By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
USA Today, in common with most of the banestream media, appears to be temperamentally incapable of fairly reporting both sides of the climate question. On Friday July 6 Doyle Rice, its “weather editor”, published yet another “worser than y’all ever done thunk” piece, this time “reporting” – with his trademark lack of critical faculty – a “new study” suggesting that global warming may prove to be “double what had been predicted”.
The article opens in Doyle’s characteristically tramp-toting-“The-End-Is-Nigh”-banner style with the words “Collapsing polar ice caps, a green Sahara Desert, a 20-foot sea-level rise.”
Let’s knock Doyle’s rubbish on the head, point by fatuous point.
Collapsing polar ice caps: Doyle failed to mention that until the last couple of years Antarctic sea ice had been growing, or that both in Antarctica, home to 90% of the world’s ice, and in Greenland (5%), there is a striking correlation between areas of undersea volcanic activity and areas of ice loss, or that in Antarctica a new global low temperature record was recently set.
A green Sahara desert: Doyle somehow failed to mention that greening a desert (the Sahara was first reported to be greening as far back as 1981, so it’s not news) is a good thing, not a bad thing, just as the loss of permafrost in Russia and northern Canada would be a good thing, opening up vast new acreages of agricultural land.
Doyle Rice – “lack of critical faculty”
“A 20-foot sea-level rise”: Frankly, the world is becoming bored of this stale nonsense. IPCC has been menacing us with 20ft sea-level rises for decades, but nobody cares anymore, because sea level continues to rise at about 8 inches a century, not 20 feet. Even Al Gore’s sci-fi comedy horror movie, A Profitable Fiction, made the silly 20 feet claim: but, in the very year when Gore was making the movie, he was buying a $4 million condo at – er – Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, just feet from the allegedly rising ocean. Follow the money, Doyle, baby!
An artfully-colored world map: Again, we’ve seen it all before:
The caption read as follows: “This map shows Earth’s average global temperature from 2013 to 2017, as compared to a baseline average from 1951 to 1980, according to an analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Yellows, oranges, and reds show regions warmer than the baseline.”
Yeah, whatever. Let’s recolor the map. New caption: “Green regions are where the world has benefited from slightly warmer weather”.
Doyle intones, tediously, that “Global warming could be twice as warm as current climate models predict.” Or it could be half as fast as models predict – just as it has been since the 1970s, not that Doyle tells you that. We’ll come back to this point shortly.
Next, Doyle says: “The rate of warming is also remarkable: ‘The changes we see today are much faster than anything encountered in Earth’s history. In terms of rate of change, we are in uncharted waters,’ said study co-author Katrin Meissner of the University of New South Wales in Australia.”
And did he show her – or, for that matter, USA Today’s few remaining readers – the following graph from the Central England Temperature Record for 1694-1733? Um, no. The CET record is quite a respectable proxy for global temperature change, and it shows – in common with many other lines of evidence from the end of the Little Ice Age – that for 40 years the rate of global warming was equivalent to 4.33 K/century – about twice as rapid as the fastest rate seen in any 40-year period since Man began influencing climate in 1950.
Doyle digs himself in deeper: “This could mean the landmark Paris Climate Agreement – which seeks to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels – may not be enough to ward off catastrophe.”
However, as the 2018 BP Annual Statistical Review of Energy shows, growth in GDP and in energy is a good deal faster in the non-OECD countries, to very few of which the “landmark” Paris agreement applies, than in the OECD countries, to nearly all of which it applies.
And does Doyle tell his readers that, after 20 years of politicized reporting by the likes of him, coal’s share of global power generation is 38%, exactly as it was 20 years ago? Nope.
On drones dreary Doyle: “Even with just 2 degrees of warming – and potentially just 1.5 degrees – significant impacts on the Earth system are profound,” said study co-author Alan Mix, a scientist from Oregon State University. “We can expect that sea-level rise could become unstoppable for millennia, impacting much of the world’s population, infrastructure and economic activity.”
Professor Nils-Axel Mörner, who has been studying sea level for half a century and has written more than 650 papers on the subject, says mean sea level rise was 8 inches in the past century and will be 2 ± 6 inches this century. Much of the apparent “sea-level rise” in the official record was artificially conjured into being by devices such as the fictitious “glacial isostatic adjustment” (see diagram above).
Now for the “Worse Than We Thought” meme: “Study lead author Hubertus Fischer of the University of Bern in Switzerland and his team found that our current climate predictions may underestimate long-term warming by as much as a factor of two. Meissner said that “climate models appear to be trustworthy for small changes, such as for low-emission scenarios over short periods, say over the next few decades out to 2100. But as the change gets larger or more persistent … it appears they underestimate climate change.”
Did Doyle check any of this nonsense before merely parroting it? Don’t hold your breath, gentle reader. Of course he didn’t. All he did was check that these supposed “findings” were consistent with the Party Line. And that was that.
We have already seen that the statement published by Doyle to the effect that recent warming was unprecedented was flat-out nonsense. Let us now check his repetition of the statement that “current climate predictions may underestimate long-term warming by as much as a factor of two.”
We shall check this statement in two directions: first, by seeing whether current warming is exceeding existing predictions, and then by seeing whether it is likely that warming will accelerate many times over so as to match the new, “Worse Than We Thought” predictions.
IPCC’s very large interval of predictions made in 1990 is the yellow zone in the graph above. The bright blue trend-line is the least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the NCEI and UAH global-temperature anomalies from 1990 to May 2018. The observed rate of global warming is entirely below IPCC’s original predictions, and not much above half of its mid-range prediction.
To exceed IPCC’s mid-range prediction by double, the warming rate would have to increase by more than triple, from 1.55 K/century equivalent to 5.55 K/century.
What of the computer models? In the CMIP5 ensemble, the mid-range estimate of equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 (which is near enough the same as the mid-range estimate of 21st-century warming from all manmade sources) is 3.35 K (derived from Andrews 2012). To double the CMIP5 models’ mid-range rate, the warming rate would have to increase more than fourfold, from 1.55 K/century equivalent to 6.7 K/century.
It’s not going to happen – or, if it does, Man’s tiny perturbation of the climate is not going to be responsible. To show the arithmetically-challenged Doyle why global warming will be less than half of what is predicted rather than double, let’s do the math for him.
From Andrews 2012 we learn that the radiative forcing from doubled CO2 is about 3.464 Watts per square meter. The Planck sensitivity parameter is 0.299 Kelvin per Watt per square meter (Schlesinger 1985). So reference sensitivity to doubled CO2, before accounting for feedback, is the product of the two: i.e. 1.035 K.
Since the difference between reference and equilibrium sensitivity is accounted for solely by the feedback factor (i.e., the fraction of equilibrium temperature that is feedback-driven), all we need to do is find out what that feedback factor is. That is the holy grail of climate-sensitivity studies.
IPCC mentions “feedback” >1000 times in its 2013 Fifth Assessment Report, but it has no idea of the true value. Why not? Because in 1985 James Hansen at NASA made a striking error of physics that climatologists have profitably copied ever since.
James Hansen, ex-head of NASA GISS, should perhaps have been arrested for bad science.
From Lacis et al. 2010, the albedo in the absence of greenhouse gases would be 0.418 compared with today’s 0.293. Today’s insolation is 1364.625 Watts per square meter (Mekaoui et al., 2010; see also DeWitte & Nevens 2016). To this we should add the direct forcing of about 38.6 Watts per square meter from the presence of the non-condensing greenhouse gases. From these data the fundamental equation of radiative transfer tells us that emission temperature, which would obtain at the surface in the absence of greenhouse gases, would be 254.3 K before taking any account of temperature feedback.
However, the surface temperature in 1850, before any appreciable anthropogenic perturbation, was 287.55 K (HadCRUT4). From these values, we can directly find the hitherto-elusive feedback factor. It is simply 1 – 254.3 / 287.55, or 0.116. And not the 0.6-0.9 assumed by the usual suspects. Ever since Hansen’s catastrophic 1984 paper, climate science has, in effect, been using an equation to represent the influence of feedback on temperature that, though not incorrect, is incomplete and, therefore, incapable of determining the feedback factor correctly.
How official climatology subtracted out the Sun by mistake and got global warming wrong. Its variant is the difference between two equilibrium states of the full, mainstream equation.
Climatology’s defective variant of the system-gain equation that is universal in control theory – the study of feedback in dynamical systems (systems that change their state over time) – is, in effect, the difference between two equilibrium states in the complete, mainstream equation.
Since the emission temperature is common to all equilibrium states, Hansen’s use of an equation that takes the difference between them subtracts out the Sun’s warmth – the principal input on which the feedback response depends. That is why the feedback factor has until now been exaggerated up to sixfold, and climate sensitivity up to fourfold.
How have things changed since 1850? Well, there has been 2.29 Watts per square meter of net anthropogenic radiative forcing (IPCC, 2013, fig. SPM.5). Multiply that by the Planck parameter 0.299 to obtain the reference warming from 1850-2011 attributable to Man: about 0.7 K. But there was 0.75 K warming from 1850-2011 (HadCRUT4 again), and to this we might add 0.25 K to this, making 1 K in all, to allow for the imagined (and probably imaginary) “radiative imbalance” of 0.6 Watts per square meter over the period.
So the feedback factor for 2011 is 1 – (254.3 + 0.7) / (287.55 + 1.0) = 0.116, exactly as it was in 1850. To three decimal places it is the same as the feedback factor for 1850. Why so little change? The reason is that the 0.7 K reference warming contributed by Man is so paltry compared with the 254.3 K already contributed by the Sun and by the pre-existing greenhouse gases.
Now that we know the feedback factor, we can derive equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 concentration. It is simply the ratio of the reference warming of 1.035 K from doubled CO2 to (1 – 0.116), which works out at less than 1.2 K. Not the 1.5-4.5 K predicted by IPCC; not the 2.1-4.7 K predicted by the CMIP5 models; and certainly not the 6.7 K implicit in the paper on which Doyle’s silly, extremist article is predicated. The Party Line is no substitute for doing the math.
When your science comes from non-scientists…
You have to remember that the wamistas define a scientist as anyone who agrees with them.
Regardless of training or knowledge.
Likewise anyone who disagrees with them is not a scientist.
“You have to remember that the wamistas define a scientist as anyone who agrees with them.”
No, but thanks for making that up. Unless you really think that the super majority of scientists got together and determined the outcome before they did the work. That always cracks me up when I read about how scientists are all in on some Chinese Hoax.
Anyone who disagrees and proves their science is a hero. We are still waiting for that hero.
Why do you make up definitions?
Your idiotic response means you obviously have NOT read the ClimateGate emails where they did exactly that.
ROFL
Alley refers to “the super majority of scientists.” Well, 99.7% of 11,944 papers on climate and related topics published in the peer-reviewed journals in the 25 years 1991-2011 did not state that recent global warming was chiefly manmade. They did not, therefore, affirm the “consensus” position. Only 0.3%, or just 41 papers, did. So the “super majority of scientists” appears to be silently on the side of skepticism. At any rate, it is not explicitly on the side of Alley and climate fanaticism.
