Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
It is likely that every year annual variance in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere exceeds the warming effects of human CO2. I can’t prove it, but nobody can disprove it with any reasonable measure of evidence because there is insufficient data or understanding of natural processes. However, it is likely true, and alone destroys the human-caused global warming (AGW) narrative. This is one reason why AGW is the biggest, most pervasive, and longest lasting ‘fake news’ story to date. It is also a ‘deep state’ story created and perpetuated by and through the bureaucracies.
Part of the reason the deception persists is because of the failure of skeptics to explain the scientific problems with the AGW claim in a way people can understand. As I have written, most people, that is the 85% who lack science skills, find the science arguments of most skeptics too arcane.
However, there are problems on both sides of the debate that preclude, or at least seriously limit, the possibility of clear understanding and explanation. It is the lack of data. There is so much speculation without any facts that it is time to consider the lessons of problem solving identified by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle through his detective Sherlock Holmes.
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
It is important to use a fictional source for this reminder because, in the real world, facts and data are no longer a prerequisite. There is virtually no real weather or climate data, yet people on both sides of the debate build computer models and speculate endlessly. They end up doing precisely what Holmes predicted. It is frightening the number of people who are so certain of the AGW hypothesis yet know virtually nothing.
Another story from Holmes identifies two other problems created by the lack of data and speculation. The first is ignoring variables.
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”
Why are the IPCC and proponents of AGW ignoring and even deliberately omitting major variables in the complexity that is weather and climate? How are they allowed to claim the validity of their predictions when virtually everything is omitted?
The second involves getting so wrapped up in the complexity that you ignore the obvious. This story did not originate with Conan Doyle but uses the Sherlock approach of keeping calm and not losing perspective.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go on a camping trip. After a good dinner and a bottle of wine, they retire for the night, and go to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes wakes up and nudges his faithful friend. “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”
“I see millions and millions of stars, Holmes” replies Watson.
“And what do you deduce from that?”
Watson ponders for a minute. “Well, astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful, and that we are a small and insignificant part of the universe.”
What does it tell you, Holmes?
Holmes is silent for a moment. “Watson, you idiot!” he says. “Someone has stolen our tent!”
There is a multitude of variables overlooked or ignored. Almost all are unmeasured or even minimally measured. There is as much synthetic data created by models that is then used as real data in another model. The results of the models show the inbreeding. When you consider even the most extreme claim for the global warming effect of human CO2, it is within the error of the estimate of almost every single variable. Albedo level varies more from year to year creating an energy variation that likely exceeds the estimated impact of human CO2. Go and look at the work of Kukla and Kukla for early awareness of this issue. The work continued on natural variability of albedo due to snow cover. More recently we learned,
Because of its large seasonal variability and distinctive physical properties, snow plays a major role in the climate system through strong positive feedbacks related to albedo [e.g., Groisman et al., 1994a] and other weaker feedbacks related to moisture storage, latent heat, and insulation of the underlying surface [Stieglitz et al., 2003].
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides this assessment of the situation in Assessment Report 5 (p.359).
In addition to reductions in snow cover extent, which will reduce the mean reflectivity of particular regions, the reflectivity (albedo) of the snow itself may also be changing in response to human activities.
How do they know? It is pure speculation. Then they send a very confused message.
However, spatially comprehensive surveys of impurities in Arctic snow in the late 2000s and mid-1980s suggested that impurities decreased between those two periods (Doherty et al., 2010) and hence albedo changes have probably not made a significant contribution to recent reductions in Arctic ice and snow.
The balance of the entry discusses general conditions under the title, “Interactions of Snow within the Cryosphere.” In the climate models chapter, they say,
There is a strong linear correlation between North- ern-Hemisphere spring snow cover extent and annual mean surface air temperature in the models, consistent with available observations. The recent negative trend in spring snow cover is underestimated by the CMIP5 (and CMIP3) models (Derksen and Brown, 2012), which is associated with an underestimate of the boreal land surface warming (Brutel-Vuilmet et al., 2013).
They don’t know and what they use underestimates reality, which they also don’t know. Despite that, in the AR5 Synthesis Report, they state,
There is very high confidence that the extent of Northern Hemisphere snow cover has decreased since the mid-20th century by 1.6 [0.8 to 2.4] % per decade for March and April, and 11.7% per decade for June, over the 1967 to 2012 period.
They fail to tell us how much of that decrease was due to human-caused warming. They can’t do it because they don’t know what the natural variability is for any time prior to satellite data, but even afterward because, as they acknowledge, the full and accurate data is unavailable. Remember, this is just one variable in a myriad of variables.
I will focus on water vapour because it is the least measured, least understood, and yet critical to the entire basis of the warming due to human interference in the greenhouse gas theory. The IPCC was able to essentially ignore it a cause of warming by the definition of climate change that only includes human causes. Ironically, as I will explain, they use and manipulate it to bolster their deception.
The obsessive political objective was to isolate and demonize CO2 from human sources as the cause of global warming. This was primarily achieved by directing the controlled group of unaccountable people, mostly bureaucrats, to only consider human-causes of climate change. That eliminates the Sun because, as King Canute showed, there are things that no leader (person) can control.
Despite this, the IPCC included a category “sun” in their list of “forcing” variables. Why? Humans don’t and can’t vary solar insolation. The most they can argue is that humans add particulates to the atmosphere and that filters insolation. The problem is we have no idea how much particulate matter is in the atmosphere or how it varies over time or space. We saw an example of this when AGW proponents claimed the cooling from 1940 to 1980 was due to increased sulfate levels from humans. How did they know? They simply added enough to the models to approximate the cooling. The problem was after 1980 it began to warm despite no change in the sulfate levels.
The decisions were more difficult with regard to greenhouse gases (GHG) because humans produce all of them in varying quantities. Worse, the one they wanted to demonize was, at the start in the 1980s, less than 4% of the total. Water vapour was 95% of the total and humans added it to the atmosphere. The IPCC acknowledged the human production, but then said the amount was so small relative to the total volume they excluded it from their calculations. They did what early computer models did with evaporation from the oceans. They had no measures so assumed what was called a swamp approach that evaporation was 100 percent all the time.
