. You could choose anything you like. There is no wisdom here.
Net anthropogenic forcing to date is about 2.5 Watts per square meter. Since the ARGO data show athe present radiative imbalance to be 0.7 Watts per square meter, warming to date has been sufficient to account for 1.8 (or 72%) of the 2.5 Watts per square meter. We can, therefore, expect 100 / 72 = 39% more warming than has yet occurred. And this calculation assumes, generously, that all industrial-era warming was anthropogenic.
“Note that the input and output signals are not deltas but entire values.”
Exactly. This is the fundamental characteristic of linearity which is a prerequisite for applying Bode and which was ignored by Hansen and Schlesinger’s initial application which provided the primary, if not the only, theoretical plausibility for a sensitivity high enough to justify the formation of the IPCC and UNFCCC. The absolute gain and the incremental gain must be the same, therefore each W/m^2 of input results in 1.6 W/m^2 of surface emissions and the next one will as well.
Mr Moon has underappreciated the value of accepting as much as possible of an opponent’s case, for the sake of argument, allowing the focus to be on the area of disagreement. That is all I have done. If I am right about the area where we disagree with climate science, there is no need to worry about the rest of the official argument: there will not be enough warming to worry about in any event.
Yes, and the only thing that’s actually controversial is the magnitude of the climate sensitivity. Everything else depends on this. Feedback was incorrectly applied by Hansen and Schlesinger to provide a theoretical case for a sensitivity large enough to justify the formation of the IPCC/UNFCCC. This, as well as the many other levels of obfuscation between what’s controversial and the controversy needs to be deconstructed.
Lord Monckton,
Hope I spelled that right.
Once again, you attempt to disprove a theory, unproven, stemming from an entirely false principle, that the radiation incident on the Earth’s surface can be simulated by pretending that the Sun’s flux, excellently described by the S-B Law involving the Sun’s surface temperature at 5,778 K, could be averaged and Divided By Four due to the Earth’s rotation, which it CANNOT.
Your Classical Education will require you to refer to First Principles, which do NOT involve dividing a flux based on a temperature difference to the 4th Power, by 4, because the spherical Earth rotates.
As a planet’s surface temperature increases by fractional degrees for whatever reason, natural variability, more gas which absorbs/thermalizes some incident LWIR from the Surface, or another undetermined factor, other gases may increase, maybe Water Vapor. Predicting this from Automatic Control Theory would require a comprehensive description of Climate, have not seen this yet.
You said “for the sake of the argument.”
You bought into a bad argument if this is your reasoning. Yes there are many awful mistakes in so-called “Climate Science.” This paper you have chosen to attack for dubious math, “Lacis,” is not the worst, not even close. Let’s talk about proxies, OMG…
First Principles, also known as the Laws of Physics, which control our Physical World, address these, not the awful errors of Green Advocates.
Regards,
Michael
Bring us to the First Principles,
If Lord Monckton would attack all flawed aspects of AGW he would have no chance in hell to get published, there would be an endless debate. He accepts all flaws and focuses on the most important error in climate science. If he get published he can work on the other flaws, one at a time.
Michael Moon March 27, 2018 at 9:23 pm
Once again, you attempt to disprove a theory, unproven, stemming from an entirely false principle, that the radiation incident on the Earth’s surface can be simulated by pretending that the Sun’s flux, excellently described by the S-B Law involving the Sun’s surface temperature at 5,778 K, could be averaged and Divided By Four due to the Earth’s rotation, which it CANNOT.
The division by four is because the earth is spherical, the area at the TOA is the area of the circle perpendicular to the solar flux incident on the earth (πr^2) whereas the area used at the surface is the surface area of a sphere (4πr^2).
Phil,
A flux based on two temperatures, both taken to the 4th Power, cannot be Divided By Four and then taken back through the S-B Law to output a new temperature, for any reason at all. I am well aware that the Earth is Spherical, thank you very much, and that it rotates. Goodness, man, go back to school if you do not appreciate the fallacious nature of this calculation.
Michael Moon March 28, 2018 at 7:54 am
Phil,
A flux based on two temperatures, both taken to the 4th Power, cannot be Divided By Four and then taken back through the S-B Law to output a new temperature,
Which I didn’t do! The solar irradiance arriving at the TOA is about 1360 W/m^2 it is quite appropriate to use trigonometry to calculate the average irradiance per unit area of the surface.
If you have a flat earth.
If that uniformly-radiated flat earth has a flat, uniform atmosphere with identical properties at all “latitudes” across its diameter.
If that uniform flat earth is uniformly radiated from one side, and so perfectly insulated that all radiation heat losses are uniformly lost from only that one, uniformly-radiated side.
Frankly, Terry Pratchert has created a more realistic “Diskworld” perched on the shoulders of four elephants supported in space on the back of a turtle.
“If you have a flat earth.”
No, it is an explicitly spherical calculation. The Earth intercepts a parallel beam of sunlight, total absorbed Q Watts, intensity Q/(cross-section πr²). That Q is thermalised, and then emitted as IR, radially, intensity Q/(4πr²).
In the introduction to one of my control theory texts — I don’t remember which one — the author makes the point that the human mind can barely wrap around the most simple feedback.
This comes to mind as I look at the (perfectly understandable) struggles in this and the parent thread.
+Many
‘of all man’s creations the sailing yacht is the most likely to baffle his reasoning.’
F. ‘Buster’ R. Brown, designer of, amongst others, ‘Amble’ 28ft, 6 Tonner, 1959, Builder: William King Limited of Burnham-on-Crouch.
Lord Monckton is a master of yachts too which comes as less of a surprise.
And, by the way, Stokes probably knows some of these laws but chooses to ignore them due to his employment situation whatever it is, and Mosher has forgotten them if he ever did know them. Do you know them, particularly the ones about Thermo-Dynamics, and the Transport of Heat and Mass? Learning about those last two were an absolute bitch at my University, actually the second-best in the world for Mechanical Engineering, let me tell you the horror story of the Final in Heat Transfer at the U of M in 1981.
Not another one from Australia; U of Mel?
In USN Nuke Power School thermodynamics washed out about 1/2 the class. I was tops in that class.
Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow. Very difficult because there is so much to think about all at once.