Maybe Mr.Alley should start building his Noah’s ark in anticipation of the avalanche of sea water rise that will flood the earth from global warming (warming that has been at the rate of 1.3C per century according to the UAH satellite figures). Maybe he should also buy himself an aluminum fire protection suit with kevlar stitching to protect himself from the fires that are gonna break out all over the world in the places that arent flooded by the rising seas. Or we could buy him a one way ticket on Elon Musk’s rocket ship to Mars. No global warming there( quite cold actually).
Seems there is quite a bit of global warming on Mars
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/31/mars-also-undergoing-climate-change-ice-age-retrea/
Yah Mars has been coming out of an ice age for the past 370000 years. Since the planet atmosphere is 95%CO2 there is a lot of dry ice (solid CO2) there . For real ice to form on the surface the dry ice has to “melt”/sublimate. That is what the Mars planetary missions have spotted.
“We found an accelerated accumulation rate of ice in the uppermost 100 to 300 meters of the polar cap”
If that is your idea of global warming then you should join Alley on his one way ticket on Musk’s flight. Stay posted for departure takeoff times.
For those that only believe in AGW then there is no problem, right? The world only has a problem if CAGW happens; correct? Because if you believe that there are negative consequences to AGW, then what you are really saying is that AGW is impossible and only CAGW can happen. So I will assume that AGW is a good thing and wont worry about it. However, all the alarmists that truly believe in CAGW must include all the politicians and media because they all want to impose carbon taxes. So I say to all those people why aren’t you buying cheap land in the middle of Greenland? You already know that you can’t stop China and India from continuing to put more CO2 into the atmosphere. So fighting catastrophic global warming is a losing battle. Therefore if you really believe in it, you should be selling all your beachfront property and preparing to move to places like the middle of Greenland. Im sure that no matter how hot it gets elsewhere , the middle of Greenland will be nowhere near sweating temperatures. I’m sure you can pick up some property fairly cheaply from the Danish government. In fact I’m surprised that the Danish government isn’t advertising this. They could make a lot of money selling land plots to private alarmist citizens while still retaining sovereignty .
No reason to hurry. It is going to be luke warm sea water then…:=)
No hoax, just orthodoxy enforcement. http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018/1/14/climate-science-and-the-process-of-orthodoxy-enforcement
No hoax, just a bunch of infantile folks who haven’t outgrown being in the “in crowd” which is endemic in adolescence.
Why have’t YOU outgrown it and learned to think for YOURSELF like an adult? Gutless?
http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018/1/14/climate-science-and-the-process-of-orthodoxy-enforcement
Despite those with qualifications in natural history calling themselves scientists, the term scientist was coined by a branch of philosophers who identified themselves as adhering to a very specific philosophy , one that was opposed to inductive logic and which relied on the principles of falsification.
You could have a pile of degrees in as many of the sciences as you like, it does not make you a scientist in the strictest sense of the term. In fact a scientist need not even have a degree as long as they adhere to the philosophy..
Well, nowdays of course anyone can be a “scientist” since it’s been redefined to suite – when you can degrees in all manner of things which require ‘science’ to be tacked onto the end to signify it’s self important and oft delusional belief that it’s a science rather than a formalized dogma like climatism, economics or ‘health’.
Wouldn’t you agree this sort of self aggrandizement dilutes the real principles of science? I’d tend to view scientists as legitimate claimants to the title, not by holding a bit of paper that says they paid for a course, but more by their actions and principles.
Magnificent comment! I do have some scientific training in biology, botany and chemistry, but I am a layperson in terms of ‘climate science’. I therefore am more interested in looking at the epistemology and politics of the AGW theory, and its ”structural’ failures. I studied the philosophy of science (all scientists should have to do this). I can’t argue on the finer technical details of CO2 and statistics and graphs, but I am trying to put together a simple explanation for friends and family about the way scientific hypotheses need to be defined, limited, and must be falsifiable in order to have any credibility. Maybe when I’ve done it, somebody here might look over it for me? Or is there already such a simple document in existence? It appears to me that the simple hypothesis was CO2 would cause x amount of warming, and that Hansen’s original hypotheses failed, because the prediction closest to reality was based on ceasing all industrial CO2 production? Is that correct? And that all they seem to do is cherry pick different inputs in order to try to make the models fit the hypothesis? Am I getting this?
Attaboy!
You dont often need philosophy, but when you do, boy, you do!
the antidote to climate science, is to show that its not actually science. Any more than social science is.
Hi Silvia,
This comment may contain a few useful references regarding the philosophy of science – sorry, no time to edit.
I particularly like the video of Richard Feynman, included below.
Also look up Karl Popper.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/pop-sci/
Wonderful men – intellectual giants of our time.
Best, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/15/pres-trumps-pick-to-replace-sec-of-state-tillerson-is-a-bigger-climate-denier/comment-page-1/#comment-2766222
“AYE – THERE’S THE RUB!”
Global cooling occurred from ~1940 to 1977, even as fossil fuel consumption accelerated strongly. This observation DISPROVES the “runaway global warming” hypothesis. This ~37-year global cooling period was naturally-caused, and was NOT primarily driven by increasing atmospheric CO2, unless you believe (as many warmists do) that CO2 is the “demon molecule”, that can cause both global warming AND global cooling, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria…
RICHARD FEYNMAN ON THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD (1964)
https://youtu.be/0KmimDq4cSU
at 0:39/9:58: ”If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.”
At 4:01/9:58: “You can always prove any definite theory wrong.”
At 6:09/9:58: “By having a vague theory, it’s possible to get either result.”
THIS IS THE “CLIMATE CHANGE” ALARMISTS’ KEY STRATEGY:
“By having a vague theory, it’s possible to get either result.” – Richard Feynman
“A theory that is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific.” – Karl Popper.
The “Climate Change” hypothesis is so vague, and changes so often, that it is not falsifiable and not scientific. It should be rejected as unscientific nonsense – the prattling of imbeciles.
The “Runaway Global Warming” hypothesis is at least falsifiable, and IT HAS BEEN ADEQUATELY FALSIFIED:
1. By the ~37-year global cooling period from ~1940 to 1977;
2. By “the Pause”, when temperature have not increased significantly since the mid-1990’s, despite increasing atmospheric CO2;
3. By the fact that sea surface temperatures have not increased significantly since ~1982, and corresponding air temperatures increased largely due to the dissipation of the cooling impact of two century-scale volcanoes in 1982 and 1991+;
4. By the fact that CO2 lags temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record, and the future cannot cause the past (in this space-time continuum).
Regards, Allan
__________________________________________________________________________
“EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS”
Charles Mackay (1841)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
Quotations
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
“Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome.”
****************************************************************************
Thank you! Lots of homework for me to do!
An interesting argument in response to Feynman comes from Murphy: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” Please take into consideration that the experiment may be wrong as well.
But, I agree, the Botchocrats of climate science (see Lord Monckton on Hansen’s equation) are ubiquituous.
How about we nominate Alley as the official Purveyor of Non-Science on the WUWT blog.
QED.
Most people on this site want to define science to fit their agenda. Suddenly, science is non-science, and we can got on with pretending that the earth is cooling.
Alley, how old are you?
I’m genuinely interested to know.
Most people on this site want to define science to fit their agenda.
Sounds just like you, Alley.
Just because something happens to fit my agenda does not necessarily mean that it is wrong.
When your pot shots come from blind Alleys……
Blind Alley has not, perhaps, understood that philosophia naturalis is nothing without philosophia moralis. True science, as opposed to mere totalitarian propaganda dolled up to look like science, has a sole end and object: the truth. The fundamental principal of logic is that everything that is true is consistent with everything else that is true and inconsistent with everything that is false, while everything that is false, whether consistent or consistent with anything else that is false, is inconsistent with everything that is true.
Therefore, surprising though it may seem to those who have been taught to defer to the Party Line in the viciously intolerant Marxist environment of today’s schools and universities, it matters less whether a “scientist” has a piece of worthless paper from one of these no-longer-valuable institutions to demonstrate that he or she has received appropriate Socialist indoctrination in the Party Line than whether he or she has a sufficient grasp of the centrality of objective truth in science to be able to conduct anything like a genuine scientific enquiry at all.
It was al-Haytham who founded in the East the scientific method that Thales of Miletus had founded in the West. In 11th-century Iraq, as the glorious age of Islamic scholarship centered in Baghdad and Damashq was drawing to its close, he wrote most beautifully of the scientist as “the seeker after truth”.
Precisely to assist Blind Alley and others of his ilk, my distinguished co-authors, nearly all of whom have pieces of paper to demonstrate that they have received the appropriate Socialist training by which Mr Dead End sets such store, have been working intensively with me in recent months to reduce our argument to nothing more than the simplest of high-school algebra, in which even I have a certificate of appropriate Socialist training.
Therefore, it will be possible for anyone sufficiently diligent, interested and, unlike Mr Cul-de-Sac, open-minded to follow every step of our very simple and, in our submission, irrefutable argument and decide for himself or herself not whether we are “scientists” – increasingly and justifiably a term of abuse these days – but whether or not our argument is logically valid and our premises are true. For if an argument contains no logical inconsistencies and its premises are true, it is a sound argument, whose conclusion is necessarily true. Like it or not, that is how true science is done.
.o0O0o.
Sylvia makes the constructive suggestion of putting together a note for friends and family on how the scientific method works. Her starting-point will perhaps be the remarkable masterwork Logik der Forschung (The logic of scientific discovery) by Karl Popper.
“Party Line than whether he or she has a sufficient grasp of the centrality of objective truth in science to be able to conduct anything like a genuine scientific enquiry at all.” Toting the “Party Line” The Party is paying them to tot the “line”.
[Snip. No need to insult another commenter. -mod]
Once again sir, thank you for your efforts
Look carefully at the photo of Doyle Rice. Now look again. Where have you seen this face before? Think way back, to when you were a kid reading Mad Magazine. Aah-hah!!!
Alfred E. Newman has grown up!
“What? Me worry?”
ALLAN,
Much of your comments resonate with me.
Not sure about this one.
A bit Ad hom, perhaps. The poor chap has little input on how he [here] looks!
Plus – whilst I can see some minor similarities – I do not channel Alfred E. I am afraid.
Smiles, plus – Auto
I reckon with increasing temperature half of the things that happen would be good and half bad. Likewise with decreasing temperature – the other halves would be good and bad. Up to a point of course – too hot or too cold would both be bad…
But the global warmongering scaremongering brigade, otherwise known as the lunatic left, would have us believe that everything will be bad. Worse, in fact, than our greatest fears. And you can bet your bottom dollar, because that’s what they’re after, that were we in a cooling cycle at the moment they would be crying about global cooling and the next ice age. Just as they were doing in the 1970’s in fact. During the last (natural) cooling cycle.)
Warmer is better for life, so I would disagree with your reckoning.
(Up to a point of course), warming will have overwhelmingly positive effects and relatively few negative effects, if any. A minor warming of the sort we have in store with ECS of 1.2K or less, would give us slightly more rain to improve agriculture, which will also be improved by enriched CO2 in the atmosphere, which additionally will make plants more resistant to water stress due to more efficient water use when CO2 concentrations are higher. Taken together, these factors will expand the arable land area across the globe, likely without reducing it anywhere. To make things even less scary, bear in mind that any warming will be primarily in the form of higher minimum temperatures at night.