With CO2 they assumed, incorrectly as the OCO2 satellite later disclosed, that it is evenly distributed throughout the atmosphere. Water vapour varies more in volume and distribution throughout the atmosphere than any other gas. That is why meteorology developed four different measures, mixing ratio, specific humidity, absolute humidity, and relative humidity, to try and understand water vapour and its role in the atmosphere. The last is the best known, but the most meaningless from a scientific perspective. The amount of water vapour in the air can vary from almost zero to about 4%. This raises the question, how much water is in the atmosphere and how does it vary over time?
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has a Water Science School. They say
One estimate of the volume of water in the atmosphere at any one time is about 3,100 cubic miles (mi3) or 12,900 cubic kilometers (km3). That may sound like a lot, but it is only about 0.001 percent of the total Earth’s water volume of about 332,500,000 mi3 (1,385,000,000 km3), as shown in the table below. If all of the water in the atmosphere rained down at once, it would only cover the globe to a depth of 2.5 centimeters, about 1 inch.
Notice how they downplay its atmospheric significance by comparing it to the total water volume on the planet. They are talking about water in its liquid phase, but it is as important as a gas and a solid from a weather perspective. What percentage of water in the atmosphere is in each of the three phases and how does that vary over time? The answer is nobody knows or even has a crude estimate, as the failure of the computer models to simulate clouds and their effect proves. Not only that, but phase changes can occur in large volumes in a matter of seconds.
The IPCC set water vapour aside as a GHG variable assuming it remained constant. They had to do this because they don’t know how much it varies over time. They concentrated on CO2 but soon discovered that there was an upper limit to the warming effect with a CO2 increase. I called this the ‘black paint’ problem. If you want to block light passing through a window apply a layer of paint. It will block most of the light. A second layer only reduces light fractionally. The current level of CO2 is like the one layer of paint. Doubling the level has a fractional effect. A measure of how little is understood about this effect is reflected in the different estimates of the effect (Figure 1). The problem continues as evidenced by the ongoing decline of CO2 climate sensitivity.
Figure 1
The response to this problem was to create a positive feedback. This claimed that a CO2 increase causes a temperature increase, which increases evaporation and more water vapour in the atmosphere. This keeps temperature rising beyond the capability of CO2. I accept the argument that this sounds theoretically sound, but it is not supported by empirical evidence. It does not allow for negative feedback, for example, as more clouds form changing the albedo. Regardless, there is no empirical data and the only data they have is generated in a computer model. The outcome is determined by the data used to construct the model but there is no meaningful data or even good estimates. The sequence then is data is produced using models for which there is no data and the outcome is then used in models for which there is no data. The amount of water vapor increase suddenly becomes important in their narrative. But how much increased evaporation was necessary to create appositive feedback. How can they determine the amount If you don’t know what the original volume was or how it changes over time? Let me put a number on my opening claim. It is probable that even a 1% variation in atmospheric water vapor equals or exceeds all the effects of human sourced CO2.
So, not only have Sherlock and Watson lost their tent, but they are now exposed to precipitation. Unfortunately, the IPCC and their models will not know what form it will take. Sherlock would know why. It is because they have no data and are theorizing and speculating.
Square of wet-bulb temperature presents the precipitable water in the atmosphere at any given location, season. By presenting average annual temperature and square of wet-bulb temperature provide the necessary clue on precipitable water increase or decrease with the time.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Its the C.P. Snow effect: our lettered and learned Intelligentsia are experts in words and narrative, but as scientifically illiterate as our neolithic ancestors. You cannot discuss science with them because they don’t seem to know any.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures
Ha ha thanks for that, I couldn’t stop smiling after Boyle’s law… 🙂
Yeah, for a couple of conscie commies, they were funny guys. Unfortunately, their Lefty legacy lives on in Flanders’ daughters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Boyle,_Baron_Boyle_of_Handsworth
Notanist
I think the opposite is the greater problem: people think they know so much science that they are smarter than the scientists and don’t need to listen to them.
It’s easier to discuss sciende with someone who doesn’t know any than to do it with someone who’s convinced it’s corrupt.
Science? Corrupt? Who in the world would think such as thing? Then I dreamed one night I was walking along a deserted beach and a giant wave of propagandas swept over me roaring a-swine-flu-pandemic-is-coming-flu-shots-will-save-you-pregnant-women-children-get-theirs-first-co2-is-burning-up-the-earth-vaccines-are-safe-we-don’t-know-what-causes-autism-genetically-modified-food-is-equivalent-to-natural-food-gmoed-low-sperm-count-won’t-sterilize-grow-tumors-affect-your-organs-gulf-war-syndrome-is-ptsd-is-mental-illness-those-are-contrails-you-see-in-the-sky-we-don’t-know-what’s-causing-droughts-stop-h.a.a.r.p.ing-about-weather-ebola-will bleed-you-out-rockefeller’s-zika-skeeters-will-shrink-your-head. Suddenly, I awoke wondering how our scientists would handle all this. Then, it dawned on me . . .
Kristi,
Sorry, but you are pathetically naive. Please heed the wise words of US President Eisenhower regards the corruption of government “science” almost sixty years ago:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/eisenhower-warned-of-government-science-corruption-in-1960/
I don’t know about that. You don’t know any – and it is very hard to discuss anything with someone that runs away screaming “Settled Science!” “Evil Oil Companies!” “AAAGH!”
” people think they know so much science ”
Projection, it’s the only mental skill your average alarmist has mastered.
I used to track the water vapour numbers every month.
It was increasing as proposed but only about one-third of the rate that was built into climate models.
But the emprical data means nothing to the debate. The warmers just change it or completely ignore it while continuing to prophesize the coming apacolypse.
I don’t see a way to stop these guys other than cutting off ALL the money they get. People need to email Trump and explain to him like this and eventually he will get it done. He doesn’t believe the hoax either.
Didn’t Lindzen suggest a 90% reduction in “climate change” “research” spending?
I second that.
It’ll do for a start. Until the field returns to real science and sanity. Every nickel is wasted. Bad science is overwhelming good and taking us backwards.
“There is virtually no real weather or climate data”..
I’d have to disagree with the no real weather data. Meteorologists frequently refer to prior episodes of weather on a specific date. No tornadoes this year in Oklahoma, up to (so far) April 30? Weather records for this time period for Oklahoma show how far back and how many times tornadoes cranked up in Oklahoma for January 1 through April 30.
You want records? I keep track of my local weather. 71% humidity at 5:45AM this morning is normal for this time of year. But 29% humidity by 12:30PM is NOT normal. The air is too dry. No dew on the side of my house or the grass means something is wrong.
We’re to have thunderstorms (again) by next Tuesday. Does the last T-storm’s hail mixed with rain mean a regular occurrence of this kind of thing? I don’t know. Likely not, but possible.
Is anyone paying attention to these things besides me? I don’t know, or care. I’m paying attention to it. My records show that last year and the year before the humidity levels were dropping just slightly from the prior year, for the same time period.
Significance? You tell me. It is, after all, JUST WEATHER,,,. right?
Sara
Years ago l did keep a daily record of my local weather for 3 years and ended up having a better understanding of weather because of it.
The only long term weather record l have is the recording of the first snowfall of the season since 1977.
Which was born from my love of snow as a child. The record has shown that there has been little change in the trend in the timing of the first snow over the last 40 years. Which suggests any warming of the winters here in England have been due to less colder weather turning up recent winters. Rather then been due to the winters starting later.
My weather watching is now across the globe with the help of nullschool and jet stream maps. As my interest in recent years has been in understanding the important role the weather play’s in climate change and ice age formation.
…in a hundred years…
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/4e235261-e458-4b21-ada2-0ddf99b3c5cd
Having good records for one spot is not evidence that we have good records for the entire world. Which is what Dr. Ball was talking about.
The confusion stems from Water Vapour’s role as a ‘greenhouse gas’ and the primary ‘cooling’ agent in the atmosphere.
The Warmist model relies entirely on ‘radiative’ transfer. Water Vapour ‘physically’ transports heat through the atmosphere as enthalpy; high into the atmosphere…to winter polar regions…to desert regions…and mountains.
lts good to see there has been studies into snow cover extent and that changes to its extent during the springtime are when it matters the most. A point l have been trying to get across for a number of weeks now.
This spring has been a real insight for me on how changes to the jet stream patterning can lead to cooling over the northern most land masses and thus risk extending the spring snow extent.
This years NH spring snow extent looking like it will be higher then last spring. lf that it the case then it suggests to me that the recent warming of the NH during the springtime, has now for the time been at least come to a halt.
I have had tremendous success in waking up the layman with this impossibly simple graph that I made.
http://www.maxphoton.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/CO2.png
Purple = Nitrogen
Dark blue = Oxygen
Light blue = Argon
Green = Various trace gases, and water vapor
Orange = Carbon dioxide prior to year 1800 and the industrial revolution
Red = Increase in carbon dioxide after year 1800 (assumed to be man-made)
Please add average water vapor.
As a separate category, then a second graph showing relative concentration and GHG strength of H2O v CO2.
Thanks.
Max you dont have enough green dots for the water vapour H20 on average is 50 times the amount of CO2.
Almost without exception, even the most dug-in believe is SHOCKED.
Here is a video of their belief system …
* most dug-in believer …
No fuel or ammo onboard ?
There was a minor secondary explosion, but once her back was broken, that was it. Sayonara. See you on the bottom.
@ur momisugly Felix,
I assume it was a ship emptied of all volatiles, and a veteran sub captain just had to let loose a torpedo.
Who could blame him ?, all those years of patrolling the oceans, with nothing to sink.
UK,
A sitting duck target, solely to test a torpedo exploder mechanism, IMO.
The Japanese were able to overrun the Philippines only because the USN never tested its torpedoes before the war. It took nearly the whole war to get the navy to fix the problems with its torpedoes.
We should have been able to sink all the Japanese troop transport ships. There were enough USN subs in the region to do so, had our torpedoes worked.
But instead of being shot at dawn, the admirals responsible for this crime against humanity were promoted.
Be that as it may.
“No operation extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main body of the enemy.”
UK,
AKA, “No plan survives contact with the enemy”. Moltke the Elder. If his idiot nephew had grasped this simple truth and grokked the Schlieffen Plan, WWI wouldn’t have been such a catastrophe for the West.
Instead of keeping the right strong, the moron strengthened the left, so that instead of luring the French farther into Alsace-Lorraine, they were able to swing back to their left and help defend Paris.
Machine guns…..there was no defense, certainly no offense.
UK,
But France and Britain were deficient in MGs in 1914. The Schlieffen Plan would have worked 1) had First Army been motorized, which was possible then, 2) the right been strengthened rather than the left, and 3) two divisions not been transferred to the Eastern Front, where they weren’t needed, at a critical juncture.
Later, countermeasures against MGs were devised, to include mortars and hand grenades. Plus mobile squad automatics like the Lewis gun.
It is people like you, that…..that….that…. keep me coming to WUWT.
A couple of grams of arsenic can kill a grown man.
Just because the amount is small is not evidence that it can have no impact.
But CO2 is harmless to a grown man, in small concentrations, as opposed to arsenic, or plutonium, or other harmful substances. I really like this graphic, but actual atmospheric percentages should/might be shown next to the:
“Purple = Nitrogen – 78.09%
Dark blue = Oxygen – 20.95%
Light blue = Argon – 0.93%
Green = Various trace gases, and water vapor – 1% at sea level, and 0.4% over the entire atmosphere
Orange = Carbon dioxide prior to year 1800 and the industrial revolution – 0.04%
Red = Increase in carbon dioxide after year 1800 (assumed to be man-made) – ?%”
And how many small squares are shown?