If all of this is accepted as the case, then logically the opposite (cooling) must have overwhelmingly negative effects and relatively few positive.
Warming of a degree or so will also add millions of acres of land on which agriculture becomes possible.
The observed warming is minimum temperatures, not maximum. If anything the climate is becoming milder.
Incorrect.
Zazove makes the useful point that the temperature differentials that are the chief cause of storminess are diminishing a little as the world warms a little. As explained in the head posting, this fact will tend to reduce extreme-weather events that arise from storms in the extratropics, and arguably in the tropics as well.
Warmer air holds more moisture, and that is the fuel of storms.
Yes, and that’s why the most powerful storms occur in polar regions.
Evidence to support that claim?
To date … practically ALL the so called “global” warming has been in the high north latitudes. No matter how you slice it, “global” warming doesn’t exists … there is only a warming global average temperature, driven exclusively by a warming arctic, and that only during certain times of the year.
Warming is not better for life if you are in India, or many parts of Africa, or the Middle East, or parts of the US Southwest.
Chris,
I’d think the Sahara Desert would be the best example possible of a place where “warmer is not better.” Yet even Doyle’s USA Today article mentions the greening of the Sahara.
Hmmmm. Why is that?
Well, for starters you fail to mention that the greening of the Sahara is going to lead to more severe tropical cyclones. Second, a green Sahara may help the folks in that sparsely populated area (less than 1M), but higher temps will make things worse for the millions elsewhere in Africa and the ME.
https://www.su.se/english/research/profile-areas/climate-seas-and-environment/sahara-greening-intensify-tropical-cyclone-activity-worldwide-1.335745
If it were true that warming would hurt those you listed perhaps then those over-heated millions could employ the time-honoured solution to drought… move. If the grass is greener in the Sahara… You admit warmth causes more rain so how a slight warming could even cause deaths I don’t know.
I feel you are fishing about for phantoms to scare everybody with. That global warming is a net global benefit for flora and fauna alike is self-evident. We aren’t frightened by these imagined threats. Global slavery and penury under Agenda 2030 is a real threat on the other hand.
The greening is not primarily due to warmer temperatures, it is due to higher CO2, and the fact that plants need less water when they have more CO2 because they are more efficient in their water use. They lose less water when they have fewer stoma and open them less in respiration.
As a result, areas that may have the same rainfall as in the past but were barren are now green. And yes, the very minor temperature increase may cause more evaporation and lead to more rainfall.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/03/global-temperature-report-june-2018/
Look at the graphs, barely any warming in the Sahara or anywhere in the tropics
If by “warming” you mean (and “they” DO mean) “increase in AVERAGE surface temperatures,” AND “caused by CO2,” then the specific regions of which you speak will see little change, since most such change (if it exists) will occur in the coldest and driest air masses, not in hot/humid areas.
So, on balance, warming IS better for life. And if you continue to struggle with this concept, compare the diversity and extent of “life” in the tropics as compared with the poles.
There is no struggle at all. On balance, global warming is NOT better for mankind. The tropics don’t need to be any warmer. And comparing the tropics to the poles is just silly. No one is saying we should cool the tropics, we just don’t want to warm them more.
Go ahead, prove me wrong. Post links for me that indicate the people living in the tropics are advocating for higher temperatures.
Chris, you continue to miss the point. Are you open to the truth or just trying to be a troll?
The tropics have shown very little warming. When they talk about a global average temperature, it has no physical meaning. If you average the temperature of the solar system to include the sun and the Oort cloud, what does that mean? That’s an extreme example but it’s the same idea as averaging across the whole surface of the earth to include the poles and the tropics. Look at the data. The arctic is a bit warmer, the antarctic is a bit cooler and the tropics are barely changing. And when they talk about average temperatures at a particular place, its an average of the nighttime and daytime temperatures. When the nighttime lows are moderated and the daytime highs do not change, the average rises, but it does not mean that the high temperatures are rising, it means that the low temperatures are rising.
Yes it’s hot right now in California. It was extremely hot in New England last week. It’s called summer.
I can’t feel any difference whether it is 31°C or 33°C outside, it is darned hot to me. But is makes a difference when I got 15°C or 17°C in the garden. 17° just feels better.
Chris,
You are deceived by the propaganda machine. It is not significantly warming in the tropics, and there is nothing out of the ordinary in having heat waves during the summer. Where it is warming, primarily in the arctic, the low temperatures are a bit warmer at night.
Chris – have you ever been to the Sahara Desert? I have, several times, in Tunisia and also in Egypt. I’ve also been to deserts in Chile (the Atacama) and in Kazakstan (the Central Asian).
The limiting factor to life in the desert is WATER, not heat. Where there is water there is life. Anything that enables life to exist, including increased atmospheric CO2, will improve life for all that live there. Greening of the desert due to increased atmospheric CO2 is beneficial and of far greater importance than any minor resulting warming that may occur.
People and animals manage to live in extreme heat, often by moving their abodes underground. People do this in the Sahara and also in Australia.
But they cannot survive without water.
“too hot or too cold would both be bad…” For who? I lived in Leadville Co. One of my co-workers was a “local”. Lived all is life in Leadville. It didn’t make any difference what the temperature was he wore coverall, t-shirt, hard steel toe boots and maybe a light jacket. By the way we worked outside. Elevation 10,250Ft. Then I worked in Yuma, Az. I would be sweating in the shade by 9am. My “local” co-workers would even break a sweat in the sun at high noon. We adapt.
O/T:
Sorry to hear that May’s Remainers appear to be winning.
Keep fighting the good fight Christopher Monckton of Brenchley.
Cheers.
The question is whether May remains , not Britain.
It is sufficient for the Conservative party to elect a new leader to change the British PM. ( Yep , no “popular vote” needed here either ).
David Davies is principled man and would be welcome. But I fear that Bojo sees this as his chance to make a run for PM. God help us.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was a good as London mayor, and I voted for him twice, but a lousy and embarrassing secretary of state. As a born American he would stand better chance if he went for the US presidency in six years time.
Agree, DD is a man of principle, not so the other one. While the boogieman Corbyn is around TM the PM is safe.
Nope. The key thing sis whether someone like Rees Mogg throws his hat into the ring. That is a man who people feel can both deliver brexit and make the Tories electable.
That is the quandary for the powers that be. Right now a shabby BRINO (Brexit in name only) would suit them fine. They and the EU are two cheeks of the same arse as George Galloway would say.
BUT they run the risk of electoral suicide for the tories if they do, and despite having maneuvered such a joke into control of the opposition, as well as into the Tory party leadership, the chance that out of sheer frustration and spite and black humour the British electorate might place him in a position of power, exists.
In short there is a political vacuum now that UKIP has been destroyed … and nature abhors a vacuum.
Britain knows what it wants, and all it takes is a group of people to deliver it, and electoral success is theirs.
Unfortunately its not what TPTB want. They are career bureaucrats and people with money. Serious money.
So they have to be forced to accept it.
Up till now May has been better than disunity. But line has been crossed.
To preserve the party in power is in the end all the rank and file career politicians want.
and if Rees Mogg and a clean Brexit will deliver a Tory victory, farewell Treason Maybe, and all hail Rees Mogg. And Brexit.
Couldn’t agree more. JRM is a character, and got a good one. May with her broad incompetence is just an open invitation to name-calling.
Medium and the long term problem for the Leavers is that the young favour Remain and the elderly Leave. As the things stand there is around a million/year of new 18 year old possible voters added, while nearly as much fewer of the older generation (over 55) voters who remember the UK before its common market entry.
It is also true that young are as not enthusiastic voters as the elderly are, but in the recent year or two there has been an increase in politization of the youngsters.
It is unlikely that EU will want to loose 39 billion exit fee payable by the UK, not to mention German car makers pressure, so the EU will not entertain idea of ‘no deal’, hence some modification of the PM’s latest proposal may be accepted so a quasi- or semi- Brexit is most likely. It is thought that the true exit may not be completed by 2022 or later, by then the ratio of leave/remain supporters may not be same as it was two years ago.
In the last few days it has been painfully demonstrated that ‘six days is long time in the British politics’, so it is unwise to speculate what may change in six years between 2016 -2022. As ‘the Brexit means Brexit’ has evolved (as PM said today) (looks like into a BRINO -brexit in name only) so the quasi-Brexit may slowly and naturally fade out of existence.
declaration: I voted remain, so it did majority of his lordship’s countrymen.
Real smart vote, way to vote for globalism aka socialism. What a putz
I assume that is an insult. The UK is still country that allows diversity of opinion. The 16 million of people (48%) who voted remain and pay taxes are unlikely to be all idiots, morons or worthless creatures. Many of my friends and neighbours voted leave, but my respect for them has not change in any way.
Democracy died in the UK last Friday at the hand of the conservative party.
Many who voted leave will never vote again for any party after their instructions to parliament were prevaricated upon for two years and then willfully ignored.
We truly will be a vassal state under the jackboot of the usual suspect which reneges on it’s defence spending commitments and defrauds in it’s trading and tariffs as Mr. Trump has noticed and duly acted upon.
It is said that one of the East European dictators always had ‘black maria’ parked at the Central committee’s exit door every time when the Politburo met.
No 10 was far more civilised on Friday at the Chequers, no ‘black maria’ just the phone number for the local mini-cab firm.
Some say that there was a column of hearses slowly rolling past…
Actually, what we have seen over the last two years is that Britain is not still a country that allows diversity of opinion. From climate change to Brexit, those that express opinions that are not ‘on message’ are derided, marginalised, lose their jobs and their careers, and are made to feel like social pariahs.
Your post is an example. The ‘on message’ rhetoric is that young people who are claimed to be remainers, will outnumber old leavers as they die off. AND WILL NOT CHANGE THEIR VIEWS as they age.
This is an ageist and patronizing and insulting view of the young and the old.
As well as betraying a massive lack of comprehension as to what 17 million UK voters actually were voting for.
all matter of opinion,
… today outrageous, tomorrow the ‘new conservative’ or mainstream (gay rights, breast feeding in public, Daily Mail show-biz online pages ….)
… ‘ageist’ most likely, sadly the nature does its thing.
May isn’t ‘dead woman walking’ , just a kitten with nine lives, at the end outfoxing the Leavers, much stronger today than she was yesterday.
Let’s enjoy good weather, have a nice day.
… and enjoy the football world cup
Good luck England!
How come that the EU outplayed rest of the world?
Belgium, France, England and Croatia the only ones left standing.
Outrageous!
actually a majority voted leave
or we wouldnt be here
Scotland, the country of the lord Monckton of Brenchley voted by 60% to 40% Remain.
Scotland (/ˈskɒtlənd/; Scottish Gaelic: Alba [ˈal̪ˠapə] ( listen)) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland
In general, the totalitarians voted to remain in the EU and the libertarians voted for freedom. Scotland these days is totalitarian-minded. But it had the sense to vote to stay in the United Kingdom, for its canny citizens knew that under the inept totalitarian rule of the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Scotland (SNP) it would have been bankrupt in six months.
I visited Scotland only one time couple of decades ago, great country of very friendly people. Coming from Montenegro the land of mountains, sea and disobedient clannish minded rebellious populace, I feel far greater affinity with Scots than with the English despite living in the South East since my student days.
Och ! Aye ! Being REALLY CANNY my ancestors voted LEAVE
with their FEET and ended up in New South Wales , for
pretty much the same reason , but 3 or 4 generations ago !!
Now THAT takes a bit of prescience !
Leo,
while a majority voted leave nobody actually knew what they were voting for.
It is still exceedingly unclear what “leave” means or meant to the people who voted for. What is apparent is that there are a multitude of ways of leaving the EU and there is no consensus on what people want or what would be best economically.
Oh lord that old trope – again! The most ignorant, fatuous recourse of the terminally butt hurt. Heh, how about this Percy – You didn’t know what you were voting for either. There are multiple ways of remaining in the EU and blah, blah, blah … See how that works?
Cephus,
Voting remain meant keeping all existing existing treaties with the EU it was well defined and everyone knew what it meant. Nobody clarified what leaving the EU meant – did it mean staying in the single market,
and/or customs union etc. There was and still are a variety of ways of leaving the EU (ranging between a soft and hard exit) but there was only every a single way of remaining.
I knew exactly what I voted for and that is to get out of the EU in it’s entirety, not a bit here and a bit there.
The UK was deliberately taken in to the EEC under false pretences as in 1972 Heath new the plan all along was for it to morph in to the current EU.
The UK public were and have been lied to ever since.
I’ll bet you a majority are very happy that they didn’t “join” the Euro. They know what that means too.
THAT is one of the very reasons Britain is still Britain, and Stirling is still a major force in currency. Yes, Britain kept the pound!
The elderly benefit from remaining in the EU because it was the EU that mandated minimum state pension levels, which are above UK minimums. My parents are happy about that. I contracted out of SERPs in the 80’s so I still have my private pension fund, in GBP, there but I live in Australia. I can’t touch it yet however, I am considering leaving it there as I am sure the GBP to Aussie $ rate will change in my favor.
Cameron, given a clear mandate, wimped out, resigned and passing the buck to May. May, with a clear mandate, rejected it and had a second referendum which fell on the side on an exit vote. Now there are resignations etc etc. Just get on with it May, be a UK PM for a change, rather than EU puppet.
Have courage! We voted to leave, and leave we shall. Without the unanimous assent of our European partners, we cannot remain in the EU to any degree beyond March 2019, and steps have been taken to ensure that that unanimous assent will not be forthcoming.
The EU is as wrong about climate as about just about everything else. The sooner we are all rid of it the better. I voted for the then European Communities in the 1975 referendum, but cannot vote for the sullen centralists and conformists that rule it today. When unelected Kommissars can and frequently do override the decisions of the European “Parliament”, which cannot even bring forward a Bill without their consent, it is time to reassert democracy by leaving this viscerally anti-democratic and, therefore, anti-European institution.
” Much of the apparent “sea-level rise” in the official record was artificially conjured into being by devices such as the fictitious “glacial isostatic adjustment” (see diagram above).”
This shows the whole disingenuous lying venture for what it its.
We are supposed to be scared into action by sea level rise but they do not tell us how much sea level is rising. Instead they claim the oceans are getting deeper. Well fine then, we don’t need to worry.
The main areas which have a REAL sea level change problem are where there is a subsidence problem which far outweighs true sea level rise.
Bangladesh is in dire trouble but that trouble comes for uncontrolled land use, river mismanagement and third world chaos. That does not prevent lefties trying use the country as poster child for the dangers of man made sea level rise.
Their problems are indeed man made but nothing to do with CO2, methane or fossil fuels.
The land area of Bangladesh is increasing. The refugees from Myanmar are housed on an island that didn’t exist a few years ago. That’s why it was uninhabited.
Could someone please provide some links or references to just why this GIA is “bad science”. I know Willie Soon has mentioned this in his presentations. I agree with Moncton and also think it is but still need to have some good links/references to present to our climate obsessed government here in NZ.
Are there any links to failed GPS checking on the GIA predictions for example? That would be very good evidence that the whole thing is unreliable.
Our government is currently having a public consultation process on their new Zero Carbon Bill from our new Climate Commission which I am keen to submit on.
Thanks…
https://video.ultra-zone.net/watch?v=k9sw_HfLejg&list=PLs5Phz-k2g8hw1mpgosGRnXHC3VHHXsWH
Tony Heller gives a good explanation of GIA at the end of the video.
Briefly, the “glacial isostatic adjustment” was invented as a device whose declared purpose was to reveal how far sea level might have risen but for the fact that various land masses are still rebounding after throwing off the great weight of ice that pressed down upon them during the last Ice Age. The only fact one needs to know about that adjustment is that no part of it is a genuine, actual sea-level rise. It is a fiction, and, even if it were not a fiction, the uncertainties in determining the extent of any isostatic rebound are so formidable as to render the whole exercise little more than uneducated guesswork.
The true purpose of this adjustment, of course, is to cover for the disappointing lack of sea-level rise as measured by the tide-gauges. As for the satellite interferometers, they are so badly intercalibrated that the differences between the calibrated sea-levels shown by each successive generation exceed the total sea-level rise they purport to measure.
Agreed, ocean basin deepening is total speculation. There is no observational evidence of the sea floor alleged movement.
As CoB says the satellite altimeter has been bodged , frigged and “corrected” to produce the desired results . Measuring mean sea level by bouncing radiation off the bottom of the swell , form low Earth orbit and claiming mm accuracy is farcical.
Thanks you Christopher,
I totally agree with you but am wondering if you can point me to some papers on the subject…I’m a geologist and would appreciate some detailed information on this latest scam that I can throw back at the NZ government (NIWA) climate mafia . They always ask for refereed papers.
Mr Brickell may like to start with Cazenave (2009), from which the graph in the head posting was taken. That shows the very large adjustment (nearly all of it from the glacial isostatic adjustment) compared with what the tide-gauges actually show.
Then go to Nerem (2010), in which it is revealed that between the Topex/Poseidon and Jason 2 altimetry satellites there is an intercalibration of 175 mm (about 7 inches) between 1993 and 2009, exceeding by a large margin the sea-level rise found by the altimeters over the period.
The tide-gauges show sea level rising at about 8 inches/century, though Professor Niklas Moerner, in a series of papers, predicts that the 21st-century sea-level rise will be 2 +/- 6 inches. Hope this helps.
Wonderful, many thanks for the assistance.
For “intercalibration” read “intercalibration error”.
Colorado University’s Sea Level Research Group says:
If CU wants to chart ocean volume, then they should chart ocean volume.
“This map shows Earth’s average global temperature from 2013 to 2017, as compared to a baseline average from 1951 to 1980,…”
It’s easy (and dishonest) to invent alarmist claims when one uses the coldest 30 year period of the 20th Century as the basis of comparison to a 4 year period in the 2nd decade of the 21st Century. A 4 year period which additionally is centered on a strong El Nino.
There is a certain desperation to keep the weekly climate scare drumbeat going after Obama’s liturgical climate calendar of agency pronouncements ended. The unofficial, way off Broadway productions are lower quality but still pass for news at USA Today.
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Excellent job, as always…
Can’t wait to see the Eco-terrorists( like Nick Stokes..etc…) arrive here to claim that you spelled “tomato” wrong, so your whole article is wrong !!! 3…2…1….
Nick Stokes comments here are welcome by me. He keeps many posts honest when they are wandering into wishful thinking, including me on ocassion.
But Nick Stokes is not an eco-terrorist.
And If you think someone who invests time and intellect to actually factually debate and post factual counter evidence as Nick does frequently is an eco-terrorist, then you are as bad as the eco-terrorists.
and if you think that Nick Stokes invests time and intellect to actually factually debate and post factual evidence then you are way worse.
I agree he is a selective parrot rather than just a parrot, of the likes of skeptical science, but a parrot he is nonetheless.
Marcus, many thanks for your kind words. But one should avoid terms like “eco-terrorist” in describing those who disagree with us.
I like the way it is going thus far this year. Global temperatures and overall sea surface temperatures both continue to be lower.
July is looking quite cold in particularly in Antarctica.
One has to predict BEFORE it happens if it has any meaning. I say 2018 is the transitional year. I much rather be early then late when predicting. Late has no meaning it is after the fact.
Of course it is still to early to celebrate and more months have to go by but it has to start sometime if it is going to occur.
The climate when it does really shift or go to another regime does so abruptly not slow and gradual. Ice Core data shows this to be the case
The climate post Dalton shifted to the present climatic regime in a period of 10 years and has been in the same climate regime other then the climatic shift in the late 1970’s which was all natural and accounts for all of the rise in temperatures from the Little Ice Age.
If I turn out to be correct I will be on pretty firm ground because I would not have only pin pointed the transitional year(before it happened) but also the reasons why and how and my website climatebusters.org backs this up.
My website being done some 5 years ago way in advance of this potential change.
In truth we are not good at predicting whether an El Nino will appear or how severe will be its effect on global temperature. My own expectation, based on limited information, is that a further el Nino will peak either this midwinter or next, notwithstanding the low solar activity.
We have pictures of La Jolla California from a century ago. We have pictures of the NYC Battery from near a century ago. The Portsmouth (ME) Naval Shipyard was established on June 12, 1800 and sits on a cluster of conjoined islands called Seavey’s Island in the Piscataqua River. The HMS Falkland was commissioned there in 1696.
CM, might we see you back charting the dreaded “Pause” again? I note that the cooling of the seas has resulted in the once “ridiculously persistent hot blobs” switching to cold blobs, the large wedge of cold water just below the equator the result of cold blobs bleeding equatorward rather than upwelling in the eastern Pacific and indicating a decoupling of ENSO from the behavior of global temperatures. The big El Nino was partly amplified by the former hot blobs and, it would seem the weak La Nina to borderline El Nino didn’t prevent the most precipitous drop in equatorial temperatures ever recorded. The cold water is still there nearby, but not in the ENSO boxes.
I am troubled by BOM of Australia looking after ENSO data. The temp has “stalled” at 0.53 for three weeks. In other metrics, like sea level, and global temperatures, an interruption in adding data points presaged an “overhaul” of the metric to the dark side. Is BOM up to something?
Mr Pearse asks whether I can resume charting the Great Pause. At present the answer is No, because the recent el Nino brought the Pause to an end. Also, four of the five longest-standing temperature datasets have been – whether or not for good reason – tampered with to show faster warming rates than the raw data showed.
Meanwhile, we are enjoying a glorious, hot, dry, sunny Summer here in England. We have not seen the like since 1959 or 1976. Why do people think that sunshine is a Bad Thing?
Reality Is: The Iceman Cometh plus… https://youtu.be/nsqZJP54shg
HOW can we make these muttonheads accountable.. really. I mean when the dust settles and the truth of their maniacal drivel is discovered, they’ll be presenting the view that they’re ‘astonished’ or excuse themselves with claims of ‘being deceived” with wide-eyed, butter wouldn’t melt in their gobs expressions and sheepish grins when all the time basic chemistry, physics and biology was there demonstrating it was all a fiction.
So maybe we need to discuss how we can make these fish-for-brains media goats accountable?
It makes me sick at the waste, the psychological and real pain they’re causing the population, the tyrannical authoritarian edifices they’re building – and if things go on without some sort of intervention they’ll happily collapse society then stand about gormlessly proclaiming they had no idea.