By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains a variable amount of water vapor, on average around 1% at sea level, and 0.4% over the entire atmosphere.
We are not talking poisons. We are talking about small quantities being able to influence.
CO2 doesn’t have to be poisonous to man in order to impact the climate.
The magic of my CO2 graph is that it is not labeled. I just show it to people, and say, “Check this out.”
They’ll ask what it is. This means that they’re defenses are down; they are open. (Let’s face it: it is impossible to communicate when someone’s defenses are up, so why even attempt it?)
I say that it’s the earth’s atmosphere — this is nitrogen (they are always greatly surprised), this is oxygen (more surprise), this is argon (what’s that?), this is the trace gases, …
Then the fun begins.
People are absolutely stunned when they learn the orange is the CO2 level of 200 years ago.
But the grand finale is explaining that microscopic red dot. People. Are. Floored!
Then they get angry when they realize they’ve been lied to and deceived to believe CO2 is, like, 80% of the atmosphere.
You guys should try it; I doubt there is a better way to cut through to the layman. Let me know if you find one!
(Pardon my typos.)
Max Did you ask your cousins all those Photons to which you are related to : How many does it take to raise the earths temp by 1C?
I really like this graphic – (+ 10,000).
How many small squares are in this graph? I failed to count them.
The graph is 100 x 100 = 10,000 squares, which is exceptionally convenient!
Each row and each column = 1%.
So each square = 1/100th of 1%, or 100 ppm.
This scaling makes it super easy to talk to the layman about CO2 going from, say, 300 to 400 ppm, using a crystal clear visual. Without the graphic, those numbers mean absolutely nothing to people.
Incidentally, I have found that the average person thinks CO2 makes up somewhere between 50 – 80% of the atmosphere!
Note that nitrogen and oxygen are off by a few squares, and I should correct that, but for casual discussion it is more than adequate.
Again, I strongly suggest you guys show it to people. It’s profound to watch the impact it has on them.
We cannot expect the layman to understand anything more complicated than that graphic. Fortunately, we don’t need to! 🙂
+97% 😂
“People are absolutely stunned when they learn the orange is the CO2 level of 200 years ago.
But the grand finale is explaining that microscopic red dot. People. Are. Floored!”
“I called this the ‘black paint’ problem. If you want to block light passing through a window apply a layer of paint. It will block most of the light. A second layer only reduces light fractionally. The current level of CO2 is like the one layer of paint. ”
These hand-wavy arguments are amusing. Either there’s too little CO2 in the atmosphere to cause any harm, or there’s so much CO2 in the atmosphere that adding any more cannot cause much additional warming.
Bellman, you are pretending to be dense (or are you)? CO2 does at least two things, one is acting as a greenhouse gas, and the other is as plant food. The effect as a GHG is on a log curve, so additional CO2 is minimal. C3 plants grow better with a level of CO2 at about three times current levels, so the level is too low.
Tony Hella
“C3 plants grow better with a level of CO2 at about three times current levels, so the level is too low.”
I’m assuming this is in response to my comment in response to a comment asking why scientists wanted to starve plants by reducing CO2.
I think your suggestion that C3 plants are currentyl starving at a mere 400ppm of CO2 is strange. According to Wikipedia C3 plants thrive at 200 ppm or better and currently make up around 95% of all plant live, so it’s difficult to see how they were being disadvantaged by the lower pre-industrial levels, let alone the current levels.
That’s a good graph Max. A sense of proporportion makes many questions answer themselves.
“proportion” Fingers stuttered.
Exactly, CKMoore. The graph provides the layman with a sense of proportion that ALL of the climate alarmism denies them.
Watson got one thing wrong: Humans can only see a few thousand stars at night with the unaided eye, not millions.
Dr Ball
Insightful as usual, and given the number of articles and calculations on the warming effects of CO2 this year alone, very timely.
To monopolise your opponent you make a claim, in this case the warming effects of CO2, and leave it up to them to prove you wrong. The answer is never provable in absolute terms, but acts as a major distraction of all resources. Skeptic’s usually agree with the lowest calculation. But in issuing that calculation you are also by default agreeing that CO2 has warming effects. Then only question is how much. Imediately you are in their camp.
A small point, there is a longer standing issue, CFCs and the so called ozone hole. NASA the primary source of data and comment, report ozone in the hemispheres differently. In the NH three values are reported, over 40N minimum and maximum, and NHPC over 63N to two decimal points. In the SH only the SH minimum over 40S, and the ozone hole, both loss figures.
Additionally they use the colour blue in the images to cover 220DU down to 115DU. It is a numerical and visual deception.
With regards
The Ozone hole theory is another big scam. There always was an ozone hole over the Antarctic. They only started measuring in 1979.
Let me start by saying I love this site and all you guys out there who actually enjoy thinking, sharing your knowledge and thoughts freely and in a straightforward and often humorous manner… and if there is to be a fight back…you guys are the brains behind the effort, but……!?
As usual none of you have the slightest idea about a political message. Its all very well to correct the lies of the insane warmist assholes…but it will get you precisely no-where if the object is to enlighten the average Joe and destroy the warmists Chicken Little narrative. Even this article…do you really think a single undecided person will read this and suddenly wake up to themselves? Zero chance of that. Far too many words for Joe and Boooorrrringggg! The sensational lie will continue to be played over the media, your thoughtful rebuff will not.
You must come up with a simple unarguable point that the layperson can understand, take to heart as an obvious truth and can repeat to others without them glazing over as well, and that cannot be covered over or be lied about…by the professional liars.
One simple point that anyone can understand and I believe should be spread far and wide by the non-lamestream media, meaning YOU guys to begin with…is this: The record of CO2 concentrations over the geological timeframe. As I am sure you all understand we are at 400PPM CO2 concentrations…roughly the equal LOWEST concentrations in 600,000,000 years of complex life since the Cambrian. The only other time in the history of life on planet Earth we were at such dangerously low CO2 concentrations was during the Carboniferous-Permian border. We have been above 8,000PPM, and the average CO2 level over the 600,000,000 years is above 2,000PPM and the whole of the Cambrian, the greatest evolutionary period of life in the planets history was between 8,000PPM and 5,000PPM. So how the FH can 400PPM be considered likely to plunge the planet into catastrophic holocaustic run away global warming, when that did not happen over the 200,000,000 years of the Cambrian when CO2 concentrations were as much as 20 times current levels? In fact its quite obvious that the opposite happened, hence the expression “The Cambrian Explosion.”. Debate over, Joe will take that on board and will see the obvious common sence in it, and Joe will repeat it, and laugh at the same idiots we all laugh at. And scoff at their obvious insane lies.
Give them a printed chart, I have begun printing these things from graphs I found on-line, laminating them and sending them to very many different sources such as radio station hosts etc. I intend to bombard politicians with this stuff and seek replies…which I wont get…but if they get 50? Or 500? Or if this truth gets about widely? I’m going to send one to Trump and see what happens there. I bet he replies.
Laminating is cheap, I bought an Aldi laminator and a bunch of plastic sleeves and intend to use them all up and repeat. I urge you to become a bit more active than enjoying your daily browse of sanity here and fight back. This will do it if we can get the reality of the near record low CO2 levels into the minds of the voting public. We can also tell them about the polar bears, the history of corals, the benefits to agriculture et al…we can easily crush them if we just get bloody organized!
Hope this all makes sense, don’t have time to correct it, cheers guys, keep on kicking.
Excellent idea, Bill5150.
There is no doubt that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were much larger in the past than today, and there has never been a Runaway Greenhouse Effect” in all of Earth’s history and the Alarmists cannot refute either fact.
Putting this information in a simple graph and passing it around to people you want to influence is a great idea.
It is easy for some to just know what is true without data.
https://youtu.be/uyS1cXrsgIg
When a student is given a question s/he thinks it’s solvable from the information given. If one of the answers is “there’s not enough information” then that changes the whole response I would think. Is this so difficult to understand about students who are tested all the time?
The science is 100% irrelevant because the perpetrators can lie with impunity and they do. This isn’t. Global warming is an oil industry/banking scam.
James Hansen in the Guardian.
Governments today, instead, talk of “cap-and-trade with offsets”, a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/26/james-hansen-climate-change
OK we get, big business bad, big government will save us all.
James Hansen was the Director of GISS a division of NASA who once made a prediction that NewYork city would be under 6 feet of water by the year 2000. He also made many other doomsday predictions none of which came true. The guy is a crackpot and really is just plain evil for his opposition to fossil fuels . Because of people like him some people have died from the cold cause they had to make a choice between food and heat.
And yapped about Catastrophic Global Cooling before that.
I’ve got a hundred plus of these papers etc. circulating and zero explanations as to why I am wrong.
If K-T’s 333 W/m^2 GHG energy loop doesn’t work the entire man-caused climate change shenanigans fall apart.
http://www.writerbeat.com/articles/21036-S-B-amp-GHG-amp-LWIR-amp-RGHE-amp-CAGW
Nick go back to algebra 101. You can solve for any single equation if you have only 1 unknown. Your talk of substituting .7/,7 for emissivity is just nonsense.
“Part of the reason the deception persists is because of the failure of skeptics to explain the scientific problems with the AGW claim in a way people can understand.”
Part of the problem is when you put in the AGW acronym in your quote/pronouncement, 99% (my guess) of the general population have no idea what you are talking about. Even if you say anthropological global warming, they still don’t know. You somehow have to say “human caused global warming” or maybe something better and “to the point” that they understand.
Just sayin…
Ask 100+ or so what people on the street say what AGW stands for, and you will see my point.
The logarithmic effect of CO2 shown in the chart Figure 1 above is usually ignore or not shown by any AGW types as they are afraid of its contents and that it distinctly show the limits of greenhouse gas warming. Most of the warming is done by the first 20 parts.
“Most of the warming is done by the first 20 parts.”
How is that relevant. We started the century at ~290ppm. The logarithmic effect just means there will be a certain rise for a doubling of CO2. Looked at over the actual rise in CO2 there isn’t much difference between logarithmic and linear.
And the Junk Science graph is just showing three estimates of sensitivity that happen to be on the low side. Whether they are correct or not, pointing to the graph of evidence of this is just a circular argument. If sensitivity is low there will be less warming, if it’s higher there will be more – the graph proves nothing.
The problem for skeptics, we don’t use enough pictures. Pictures are the universal language. Emotional pictures speak to the heart, not the head, and the heart will trump the head every time. The alarmist beat us because they are better at pictures.
Dr. Deanster,
The problem for skeptics is that you don’t use enough evidence to back up your claims.
Kristi,
All the evidence in the world supports the skeptical position.
Alarmists, OTOH, have nothing, no evidence, no reason, nada, zilch, nothing.
The burden of proof is not on skeptics.
From Kristi Silber
May 5, 2018 at 4:01 pm
“I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts. Not just insults about some ill-defined group, though,”
Hmmmmm…… Then you attack Dr. Deanster’s thoughts and insult some ill-defined ‘skeptics’ group. Are your contradictory statements ‘enough evidence’ of why people question your judgement.. and your honesty?
From Kristi Silber
May 5, 2018 at 2:15 pm
“It’s not a competition for who can do the most good, it’s a battle of who’s most self-righteous.”
OK. You ‘Win’. Again. And Again.
Kristie …. (not that you will respond), yep, the evidence is not conclusive on either side regarding short term fluctuations (ie, 100-500 year intervals) in climate. Thus, as I said, the CAGW crowd masters the use of pictures to appeal to the heart. One picture of a starving polar bear or a bear floating on an iceberg, with an unsubstantiated claim that the bear is starving due to climate change is more impactful than papers on the truth. Pictures of hurricane damage with captions of due to global warming, burnt forest, pictures of people living in a drought.,a picture of a flood, a heat wave, you name it, any catastrophe, …. tag on due to global warming, and wallah, you score a point.