I like to write to companies seeking clarification on their stances on various matters, pointing out and referencing clear claims and factual accepted, demonstrable information and have them write back with their position addressing their stance in defiance of facts.. Get it on record so to speak, so when the dung hits the wind maker they can’t field the usual ‘we didn’t know’ in defense. I did this to a large manufacturer of mouthwash inquiring why they did not put warning labels on their alcoholic products given the innumerable cancer risks associated with even topical applications of ethanol – they evaded in their reply, but across the years they transitioned to manufacturing alcohol free mouthwash. It’s was not speculative – cellular mutations are demonstrable in the lab .. and they made the change.
I continue to write to media organizations seeking similar reactions, clear statements where they nail their colours to the flagpole but they’re evasive as all heck and make politicians look like bastions of clarity – they simply slither, squirm and avoid making statements that would hold them to account.
Recently I’ve come to wonder whether ALL media outlets should be declared political organizations, subject to the same rules and laws of disclosure as any other, without actually stating what sort of political organization they are.
For one thing it would force them to examine themselves – to ask themselves who they are and what they stand for. It would probably make them without prompt, state their allegiances. They may conclude they’re libertarian right or authoritarian left and it may make them take stock. Some editors and reporters may find themselves alienated once they realize just who they’ve been working for, they may question themselves and their goals and we may in fact get more honesty from them.
If nothing else it would allow the viewer to differentiate and to actually question themselves and stop viewing politics as a bloody team sport where they barrack for their team irrespective of the facts.
One thing that would really please me is the Aussie ABC could be cut loose and the tax money spent on them diverted to benefit the taxpayers not the self important, overpaid pills who populate that particular sheltered workshop.
How can we make the muttonheads of the drainstream media accountable? Karlos 51 is asking the right question. Albert Camus gave the answer: “A free Press may be either good or bad, but without freedom it cannot be anything but bad.”
If our simple but devastating result turns out to be correct, then all who had rushed on to the air and into print to declare their undying faith in the climate-Communist Party Line are going to look very foolish. Some of these creatures have devoted their entire careers to attempting to destroy capitalism by making the West’s energy costly, intermittent and unreliable. They have until now at least had the fig-leaf cover of their mantra that “The Science Is Settled” – i.e. the Central Committee had decided the Party Line but they could pretend that there might be some sort of scientific basis for it.
However, as the legislators in the Indiana House of Representatives discovered when they passed a Bill to declare that pi was exactly 3.2 (the State Senate had the good sense to sling the Bill out), the scientific truth is simply not subject to partisan co-option of this kind. Now that it can be proven that global warming will be slow, small, harmless and net-beneficial, those who have hitherto faithfully parroted the Party Line in the media will at first be cowed into silence upon facing the truth.
In due course, like the orator in George Orwell’s 1984, they will be handed a note from the Central Committee and, in mid-sentence, they will reverse themselves and declare the precise opposite of all that they have been arguing heretofore.
Let us be generous to them, though they have been mean-spirited to us and have denied us access to the airwaves and to the papers. They need no punishment over and above the abject humiliation of having been proven wrong on a subject on which they had asserted, over and over again, that they were more certain than they were about anything else.
Will the correction of the climate error be the end of the Left? No, but it will be quite a good start.
Brillant except that the sensitivity factor will be even a lot less if you factor in the logarithmic scale of CO2 forcing. Plus factor in the IRIS factor of Dr. Lindzen and the forcing factor drops precipitously. And factor in that the absorption factor on the wings of CO2 is 40% less according to Dr. Happer. All these taken together doesn’t leave much room for any warming by CO2.
The infrared issues are most interesting for me. Is there a book about, or a link to, Dr Lindzen’s work?
In response to Mr Tomalty, the approximately logarithmic response of radiative forcing to atmospheric CO2 enrichment is of course already allowed for in our calculations.
We have confined our paper only to the single very large error we have found right at the heart of the climatologists’ method of deriving equilibrium sensitivities to forcings of all kinds. The exposure of that error, on its own, would be enough in a rational world to bring the global-warming scare to an end.
In our submission, the value of our result, compared with those of Professors Lindzen and Happer, both of whom I admire, is that we have formally proven it. What is more, after months of very hard work, we have reduced the argument to nothing more than simple, high-school algebra. We are expecting that peer review will be a long and wearisome process, for our result is a large embarrassment to all who have said the science was settled when it wasn’t. If we are right, it is now – and in a direction They did not expect.
Christopher have you submitted any of this to proper peer review yet? If not why not? Sure there are some very bright people on this blog but it won’t be accepted as proper PR.
Interesting to see if Nick Stokes is able to puncture the math, but I seem to remember that a prominent sceptical scientist doesn’t quite accept your calculation as well.
You may well be correct, who knows?
In response to ngard2016, our paper is before a journal for peer review. We have spent most of this year reducing the argument to the very plainest, simple, high-school algebra, since earlier versions of the paper baffled the reviewers. We are expecting a long haul before any serious journal will allow publication. To some extent, this is understandable. In the end though, unless a sufficiently large error is found in our argument, our result is going to have to be published.
You say that I “may well be correct – who knows?” Actually, anyone with sufficient determination will be able to follow our argument and decide for himself whether we are correct. After years of work, we have reduced the argument to a very simple and, in our submission, irrefutable form.
You are right that a prominent skeptical scientist publicly expressed disagreement with our result, but it is not unfair to say that he did so chiefly because he could not believe that so large an error as that which we have discovered and proven could possibly have been perpetrated. The notion that feedback processes in the climate respond not only to any anthropogenic perturbation but also to the pre-existing non-condensing greenhouse gases and, most importantly of all, to the Sun caught him more than somewhat by surprise: but it is so.
The essence of our argument is that climate scientists, not realizing that feedback processes respond to the temperature they find, had left out the sunshine from their calculations. Everyone can understand that.
What journal? I suggest you submit it to the following:
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Proceedings of the Royal Society A
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA
Physical Review Letters
It seems your paper failed the ‘peer review’ of Dr. Roy Spencer. If all else fail, try Wicca Book of Spells
It appears that the furtively pseudonymous “Doctor Strangelove” is as incapable as ever of mustering anything resembling a scientific argument. If he really thinks that books about witchcraft are a valuable contribution to climate science, his opinion of climatologists must be even lower than mine.
1 – The underlying assumption for feedback analysis is that we are dealing with a linear time-invariant (LTI) system. That assumption is unwarranted as far as the climate is concerned.
2 – “… fluctuations in atmospheric temperature, sea surface temperature, precipitation or other parameters can be quasi-periodic, often occurring on inter-annual, multi-annual, decadal, multidecadal, century-wide, millennial or longer timescales.” link In other words, even if the system were LTI, it would be at least second order (that’s the basic requirement for ringing or oscillation). Simple algebra does not apply.
A very long time ago a buddy’s thesis advisor observed that students will apply random formulas no matter how inappropriate. That is precisely what Dr. James Hansen has done. As our esteemed CM points out, Hansen also got the math wrong. Sad.
We use simplifying assumptions all the time for systems we understand well. We don’t understand the climate well enough to get away with that.
commieBob,
It’s not the climate system that’s not LTI, but it’s the model that’s not LTI. A system quantified as W/m^2 in and W/m^2 out is very linear, but W/m^2 in and degrees K out is not even approximately linear. Time invariance is a little harder to think about as the system changes significantly on a seasonal basis; however; the year to year average response is relatively time invariant and it’s the transfer function describing the response that’s the subject of time invariance.
The differential equation describing the LTI behavior of the climate system is,
Pi = Po + dE/dt
where Pi is the solar input scaled by albedo and Po is the output of the planet. E is the power stored by the system and is linearly proportional to the temperature, T. Po can also be expressed as e*Psurf, where Psurf are the emissions of the surface at T and e is what they are scaled by to produce Po. Completing the model,
Pi = Psurf(1 – a)
Po = eoT^4
T = kE
Pi = Po + dE/dt
To be sure, this isn’t a first order LTI, but a higher order LTI owing to the T^4 in the relationship between E and Po. In the case of a first order LTI, Po would be linearly proportional to T. In addition, the yearly averages for the constants a, e and k are also relatively time invariant and whose averages are readily measured.
Modeling the planet as a first order LTI with W/m^2 in and degrees K out is clearly wrong for many reasons, however; this doesn’t mean that an appropriate way to model it as a legitimate LTI doesn’t also exist.
In response to CO2isnotevil, one should consider the nature of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer, i.e. emission temperature T = radiative flux density Q at the emitting surface x emissivity e x the Stefan-Boltzmann constant s. Since emissivity may be taken as unity without large error, it can be regarded as constant. Therefore, the first derivative delta-T / delta-Q is simply T / (4Q). No fourth-power terms anywhere.
In practice, one can allow for the difference between the emission surface and the hard-deck surface by using the Schlesinger ratio, where T is surface temperature and Q is flux density at the emission altitude. Since surface temperature will not vary greatly from today’s 288.4 K, and since the flux density, dependent only on insolation and albedo, neither of which will vary greatly either, over the small interval of a couple of Kelvin that is of interest one may without much error regard the derivative (also known as the Planck sensitivity parameter: see e.g. Bony et al., 2006) as constant at 0.3 Kelvin per Watt per square meter.
Since the coefficient in the CO2 radiative forcing equation will not vary much over the interval of interest (it is 5, so that the equation is 5 ln (C / C0), where C0 is the unperturbed concentration), one may take that coefficient as constant. Therefore, at doubled CO2, the reference sensitivity (i.e., the warming before taking account of temperature feedback) is the product of the CO2 forcing and the Planck parameter: thus, 5 ln (2) x 0.3, or 1.04 K.
So to feedback. Here, there are various nonlinearities, most notably the near-exponential increase in the atmospheric burden of water vapor as the space occupied by the atmosphere warms. However, this is offset by the logarithmic radiative response. Our approach to potential nonlinearities in feedbacks was a simple one. We calculated the feedback factor (the fraction of equilibrium temperature represented by feedback response) first for 1850 and then for 2011 as explained in the head posting. The result was 0.116 for both years, indicating that, since the sum of the emission temperature driven by the fact that the Sun is shining and the warming from the naturally-occurring, non-condensing greenhouse gases is >350 times larger than the tiny anthropogenic reference sensitivity of just 0.7 K, nonlinearities in individual temperature feedbacks are simply not going to exercise an appreciable influence.
The bottom line is that those elements in the climate system that influence equilibrium sensitivity are either as nearly linear and time-invariant as makes no difference or of such small influence compared with the larger influences already at work – notably the Sun – that without significant error we may regard the system as linear and time-invariant with respect to the derivation of equilibrium sensitivities.
“T / (4Q). No fourth-power terms anywhere.”
Actually, there’s an implicit forth-power in your equation, which is the relationship between Q and T. When you substitute eoT^4 for Q, the sensitivity becomes 1/(4eoT^3) and a 1/T^3 dependence emerges. So. while the emissions are proportional to T^4, the sensitivity is proportional to 1/T^3.
In response to CO2isnotevel, yes, of course the first derivative of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer may be expressed as 1 / (4esT^3): but, since it can be expressed as T / (4Q), one may infer – as additionally explained and demonstrated in detail in my earlier response – that in modern conditions the first derivative of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer changes remarkably little with temperature.