Pictures of lush forest, fat people who eat to much, healthy polar bears, etc …. just don’t have the same impact.
“The burden of proof is not on skeptics”
Let’s reemphasize that for Kristi. It’s not up to skeptics to prove anything.
Kristi, what skeptics do is point out that the other side has no evidence. It is up to the other side to prove their claims.
I know you think they have already proven their claims, but the truth is they have not. That’s why they don’t want to argue with skeptics because they can’t make the case, and the temperatures are not cooperating with them.
Their only hope is that the Earth’s temperatures start climbing again. Currently, they are just fudging the temperature record to make it appear that temperatures are going up, up, up. One notable thing is we haven’t heard “Hottest Year Evah!” lately. Yet CO2 atmospheric concentrations continue to increase. No correlation between CO2 and temperatures, despite the Alarmist’s best efforts at bastardizing the temperature record.
Kristi, I think you are sincere in trying to understand this climate change situation. Where I think you are going wrong is you already have your mind made up that the science is settled. So instead of trying to understand the technical reasons for skeptic arguments, you focus on the psychological aspects. Which is ok, skeptics do that, too, but you are missing a lot of the arguments by the narrow focus.
Keep searching, Kristi. We’ll turn you into a skeptic yet! 🙂
You guys forget, that Kristi is part of the new wave of college grads with fake degrees, who have been taught that science is defined as whatever they agree with.
That’s why it’s only “data” when it supports them. That’s how Kristi ca say with a straight face that skeptics have no data.
Kristi what specific piece of evidence do you have that proves CO2 is the climate control knob?
mkelly: A lay person’s summary in is in a Time magazine article . After you read that, read the Science paper by Lacis et al. (2010, with the 2011 correction) that the Time article summarizes: “Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature.”. Then watch the excellent lecture by Richard Alley at the AGU conference: “The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History.”
mkelly: Sorry, I broke the link to the Time article in my previous comment. Here it is: http://science.time.com/2010/10/14/climate-why-co2-is-the-control-knob-for-global-climate-change/
mkelly: Jeff Masters summarized Alley’s lecture.
Here’s a clear and simple fact for you , Kristi. Except for the Arctic, nowhere in the world is the weather distinguishable from 1970. The Arctic is warm , with plenty of evidence that it has also been warm in the fairly recent past.
@ur momisugly Tom Dayton May 6, 2018 at 12:10 pm
Sorry Tom. There is no physical evidence for an increase in water vapor in the real world.
Also, CO2 increase in known to lag temperature increase on all time scales.
It was a great theory but the data does not bear it out.
Also, CO2 does not last for hundreds of years in the atmosphere. IIRC it’s half-life is on the order of 7-1/2 years.
Also, the very fact that water vapor condenses is what drives heat transfer to TOA where it can be radiated. Vapor is created by absorbing tremendous amounts of latent heat during the phase change. It then convectively rises to the upper atmosphere where it dumps all of that latent as it condenses and the heat is mostly radiated to space.
My personal favourite Sherlockism: “Data, data, data, I can’t make bricks without clay!”.
The following is not really on topic, but not really off topic either.
I was admiring my nice argon filled, double glazed windows (low-emissivity, no less!!). And a thought arose, unbidden yet fully formed, in my mind. The thought went like this:
“If CO2 is so good at trapping heat, why don’t manufacturers of double glazed windows put CO2 between the panes, instead of moldy old (and inert) argon? Wouldn’t it make solar-heated buildings even more efficient?”
I can think of two possible explanations:
No. 1 – CO2 actually isn’t that good at trapping heat.
No. 2 – I’m too ignorant to think of the next potential explanation
Can someone enlighten me, insolate me, or something? The question is not intended to be frivolous. I think it’s a rather good question, although I modestly and generously admit that I may not be the first to ask it. Answers in the form of “This is what a warmist would say, but of course that’s a load of twaddle” are welcomed. Answers invoking a 97% consensus would be met with blistering invective. Thank you all.
“CO2 actually isn’t that good at trapping heat”
It just depends on how much you have. There are 10 tons of air above every square meter, and so about 6 kg/sq m CO₂ (allowing for extra density) that lies in the pathway of radiation. The 15 mm gap between glass would put 0.03 kg/sq m in the IR path through the window.
“Nick Stokes May 5, 2018 at 11:29 pm
It just depends on how much you have.”
How much would we need for CO2 to become a good insulator and good at trapping heat? There has been no concentration of CO2 on earth that would insulate and/or trap heat. CO2 does not trap heat anywhere in the known universe, not even on Venus.
CO2 has a peak absorbance at 15 microns in the IR spectrum which corresponds to -80°C. There is only one molecule in 2500 in the atmosphere. CO2 absorbs and re-radiates only about .002 of the radiation incident upon it. That does not seem to produce much warming except in Antarctica.
“It is probable that even a 1% variation in atmospheric water vapor equals or exceeds all the effects of human sourced CO2.”
Dr. Ball
IPCC put the radiative forcing of anthropogenic CO2 at 1.7 W/m^2. Calculations based on radiative transfer equations put the radiative forcing of water vapor at 75 W/m^2. A 1% change in water vapor equals 0.75 W/m^2. Or less than the CO2 forcing. But any increase in GHE can be compensated by evaporation and convective cooling. Radiative heat transfer is the easy part. Fluid dynamics is the hard part. We cannot predict the climate simply because we understand the GHE
https://scienceofdoom.com/2010/02/10/co2-%e2%80%93-an-insignificant-trace-gas-part-five/
If I may I’d like to aim another curve-ball at the radiative forcing of anthropogenic carbon dioxide argument.