Do the math. For the surface temperature of 287.55 K in 1850, the Planck parameter is 287.55 / (4 *241.2) = 0.298. For today’s surface temperature of 288.4 K, it is 288.4 / (4*241.2) = 0.299. On doubling CO2 concentration, surface temperature would be 289.55 K and the Planck parameter would be 0.300.
Why the very small changes in the Planck parameter with temperature? Because the Stefan-Boltzmann constant in co2isnotevil’s preferred form of the first derivative is minuscule: i.e, 0.000000056704 Watts per square meter per Kelvin to the fourth power. Multiply that by T^3 and it should be obvious that the cubic relation will make practically no difference.
Over the range of temperatures found on the planet it certainly does make a difference. At the lowest temperature on the planet of about 260K, the sensitivity (considering e=0.62) is about 0.41 K per W/m^2, while at the warmest temperatures found on the planet of about 320K, the sensitivity is only about 0.22 K per W/m^2. But this isn’t the real nature of the problem which boils down to establishing proper mathematical approximations.
The math issue is that when you curve fit T^4 to a linear approximation and take the derivative (i.e. the sensitivity), the factor of 1/4 arising from the T^4 exponent disappears and the sensitivity is over-estimated by a factor of 4.
For example, start from x=y^4, dy/dx = 1/(4y^3).
At x = 4, y is 256 and dy/dx = 1/256. Curve fitting this to the linear function, x’ = ky’, results in k = 64, thus dy’/dx’ = 1/64 which is a factor of 4 too large.
If you want to legitimately linearize, you need to curve fit to an equation like x’ = y0 + ky’, where y0 is the absolute relationship at the average you are look for perturbations around. This could be another mathematical way to express what you were inferring about the failure of the IPCC to account for the rest of the forcing from the Sun, which is responsible for the y0 term.
Commiebob says feedback analysis assumes a linear, time-invariant system. Certainly the zero-dimensional system-gain equation makes that assumption, but it is possible to complicate matters by using a more detailed equation – see e.g. the excellent pedagogical paper by Roe (2009). Gerard Roe was a pupil of the great Dick Lindzen.
Over the past six months we have thought long and hard about nonlinearity in feedbacks. In the end, we adopted a delightfully simple approach. We used the zero-dimensional system-gain equation to derive the feedback factor for 1850, which worked out at 0.116. Then we incorporated the changes since 1850 and fed them into the same equation, discovering that the feedback factor (i.e., the fraction of equilibrium warming that is feedback response) was still 0.116 in 2011.
From this we deduced, not unreasonably, that the anthropogenic reference sensitivity of only 0.7 K since 1850 was so small when compared with the sum of emission temperature and the warming from the naturally-occurring greenhouse gases to 1850 that the self-evident nonlinearities in some of the temperature feedbacks are simply insufficient to make much difference to the feedback factor.
Bottom line: the nonlinearities are there, all right, but the feedback response to the Sun and pre-existing greenhouse gases is so much greater than the feedback response to our minuscule perturbation that one can assume nonlinearity without significant error.
Should read “one can assume linearity without significant error”.
If you believe in Climate Change(TM,R), then do your part and do not reproduce!
Is the greening Sahara one of the deserts the Pope says we’re going to leave behind?
‘However, the surface temperature in 1850, before any appreciable anthropogenic perturbation, was 287.55 K’
The use of a decimal point shows they have a sense of humor.
Thanks, Christopher. As always, it was a treat to read your post.
Cheers
Bob
Bob, many thanks for your kind words.
Yes, Hansen’s misappropriation of Bode’s LINEAR amplifier analysis to support a sensitivity higher than the physics will allow is the keystone of climate alarmism. Fix this and the whole house of cards collapses.
The timing of the Schlesinger paper that ‘corrected’ 2 of Hansen’s many errors was interesting. One was the unacknowledged assumption of unit open loop gain and the other was swapping the gain and feedback terms. Schlesinger either didn’t notice or didn’t care that Hansen failed to honor the preconditions Bode stated for using his analysis in the first place.
The Hansen paper came out in 1984 and was the key that provided a theoretical path to justify a climate sensitivity as high as they needed to form the IPCC. As they were preparing AR1, they discovered 2 of the critical errors in Hansen’s paper and needed a fix as this was their primary theoretical justification. It may have been Schlesinger who noticed the errors and in any event, came up with the fix. He actually added more errors than were fixed, including a failure to actually correct Hansen’s assumption of unit open loop gain. The Schlesinger paper was subject to very weak peer review and rushed into publication just in time for the formation of the IPCC. It was prominently referenced along with Hansen’s paper as supporting theory. This misapplied theory has since been canonized in the minds of alarmists and is why the science has been so hard to fix.
Whether this was the result of incompetence or malfeasance is the only open question left. My guess is that it was done because they thought they would eventually find something more solid to support their claims and that the ends justified the means. In this case, it was a little of both and those that made this decision should be held accountable.
CO2ISNOTEVIL
Could you please explain the saturation effect of CO2 for us dummies both for and against arguments? As there is always new CO2 going into atmosphere and new photons from earth surface, I dont understand how CO2 can get saturated.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/10/the-diminishing-influence-of-increasing-carbon-dioxide-on-temperature/#more-114325
this should help
Alan,
All GHG’s capture photons only at very specific wavelengths (energies). The concept of saturation is a measure of the fraction of source (surface) emissions at a specific wavelength or range of wavelengths that are captured by a column of the atmosphere where the effect across all wavelengths goes as the log of the concentration. In this context, saturation is not an absolute concept.
If you’re thinking of saturation being the fraction of CO2 molecules that are not in the ground state, this reaches 100% at very low concentrations as each photon of energy can be absorbed and re-emitted many trillions of times by different molecules before eventually either leaving the planet or returning to the surface. Energized saturation simply means that the output flux in absorption bands must be equal to the input flux because there’s no where else to put a new photon of energy in those bands. As an energized CO2 molecule absorbs additional photons, the mean time before a spontaneous emission of another photon by that molecule rapidly decreases towards zero.
Even at the current level of 400ppm, CO2 contributes less than 1/3 of the total GHG effect, moreover; clouds cover 2/3 of the planet making the GHG effect between clouds and the surface irrelevant to determining the surface temperature as the clouds would be absorbing and re-radiating half of the energy otherwise absorbed by GHG’s back to the surface anyway. As a result, the GHG effect from CO2 is responsible for replenishing less then 10% of the increase in surface emissions above and beyond the solar forcing. Water, in the form of clouds and vapor, provides most of the remaining 90% as well as all of the cooling from albedo. Clearly, atmospheric water in all of its forms is a far more important influence.
“where the effect across all wavelengths goes as the log of the concentration.”
I have read this a 100 times but nowhere does anybody explain how and why?
This has to do with the relationship between optical depth and transmittance, where the optical depth of the atmosphere is defined as the natural log of the ratio of the energy emitted by the surface and the energy emitted into space. Since what’s not emitted is absorbed and optical depth is proportional to species concentration, the fraction of surface emissions absorbed, or the absorption strength, is proportional to the log of the species concentration.
well if the alarmists agree with this then why the hullabaloo about global warming?
The alarmist hullabaloo about global warming arises because the very small direct warming from CO2 is tripled or quadrupled by feedback responses in the models. However, we have demonstrated that the feedback response will be small – indeed, it could be altogether disregarded without much error.
In reply to CO2isnotevil, during recent months, my distinguished co-authors and I have considered the Bode feedback loop in depth. Our Professor of applied control theory eventually drew the conclusion that it did not matter whether one had a mu amplifier within the feedback loop or simply added the greenhouse-gas warmings to the emission temperature before the input node, setting the mu amplifier to unity. The latter method is actually a great deal simpler to follow, so we have recast our paper in that way.
The real error made by Hansen was to omit the sunshine and the warming from the pre-existing greenhouse gases from the input altogether. Had he included them, he could have done what we have done and found the Holy Grail of climate sensitivity studies – the feedback factor. In 1850 it was simply 1 – (254.3 / 287.55), or 0.116. The numerator is the input signal – i.e., the sum of emission temperature and the warming from the naturally-occurring greenhouse gases. The denominator is the equilibrium surface temperature in 1850.
The variant system-gain equation that Hansen used is actually a correct but incomplete equation. The mainstream equation we have used includes the full input signal, most importantly including the solar-driven emission temperature. Without that, one cannot derive the feedback factor from the equation. With it, one can. We have. Case closed.
Christopher,
Yes, the failure to account for the rest of the solar input is a serious flaw and arises by incorrectly casting sensitivity/gain as ‘incremental’ when the linearity requirement of Bode dictates that the incremental gain and absolute gain MUST be the same. Decoupling the sensitivity from reality provided the wiggle room to support a nonsense value for the ECS.
Actually, the mu term is already assumed to be unity by Hansen, Schlesinger and Roe, but none seems to see the assumption because of the error considering the output to be temperature and the input to be W/m^2, when according to Bode’s preconditions, both the input and output MUST either be expressed in the same units or be expressed in units that are linearly related to each other across ALL relevant conditions (for example, volts in and amps out which are linearly related to each other through Ohms Law).
The trivially derived gain equation for any linear feedback system quantifiable with Bode’s analysis is,
1/Go = 1/g + f
where Go is the open loop gain (Bode’s mu), g is the closed loop gain (surface emissions/input power) and f is the fraction of the output emissions fed back to the input. Substitute 1 for Go, 390/240=1.63 for g and the required feedback, f, fraction becomes
f = 1 – 1/1.63 = 0.386
Which represents the dimensionless fraction of surface emissions that must be fed back to the surface to make it warmer than it would be based on solar input alone. Note that when 39.6% of the output emissions are added to the 240 W/m^2 of incident solar, replenishing all of the 390 W/m^2 of surface emissions can be completely accounted for. Furthermore, the emissivity of an EQUIVALENT gray body model is given EXACTLY by e = 1/g = 1 – f .
The derivation of the gain equation is as follows:
Consider a gain block whose input is X and whose output, O which is equal to the input to the gain block times the open loop gain, O = X*Go. X is equal to the forcing input, I, plus the feedback, which is the fraction of O fed back to the input, given by X = I + f*O. Substitute O/Go for X and rewrite:
O/Go = I + f*O
divide both sides by O
1/Go = I/O + f
Recognizing that the closed loop gain, g, is the output divided by the input, g = O/I and substitute to arrive at the final form.
1/Go = 1/g + f
Temperature feedback is an obfuscating concept relative to the underlying physics which feeds back W/m^2 of surface emissions to add to the W/m^2 of input forcing and not degrees K whose units are incompatible for summing with W/m^2. You can convert the dimensionless power feedback fraction into something dependent on a change in temperature, but only relative to some starting temperature, which in this case is the current average of about 288K. None the less, just because something can be represented at a specific condition, doesn’t mean its a valid representation over all conditions and any temperature feedback coefficient is only valid at a single temperature, thus is useless for predicting any other temperature.
We are agreed that official climatology has failed to allow for the Sun’s heat. There is no harm in doing the calculations using temperatures to derive a temperature feedback factor. And we have shown that the temperature feedback factor 0.116 is stable from 1850-2011, and we have shown why that is the case. From that feedback factor, the Chaney sensitivity of 1.17 K follows.
The harm is perceptual, where 0.8C per W/m^2 of forcing sounds a lot more plausible than 4.3 W/m^2 of incremental surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing, even as both equally represent the same amount of change. Plus, it allows invoking non linearity as an obfuscating factor, as the relationship between temperature and W/m^2 is intrinsically non linear.
Schlesinger ‘fixed’ Hansen’s assumption of unit open loop gain by considering the SB relationship to be the open loop gain, converting the sum of forcing and feedback, both expressed in W/m^2, into an ‘amplified’ temperature, expressed in degrees. The unit gain assumption arises by plugging Go=1 into the derived gain equation for a feedback amplifier, 1/Go = 1/g + f, which when solved for g results in g = 1/(1 – f), which is the gain equation referenced by Schlesinger (and Hansen with g and f swapped).
If you examine Schlesinger’s paper carefully, you will see that he transforms the input of his gain block (J) by Go to get an output temperature (delta T) and then reverses the Go transformation with F in figure 1 where he defines f = F*Go, where f is the dimensionless fraction of output returned to the input and the fraction of J returned as feedback, implying unit open loop gain. Go is the SB Law and F is the inverse. He definitely didn’t like it when I pointed this out to him about a decade ago.
Any linear trend calculation starting in 1990 and ending at the present time is increased by more than a factor of 2 due to Pinatubo, the 2015-16 El Nino and general noise in the climate system. The claimed warming of .44 C is a mirage.
If you look at months least affected by climate noise during years with the least climate noise, you end up with more like .18 C of warming (UAH 6).
April-August 1990 14.5 C (58.1F) .02C
April-August 1995-96 14.6 C (58.2F) .09C
April-August 1998-2003 14.7 C (58.4F) .17C
April-August 2007 14.7 C (58.4F) .18C
April-August 2014 14.7 C (58.4F) .17C
April-June 2018 14.7 C (58.4F) .20C
This comes out to about .06 C/decade. However, some fraction of this is due to the AMO going positive in the mid 1990s. The take away is even the small warming shown in the satellite data is overstating the situation. The models are even worse than it appears.
“The CET record is quite a respectable proxy for global temperature change, and it shows – in common with many other lines of evidence from the end of the Little Ice Age – that for 40 years the rate of global warming was equivalent to 4.33 K/century – about twice as rapid as the fastest rate seen in any 40-year period since Man began influencing climate in 1950.”
About twice is something of an exaggeration. CET between 1962 – 2001 inclusive was 3.17°C / century, making the 1694 – 1733 rate about a third faster.
Which raises the question if you think that CET is a respectable proxy for global temperatures, why don’t you use it for modern temperatures instead of using the global records?
Of course this very rapid 4.33°C / century does depend on less reliable data, based on imperfect instruments and probably a lot of guess work.
In reply to Bellman, we are in agreement, at least, that Doyle Rice was incorrect in his assertion that the recent warming rate was “unprecedented”.
For fun, I decided to use the CET record for the basic calculations in our paper to see what difference it made. In 1850, temperature would have been 287.25 K rather than the 287.55 K we had assumed. Therefore, the feedback factor for 1850 becomes 1 – 254.3 / 287.25) or 0.115 compared with our 0.116. There was 1.05 K warming from 1850-2011 on the CET data, and we must add about 0.25 K to that to allow for the imagined (and probably imaginary) “radiative imbalance”. So the feedback factor for 2011 becomes 1 – (254.3 + 0.7) / (287.25 + 1.3) = 0.116, exactly as before.
Applying the feedback factor 0.116 to the 1.035 K reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 gives Charney sensitivity 1.035 / (1 – 0.116), or 1.17 K, as before.
The game’s up, mate.
I said nothing about Doyle Rice nor the accuracy of the reporting or the original paper – I was only commenting on your claim that 4.33 was “about twice” 3.17.
Doyle Rice made no assertions about warming rates, he was quoting Katrin Meissner, but I suspect she was talking about global temperatures, not those for Central England.
It does also depend on what time frame you want to cherry-pick.
Looking at the last 150 years, CET has been warming at the rate of almost 0.8°C / century, the fastest of any 150 year period, and more than twice as fast as any 150 year period starting in the 17th century.
The furtively pseudonymous “Bellman” is up to its favorite trick – divorcing the argument from the surrounding facts and then drawing fatuous conclusions.
The dreadful Doyle Rich wrote: “‘The changes we see today are much faster than anything encountered in Earth’s history. In terms of rate of change, we are in uncharted waters.”
No, we aren’t. Doyle’s half-baked statement that “the changes we see today are much faster than anything encountered in Earth’s history” is simply false. As the head posting says, there are multiple lines of evidence that the rates of warming in the past have been greater than in the present. The CET is one. Whether Bellman likes it or not, the warming rate equivalent to 4 K/century that obtained in the 40 years 1694-1744 has not been matched since: indeed, Bellman admits that the warming of the past 150 years has averaged 0.5 K/century, about one-eighth of the warming rate caused by the recovery of solar activity after the Maunder Minimum.
Going back still farther, some 9000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, the world appears to have warmed at a rate of 5 K over only three years. Again whether Bellman likes it or not, suggestions that the warming of recent years is “unprecedented in human history” are the sort of rodomontade to which one has become accustomed from the climate Communists. The fact that their fellow-travelers such as Bellman try to defend the indefensible is no small part of the reason why the fanatics are losing the climate debate to the skeptics.
The main reason why the extremists are losing the debate is that they are simply wrong, and can no longer get away with concealing from the public the fact that they are wrong.
If by “divorcing arguments from the surrounding fact” you mean pointing out an inaccuracy in one of you arguments, then yes that’s exactly what I was doing. I drew no conclusions fatuous or otherwise from this. My sole points were to suggest CET was not global temperature and was not very reliable in the 17th century, and that you were wrong to claim that the warming was almost twice as fast as anything “seen in any 40-year period since Man began influencing climate in 1950.”. I note that through all your invective and ad hominems you haven’t denied you were wrong on that point.
I’ve explained before why I think it is dubious to use CET from the 17th century to disprove the claim that current warming is unprecedented – but I say nothing as far as the correctness of the claim. I just note that CET is not global, is not very reliable in the early parts at least.
You say that the warming during the 40 years since 1694 where eight times faster than the warming of the last 150 years. You should realize the dangers of comparing a trend of 40 years with one of 150 years, and in any event you are wrong. The rate of warming over the last 150 years 0.8°C / century, not 0.5°C, 5 times slower not 8 times.
You then assert that 9000 years ago the globe warmed 5°C in just 3 years. I’d like to see some evidence for that remarkable claim. This was presumably when the Earth came out of the ice-age, but what mechanism could release that much heat into the earth in just 3 years?
Lord M.
Is your preprint in review?
Did they allow you to suggest reviewers (you may know it happens all the time)?
If so, was there issues finding ‘appropriate’ reviewers (that you know about)?
Does the journal allow fundamental edits; during and/or after review (pre publication)?
Do you have a confidence level for publication?
Thanks in advance . . .
In response to Warren, yes, our paper is currently out for review. The journal in question takes its time, and we are not expecting to hear much till September. So far, they’ve gotten as far as to verify the references.
The review process at all serious journals, including ours, which is in the top ten climate journals by impact factor, is as follows.
Step 1: The co-authors submit the manuscript via an online editorial management system, nominating five reviewers.
Step 2: The journal’s editorial staff check the paper to make sure that it complies with basic standards of English, math etc., and that the tables, figures and references are presented and numbered correctly.
Step 3: An external, automated check is performed to ensure that the references cited actually exist.
Step 4: The paper is passed by the editorial staff to the editors for their consideration. The editors will reject at that stage any paper that does not appear on its face to constitute proper science.
Step 5: The editors appoint three or four reviewers. In most journals, particularly where the papers being submitted are skeptical, the editors will avoid using any of the reviewers suggested by the co-authors.
Step 6: The paper is sent out for review. Though some journals promise a quick turnaround, that tends not apply to skeptical papers.
Step 7: The reviews are sent to the co-authors together with the editors’ decision. If the editors reject the paper, it can be resubmitted if all the points made by reviewers are covered. If they accept it, they will usually do so on the basis of requiring minor or major revisions, which must be carried out within a short timeframe.
Step 8: The revised paper is accepted by the editors for publication, is typeset and proofed, and the proof is sent to the co-authors for correction.
Step 9: The corrected proofs are returned to the editors, who schedule publication and request the co-authors to draft a suitable press release.
Step 10: The paper is published.
This is a wearisome process, particularly if one does not have an army of graduate students to do the grunt work. But, as can be seen from the step-by-step approach that is taken, it is possible to make corrections in the light of reviewers’ comments.
Finally, whether a result as utterly destructive of 123 years of climate science as ours will pass rapidly through peer review and reach publication is anyone’s guess. We are expecting very fierce resistance.
If we have ourselves made a material error, then we shall of course accept the position and that will be that. However, we have had our paper extensively reviewed by various experts before publication, and no significant error has been found. There is, therefore, a reasonable prospect (I put it at better than 50%) that we are correct.
If we get the impression that the journals are not giving our paper a fair and impartial review, there may come a point where we consult the fraud-investigating authorities. But we are hoping it will not come to that. Notwithstanding the totalitarian interference, particularly on the climate question, that is now routine throughout academe, we continue to hope that there is a basic honesty somewhere present in the souls of even the most ruthless academic totalitarians, and that they will realize that – if our result is correct – they simply cannot get away with rejecting it. If we are right, they will have to publish. But this is going to take time.
Detailed response much appreciated!
“Peer review is simply a regression to the mean” – Sydney Brenner
https://ktwop.com/2014/03/02/peer-review-is-a-regression-to-the-mean-a-completely-corrupt-system-sydney-brenner/
Based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models one can conclude that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. The AGW conjecture is based on only partial science and is too full of holes to adequately defend. I applaud the author for exposing some of the problems.
Many thanks to Mr Haas for his kind words. Our conclusion is that CO2 does have some effect on climate, but that the effect will be small, slow, harmless and net-beneficial.
Getting better Chris.
I could almost follow that 🙂
and yes, that is about right for climate sensitivity if climate is more or less linear with respect to radiation input.
However its probably not.
climate sensitivity could be a function of temperature as well as CO2.
In a most non linear way.
And in fact that is what climate alarmism relies on. The possibility that their lovely equations that assume linear response (that you have shown are not scary if the linear response is calibrated with real world data) are in fact not representative and that something far more scary that we haven’t even thought if – or think we have like clathrates subliming and turning the world into a methane hell – COULD happen and then it’s ‘Goodnight, Vienna’.
In short, good work on refuting the science. Alarmism fails as science…on its own terms
But the game has moved on.
From ‘science shows that it will’…through ‘science shows that it probably will’…’science shows that it might’..to ‘science can’t show that it couldn’t’.
And that is it in a nutshell.
Science can’t show that due to some unknown unknown, adding a smidgeon of CO2 wont cause the earth to turn into a
tropical paradisehellish desert.Ergo we must curb CO2.
And kerb our vehicles.