At any one time there are lots of clouds in the sky. Each cloud contains quite a lot of liquid water. Now I know if one were to put all the water-drops in a typical cloud together you probably wouldn’t get very much water in your bucket. However, where one to take all the CO2 in the volume in the cloud and condense that into a liquid I don’t think you’d get very much of that either.
Now back to the water.
If one were to regard each water droplet as a giant molecule (not a big stretch if one takes into account that water molecules each have a charge which helps them stick together) then one could regard water droplets in clouds as molecules mixed in with all the other molecules in the air.
If my hunch is correct I think you will find that water droplets are radiatively active in almost all the frequencies of light that carbon dioxide is. Furthermore, water droplets in clouds are probably a tad bigger than carbon dioxide molecules so each droplet would probably absorb and re-radiate rather more than 0.002 of the radiation incident upon it.
To me this explains why if you’ve ever slept out on a windless night under a starry, cloudless sky you would most certainly notice a difference compared with doing so when it’s overcast.
To me the big question, when it comes to carbon dioxide, is: “What difference does it make?”
Clouds (water droplets) have a net cooling effect of negative 21 W/m^2 because it reflects solar radiation. Better than your hunch, read climate dynamics of clouds
https://atmos.washington.edu/~dargan/587/587_6.pdf
“What difference does it (CO2) make?”
300 ppm CO2 contributes 24 to 32 W/m^2 to the GHE. Double it to 600 ppm, it adds 3.7 W/m^2 or about 1 C without feedback. The effect is nonlinear. Negative feedback will decrease the effect. Positive feedback will increase the effect. It is uncertain but my bet is negative due to absence of the “tropical hot spot”
There are no calculations of radiative forcing of water vapour. Your 75W/m^2 is plucked from thin air. You are a charlatan who runs a website that copies and pastes gobblydook from alarmist sites. You always talk about radiative transfer equations but never give the equations. Michael Modest does in his book and he says they are unsolveable. I suggest you read his book 1st before spewing any more junk on your site.
I’m not a charlatan. You’re just ignorant of atmospheric physics.
http://slideplayer.com/slide/7448281/24/images/38/Solution+to+the+Radiative+Transfer+Equation.jpg
Discussion of radiative transfer equation (also called Schwarzchild’s equation)
https://scienceofdoom.com/2011/02/07/understanding-atmospheric-radiation-and-the-%e2%80%9cgreenhouse%e2%80%9d-effect-%e2%80%93-part-six-the-equations/
75 W/m^2 came from numerical solution of RTE using computer (Kiehl and Trenberth, 1997)
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0477%281997%29078%3C0197%3AEAGMEB%3E2.0.CO%3B2
This is a good approximation since they are not forecasting future climate states. The parameters are constrained by satellite observations of SW and LW fluxes and environmental lapse rate. In short, it’s a complex curve fitting of RTE and empirical data. In contrast, forecasting is extrapolation beyond known data points.
Your radiative heat transfer equations are equivalent to a kindergarten school primer on heat transfer. Read a real text book on radiative heat transfer. You know nothing about the subject. I suggest you get the text book written by Michael F. Modest (the world authority on radiative heat transfer who you never even heard about until I told you). The title of the book is Radiative Heat Transfer 3rd edtion. Read the chapters on gaseous heat transfer and then you will understand why nobody can calculate it.
Yeah radiative transfer equations are for kindergarten and you don’t understand it. BTW I also teach quantum electrodynamics (QED) in my kindergarten class. Modest (Radiative Heat Transfer,3rd edition) devoted seven chapters to RTE solutions including four radiative transfer calculations for gases (Chapter 11), exact solutions (Chapter 14) and approximate solutions (Chapter 15) Just a kindergarten book you don’t understand. She will teach you how to solve RTE and QED
Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is plenty of scientific reasoning to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is really zero. It is all a matter of science.
I think Karl Popper has stated what is required to be scientific by his Falsification imperative. Only if repeated, seriously and systamatically conducted falsifications all fail, we ca conclude that a temporary truth (nota bene: until the next Falsification holds). I have asked several resaerch institutions to infom me about such Falsification tests – with no avail! Once again: how has the CO2 hypothesis been fared by such falsifications? I am still waiting for an answer
Rolf – All you need is one credible falsification to disprove a hypothesis.
I suggest that global warming alarmism has never been credibly demonstrated to be correct and has repeatedly been falsified.
The argument is about one parameter – the sensitivity of climate to increasing CO2. Let’s call that TCS.
There is ample Earth-scale evidence that TCS is less than or equal to about 1C/(2xCO2).
There is no credible evidence that it is much higher than that.
At this magnitude of TCS, the global warming crisis does not exist.
Examples:
1. Prehistoric CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were many times today levels, and there was no runaway or catastrophic warming.
2. Fossil fuel combustion and atmospheric CO2 strongly accelerated after about 1940, but Earth cooled significantly from ~1940 to ~1977.
3. Atmospheric CO2 increased after ~1940 , but the warming rates that occurred pre-1940 and post-1977 were about equal.
4. Even if you attribute ALL the warming that occurred in the modern era to increasing atmospheric CO2, you only calculate a TCS of about 1C/(2xCO2). [Christy and McNider (1994 & 2017), Lewis and Curry (2018).]
There are many more lines of argument that TCS is low – these are a few.
Regards, Allan
“Part of the reason the deception persists is because of the failure of skeptics to explain the scientific problems with the AGW claim in a way people can understand.”
Dr. Ball, it strikes me that what is needed — and it could be a project of WUWT — is a very simple sheet of incontrovertible, indisputable facts, presented devoid of emotional and political rhetoric and adjectives as well as arcane three letter acronyms and abbreviations. Pretend you are explaining it to a sixth grader of average intellectual abilities but who needs to have this important information.
It could start out something like this:
1. Carbon dioxide — CO2 — is NOT a pollutant. It is an essential plant food. If there were no CO2 in the air, all plants would die, followed quickly by all animals and people.