Personally I think climate change is down to cats. Cats should be kerbed. By fast driving gas guzzling sports cars, preferably.
Show me where the science says that climate change isn’t down to cats eh?
Gotta be right. Al Gore invented the Internet, and global warming, and the Internet is made of cats. I read that somewhere, so it must be true.
Didn’t you ever read your Kipling?
We are the Bandar Log. We all say it, so it must be true.
Pip pip!
In response to Leo Smith, I am glad that the rather compressed account of our result that is included at the end of the head posting is somewhat comprehensible. We have been working very hard on simplifying our result.
One of the important effects of this work is that we decided to derive the feedback factor for two dates: 1850, because that was when anthropogenic influence arguably became potentially significant, and the global temperature record began; and 2011, because that was the date to which IPCC (2013) presented all its data.
The feedback factors for both dates were 0.116. To three d.p., there was no difference between the two results. The reason for this is that the 254.3 K sum of emission temperature and the warming from the naturally occurring, non-condensing greenhouse gases is more than 350 times greater than the 0.7 K anthropogenic perturbation over the period 1850-2011. The feedback factor, therefore, simply can’t change much. So the nonlinearities in the system don’t matter.
In due course I’ll do an updated description of our result and offer it for posting here. However, it seems prudent to wait two or three months till the reviewers have had a chance to come back to us with their comments.
How many ppm/v does it take to raise the temperature 1 C ? Don’t need a link, just post here so everyone can see it.
When the world was a black body, the S-F formula says it’s 255 K or -18 C. Then wonderful co2 came along and Viola! added 33 K, which raised the temperature to balmy 288 K or 15 C or 59 F. This all happened when co2 levels were 280… 290… 300 ppm/v. At 280 ppm/v it took 8.48 ppm/v to raise the temperature 1 C or 1 K, at 290 it took 8.78 ppm/v and 300 it took 9.09 ppm/v to raise it 1 K or 1 C. (somebody will nitpick at what the co2 levels were, just providing a range)
So, here we are at 411 ppm/v, what should the increased temperature be? It takes awhile? 50 years? 60?
Did the linear slope of co2 change? Did the rate of change in the effect of co2 change? Does it now take much more co2 to raise the temperature 1 K or 1 C? Or less?
Here’s what’s interesting: If it takes the same or less co2 to raise the temperature ( feed back loop or whatever) the temperature should be apparently much, much warmer. And if it takes more co2 to raise the temperature then after a point, additional co2 will have little or no effect.
If AGW is using the most advantageous number it’d be 300 ppm/v. By Nov 1960 315 ppm/v would equal 1.65 C. Looks like more temperature and co2 records will have to be adjusted.
But then if they wanted to show how much co2 we are ‘stuffing’ into the atmosphere it’d be 280 ppm/v and in 1960 the temperature should have increased by 4.13 K or 4.13 C.
Somebody informed me it was 285 ppm/v, so 8.64 ppm/v to raise the temp by 1 K or 1 C. By 1960 the temperature should have soared by 3.47 K or C.
That’s an awful lot of heat to be hiding somewhere…. since 1960.
If the “science” is so solid that co2 is a GHG, then why aren’t we on our way to 303 K or 30 C or 86 F ? A rise of 1 C at this point is insignificant in proving co2 has anything to do with temperature. It’s taken 126 ppm/v increase in co2 to get a 1 K or C rise ?
30 years later from 1988, when co2 levels were 350 ppm/v, not even a 1.5 K or C increase since then when it should be 7 K or C warmer.
Core radiative transfer calculations performed by GCM’s are bogus
The weather patterns in GCM’s are supposedly calculated with the Navier Stokes equations with turbulence being just one ugly variable. The Navier Stokes equations have only been solved within very limited boundaries and many assumptions. Even to solve them for water rushing through a pipe is a formidable task not to mention air rushing through the whole atmosphere along with 1000’s of other variables. Good luck with that but let us assume that we aren’t worried about being accurate with the weather patterns. Trying to solve the heat transfer equations is another whole new ballgame.
Here is proof that the core radiative transfer calculations performed by GCM’s are bogus. Dr. Judith Curry couldn’t find them and concluded that the physics is not there. Well she is right. I quote from the bible of Radiative Heat Transfer by Michael Modest. Chapter 20 Solution Methods For NonGray Extinction Coefficients
Gray media radiative properties do not vary across the electromagnetic spectrum. Therefore we are dealing with non gray medium.
Page 627 says ” In general radiative heat flux, ……… must be evaluated for many many spectral locations, followed by numerical quadrature of the spectral results. THIS PROCESS WILL ALWAYS INVOLVE THE GUESSING OF A TEMPERATURE FIELD , FOLLOWED BY AN ITERATIVE PROCEDURE. ”
Hitran databases can provide the spectral information but they cant evaluate the temperature for you.
Modest goes on to say ” The above statements are true even for the case of radiative equilibrium. ”
So what does this all mean ? It means that you can never calculate a temperature even if you had all the other 1000 variables experimentally determined ( which is impossible by the way). The physics is not there and never will be there for an atmosphere. GCM’s are junk science and always will be junk science.
Science Officer Spock would know how to do that in around 500 years or so.
NASA are also doing junk science.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2641/keeping-an-eye-on-earths-energy-budget/
If you go to the bottom of the page you will see the last update was July 10 2018. Susan Callery is the science editor . Here is a quote from her after she got hired by GISS.
“I can work in the field of Earth science and enjoy and learn about space science at the same time.”
I wonder how that fulfills NASA’s GISS mission statement. Space studies is within the name of GISS. GISS is the Goddard Institute of Space Studies. So they hire a science editor who is learning on the job. The mind boggles.
1) The energy chart on the above page shows that the back radiation is exactly the same amount as total incoming solar radiation. If the atmosphere is cooler than the surface especially at night, how can you have a transfer of IR the opposite way? Even in the daytime the surface heats up much more than the atmosphere. A room 4 metres by 3 metres with a large single glazed window may need 80 watts/m^2 to heat it by a infrared heater in the winter time. So NASA are asking us to believe that back radiation will supply over 4 times the heating capacity of a 1000 watt infrared heater Don’t forget infrared heaters don’t heat the air , just the walls and floors and objects including people. So why would IR from the surface heat anything?
2) They show IR emitted from the surface at 117% of total incoming solar radiation. NASA does not understand algebraic flowcharts. You cannot have an ongoing flow of energy within a system that is greater than the source energy. If you put air into a balloon it will eventually burst so that the flow in will be equal to the flow out. Since the atmosphere is NOT a balloon, the energy flow in will always equal the energy flow out. The temperature of the troposphere is determined by the pressure and thus the lapse rate. To be sure that that pressure is caused by the N2 and O2, H2O and argon and to a much lesser extent by CO2. We are not warmed much by the temperature of H2O and CO2 but are instead warmed by the 99% of the atmosphere which is N2 and O2. Any decrease in outgoing IR would warm the troposphere but NOAA studies show that outgoing radiation has not decreased since they started measuring it.
3) The chart shows a piddly amount of convection of only 18.4 Watts/m^2. Since the earth surface is covered by 70% water the oceans would have boiled over by now if only 18.4 watts/m^ escaped in latent heat by convection. In fact convection accounts for 2/3 of the heat flux escaping from the surface with only 8% escaping IR and 25% from evapotranspiration (evaporation and plant evaporation).
So since NOAA measurements show no decrease in TOA IR from 1974 to 2012, NASA GISS should be disbanded for practicing junk science
http://www.climate4you.com/images/OLR%20Global%20NOAA.gif
In amongst all the math and statistical calculations we have the fly in the the IPCC ointment, namely the properties of water. These ensure that large quantities of energy are transmitted up through the atmosphere for dissipation into space in reaction to any variations in energy input. During this process, due to the phase changes taking place on a continuous basis much of the energy is transferred at ZERO sensitivity with respect to temperature. A factor, I suggest, which has been ignored in the calculations.
The assumption that H2O exacerbates the warming of the greenhouse effect by the IPCC is a fundamental error; for it is water that reacts to increasing energy input by accelerating the inherent cooling process of the Rankine Cycle.
One has only to observe the kettle in the kitchen to demonstrate this as it boils at 100C at sea level no matter how much you turn up the heat. The physics which ensures this is well known and it is high time this knowledge be used to explain the processes occurring in the clouds and the upward movement of energy.
The Steam Tables tell us that for every kilogram of water evaporated from the surface some 680 Watthrs of energy are moved up through the atmosphere for eventual dissipationof a proportion into space; thus providing the basic global thermostat.
Bore da, arglwydd Monckton. Sut mae’r “diffyg angheuol” heddiw?
Yn dda iawn, diolch!
If there has been discussion other than the WUWT original, it has passed me by. Are you as confident as ever? For (as I said previously) your idea should be very readily debunkable or confirmable by engineers or the math mafia.
In response to Hywel Morgan, we are more confident than when I wrote the original series for WUWT. We have done considerable further work, simplifying and clarifying the argument and demonstrating that the variant zero-dimensional system-gain equation used in climatology to allow for feedback represents the difference between two equilibrium states in the complete mainstream equation.
It is now entirely clear that the models, in trying to take a bottom-up approach by attempting to guess the forcings attributable to individual feedback processes, have in effect been guessing, and their guesses were very wrong. Our own top-down approach allows definitive derivation of the feedback factor from just two quantities: the 254 K temperature that would have obtained in 1850 before allowing for any feedback, and the equilibrium temperature in 1850 after feedback, which is of course the surface temperature of 287.5 K for that year.
The feedback factor for 1850 is then 1 – 254 / 287.5, or 0.116, and, to three d.p., it is the same for 2011. Applying this feedback factor to the 1.04 K directly-forced warming from doubled CO2, Charney sensitivity is 1.17 K. End of climate scare.
Pechodion – os gwelwch yn dda – ceisiwch ddangos rhywfaint o ddinesigrwydd – siaradwch Gaeleg!
.. .ond mae’r Gymraeg yn fwy prydferth na’r Gaeleg.
[Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish spell check not provided by the mods. .mod]
mae’r Cymry yn wir yn hyfryd, fel y mae eu tir
Welsh rugby good . . . language not so easy to understand.
In response to Warren, Welsh is in fact quite an easy language to learn, once one has overcome one’s fear of what appears to be a superfluity of consonants. It is also arguably the world’s most beautiful spoken language.
As you will see from the above exchanges in Welsh, Allan Macrae (of Scottish origin) says, “Guys, come on, be more civilized and speak Gaelic.”
A century or two ago I’d have agreed with him. But, as Scotland’s populace has descended into urbanized (but far from urbane) totalitarianism, the gentle, lilting sibilance with which Gaelic was once spoken has been replaced by a harsh, guttural growling that sounds like a cross between German and Klingon.
There is probably an interesting thesis to be written on the correlation between the sweetness with which a language is spoken and the gentleness of the people who speak it. On that test, the Welsh people are the gentlest of gentlemen – and so I have found them to be on my many happy visits there.
And you should hear them sing!
Diolch yn fawr Christopher.
I get the impression you’re not into rugby, so how about this amazing scene (combines both talents):
Have you or are you passing this info to the White House, President Trump, and the EPA?
They need to be keeping track of all this nonesense; so reality can be removed from all of
the politics.