2. There have been at least X (number) of times in the earth’s history when CO2 was at much higher levels in the air, yet the earth was virtually covered with ice and snow. This shows that CO2 is not the primary cause of the warming of the earth.
3. No one knows exactly why the earth warms and cools, but it has done so for hundreds of millions of years, including when there were no people on the earth.
. . . and so forth
Good idea?
Thanks for this exercise on logic regarding AGW. I used to believe in AGW until I helped my son with a science project about 8 years ago and stumbled upon Watts Up With That. My eyes were opened and I became an official “denier” after that encounter with non-political skepticism. Keep up the good work!!
Dr. Tim Ball wrote in this article:
“It is likely that every year annual variance in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere exceeds the warming effects of human CO2. I can’t prove it, but…”
Hello Tim, (Cc via email)
Here is a relationship between UAH LT Global Temperatures and Equatorial Atmospheric Water Concentrations – this may provide the proof you need.
Best, Allan
UAH Lower Troposphere: Anomalies
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0beta5.txt
NOAA Precipitable Water Monolevel +/-20 N, 0-360W
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1665255773551978&set=a.1012901982120697.1073741826.100002027142240&type=3&theater
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/30/game-over/comment-page-1/#comment-2778422
The correct mechanism is described as follows (approx.):
Equatorial Pacific Sea Surface Temperature up –> Equatorial Atmospheric Water Vapor up 3 months later –> Equatorial Temperature up -> Global Temperature up one month later -> Global Atmospheric dCO2/dt up (contemporaneous with Global Temperature) -> Atmospheric CO2 trends up 9 months later
What drives Equatorial Pacific Sea Surface Temperature? In sub-decadal timeframes, El Nino and La Nina (ENSO); longer term, probably the Integral of Solar Activity.
The base CO2 increase of ~2ppm/year could have many causes, including fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc, but it has a minor or insignificant impact on global temperatures.
For those who are interested, here are a few more points to tie this together – note the graph:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/28/the-end-of-the-end-of-winter/comment-page-1/#comment-2702794
[excerpted]
You may recall our conversation of November 11, 2017, excerpted below.
The atmospheric cooling that I originally predicted (4 months in advance) using the Nino34 anomaly has started to materialize in November 2017 – more global cooling should follow. I can only predict 4 months in the future using the Nino34 temperature anomaly, and 6 months using the Equatorial Upper Ocean temperature anomaly.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1527601687317388&set=a.1012901982120697.1073741826.100002027142240&type=3&theater
Global atmospheric temperatures have reacted a bit later than usual to the drop in Nino34 temperatures, but are slowly returning to their “typical relationship”. This delay in the typical relationship is probably due to the large magnitude of the latest El Nino, such that the excess heat is taking longer-than-usual to dissipate from the ocean through the atmosphere and into space. See the email conversation with John Christy (Nov.4, 2017), located just above on the same page of wattsup.
The sharp decline in the UAHLT global atmospheric temperature anomaly in November 2017 should be followed by even more cooling, down to about 0.0C as I predicted on November 12. I would really like to be wrong about this further cooling, because we are all freezing in most of North America, Prescient people are taking their brass lawn ornaments indoors, such that the extremities do not freeze off.
In the longer term, I expect moderate global cooling, as was experienced from ~1940 to ~1975, to resume. I predicted in 2002 that this moderate multi-decadal global cooling would re-commence by ~2020 to 2030, and this prediction is looking increasingly probable, since solar activity has crashed in SC 24 (and will probably also be very low in SC25).
I hope to be wrong about this last prediction – both humanity and the environment suffer in a cooling world. This human suffering will be exacerbated by the actions of our corrupt/imbecilic politicians, who have greatly compromised our electrical grids due to their over-reliance on intermittent wind and solar energy systems.
Best personal regards, Allan in Calgary
__________________________________
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/11/noaa-la-nina-is-officially-back/#comment-2663851
Allan M R MacRae November 12, 2017 at 1:32 pm
My further analysis suggests the UAH LT temperature anomaly will cool to about 0.0C within about 6 months.
__________________________________
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/11/noaa-la-nina-is-officially-back/#comment-2663875
AndyG55 November 12, 2017 at 1:51 pm
WOW, Allan, you reckon that far, that quickly.
That’ll make things interesting, especially if it continues to drop after that.
_________________________________
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/11/noaa-la-nina-is-officially-back/#comment-2663837
From: John Christy
Date: November 4, 2017 at 7:28:22 PM GMT+7
To: Allan MacRae
Cc: Anthony Watts, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Joe D’Aleo, Joe Bastardi
Subject: Re: Sorted – atmospheric cooling will resume soon
Allan
Yes. We’ve seen this correlation since our first paper about it in Nature back in 1994. The Pacific gave up a lot of heat between July and October – and some of it is making its way through the atmosphere. We think the anomalies will drop soon too.
John C.
The following is in support of the above article.
Quote from the above article.
Systems that have positive feedback are unstable. Almost all, natural physical systems have negative feedback. Negative feedback resists change.
The standard method to determine whether a system has positive or negative feed is to determine how the system responses to a step input change, in this case a change in the energy that is heating the earth.
We know when there are very, very, large volcanic eruptions (volcanic eruptions create sulfur dioxide which reflects sunlight and cools the planet) that we have a year without summer which indicates a very strong step change in amount of energy that is reaching the earth.
There is not, however, decades of widely oscillating temperature after a volcanic eruption.
The system response to a volcanic eruption shows the planet strong resists (negative feedback) forcing changes.
The following paper analyzes eight independent step changes in forcing that occur naturally on the earth to determine how the atmosphere responses to a step change in forcing.
In all of the eight independent cases, the analyze supports the assertion that the earth’s response to a change in forcing is strongly negative.
Idso Skeptics View of Global Warming
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/idso98.pdf
The following is another paper that analyzes how the planet actually responses to forcing changes and compares the actual response of the atmosphere to what is predicted by 11 different climate models. In all cases the climate models are incorrect.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf