By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Well, we sent out our paper On an error in defining temperature feedback to a leading journal for review. The reviewers did not like it at all. “And, gracious! How Lord Lundy cried!”
We are persevering, though, for in our submission nothing the reviewers have said in any way undermines the scientific validity of our result, which I outlined here in a series some months back.
Here, I shall summarize our argument in layman’s terms (for a layman is what I am). If you want a more detailed account of the physics, Anthony has kindly posted a single-sheet scientific summary here:
error-summary (PDF)
After the brief account of our argument that follows, just for fun I shall set out the reviewers’ principal objections, together with our answers. Feel free to comment on whether we or the reviewers are right.
How climatologists forgot the Sun was shining
Climatologists trying to predict global warming forgot the sunshine in their sums. After correction of this startling error of physics, global warming will not be 2 to 4.5 K per CO2 doubling, as climate models imagine. It will be a small, slow, harmless and net-beneficial 1.17 K.
The Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5: Andrews+ 2012) had predicted that doubling CO2 will warm the world by 1.04 ± 0.1 K (before feedbacks act) and 3.37 ± 1.3 K (after feedbacks have acted). IPCC says 3.0 ± 1.5 K. Some papers (e.g. Murphy 2009) give high-end estimates up to 10 K per CO2 doubling.
Climatologists erred when they borrowed feedback mathematics from control theory without quite understanding it. They used a variant feedback system-gain equation that relied solely on small changes in reference temperature (before feedback) and in equilibrium temperature (after feedback). But the mainstream equation they borrowed from control theory uses entire, absolute temperatures in Kelvin, not just changes in temperature.
Their variant equation is a valid equation, for it constitutes the difference between two instances of the mainstream equation. However, in taking that difference, they effectively subtracted out the term for the 243.3 K emission temperature as it would have been at the Earth’s surface without non-condensing greenhouse gases, driven by the fact that the Sun is shining, as well as the term for the 11.5 K warming from the pre-industrial greenhouse gases.
Because they lost this vital information, their variant equation could not reliably yield the true system-gain factor – the ratio of equilibrium to reference temperature. Instead, they tried to find that factor, the Holy Grail of global warming studies, by hunting for individual feedbacks computer models’ outputs. They were looking for blunt needles in the wrong haystack, when all they needed (if only they had known it) was a pin they already had.
Measurement and observation cannot tell us the magnitudes of individual feedbacks, and cannot help us to distinguish individual feedbacks either from each other from the manmade warmings that triggered them.
Restoring the missing sunshine and pre-industrial greenhouse-gas warming allows anyone to calculate the true system-gain factor. The calculation is direct, swift and accurate. You do not even need to know the magnitude of any individual feedback. All you need are the entire reference temperature (before feedback) and equilibrium temperature (after feedback) in any chosen year.
In 1850, reference temperature – the sum of the 243.3 K warming from the Sun and a further 11.5 K from the pre-industrial non-condensing greenhouse gases – was 254.8 K. The measured equilibrium surface temperature was 287.5 K (HadCRUT4). Therefore, the feedback system-gain factor for that year was 287.5 / 254.8, or 1.13.
Using the variant equation, however, one cannot derive the system-gain factor for 1850 at all.
By 2011, manmade influences had increased reference temperature by 0.68 K to 255.5 K. Measured temperature had risen by 0.75 K, but another 0.27 K that might not yet have come through because of an imagined “radiative imbalance” has to be allowed for, raising equilibrium temperature by 1.02 K to 288.5 K. Therefore, the system-gain factor for 2011 was 288.5 / 255.5, or 1.13.
That 2011 value is just as it was in 1850. It is not difficult to see why. The 254.8 K reference temperature in 1850 that was left out of climatologists’ sums is about 375 times the 0.68 K manmade reference warming from 1850 to 2011. That is why our effect on the system-gain factor is minuscule.
The climate stability evident after correcting climatologists’ striking error of physics should come as no surprise. For more than 800,000 years, according to analyses of air trapped in ancient ice (Jouzel+ 2006), global mean surface temperature has varied by little more than 3 K either side of the average temperature for the period.
Though IPCC (2013) mentions “feedback” 1000 times, feedback can be ignored with very little error. The system-gain factor may be taken as constant at 1.13. The non-linearity in feedbacks that climatologists had imagined makes very little difference.
Using the variant equation, the system-gain factor would be 1.02 / 0.68, i.e, 1.50, and the equilibrium warming from doubled CO2 would thus be 1.50 times the reference warming of 1.04 K in response to doubled CO2: i.e., 1.55 K. Even that value is only half the 3.37 K mid-range estimate in the CMIP5 models.
Using the mainstream equation, though, the true equilibrium warming from doubled CO2 is even smaller. It is 1.13 times the reference warming of 1.04 K: i.e., a harmless 1.17 K. To make sure, ten separate official estimates of manmade radiative forcing were studied. In each case, global warming in response to doubled CO2 was 1.17 K.
A statistical Monte Carlo simulation showed the true range of global warming as 1.08 to 1.25 K.
The control theory underlying the present result was verified on two test rigs, one of them at a government laboratory.
Climatologists had imagined that individual temperature feedbacks would self-cancel, except for water vapor, the largest. The atmosphere can carry 7% more water vapor for each Kelvin of warming. Can, not must. Models had predicted that, if and only if warming were manmade, the tropical upper air would warm at thrice the surface rate. Yet the water-vapor content up there is falling. Therefore, the tropical mid-troposphere “hot spot” does not exist.
Bottom line: global warming is not a problem after all. Enjoy the sunshine climatologists forgot about.
Reviewers’ comments, and our responses
“Simply inserting emission temperature in place of anthropogenic surface warming in the equations, and proceeding as before, is a massive violation of energy conservation.”
Um, no. One of my co-authors, John Whitfield, built a test rig – effectively an analog computer – to verify the control theory underlying our argument. There was certainly no “massive violation of energy conservation”. Instead, the outputs from the rig, in 23 distinct experiments, confirmed our understanding in all respects.
To make assurance doubly sure, we commissioned a government laboratory to build a test rig to its own design and to carry out the same 23 experiments. The results agreed with what the theory had led us to predict, and did so to the equivalent of a tenth of a Kelvin in each case. If there had been any “massive violation of energy conservation”, it would definitely have shown up in the experiments. It didn’t.
Besides, the reviewer had provided no evidence or argument whatsoever to justify the nonsensical assertion that our method was a “massive violation of energy conservation”.
“Instead of feeding in the perturbation temperature and asking what the perturbation in the top-of-atmosphere energy budget is, they shove the whole temperature difference from absolute zero into the equation by fiat and without physical justification. It’s plain rubbish.”
The physical justification is this. Feedback processes, being inanimate, cannot discriminate between a pre-existing temperature and a perturbation of that temperature. They have no means of deciding not to react at all to the former and yet to react vigorously to the latter. Nor are those inanimate processes concerned with what might have been if the Sun were not shining. For the Sun – like it or not – is shining.
Feedback processes simply respond to the temperature as they find it. Let us see why by studying the block diagram for a feedback loop –
The reference temperature (i.e., the temperature before feedbacks act) comes in from top left and is input to the summative input/output node. From that node, the fraction of the output temperature represented by the feedback response goes round the feedback loop and is fed back to the input/output node, where it is added to the original reference temperature to give the equilibrium sensitivity.
Now, increase the reference temperature by some increment. Then the input to the feedback loop is a little larger than before. The feedback processes simply respond to that larger reference temperature. There is self-evidently no physical mechanism by which those processes can “know” that they must not respond to a somewhat larger reference temperature than before.
“The analogy to a Bode amplifier, on which the authors place so much emphasis, is not an identity. If it were a perturbation voltage that were isolated and it was the perturbation voltage on which the feedbacks operated, the analogy could be made more closely.”
To understand why the reviewer sees things this way, let us recall IPCC’s official definition of a “climate feedback” (IPCC, 2013, glossary, p. 1450) –
“Climate feedback An interaction in which a perturbation in one climate quantity causes a change in a second, and the change in the second quantity ultimately leads to an additional change in the first. A negative feedback is one in which the initial perturbation is weakened by the changes it causes; a positive feedback is one in which the initial perturbation is enhanced. In this Assessment Report, a somewhat narrower definition is often used in which the climate quantity that is perturbed is the global mean surface temperature, which in turn causes changes in the global radiation budget. In either case, the initial perturbation can either be externally forced or arise as part of internal variability.”
Notice that the word “perturbed” or “perturbation” occurs five times in this short and calculatedly inspissate definition. Let us draw the block diagram for the variant feedback loop imagined by official climatology –
Here, there is scarcely an absolute quantity in the entire diagram. So, what is going on? Well, the mainstream feedback system-gain equation used in official climatology states that the change in equilibrium temperature is equal to the sum of the change in reference temperature and the product of the feedback factor and the change in equilibrium temperature.
Now, climatology’s variant equation is a perfectly valid equation. In effect, it represents the difference between two successive instances of control theory’s mainstream equation, which states that the equilibrium temperature is equal to the sum of the reference temperature and the product of the feedback factor and the equilibrium temperature.
But the variant equation is not useful for finding equilibrium sensitivities, because one cannot reliably derive from it the Holy Grail of global-warming studies – namely, the feedback system-gain factor, which is the ratio of equilibrium to reference temperature.
For present purposes, though, it is necessary only to observe that, since climatology’s variant equation is a valid equation, so is control theory’s mainstream equation, from which the variant equation is derived.
Let us correct the official definition of a “climate feedback” –
“Positive feedback in dynamical systems amplifies the output signal. Negative feedback attenuates it. In climate, the input signal is the global mean surface reference temperature 
that would obtain without feedback. The output signal is the global mean surface equilibrium temperature 
after allowing for feedback. The feedback response 
constitutes the entire difference 
between equilibrium and reference temperatures, such that the feedback factor 
, which is the fraction of equilibrium temperature that constitutes the feedback response, is equal to 
. The system-gain factor 
is equal to 
, i.e. 
.”
Note in passing that the feedback-loop block diagrams (a) simplify to the system-gain block diagrams (b). What this means is that all one needs to know to find the system-gain factor 
for any given year is the reference temperature (before feedback) and the measured equilibrium surface temperature (after feedback) in that year. One does not need to know the value of any individual feedback.
“[Test rigs] are all very well, but simply show that one can construct systems for which the one-dimensional energy-balance equations are exactly true. There is no information contained therein to say whether these models are relevant to the real climate.”
If the feedback mathematics borrowed by official climatology from control theory is as inapplicable as the reviewer suggests, then there is no legitimate basis for climatology’s current mistaken belief that feedback response accounts for at least two-thirds of equilibrium sensitivity. Paper after paper (see e.g. Hansen 1984, Schlesinger 1985, Bony 2006, Roe 2009) uses feedback mathematics, explicitly referring to Bode. But these and suchlike papers use Bode in a fashion that prevents accurate derivation of the system-gain factor. IPCC (2013) mentions the word “feedback” more than 1000 times.
These and numerous other authors have accepted that feedback mathematics is relevant to the derivation of equilibrium sensitivity. Quite right too: for equilibrium temperature is greater than reference temperature, and feedback response constitutes the entire difference between them.
It is interesting to see how ready the reviewers are to ditch the “settled science” that has been in the literature for decades whenever they find it inconvenient.
“The energy-balance equation used by climate science is just a Taylor-series expansion of the difference between the global average top-of-atmosphere energy imbalance and the radiative forcing. Higher-order terms have been dropped. This is why emission temperature does not appear in the zero-dimensional energy-balance equation. I just don’t see any opposing argument that would change this view of the equation.”
Since climatology’s variant equation is a valid equation, there is nothing in itself wrong with it. It is validly derived from the energy-balance equation, and the fact that it is derived via a leading-order Taylor-series expansion does not in any way impugn our argument: for a Taylor-series expension is merely a mechanism for expressing the shape of a curve about a particular point.
But leaving out the sunshine term makes it impossible to derive the feedback system-gain factor accurately from the variant equation.
Nothing in the derivation of the variant equation from the top-of-atmosphere energy-balance equation tells us anything about the magnitude of the system-gain factor. It is precisely for this reason that climate modelers have spent decades futilely attempting to constrain the interval of Charney sensitivities, which, in IPCC (2013), was [1.5, 4.5] K, just as it was four decades ago in Charney (1979).
“The authors would do well to educate themselves on the literature evaluating the linearity or otherwise of feedbacks.”
Yes, some feedback responses are non-linear. The water vapor feedback is the prime example. As the space occupied by the atmosphere warms, it can carry 7% more water vapor per Kelvin. Indeed, close to the Earth’s surface, at a pressure altitude of 1000 mb, it does precisely that:
At 600 mb, however, there is no increase in the specific humidity with warming. And at the crucial mid-troposphere altitude 300 mb, the specific humidity has been falling. Why is this important? Well, official climatology regards all individual feedbacks except water vapor as broadly self-canceling. It is only the water vapor feedback that provides the pretext for the notion that because of feedbacks equilibrium warming is three or four or even ten times reference warming.
Yet the only altitude at which the predicted rate of increase the specific humidity is observed in reality is very close to the surface, where, as Harde (2017) has pointed out, the spectral lines of water vapor are very close to saturation.
Turn to Fig. 9.1c of IPCC (2007). There, the predicted tropical mid-troposphere “hot spot” – I had the honor to name it – is made evident in the fashion with which we are now wearily familiar: lurid colors –
So much for what is predicted. I could show dozens of similar images from various general-circulation models. In reality, however, the predicted “hot spot” is conspicuous by its entire absence –
Now, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program produced its real-world data showing no “hot spot” a year before IPCC persisted in its false claim that the “hot spot” exists. And why would it exist? For the specific humidity that would have to increase to deliver the predicted faster-than-surface warming has actually decreased.
However, using our method of finding the feedback system-gain factor, one does not need to know anything about individual feedbacks. All one needs to know is the reference temperature (before feedback) and the equilibrium temperature (after feedback) in any given year.
And to find out whether nonlinearities in individual feedbacks are varying the system-gain factor with time and temperature, all one needs to do is find the system-gain factor for two different years – one close to the beginning of the industrial era and one close to the end. So we did that. And we even made allowance for the imagined (and probably imaginary) “radiative imbalance” that may have delayed about a quarter of the manmade warming to date.
In both 1850 and 2011, the system-gain factor, to three decimal places, was 1.129. It didn’t change even in the third decimal place. It didn’t change because the combined temperature from the Sun and from the pre-industrial non-condensing greenhouse gases was 375 times bigger than the 0.68 K reference sensitivity between those two dates. Nonlinearity? Schmonlinearity.
“The fact that feedbacks, calculated properly from models, give the right range of climate sensitivity in models probably should have given the authors pause in their conviction it [their analysis] is fundamentally defective.”
And this, gentle reader, is our old friend the circular argument, the argumentum ad petitionem principii, one of the dozen commonest logical fallacies. From this fallacy the only valid conclusion that may be drawn is that the perpetrator is insufficiently educated to know any better.
To demonstrate the utility of the simple system-gain equation in studying equilibrium sensitivities, we had taken climatology’s variant of it and demonstrated that, using the range of feedback factors officially derived from the models by Vial et al. (2013), it would deliver the published interval of equilibrium sensitivities. But that exercise told us nothing of the correct value of the feedback factor, or of its cousin the system-gain factor. To derive the correct values of these variables, one needs to look outside the window, notice that the Sun is shining, and take proper account of that fact by using the mainstream system-gain in one’s calculations.
“The sensitivity of any climate model is what it is – it cannot change due to any post-hoc analysis of its feedbacks. In a model the CO2 level is doubled, the radiative transfer calculation alters, and temperatures, water vapor, circulation, clouds etc. all change. The simulated climate system eventually stabilizes and the resulting net change in surface temperature is the sensitivity of that model.”
And this is the fundamental fallacy of relevance known as the straw-man argument, the argumentum ad ignorationem elenchi. For we had not undertaken any post-hoc analysis of any model’s feedbacks. Instead of adopting the models’ doomed-to-failure bottom-up approach to deriving equilibrium sensitivity by making fanciful guesstimates of the values of individual feedbacks, we had adopted the far simpler and more robust top-down approach of finding the reference and equilibrium temperatures for two well-separated years in the industrial era, discovering that the system-gain factors derived from these values were the same, applying the system-gain factor to the reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 and demonstrating, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 is just 1.17 K, plus or minus less than a tenth of a Kelvin.
The reviewer is, in effect, saying that the models must be right. Well, however elaborate they are, they are not right. They are wrong, as our analysis has demonstrated.
“No physical arguments are given for why the sensitivity should be so small, and accepting this simple estimate as plausible would require rejecting all previous work by scientists to understand the physics of climate change, much of which has been proven beyond doubt. The analysis given is both rudimentary and fundamentally flawed and I cannot recommend publication by a reputable journal.”
See the analysis of the water vapor feedback, earlier in this article. The magnitude of that feedback has not been “proven beyond doubt”: it has been disproven beyond doubt. Consider, for instance, John Christy’s fascinating graph of predicted tropical mid-troposphere temperature change in 73 models from 1979-2012. All 73 models showed tropical mid-troposphere warming at a mean rate about four times the observed rate, and no model’s prediction was below the observed outturn –
It is very likely, therefore, that the chief reason why the corrected value of the system-gain factor, and hence of equilibrium sensitivity, is so much below all official estimates is the overegging of the water-vapor pudding in the models. But we don’t need to know what the models got wrong – it is sufficient to demonstrate – in our submission irrefutably – that wrong they were.
In one respect, though, the reviewer is right. We are indeed rejecting all previous work by scientists to derive equilibrium sensitivity, insofar as that work, however honest and diligent, is incompatible with the correct result which we have reached by a far simpler and more reliable method than theirs.
“Look back at the definition of the feedback factor above, and marvel at what they have done. The perturbation in climate forcing that they use to estimate feedbacks is, quite literally, Switching On The Sun. Start with the Earth at zero Kelvin. Now switch on the Sun, forbid any feedbacks, and we get a reference temperature of 255 K. Now allow feedbacks to perated, and in our current world we actually get to equilibrium temperature 287 K.”
Perhaps all climatologists are Scottish. For it comes as a great surprise to us, whenever we take the road to England – or the boat for the cold coast of Greenland, or the flight to almost anywhere – and we find, to our fascination and delight, that the land is often bathed in the holy radiance of a large, bright, warm, yellow object in the sky. We don’t see it that much in the Gaidhealtachd.
We do not have to Switch On The Sun. For, owing to the bounty of Divine Providence, it has already been Switched On for us (except in Scotland), and the angels – the intergalactic grease-monkeys whose task is keep the Universe unfolding as it should – are doing a splendid job of care and maintenance.
For the Sun, you see, is shining. Are we wrong to take account of that fact? We think not. The feedback processes operating today don’t care what feedback processes operated at zero Kelvin. They simply respond to the temperature as they find it. And that means it is better to take account of the fact that the Sun is shining than to ignore it.
It was not only the reviewers nominated by the journal who reviewed it. Somehow, a copy of our paper reached the Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, who, on reading the paper, summoned a meeting of all 65 Professors and Doctors of science in his Environmental Sciences faculty and yelled at them as follows –
“Monckton’s paper is a catastrophe for us. If the general public ever gets to hear of Monckton’s paper, there will be hell to pay.”
He ordered the faculty to drop everything and work on trying to refute our paper – which, at that time, was merely a 2000-word outline that has now been developed into a full-length, 6000-word paper. He later denied that the meeting had taken place, but we heard about it directly from one who was present.
Finally, here is a comment from a notoriously irascible skeptical blogger (not, of course, our genial host here):
“No, we’re not going to discuss Monckton’s result here. We don’t do simple.”
My reading in mathematics and physics has led me to imagine – perhaps wrongly – that there is more rejoicing in Heaven at the discovery of a simple method to derive a correct result than at the use of a pointlessly complex method to derive a result that, not least on account of the complexity, is incorrect.
Some final questions for those who have had the persistence to read this far. Are the reviewers correct, or are we correct? And would you like to be kept abreast of developments with occasional pieces here? The paper remains out for review and, in due course, we shall learn whether it has been accepted for publication. We have also been invited to write a book giving an account of our result and how we came by it.
And we have sent to IPCC a formal notice that all of its Assessment Reports are gravely in error. Though we have followed IPCC’s own published protocol for submission of alleged errors, we have been unable to obtain from the Secretariat the acknowledgement which its own rules require. So we are about to put the matter into the hands of the Bureau de l’Escroquerie, the Swiss Fraud Office, via the London Ambassador of Switzerland, the nation where IPCC is headquartered.
Before we call in InterPlod, are we right to think we are correct and the reviewers wrong?
For a 45-minute You-Tube presentation by me explaining our result, follow this link. I’m most grateful to John Charleston for having filmed the presentation in his own studio, and for having edited it and posted it up.
And here is the single slide, from my presentation at next week’s Camp Constitution in Connecticut, that brings the entire global warming foofaraw to an unlamented end –
As my noble friend the Earl of Seafield once put it, “There’s ane end to ane auld sang.”
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I was startled by the circular reasoning and arrogant nonsense in some of the reviewer comments. I know, I shouldn’t be, I’ve followed this debate long enough to know better. Still, it is astounding.
I would like to see Monckton’s math presented in a slightly different way. He has, at the end of the day, constructed a model. A model’s value can only be shown by its ability to predict the future. Except 2011 to now isn’t a long enough period of time for any divergence between Monckton’s model and reality to emerge. The vaunted climate models have been around long enough that their divergence from reality is so obvious as to be dumbfounding. Can we put Monckton’s model to a similar test?
It would be interesting, to me at least, if Monckton did the calcs over again, but instead of using 1850 to 2011, use 1850 to 1934 with the same math. Based on HadCrut4, that temp increase is a much smaller trend than 1850 to 2011, but the CO2 increase was ALSO much smaller. If the model spits out numbers that predict the temp change from 1935 to present with accuracy…
My reservation being that I don’t think 168 years of data is sufficient, much less so 84. But the outcome would be of interest.
Mr Hoffer makes an interesting point about predictions. The reason why we chose 1850 as our first equilibrium year was that there was an actual temperature equilibrium that year. There would be no trend in global temperature for another 80 years. Also, that year the HadCRUT global mean surface temperature dataset began.
The reason why we chose 2011 was that that was the year to which IPCC brought all its estimates of net anthropogenic forcing up to date, and because it was the closest year to the present for which such data were available from a “mainstream” source.
Since the system-gain factors for both years are 1.13, and since the reason for the near-identical values is that the vast majority of the feedback response is to the Sun and the pre-existing greenhouse gases, I should not expect a significant departure from that value in the intervening years.
Therefore, we predict that global warming per doubling of CO2 concentration is about 1.2 K. Since the predicted 21st-century anthropogenic warming from all sources is about the same as the predicted warming at CO2 doubling, we are, in effect, predicting a warming of order 1.2 K this century. At present, the warming rate since 1990 is running at about 1.5 K/century equivalent. So we are a lot closer to the mark than IPCC, whose original prediction was for 2.8 K/century equivalent as far as 2025.
The UAH satellite data give about 1.3K/century
Mr Tomalty’s point is excellent. The HadCRUT data would also have given about 1.3 K/century till they were tampered with (whether with or without justification) a few years ago.
“So we are a lot closer to the mark than IPCC, whose original prediction was for 2.8 K/century equivalent as far as 2025.”
Is this accepting that the previous claim that the IPCC predicted 3.3°C/century was wrong?
“At present, the warming rate since 1990 is running at about 1.5 K/century equivalent.”
I’m guessing you are using the two lowest warming data sets to get your 1.5 figure.
Looking at all the data sets, only one shows a trend less than that (UAH with 1.27°C/century), all other data sets show warming between 1.72 and 2.09°C/century since 1990.
In response to the childish Bellhop, IPCC in 1990 variously predicted 3.3 and 2.8 K warming per CO2 doubling. For the sake of kindness, I have here adopted the lower figure as a point of comparison.
I am using the HadCRUT dataset, which is the one the IPCC uses and is therefore an appropriate point of comparison, together with the UAH dataset. Bellhop is free to use any other datasets he may prefer.
“Monckton’s paper is a catastrophe for us. If the general public ever gets to hear of Monckton’s paper, there will be hell to pay.” I think that sums up where all the reviewers are really coming from. If the IPCC really knew what they were doing they would have only one simulation model now but they are still considering a plethora of models that means a lot of guess work has been involved. All their models have predicted warming that has not happened so something has got to be wrong somewhere but they will not admit it and will talk down any criticism as to what they have done. For many of the reviewers their livelihood depends on it. The peer review seen here is more of a political review rather than a real science review. The AGW conjecture is full of holes but those whose careers depend in it will not admit it. After more than two decades of effort the IPCC has been unable to determine the climate sensitivity of CO2, They have been unable to narrow their initial range of guesses one iota.
One of the most useful aspects of our research is that we have been able not only to reduce the Charney sensitivity to a more reasonable value but also to constrain its interval to less than one-sixth of a Kelvin from lower bound to upper bound.
William,
Yes, it appears that there is no consensus on what goes into a skillful GCM, or what values to use in parameterization. Hence, there are many similar, but not identical models. However, it seems that most of them are running hot (with the notable exception of the Russian model). That is prima facie evidence that they are unskillful. That is likely because, as Monckton is pointing out, there is a serious structural error in the mathematics.
This “startling error” (not) has nothing to do with the mathematics of GCMs.
Mr Stokes is disingenuous. If our approach is correct, then it demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that the GCMs in which he has for so long placed his faith were false gods.
If the IPCC was really serious about doing science they would have already discarded the worst models in terms of their having predicted warming that did not happen. But it is really politics that allows funding of studies based on wrong models. Monckton and his team are just one of many who have found that CO2 is not as dangerous to the climate an the IPCC and “official climatology” previously thought.
Absolutely! Millions of us – especially those who have worked around the world on engineering projects that require some understanding of climate – know from our own research and analysis, that carbon dioxide has only a minor influence on world temperature.
Lord Monckton’s paper now explains why the so-called “science”, supporting global warming, is a crock! And William Haas has it right – a generation of global warming enthusiasts has a lot to answer for and a lot to lose.
“….know from our own research and analysis, that carbon dioxide has only a minor influence on world temperature” is olympic grade arm-waving.
Meantime, scientists extract this sort of data:
temperature
RyanS, I tell you what is Olympic grade arm waving is any data on that graph prior to 1979 and even after that is basically roughly estimated on many variables.
Mr Browne is right on the button. Of course our result is a threat to a multi-trillion-dollar rent-seeking industry. No surprise then, that one or two handsomely-paid trolls for that industry are busy trying to disrupt the thread here with arrant nonsense. But our demonstration of officialdom’s error is simple. If correct, it will eventually come to be seen by everyone as true, and all who wish to understand it will be able to do so.
If it is not correct, well, at least we tried!
this diatribe would be easier to follow if we had, maybe as a separate archive:
1. the journal
2. the reviewer’s comments, one reviewer at a time. (three reviewers, I assume?)
3. the editor’s response.
Interesting that at least 3 people voted this comment down. Makes you wonder why these people *don’t* want to see the reviewers’ and editor’s comments published.
Popularity contests are not based on substance.
“Diatribe” rankles.
Interesting that at least 3 people voted this comment down Makes you wonder why these people *don’t* want to see the reviewers’ and editor’s comments published.
Why do you assume that’s what the down votes mean? The down votes don’t have a comment as to their reason attached. People can and do down vote for a variety of reasons.
sometimes they vote down due to suspecting dual accounts being used to promote a viewpoint. i am not one of the three, but was tempted to make it four.
Probably because of the pejorative use of “diatribe.” If it was a simple request to have more information, it would have been received more warmly than stating up front what RS thinks of the article. Ye reap as ye sow.
In response to ReallySkeptical, I have faithfully extracted what seemed to me to be the more serious scientific comments directed at the main point we are making. I have reproduced them warts and all, and, of course, the cheerleaders for the Party Line have enthusiastically parroted those comments, many of which were unacceptably politicized in their tone.
I have not included the numerous heroically idiotic comments. One, by a reviewer in a prominent position at NASA, was to the effect that I had been wrong to state that the ratio of the Earth’s surface area to that of its great circle was 4. He said that a great circle was the shortest distance between two points on the Earth’s surface. However, I am a Trustee of the Hales Trophy for the Blue Riband of the Atlantic. What the hapless reviewer was describing was a “great circle route” – i.e., a route between two points on a great circle. My formulation in the paper was precise and correct.
There were dozens of inconsequential fatuities of this kind in the reviews, but I did not think it right to burden the readers with them.
By convention, I have not named the journal in question.
I have provided plenty of information to embody the substance of the reviewers’ comments. And I have done so openly and frankly. If ReallySkeptical were really skeptical, he would appreciate that he has probably never seen so much detail on the reviews of a scientific paper ever before. Be grateful for what you’ve got, because you’re not getting any more till the next round of reviews comes through.
The ratio of the Earth’s surface area to the area of its great circle does indeed work out to be 4. Once the hapless reviewer realizes his/her misunderstanding, I’m sure they’ll be quite red-faced whether or not they ever publically admit to their error.
What is the difference in forcing between the quiet sun, say during the early period of the solar system, and the sun today?
Is it not clear that prior to the industrial period, the temperature must be made up by the direct forcing and a certain component of feedback, which component is consequent upon the change in direct forcing that has occurred over time, ie as from the planet’s inception through to the industrial period.
I have yet to hear anyone convincingly explain how there could have been no feedbacks as at the start of the industrial period, and why feedbacks only begin to kick in once CO2 starts to rise from the pre industrial level.
Mr Verney’s is the $64,000 question. My prediction is that it will be met either with silence from the usual suspects, or with nonsense.
Feedbacks are part of complex dynamic systems. That doesn’t mean that the feedbacks are constant or even linear. Somewhere in the domain they may be negligible, while they may be significant elsewhere, in a non-linear fashion. That is why the question of absolute temperatures is important and temperature difference don’t adequately represent the atmospheric system.
“My prediction is that it will be met either with silence from the usual suspects”
Never! As I have expounded here and elsewhere, feedback is analysed, for necessary reasons, as perturbation of a state. States just are, they don’t incorporate feedback, because for the analysis, you don’t care how they came to be. Just as well, because there is no unique such path to which you could ascribe feedback..
In this case, the 1850 climate is the state, and the effect of CO2 is the input, to which the problem is to calculate the response, including feedbacks.
The effect of CO2 is not the only input.
My prediction was correct. Mr Stokes has responded to Mr Verney’s $64,000 question with nonsense. Feedback processes respond to the input signal they find. They are inanimate and cannot discriminate and decide only to respond to some arbitrarily small perturbation of the input signal.
If, therefore, one wishes to study the effect of a perturbation, one adds it to the input signal. Not difficult, really. The feedback processes, which simply respond to the input signal they find, will respond to the increased input signal.
“No physical arguments are given for why the sensitivity should be so small, and accepting this simple estimate as plausible would require rejecting all previous work by scientists to understand the physics of climate change”
The reviewer that wrote this has no business being anywhere near this topic of science.
“physics of climate change”.
There is no such theory or predictive model for “climate change” and never has been. There is just no scientific theory called climate change. This reviewer is an ideologue and a fool. Climate models cannot model climate, never have modeled climate and never were meant to model climate, because they can’t model weather, and climate is weather over time, and climate models have 0 predictive power for any weather in any specific location and time on earth.
Even over short term, NOAA completely blew the forecast for Jan Feb 2018 with their Oct 2017 forecast, it was a catastrophic failure of a forecast.
If you cant model weather\time you cant model climate.
Of course these reviewers were already waiting for this paper, and already ready to reject it before they even seen it. There was and is no scope for them to accept it, they cannot, because the ramifications for the entire field are immense. There is a lot of standing and kudos and money to be lost, hundreds of millions over years, they are not going to let one paper ruin all of that.
What strikes me is the irrational confidence they have in the models. Should it not be understood that models are an artificial construction and may need amending in light of new information? How can they be regarded as proof of anything?
These are what they based their careers on , and what ever else they can smell a ‘consensus’ when they see one .
@Susan: “How can they [models] be regarded as proof of anything?”
Models are useful only to the extent that they explain and/or predict _observable events_.
George Box said it best: ‘All models are wrong, but some are useful’
johanus:
A model is right when its predictions agree with observed reality to within determined accuracy reliability and precision.
A model is wrong when it fails to provide predictions that agree with observed reality to within determined accuracy reliability and precision.
In other words, George Box was mistaken because
(a) all useful models are right
and
(b) wrong models are worse than useless because they are misleading.
All the climate models are wrong.
Importnatly, the above article by Viscount Monckton of Brenchley explains one of the reasons why all the climate models are wrong.
Richard
The current models are CMIP5. These will shortly be replaced by CMIP6. Obviously there were also CMIPs 1-4. And yes, they do incorporate knew information into the latest versions.
… and yet the CMIP3 and CMIP5 models produced precisely the same intervals of equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2: [2.1, 4.7] K. It is as though the result had been predetermined.
A GCM is a very complex hypothesis expressed in mathematics and the formal language of digital computer programming. As with any hypothesis, it should be tested against reality. If it is shown to be wanting in its predictive powers, then it should be modified and re-tested. That is the essence of the Scientific Method!
Or one can adopt our approach, which is to demonstrate that the models’ implicit estimate of the feedback system-gain factor, and hence of equilibrium sensitivity, is excessive.
You aren’t disagreeing with me. Instead of actually comparing the GCM to reality, which isn’t a trivial task, you have built a physical model of reality and compared that to the GCMs, and found the GCMs to be wanting for reasons that you explain.
Bingo!
Quote
“for equilibrium temperature is greater than reference temperature, and feedback response constitutes the entire difference between them.”
If there is a reference temperature from basic theory
and
there is the current temperature
how does one know
there is not some additional input energy,
such as energy stored in the system over time
that is currently being released back into the system
effecting the current temperature
or
there is input energy
not currently being expressed as temperature
because it is going into longer term storage?
If either of these conditions exist
would it not be the case that a feedback factor
calculated from the current temperature
is either too large or too small, depending?
The “climate” at the approximate end of the Little Ice Age
differed from today’s “climate”
(if it is in reality meaningful to call the general weather then
and the general weather today different climates)
It seems that this consideration of differing inputs
would also apply if there were
additional input from outside the system
or
less than average input from outside the immediate earth system.
“….how does one know there is not some additional input energy, such as energy stored in the system over time that is currently being released back into the system effecting the current temperature…”
One can’t *know* that for sure; it’s just that they’ve looked pretty hard at all the alternative *known* heat reservoirs and inputs and there isn’t any evidence that this is occurring. For example, the oceans, being the most obvious heat reservoir in the climate system, have been gaining heat energy over the same decades-long period that the atmosphere has warmed. Therefore atmospheric warming can’t have come from the oceans, otherwise one would have expected to see a concurrent reduction in ocean heat content, not the opposite. All this happened over a period when the sun’s output was in decline, by the way. Once one eliminates the oceans and the sun as the source of the atmospheric warming, options become rather limited.
DWR,
You said, “options become rather limited.” It would be more accurate to say “known options.” If the models are not performing well, then it would appear that something unknown is missing, or that the known things are not being represented correctly. It isn’t sufficient to have blind faith in what one is dealing with if the results don’t match reality.
DW Rice: So, you are saying that when the sun rises in the morning and warms up the ground, the ground cannot heat the atmosphere …. LOL.
I have seen others make the same silly claim. Let me help you out. If the oceans are warming for any reason then it makes sense they would share some of that heat with the atmosphere.
Face::palm.
BTW, that is exactly what has happened.
Name those reviewers, and get them to present their own explanation of the deviations between “their” climate models and reality.
Alas, we can’t name the reviewers, because we’re not supposed to know who they are, though they know who we are.
Frankly, we have not been very impressed with the peer-review system. Here is how I think it should work:
1. A paper is submitted – and not necessarily through the clunky online systems most journals use.
2. The paper, if not obviously nonsense, should be sent out for double-blind review. The authors should not know who the reviewers are, and the reviewers should not know who the authors are.
2. The reviewers should be paid for their trouble. The journals can well afford it.
3. Any review that is intemperately expressed should be slung out.
4. On any contentious subject, the editors should be required to appoint reviewers on both sides of the controversy.
5. There should be a strict time limit for reviews to be conducted, and for the authors to make consequent revisions.
6. There should be an appeal process to prevent politicized reviewers from wrecking an uncongenial paper’s chance of publication on specious grounds.
Why are we starting at 1850, rather than say at the Holocene Optimum?
If we were to perform this exercise starting say at the Holocene Optimum, what would that say about Climate Sensitivity to CO2?
If that exercise gives a different result, why is that? What would such an exercise tell us about Climate Sensitivity and/or about our understanding and/or limitations?
We start in 1850 because that is the first year of the global temperature record; that is early enough in the industrial era to allow us to assume a negligble pre-existing anthropogenic influence; and it is close enough to the present to minimize any nonlinearities in the feedback processes.
If we were to start the exercise at the Holocene climate optimum, we’d have to know not only the emission temperature but also the equilibrium temperature, as well as the forcing from the naturally-occurring, non-condensing greenhouse gases. And we couldn’t be sure that the feedback processes acting in the very different world of that time would be close enough to today’s to allow a fair comparison between system-gain factors.
Problem with starting at 1850 being there was virtually no southern hemisphere coverage either on land or ocean. (page 9 link below)
By 1885 it was hardly any better (page 10)
This means generally relying on mainly the Northern Hemsiphere data which building up over the decades makes comparision with recent decades and older periods with global temperatures in this term such a farce.
Knowing the southern hemisphere emission temperature and equilibrium temperatures during the early stages makes it no different from the holocene Optimum where both would need proxies to be relied upon.
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/10178730
One of the advantages of our method is that it is not very sensitive to small changes in the base data. The published uncertainty in the HadCRUT4 temperature data is quite large for the earlier decades, but, within reason, one could take almost any plausible value up or down by a degree or two from the current value without much altering the result. The point is that the influence of the Sun and of the pre-industrial greenhouse gases on feedbacks are so very much larger than our tiny perturbation that one can ignore feedback responses without much error.
With all due respect to Lord Monckton, and whilst I understand why he seeks to go about this task, this is simply an exercise in futility. I say that since we do not have data of sufficient quality to test the assertion that the Climate is Sensitive to CO2.
But such data that we have (poor quality as it is) does not, on any time scale, suggest that CO2 drives temperature. To the extent that one can read something into our limited data, it suggests that CO2 is a response, not a driver, of temperature change. CAGW proponents are putting the cart before the horse.
I would suggest that it is no coincidence that the best sampled land with the most complete historic data , ie., the contiguous US, shows no warming. If CO2 is a well mixed gas, then someone needs to explain what geographical and/or topographical features of the US render the US, an outlier. Unless someone can adequately explain the physics behind why the US is an outlier, the obvious conclusion is that if we were to have better data on a global scale, then we would find something similar to the US.
It is because most of the data on a global scale is simply estimated (made up if you will) that the global construct differs from the US. Don’t forget that both Hansen and Jones in the early 1980s acknowledged the problems and limitations with Southern Hemisphere data, and Phil Jones, in the Climategate emails, was more candid saying that most of the SH data outside the Tropics and below Antarctica is simply made up. He is right on that since there is no worthwhile data of ocean temps pre ARGO. Ocean temps (pre ARGO) are all made up.
Hansen has recognised the problem, and has, for a long time, sought to argue that global constructs are different to the US, without offering any good reason why the US should be regarded as an outlier. Even in 2010, NOAA were showing that there had been no warming in the US since the mid 1930s, or indeed for that matter since 1880. See:
There is a plethora of other data that suggest the same, eg. if one looks at the unadjusted temps for Greenland and Iceland, one see something similar.
The starting point is to get a proper handle on temperatures, by selecting only the best sited stations and then compare each station individually to itself, without making any global or hemispherical wide construct. Preferably, we would retrofit the best sited stations with the same LIG thermometers that were used in the past and take modern day obsrvations using the same practice as was used at each station (eg., the same TOB) and then we would obtain modern day RAW data that needs no adjustment whatsoever that can be compared with the unadjusted RAW historic data for the station in question (each with itself). We would then know whether there has actually been any temperature change at any given point. Once that has been ascertained we can then investigate wider issues such as the reason why there has been a change (if indeed there has been a change).
“Even in 2010, NOAA were showing that there had been no warming in the US since the mid 1930s, or indeed for that matter since 1880. See:”
This is a curious thing to cite. It is a reanalysis product, which means it isn’t very good on homogeneity, and hence trends. But it isn’t any ordinary reanalysis. From here:
“20th Century Reanalysis and PSD: Until recently, the earliest reanalysis product started from 1948, leaving many important climate events such as 1930’s dust bowl droughts uncovered. To expand the coverage of global gridded reanalyses, the 20th Century Reanalysis Project is an effort led by PSD and the CIRES at the University of Colorado to produce a reanalysis dataset spanning the entire twentieth century, assimilating only surface observations of synoptic pressure, monthly sea surface temperature and sea ice distribution”
IOW, it doesn’t even use land surface measured temperatures.
Nick
You are right that it is a reanalysis, but then again, all the data constructs are, and that is why they habitually change. Almost every year, the past appears to be different.
No one knows what Climate Sensitivity is, and no one can estimate it for 2 reasons. First, the data is not fit for scientific purpose and does not withstand the ordinary rigours of scientific analysis and scrutiny. Second, until we know everything there is to know about natural variation, what it comprises of (ie., the forcing associated with each and every constituent component), the upper and lower bounds of each constituent component, when each component is operating at any given moment in time, in which direction the forcing associated with each individual component is operating at the relevant time, the extent of each component in operation at any given time, we will never be able to disentangle the forcing, if any, of CO2 from the forcing of natural variation.
It is simply an impossible task given our present understanding and available data.
Mr Verney is unduly pessimistic. One can only draw the conclusion that it is impossible to derive an accurate estimate of Charney sensitivity if one has at least conducted a proper sensitivity analysis.
If we are right that feedback processes respond to the entire input signal and not to some arbitrary fraction thereof, then we are able to say to 2-sigma confidence that Charney sensitivity will be 1.08-1.25 K, with a mid-range estimate 1.17 K. The reasons why this interval is so narrow are interesting. Not the least of them is that the feedback response to the emission temperature and to the pre-industrial greenhouse gases is a great deal larger than any response to our puny addition to reference temperature. Another reason is that for feedback factors <0.5 the slope of the rectangular-hyperbolic Charney-sensitivity response curve is small and near-linear. For these and suchlike reasons, even quite large variations in the underlying quantities do not engender large uncertainty as to Charney sensitivity.
Lord M.
I am not being unduly pessimistic. I understand the tactic behind your desire to point out what you perceive to be a fundamental error, but the problem is far more deep rooted than that. It is an intractable problem given the poor quality of data and our limited understanding of matters (in particular, what drives changes in temperatures).
I am simply pointing out an inconvenient fact, namely that the data is not fit for purpose, and we are unable to attribute any warming to a forcing change brought about by an increase in CO2, since we do not know what temperature changes have been driven exclusively by natural variation. Indeed, we do not know whether this planet is any warmer today than it was in the late 1930s/early 1940s, or for that matter since about 1880. Whilst there has obviously been some warming since the LIA, and whilst there is considerable multidecadal change, we do not know whether there has been any warming at all since 1880.
One fundamental problem is that this planet is never in equilibrium, such that there is no equilibrium state: T eq1 (3:45 of your video presentation). You state: “In 1850 the temperature wasn’t going to change for about another 60 years, it remained more or less level…”
I do not know where you got that idea from, since we know that the temperature did not remain steady. If one looks at HADCRUT3, the temperature changes from a negative anomaly of -0.8degC in 1850 to a positive anomaly of +0.39 in 1879. Thus in a period of 29 years there was a change of temperature of approximately 1.2degC That somewhat conflicts with your assertion, and the premise upon which your assessment is made.
First, we know from this that the planet was not in equilibrium as at 1850, far from it. Second, we know that the about1.2 degC of warming was not caused by any change in forcing caused by rising CO2 levels between 1850 and 1879 simply because there was all but no increase in CO2 during this period. According to the Law Dome Ice Core Data, the change in CO2 during this period was about 3ppm,
With such huge variations in temperatures, which cannot be explained by CO2, I am sure that you will see the obvious problem.
Your red herring is well said.
Mr Verney may care to calculate the least-squares linear-regression trend on the HadCRUT4 data for 1850-1930. That is 81 years, and the trend is just about zero.
And I quite understand that there are many who would prefer to discourage us by saying that our seeking the truth is futile. But seeking the truth is never futile. Like it or not, that is what science does. If we are right, no one will love us. The skeptics will hate us for finding the actually quite simple error we have identified, and they will wonder why they didn’t find it first. The true-believers will hate us for demonstrating their superstition to be false. But the truth is the truth and, if our research is correct, then the truth will prevail, however uncongenial or unprofitable or futile people may think it to be.
We are going to pursue this research until either it is demonstrated that we are wrong or it is published and found to be right. No one pays us. We are interested, and curiosity is the foundation of all true science. Mr Verney is entitled not to be much interested, but that is his affair.
Lord M,
I note that you have not addressed the point I make about equilibrium. If the data sets can be relied upon, the temperatures were certainly not stable and in equilibrium in 1850, as all data sets show considerable warming through to 1880 with all but no increase in CO2 during those 30 years, such that natural variation is the only explanation for the change (ie., we do not know what caused the change, but it was not CO2, and we do not know whether what caused the change was already built in as at 1850, or whether it was something that occurred during the intervening years). The 60 years that you refer to is a cherry pick, just as the 29 years that I refer to are a cherry pick, save that the 29 years I refer to establishes that there was no equilibrium in 1850.
The data sets are not fit for purpose. The notion that we have any handle on the average temperature of this planet in 1850 is farcical, and would be laughed at, in any real science. HADCRUT4 is an amalgram and there is no worthwhile ocean data going back to 1850, nor is there any worthwhile SH data going back to that date. Phil Jones, correctly quipped that most of the SH data (outside the Tropics and Antarctic) is simply made up. Even today the SH is not well sampled and there are relatively few SH stations with historic data going back to the 1930s let alone 1850.
I suspect that if we were to identify say the best 100 sited stations in 1880, ie those that comply with standards CRN Class 1, and which have undergone no significant environmental change from then through to today (ie., they are still CRN Class 1), and if we were to retrofit those stations with the same type of enclosure (volume, construction paint etc) and use the same type of LIG thermometer as was used in 1880 (calibrated as those LIG thermometers were calibrated in 1880) and take measurements today using the same TOB as used at each station, such that modern day RAW data could be compared directly with historic RAW data, on a station by station basis, we would find that there was no statistically significant warming covering a period of nearly 140 years!
You are not seeking to get to the truth. What you are seeking to show is that one farcical component upon which warmist rely, has been incorrectly assessed, and I consider that you are probably correct on that. Now showing that might be useful, but it is not getting to the truth, namely the ascertaining whether there is any Climate Sensitivity to CO2 whatsoever, and if so what it actually is.
It may be that I am suffering from boredom since in previous articles which you have posted on this subject, we have discussed whether you are right or wrong. In those previous posts, I have expressed the view, for what it is worth, that I think that you are correct that an error has been made. Since that has been flogged to death, I have chosen with respect to this current article, to comment on more fundamental issues relating to Climate Sensitivity. If you rely upon cr@p data, you inevitably end up getting cr@p results.
“the data is not fit for purpose” (July 31, 2018 10:56 am)
Richard,
True, the data are not fit for purpose and you may consider that Lord Monckton is just tilting at windmills in the style and futility of Don Quixote, but at least he is aiming at the windmill he can see!
I agree with that. I agree that he is actually doing something, which is to be applauded.
Chipping away, little bits here and there, may cause the edifice to crumble. But I suspect that it is only when there are either no votes in Climate Change, or when reality kicks in that will cause the edifice to collapse, eg., when they face the wall that wind and solar are incapable of supplying energy on a reliable grid structure, and that presently back up storage is fantasy, a lesson gradually being learnt in Germany and Australia, or if Arctic ice makes a significant recovery for a prolonged period of time. Temperatures can be adjusted away, but it is more difficult to conceal physical realities such as growing ice, growing glaciers etc.
It appears that the political climate is slowly changing, and it would be easier for this paper to be published once Governments have given up on seeking to achieve a cap of 1.5degC warming.
Mr Verney says I am not seeking the truth. He is entitled to his opinion. But his evidence is appallingly inadequate, as well as incorrect.
One of our co-authors is a professor of statistics. When we were seeking to establish whether the global mean surface temperature in 1850 was an equilibrium temperature, he had no problem in accepting that, if one were to take a linear trend of sufficient length on the data after 1850 and were to find a zero trend, it would be acceptable to conclude that the temperature in 1850 was an equilibrium temperature.
Since the climate object is chaotic, there will be departures up or down from the trend line. But if for 80 years the trend is zero, the temperature at the beginning of that period may be taken as being an equilibrium temperature.
Mr Verney is unhappy at the wide uncertainty interval in the HadCRUT data. So let us allow for it. The published uncertainty for 1850 is 0.35 K. That would not alter the system-gain factor for 1850 by enough to make any difference. The interval would be 1.129 [1.127, 1.130], leaving Charney sensitivity unchanged at 1.17 K.
In response to Mr Mulholland, one of the advantages of our method is that even quite large variances in the underlying data don’t make very much difference compared with the very large impact of correctly accounting for the fact that the Sun is shining. In any event, climate sensitivity cannot much exceed 1.5 K, and is more likely to be in the region of 1.2 K.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/30/climatologys-startling-error-an-update/#comment-2417638
Thank you Richard for your comments.
While it is difficult to precisely estimate the value of climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2, I do think it is possible to “bound” this parameter, and to demonstrate that it is far too low to be of concern to humanity or the environment.
I have included some related thoughts below, when they appear from moderation, at
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/30/climatologys-startling-error-an-update/#comment-2417670
Regarding the close relationship between dCO2/dt and global temperature T, and the resulting ~9-month lag of atmospheric CO2 trends after temperature trends, I do not say (as some others do) that temperature is the only significant driver of atm. CO2 – other drivers such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation etc probably contribute and even dominate this equation.
I do say that for this clear dCO2/dt vs T signal (and the resulting ~9-month lag of atmospheric CO2 trends after temperature trends) to exist, climate sensitivity to increasing atm. CO2 must be extremely low, far too low for any dangerous man-made global warming to exist.
I recently determined WHY the approx. lag of atmospheric CO2 trends AFTER global temperature trends is ~9 months:
The integral of a sine curve (atm. CO2) lags the sine curve (global temperature and dCO2/dt) by 90 degrees, which equals 1/4 of the 360 degree full cycle. The average cycle for ENSO, based on UAH LT temperatures, is 36.3 months, so ¼ of that is ~9 months.
I should have realized this conclusion years ago, but then, hardly anybody wanted to discuss my 2008 observation that CO2 trends lagged temperature trends by ~9 months in the modern data record. The verification of this observation by Humlum et al in 2013 met with a similar “ho-humlum” response.
I guess everyone is having too much fun arguing about the magnitude of climate sensitivity, which may in reality may be too small to measure. The observation that “the future cannot cause the past” tends to spoil the party. 🙂
Regards, Allan
Mr Verney has not, perhaps, appreciated the beautiful simplicity of our intellectual approach. We start by saying that we shall accept ad argumentum all of official climatology except what we can prove to be incorrect. Then we do our calculations, adjusting only those matters that are proven incorrect. Then we calculate the equilibrium sensitivity that official climatology would have calculated if it had not erred in the fashion we have described.
In fact, our conclusion is, to a remarkable extent, proof against quite large variations in the underlying data. All we need to know is approximately (say, to plus or minus 5%) what the emission temperature would have been without non-condensing greenhouse gases, and what the warming from those gases in the pre-industrial era to 1850 would have been, and the equilibrium surface temperature actually observed in 1850. Within those variances, the math is such that we are able to say with 95.4% confidence that the true Charney sensitivity is 1.17 [1.08, 1.25] K.
Lord M
I do not know why you state: “Mr Verney has not, perhaps, appreciated the beautiful simplicity of our intellectual approach.” given that I, myself, stated “whilst I understand why he seeks to go about this task…”
Of course, I understanding what you are doing, and why. But nonetheless it is an exercise in futility, for reasons that I have outlined above.
Further, anyone who has read the Climategate emails would immediately realise that there is no prospect of this paper passing peer review such as to enable it to be published in one of the well renowned Climate Science journals. It does not matter whether you are correct, there is no way it will be published until such time as the consensus view is that Climate Sensitivity is less than 1.5 degC per doubling. As we know, this is not about science, but about politics.
Over recent years, the majority of recent papers are suggesting ever lower figures for Climate Sensitivity. If this trend continues (as it will if there is no significant warming in the next 10 years) there will come a time when the IPCC will be forced to adopt a lower bound for Climate Sensitivity. It is only when (and if) the IPCC accepts a Climate Sensitivity range of say 1 to 2 deg C per doubling, that there are prospects that your paper may get published in a recognised Climate Science journal. Even then it will be difficult, since if a crass error has indeed been made, as you suggest, there will a reluctance to own that error.
Mr Verney thinks we won’t get our paper published. Two possibilities. 1: we are wrong, in which event our paper will not deserve to be published. 2: we are right, in which event there will come a point where continuing attempts improperly to thwart publication will constitute fraud and will be treated as such. I’m not having any nonsense: if we’re right, then we can explain to the fraud police that we are right. But I don’t think it will come to that.
The merit of our approach is that, if correct, it constitutes absolute proof that the climate models are wrong, feedback responses are all but irrelevant and equilibrium sensitivity is simply too low to matter. In the end, an absolute proof cannot be denied. Yes, the Stokeses of this world, much admired by Mr Verney, will continue to state that black is white and that, by some magic, feedback processes are intelligent enough not to respond to the entire input signal but only to respond to some arbitrarily small fraction thereof mandated by the High Priests of the New Superstition. But who will pay them any heed?
Already, our proof is quietly circulating among mathematicians and scientists, one or two of whom have commented here. Already it is being spoken of at international conferences, in whispers at this stage. If we are correct, then this is the end of the global-warming scare. And I don’t find anything futile in bringing that nonsense to an end.
Lord M
I hope that I am proved wrong, and that you get your paper published. I wish you well in that regard, but I doubt that I underestimate the forces of evil at work here.
I am at a loss to understand the fraud case. There is no automatic right to have a paper published in any journal, and if your paper is rejected, are not the police bound to think that this is just a scientific debate of differences in scientific opinions? That happens all the time.
It is difficult to see how a Judge could resolve the difference. You will call Experts supporting your view. Opponents will call Experts supporting their view. How does the Judge decide which of these competing Experts is correct?
And when you are alleging fraud, the burden of proof is the criminal standard of beyond all reasonable doubt. No one knows precisely what that means, and it is subjective, but it is thought to means near absolute certainty, eg., say around 95% certain. So even if the Judge thought that you were probably right, eg., say he thought there was a 75% chance that you are correct, that would be insufficient for your purposes, if your case against the Journal and/or the reviewers is based upon fraud.
It is not an easy case to run.
Of course, there may be behind the scenes discussions, and even expressions of disquiet about your paper. But then again, these people have known for years that their models run hot, and that Climate Sensitivity cannot possibly be at the high end, and yet nothing is done to address that. There is no attempt made to weed out the worst performing models, and use say only the best 25 performing models etc.
Again, one only has to look at the fanciful projections of an ice free Arctic, not one of these projections being remotely correct. One of the prime reasons why these predictions/projections are wrong, are that Climate Scientists overlook the geometry of the planet, and its axial tilt. This means that there is a very short melt season, and a very long recovery time. The tilt of the planet is akin to a negative feedback attenuating the ice melt, and promoting ice recovery.
The error that Climate Scientists make with the Arctic is rather similar to the error that you claim that they have made in overlooking that the sun shines.
PS. You would come across far better if you were less snidey. It is not an attractive character trait, and only detracts from the merits of any argument.
I am an extreme sceptic, but I consider sceptism to be a 2 way street. I have yet to see convincing evidence that the planet is today warmer than it was in the 1930s/early 1940s, or convincing evidence that CO2 is a GHG (albeit it is a radiative gas, the radiative properties being well known). For me, all aspects of this debate are up for grabs. I am open to be persuaded, either way on all aspects.
You are right, I do respect Nick (although we rarely see eye to eye). I make no apology for that, and I am not in the slightest way ashamed by that. I know him to be highly intelligent, and an extremely good and solid mathematician. For the main part, he puts forward well constructed arguments supported with evidence citations. I also respect that he takes the time to come here, and post his comments, notwithstanding the vitriol that he is subjected to, which I, for one, find embarrassing (but then again I am from the old school, where manners maketh the man, and it is regrettable that over the years you appear to have lost that valuable lesson). This site would be far poorer if Nick did not frequent it with his comments and view points. This site would be far the poorer if it were pervaded solely by group think.
Finally, you have posted many articles on this paper/draft thereof, and I have expressed the view, in these earlier articles, that I consider that you are probably right.
Mr Verney seems to regard it as his mission to be relentlessly discouraging and, this time, more than a little preachy. Well, he is entitled to his opinion, and to his manner of delivering it. But we shall not be discouraged. We are made of sterner stuff than that. If we are correct, then we have provided an absolute proof that official climatology is in error. If, under that circumstance, attempts are made in certain quarters to prevent that proof from seeing the light of day, the question of fraud arises.
Since I have in the past acted both on behalf of those defending themselves against fraud charges and on behalf of those investigating such charges, I am well familiar with the law relating to fraud on both sides of the Atlantic.
Fraud is more difficult to prove than murder. For one must demonstrate not only an actus reus – in the present instance, a refusal by a scientific journal to publish a correct and, if correct, not unimportant scientific result without reasonable justification – but also not one but two instances of mens rea. For in fraud there is a double intent: the intent to deceive, and the intent to profit or cause loss by the deception.
Now, in any ordinary circumstance, attempting to prosecute a scientific journal for refusing to publish an important result on improper grounds would not give rise to a fraud charge. However, let us assume ad argumentum that we have proven what we say we have proven. In that event, we shall have no difficulty in proving to a judge that we have proven what we say we have proven. Recall that any experts prayed in aid by the other side can be cross-examined. Any dishonesties of the sort that have been evident on the part of certain commenters in these threads will be ruthlessly exposed.
In such circumstances, this would be an eminently winnable case.
However, as I have said, I am hoping it will not come to that. In due course, the scientific method will probably work. Either the reviewers will come up with some compelling reasons to reject our argument, in which case the matter ends there, or they will not, in which case the paper will either be published or be left unpublished until the fraudsters have been dealt with.
There is general agreement among all but a few parti-pris commenters here that the reviewers have, thus far, not covered themselves in glory. Mr Verney preaches at me for giving as good as I get when the paid trolls here direct often highly personal attacks against me. But he is silent when he sees the unacceptable tone in which the reviewers thus far have seen fit to express their disagreement with our result. Why this double standard?
Lord M
First, I am not seeking to discourage you. Presumably, unless you decide to pull this paper, matters will simply run their usual course.
Second, you state;
I am unsure whether that is circular reasoning, or wishful thinking. One thing for sure is that is not how the Law works, and often eminently winnable cases do not succeeed.
It is a pre-requisite in order to get your case off the ground that you prove to the Judge’s satisfaction that you are correct, ie., there are no gimmes and you will have to establish the correctness of the following basic assertions:
That is the very first hurdle that you will encounter. Should you fail to convince the Judge on that, your case will be thrown out before you get onto the wider fraud issues. You are correct that the Experts on both sides can be cross examined, but whether that assists is moot, although there may be some elements of common ground on partial issues. What is of more assistance to you, is that it may well be the case, that this aspect of your claim (ie., the first hurdle) need only be established on the basis of the civil burden of proof, ie., on the balance of probabilities, and that it is only the wider fraud issues that will be subject to the more onerous criminal standard of proof. It will take a bold Judge to disturb the apple cart.
Third, I consider good manners to always be in fashion and to be capital. I do not approve of anyone using insulting or discourteous language, but 2 wrongs do not make a right. As a writer of articles published on this site, you become an ambassador, such that you should, if anything, set a higher standard. There is no need to drag yourself into the gutter alongside those ‘trolls’ to whom you refer. Further, it does not reflect well on Anthony when Authors of Articles published on this site lower the tone.
Don’t be pompous. If you don’t like the vigorous discussions here, get out of the kitchen.
The only point we need to prove to the criminal standard is that feedback processes respond to the absolute input signal and not merely to some small and arbitrarily-selected perturbation thereof. Once that point is established, which can be done by the simplest mathematics, all else inexorably and unarguably follows.
The point is that we are not the only ones running out of patience with the climate Communists and their fraudulent ways. If we are right in our central point above, and if the totalitarian gatekeepers of the learned journals cannot refute our result but refuse to publish it, then there will in due course be a fraud investigation.
Monckton of Brenchley:
You say,
“Mr Verney thinks we won’t get our paper published. Two possibilities. 1: we are wrong, in which event our paper will not deserve to be published. 2: we are right, in which event there will come a point where continuing attempts improperly to thwart publication will constitute fraud and will be treated as such. I’m not having any nonsense: if we’re right, then we can explain to the fraud police that we are right. But I don’t think it will come to that.”
Your paper warrants publication whether or not it is “right” or “wrong” because – as this thread demonstrates – the truth of the issue it raises deserves serious discussion in the literature.
However, my experience demonstrates that there is no real possibility of your paper being published especially if it is”right”; see https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc0102.htm
And I am very interested to know why you think the “fraud police” would have any more interest in the treatment of your paper than they had in the treatment of my paper that is the subject of my submission to Parliament recorded in Hansard at the link I have provided.
Richard
Richard, – how very good to hear from you. The reason why we think we are on very strong ground is that – if we are right in our result – then the matter is indisputable and formally demonstrable in a manner that even the most hostile of expert witnesses for climate Communism would be unable to refute under cross-examination.
Suppose, for instance, that the Communists who now control the universities of the West were to decide that they could enrich themselves by denying that the theorem of Pythagoras is true. Suppose that they got a global scam going. And suppose I came along and tried to publish a paper demonstrating that the theorem is true after all. And suppose they refused to publish that paper, even though it was manifestly and demonstrably true. Then they could be prosecuted for fraud, and the prosecution would have an excellent chance of success.
I am making the perhaps rash assertion that the error we have found right at the heart of official climatology is of the same elementary kind as a rejection of the theorem of Pythagoras. If I am wrong in that assertion, the process of peer review will eventually expose my misunderstanding and that of my distinguished co-authors, and that will be that.
But if it is quite clear that we are right, but the totalitarians refuse to publish our paper, the question of fraud begins to arise at that point.
To take another instance, we have already reported climatology’s error to the IPCC secretariat. But, in defiance of its own protocol for the recording and investigation of alleged errors, it has not had the courtesy to reply. We are about to report it to the Swiss Ambassador, for it is headquartered in Switzerland, on the ground that IPCC is not responding because, if it did so, it would have to investigate and report back on the error we have found, which it knows perfectly well to be a real and serious error. And we shall be inviting His Excellency to report the IPCC to the Bureau de l’Escroquerie for being at the center of the largest fraud the world has known. For it becomes not merely an error but a fraud when those who profit by it are told of it and refuse to correct it.
Christopher,
Sincere thanks for your greeting. I trust all is well with you and your family.
Thanks to advice from Allan MacRae my pain relief has been amended. This amendment enables me to reduces my pain relief (instead of stopping it) so I can think sufficiently clearly for me to contribute here. Hence, I am now making contributions in threads which I think merit support such as to be worth the pain.
This thread is clearly worth supporting for two reasons.
Firstly, some responses to your reported paper (such as that in this thread from Nick Stokes which I have refuted ) are silly. They need to be refuted, reviled and ridiculed to stop them from being adopted and promulgated by the host of ‘useful idiots’ who serve the Green Totalitarians’.
Secondly, you say you intend to fight the improper blocking of papers by use of legal action. I have personal reason to hope your intention is successful (e.g. see the link to Hansard I provided in my post you answered). If the matter does go to law then it is not likely that I will then be available to help were you to want to use the very clear example explained in the link. Were you to want another indisputable example then I suggest you contact Ed Berry about the ludicrous reasons reviewers gave to explain their rejections of his recent paper.
All my best to you
Richard
Very grateful to Richard Courtney, an old friend, for his reappearance. I’m delighted that he is now better than he was.
I am certainly hoping not to have to go to the bother of laying fraud information against any scientific journal. I don’t really see that as the best way to advance science. But, if science has become as corrupted as it appears to be in this field, there may be no other option.
But first we must be sure we are right. So far, the true-believers here have not found it possible to land a blow on our result.
All my best to you, Richard.
So nice to hear from you, my friend.
– Allan
“Within those variances, the math is such that we are able to say with 95.4% confidence that the true Charney sensitivity is 1.17 [1.08, 1.25] K.”
Does that mean you no longer believe sensitivity of 0.5 K is likely? Or is this only the true sensitivity if your assumptions are true?
The hapless and furtively pseudonymous Bellhop should stick to delivering trousers to the guests’ rooms. I have made it repeatedly plain in these threads that for present purposes we are holding our noses and accepting ad argumentum that all of official climatology is true except what we can prove to be false.
So let’s do some math. Professor Harde has calculated that the CO2 forcing has been overstated by 30%. Professor Happer has concluded, for entirely different reasons, that it has been overstated by 40%. Since the current CMIP5 estimate of reference sensitivity (before feedback) to doubled CO2 is 1.04 K, if both Professors are correct that should be 0.57 K. Allowing for feedback, make that 0.65 K. But all of this assumes that all of the warming of recent decades was manmade, which may well not be the case.
However, our estimate originally published in the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015 is that Charney sensitivity is not 0.5 but 1.2 K, and our present result confirms that estimate.
Whether the true value is 0.65 or 1.2 or even 1.5 K, it is now clear that there is no need to take any action whatsoever to mitigate global warming. There will be too little to matter.
“ I have made it repeatedly plain in these threads that for present purposes we are holding our noses and accepting ad argumentum that all of official climatology is true except what we can prove to be false. ”
Yes you have, hence my questioning your statement “…we are able to say with 95.4% confidence that the true Charney sensitivity is 1.17 [1.08, 1.25] K.”.
If your premise is false you are obviously wrong to claim that you now with 95% certainty what the true sensitivity is.
“… if both Professors are correct that should be 0.57 K. Allowing for feedback, make that 0.65 K. But all of this assumes that all of the warming of recent decades was manmade, which may well not be the case.”
So you think it could be less than 0.65 K.
“However, our estimate originally published in the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015 is that Charney sensitivity is not 0.5 but 1.2 K, and our present result confirms that estimate.”
But you’ve confirmed it’s 1.2 K. (Except you will go on to say that this is only true if you hold your nose, so you haven’t really confirmed anything).
“Whether the true value is 0.65 or 1.2 or even 1.5 K, it is now clear that there is no need to take any action whatsoever to mitigate global warming. ”
Which suggests you don’t care what the true value is as long as it’s small enough not to require any action. However, you don’t know what the true value is, so you cannot establish that it isn’t higher than any of these values.
“There will be too little to matter.”
Which is a non sequitur, nothing in these articles establishes what a safe sensitivity is.
The Bellhop continues to be silly. Under the assumptions stated in our paper, which are the assumptions made by official climatology except where otherwise stated, Charney sensitivity will fall on the interval mentioned, which was derived by a Monte Carlo simulation with 30,000 trials.
The fact remains that, if we are correct, equilibrium sensitivities are very considerably below the official estimates. And I say that 1.2 K per CO2 doubling is not enough to worry about because that warming falls well within natural variability. The planet will cope with it just fine. If the sensitivity is less than 1.2 K, the same is true a fortiori.
“ Under the assumptions stated in our paper, which are the assumptions made by official climatology except where otherwise stated…”
And my silly point is that if these assumptions are wrong then any figure you derive might also be wrong. You seem to accept that as you suggest your value for sensitivity might be out by a factor of two.
Yet you write at length about the validity of your result, there’s no mention of these assumptions in the head post, and refer to it as the true sensitivity. You also say that you have verified this value using temperature records, but how can this be? If you are correct that this value is wrong it just demonstrates that the validation used was wrong.
If the only point of this paper is to establish an upper bound for ECS then you should spell that out rather than pretending you know the exact value.
“And I say that 1.2 K per CO2 doubling is not enough to worry about because that warming falls well within natural variability.”
That’s you opinion and for all I know could be right (though I doubt it), but it’s irrelevant to the question about the value of ECS, and doesn’t follow from your argument. Hence, it’s a <em non sequitur.
The bellhop, not being very growed up, is not familiar with Socratic elenchus, where one takes the opponent’s argument and accepts as much as possible of it ad argumentum, so as to demonstrate its inherent falsity by revealing contradictions in it.
If the bellhop would get his kindergarten mistress to read the head posting to him, he would see that the basis for calculation, including all relevant assumptions, are explicitly stated therein.
The fact is that, if we are correct in understanding that feedback processes respond to the entire input signal and not to some arbitrary fraction thereof, Charney sensitivity must be about one-third of the official mid-range estimates. I do not propose to quibble about what might happen in some other world, or where yet more of the official climatology on which we have relied proves to have been incorrect.
However, we have taken more than a little trouble to verify our result by multiple methods, not least by plotting our predicted warming rate against the observed warming rate since 1990. Our prediction is far, far closer to the observed warming rate than the official predictions.
Funny. I thought I was engaging in a sort of elenchus argument. Taking your words and trying to find a contradiction. Myabe I need to be more direct.
Either the 1.2K sensitivity figure is true in which case it can be used to contradict the IPCC’s 1.5 – 4.5K estimates, or it is not true in which case it does not refute the IPCC’s estimate.
It is no good saying that you used their methods – if their methods were wrong you any figure obtained by it is wrong, and cannot be used to refute any other figure. This is a problem with Socratic arguing, you can use it to show that your opponent might not be correct, but you cannot use it to show that they are wrong.
“However, we have taken more than a little trouble to verify our result by multiple methods, not least by plotting our predicted warming rate against the observed warming rate since 1990.”
And agin, the problem is that if you have verified that sensitivity as close to 1.2K, then it cannot be 0.5K and all the talk of the 1.2K figure only being for the sake of argument is irrelevant. On the other hand if 0.5K is correct and the 1.2K value was only for the sake of argument, then the validation must be wrong.
Incidentally, one reason the trend since 1990 might not be a good validation, is that some people calim there was some sort of pause during much of that period. Personally I don’t see much evidence for this, but if there was something stopping warming for half that period any estimate based on the trend over that time would be underestimating the warming caused by CO2.
Bellman,
Your post is silly. I write to refute it.
Whatever you “thought” you were trying to do is not relevant. This post is about the above article from Monckton of Brenchley and, therefore, your attempts at self-agrandisement merely waste space in the thread.
Your attempted ‘red herring’ about Socratic reasoning is also irrelevant.
Your failure to cite any fault in the method used by Monckton of Brenchley is not surprising because the method is correct.
As Monckton of Brenchley told you,
“However, our estimate originally published in the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015 is that Charney sensitivity is not 0.5 but 1.2 K, and our present result confirms that estimate.
Whether the true value is 0.65 or 1.2 or even 1.5 K, it is now clear that there is no need to take any action whatsoever to mitigate global warming. There will be too little to matter.”
You have ignored that and have replied by writing this tosh,
“And agin, the problem is that if you have verified that sensitivity as close to 1.2K, then it cannot be 0.5K and all the talk of the 1.2K figure only being for the sake of argument is irrelevant. On the other hand if 0.5K is correct and the 1.2K value was only for the sake of argument, then the validation must be wrong.”
That is completely irrelevant to the point that any value of 1.2 K or less is “too little to matter”. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more irrelevant non sequitur than that response from you.
Is irrelevance so much your nature that it is all you can offer?
And if that nonsense were not sufficiently silly then you end with this nonsense,
“Incidentally, one reason the trend since 1990 might not be a good validation, is that some people calim there was some sort of pause during much of that period. Personally I don’t see much evidence for this, but if there was something stopping warming for half that period any estimate based on the trend over that time would be underestimating the warming caused by CO2.”
There was a ‘Pause’. Live with it,
And it is more likely that the ‘Pause’ was because nothing was causing global warming than that there was “something stopping warming”.
Richard
PS
The standard of trolls has declined on WUWT recently. On the basis of your performance, I suspect the trolls’ employers are getting desperate to employ anybody.
“Your post is silly.”
Sorry.
“Your attempted ‘red herring’ about Socratic reasoning is also irrelevant.”
It was Lord Monckton who bought up Socrates. Maybe I was trying to be too clever in my argument – I’m not much of a fan of philosophy, so if I misunderstood Socratic elenchus, I apologize.
“Your failure to cite any fault in the method used by Monckton of Brenchley is not surprising because the method is correct.”
I have not attempted to point out any fault in Monckton of Brenchley’s methods for the simple reason that I don’t claim to have much understanding of the subject and leave it to those better qualified to debate the issue. For all I know Monckton’s method is correct. Which is why I’m interested in determining why Monckton himself seems to think it isn’t correct.
“You have ignored that and have replied by writing this tosh…”
I don’t think I am ignoring Monckton’s point. I just don’t agree with it. He’s saying on one hand that he can prove that the true sensitivity is 1.2K and that this is less than IPCC estimates. But then he says that the 1.2K figure is based on assuming things he doesn’t agree with and that the true value might be much lower.
My problem is that if the value could be much lower it could also be much higher – and I don’t see any argument made why it couldn’t be higher.
Even if there was a proof that sensitivity couldn’t be as high as 1.5K or whatever, in choosing to highlight one value as the true value, whilst insisting it isn’t the true value I feel Monckton undermines his argument.
“That is completely irrelevant to the point that any value of 1.2 K or less is “too little to matter”.”
My quote this is addressing wasn’t in response to the question of what is “too little to matter” it was in response to the claim that Monckton’s sensitivity value had been verified by warming since 1990.
“There was a ‘Pause’. Live with it,
And it is more likely that the ‘Pause’ was because nothing was causing global warming than that there was “something stopping warming”.”
If nothing was causing causing global warming during the pause when CO2 was increasing, then Monckton’s sensitivity figure must be wrong.
Bellman,
I wrote to explain that your post was silly.
Your reply to my explanatiion is even more silly.
I have read that reply, decided it is too silly to deserve the bother of writing a refutation and, therefore, I let it stand as it is for everybody to laugh at it.
Richard
Bravissimo, Richard!
Yes, that’s me told.
But lets try to cut through the silliness and just answer one simple question – do you think the true value of ECS is closer to 1.2K or 0.5K?
Asked and answered. Read the head posting.
A telling response.
OK. Lets do as you suggest and reread the head posting. My interpretation of it is that you think the true ECS is around 1.2K, and is very unlikely to be below 1.08K. I see nothing in the head posting to contradict this claim or suggest it is contingent on assumptions you disagree with. I therefore infer that you believe that the true value of ECS is highly unlikely to be as low as 0.5K.
Do you agree that that is a correct reading of the head posting? If not could you point to a specific part of the head posting showing my error?
Under the assumption that the papers we cited are correct, so that, for instance, reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 is 1.04 K, Charney sensitivity is 1.17 [1.08, 1.25] K. If Professors Harde and Happer are correct – and both are formidable – then reference sensitivity is 0.57 K and equilibrium sensitivity is 0.65 K. If, as seems highly likely, much of the warming of recent decades was of natural origin, then it is possible that Charney sensitivity is still less than 0.65 K. Professor Lindzen, for instance, finds it to be 0.6 K, and Drs Spencer and Braswell agree.
Our own paper focuses solely on the question of feedback, demonstrating – contrary to the previously-imagined position – that feedback can, in practice, be ignored in the derivation of all equilibrium sensitivities, since, for the reasons explained in the paper, feedback response is minuscule.
Thanks for that reply. To summarize and to see if I’m understanding your answer, you do think that ECS might be a lot lower than the 1.2K figure, iff the sensitivity to CO2 sans feedbacks is wrong, but you are pretty sure you have the feedback response correct.
This leaves me with the same questions though:
1. Why do you constantly refer to the 1.2K figure as the true sensitivity?
2. If you think it is possible the true sensitivity is lower, how did your verification tests lead you to confirm 1.2K?
Bellman,
Please state your purpose for posing pointless questions about
(a) motivation
and
(b) methodology explained (and answered) in the head post?
I ask because it seems your intent is to distract serious discussion by filling this thread with irrelevant twaddle.
Richard
My purpose in questioning Lord Monckton is to try to get answers.
As far as this particular question is concerned I don’t think it’s irrelevant. This article and others is making a very strong claim – that this paper has proven the correct value of ECS to within a very tight margin of error.
Moreover, it’s insisting that this value proves the IPCC estimates are wrong and that this means we do not have to worry about global warming. It seems relevant to question if Monckton thinks this value given with high levels of precision is correct or not.
The only answer to this seems to be that it doesn’t matter what the true value is, as long as it’s too small to require action. But if this is the case, why not state that in the head posting? Why claim with no qualification that you know the “true”value, when you admit in the comments that you don’t?
I’d have liked Lord Monckton to answer that, hence my questioning. But the obvious answer is that he is trying to make the case seem stronger than it is.
Bellman: Hey, are you the bellboy in Return of the Pink Panther? Did Clouseau get you the promotion to Bellman? Or did your manager think “obtuse” was a good quality?
By the simple device of refusing to get the obvious, you succeeded in stringing this merrily along. The obvious- 1.2 is the upper bound based on assumptions that the IPCC is right about something. The author has made perfectly clear in both posts and comment strings (a prolific and generous responder, don’t you agree?) that he does not concede the IPCC got it right (my personal opinion, might be they got it right in the full report, but not in the Summary for Rubes and Reporters) and it could be lower. He does show it can’t be higher, even if you don’t see it. You admit that you don’t understand it at all, then pretend you’re not getting it. Here’s a prediction- you’ll respond to my comment by continuing not to get it.
I do agree that it’s good that Lord Monckton is prepared to answer questions, even mine, here. I might not agree with him much but it is good that he is prepared to engage with his critics. I would be happier if he didn’t feel the need to hand out personal insults, but it doesn’t worry me as I’m pseudonymous so I don’t take them personally.
At the risk of confirming your prediction, the point I don’t get is where Lord Monckton has proven that 1.2 is an upper bound. In any event that doesn’t answer my question, but as Richard S Courtney is hinting below this discussion is going nowhere, so time to stop wasting our time I expect.
Bellman,
You say,
“My purpose in questioning Lord Monckton is to try to get answers.”
That is clearly not true because you have repeatedly been given clear answers together with repeated statements that explanations are provided in the head post.
Your are clearly trying to disrupt discussion by your repetitious nonsense together with untrue claims that you are being refused information.
In plain English, you are being a pest and it seems your pestilential behaviour is deliberate.
Richard
Maybe I’m dense, but could you provide a quote from the head post that answers any of my questions?
I’d like to see that too.
Bellman,
I am writing in the probably forlorn hope that you will at long, long last stop your nonsense.
You ask,
“Maybe I’m dense, but could you provide a quote from the head post that answers any of my questions?”
Your request demonstrates that you are “dense”.
For example, one of your repeated questions was this,
“But lets try to cut through the silliness and just answer one simple question – do you think the true value of ECS is closer to 1.2K or 0.5K?”
You were repeatedly told to refer to the head post for the answer, but you repeatedly claimed you could not find it (your post I am answering is the most recent such claim).
If you had read the head post then you would have seen it says,
“Climatologists trying to predict global warming forgot the sunshine in their sums. After correction of this startling error of physics, global warming will not be 2 to 4.5 K per CO2 doubling, as climate models imagine. It will be a small, slow, harmless and net-beneficial 1.17 K.”
1.17 K is closer to 1.2 K than 0.5 K.
I understand your problem because your comments in this thread demonstrate that the arithmetic needed to understand 1.17 K is closer to 1.2 K than 0.5 K probably poses a challenge for you.
Richard
Your point that the head post shows ECS is close to 1.2Kis exactly what Iinfered when Monckton said the answer was in the head posting.
Monckton’s respons was that this is only true under certain assumptions and he thinks it is possible ECS could be much lower. Hence my argument that the head posting does not answer all my questions.
Bellman,
Your “argument” is daft. Nobody will waste timed on such nonsense.
Richard
I add that I observe that my prediction of my hope probably being forlorn has proven to be correct. I hoped providing you with a clear and unambiguous answer would stop your nonsense but it did not.
I find it strange how many people complain that I’m keeping the discussion going and then insult me and expect me to shut up. If you are going to call my argument “daft” don’t be surprised if I try to defend myself.
You say you provided a clear and unambiguous answer, that Monckton believes ECS to be 1.17K. But that contradicts what Monckton says. He says that figure is the result of him holding his nose and accepting ad argumentum that all of official climatology is true except what we can prove to be false. He clearly does not think that 1.17K is unambiguous.
“In plain English, you are being a pest and it seems your pestilential behaviour is deliberate.”
Typical WUWT “attack dog” post.
Bellman is asking questions here … among the very few – the rest just give our good Lord hugs and kisses.
His Classics and Journalistic degrees do not outweigh his peer-reviewers knowledge of physics and mathematics.
This isn’t “Alice in Wonderland” and logic still prevails.
This also on top of his “previous”…..
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=potholer54+monckton
Get over it Courtney.
The man is a snake-oil-salesman and he comes here because it is the ONLY place he is validated.
Anthony Banton,
Smears, personal abuse and personal attacks are the worst kind of internet trolling.
Bellman is being a pest by repeatedly asking questions to which he has repeatedly been given clear answers. Both Monckton and I have given “The man” clear answers. It is quite proper to object to trolling such as the pestilential behaviour of Bellman.
Support for a disruptive troll by another troll is of no importance.
You are the worst kind of troll: i.e. you complain at objection to Bellman’s trolling and say the objection is a “Typical “attack dog” post”, while – in your same post – you ignore the subject under discussion and attempt to smear Moncktion of Brenchley.
Please note that I am not saying you are an “attack dog” because being on the receiving end of your post is more like being savaged by a dead sheep.
Richard
” It is quite proper to object to trolling such as the pestilential behaviour of Bellman.l
And no it’s not.
Is it OK (by inference) for denizens to do just what you accuse Bellman of?
It happens every thread when a dissenting voice turns up.
It is hypocricy of the highest order.
And should Monckton engage in honest debate, instead of batting away any and all criticism, finally resorting to ad hom himself if that fails, then I’m in the best company on “his threads”.
Vis….
“The bellhop, not being very growed up, is not familiar …. ”
“If the bellhop would get his kindergarten mistress to read the head posting to him …. ”
“The hapless and furtively pseudonymous Bellhop should stick to delivering trousers to the guests’ rooms.”
Very classy my Lord – well worthy of you upbringing and degree in the “Classics”.
The peer-reviewers said it all and it no such here because of the almost universaly uncritical nature of denizens
Also…
“Kristi Silber,
I have not seen any videos by whomever hides behind the false name of “Potholer”, and I have no intention of wasting time viewing them.
I see no reason why anybody would be so gullible as to accept any assertion of “Potholer” when his/her claims are so dubious that she/he is not willing to put his/her own name to them.”
FYI: His name is Peter Hadfield and is far from anonymous…..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hadfield_(journalist)
Then you miss your hero in action Richard. His words recorded for posterity that Peter Hadfield shows to be lies, by direct referral to the PRIME sources. And which Monckton shied away from answering to in a debate on these very pages.
Here …
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-responds-to-potholer54/
That is why he is a snake-oil salesman. He makes claims that when called out on will not defend. Because, of course, he cannot by virtue of Hadfield’s going back to the source of his claims. And showing him as, err, being disingenuous. Does not admit them and apologise of course, which would be the action of somone who made a genuine interpretive error
Apart from the uncritical acceptance of anything that attacks climate science, another notable psychology of this Blog is (for some) to attack anyone here who has the temerity to be skeptical. It is not “trolling” to disagree with a post or an article, nor to be persistent in asking for answers.
Neither are we “socialist” – which what he accused me of being, which, of course precisely calls out his motivation.
Yours
The “Dead sheep”
Who dared to call a spade a bloody shovel on here.
And the attack dog duly appeared.
I must say thank you, I am honoured to have the mighty Richard S Courtney do such….
“Which brings me to the fascinating case of Richard S. Courtney, the noted climate sceptic, British coal PR spokesperson and non-scientist.”
https://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/the-continuing-misadventures-of-richard-s-courtney-non-scientist/
And
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/02/on-astounding-diplphil-courtney.html
Honoured Richard – that I am.
” It is quite proper to object to trolling such as the pestilential behaviour of Bellman”
And no it’s not.
Is it OK (by inference) for denizens to do just what you accuse Bellman of?
It happens every thread when a dissenting voice turns up.
It is hypocricy of the highest order.
And should Monckton engage in honest debate, instead of batting away any and all criticism, finally resorting to ad hom himself if that fails, then I’m in the best company on “his threads”.
Vis….
“The bellhop, not being very growed up, is not familiar …. ”
“If the bellhop would get his kindergarten mistress to read the head posting to him …. ”
“The hapless and furtively pseudonymous Bellhop should stick to delivering trousers to the guests’ rooms.”
Very classy my Lord – well worthy of your upbringing and degree in the “Classics”.
The peer-reviewers said it all and it no way alters that, that here the almost universally unskeptical (of skeptics) nature of denizens.
Also…
“Kristi Silber,
I have not seen any videos by whomever hides behind the false name of “Potholer”, and I have no intention of wasting time viewing them.
I see no reason why anybody would be so gullible as to accept any assertion of “Potholer” when his/her claims are so dubious that she/he is not willing to put his/her own name to them.”
FYI: His name is Peter Hadfield and is far from anonymous…..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hadfield_(journalist)
Then you miss your hero ( and friend) in action Richard. His words recorded for posterity that are shown to be lies, by direct referral to the PRIME sources. And which Monckton shied away from answering to in a debate on these very pages.
Here …
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-responds-to-potholer54/
That is why he is a snake-oil salesman. He makes claims that when called out on will not defend. Because, of course, he cannot by virtue of Hadfield’s going back to the source of his claims. And showing him as, err, being disingenuous. Does not admit them and apologise of course, which would be the action of someone who made a genuine interpretive error
Apart from the uncritical acceptance of anything that attacks climate science, another notable psychology of this Blog is (for some) to attack anyone here who has the temerity to be skeptical. It is not “trolling” to disagree with a post or an article, nor to be persistent in asking for answers.
Neither are we “socialist” – which what Monckton accused me of being (it’s false of course), which, of course precisely calls out his motivation.
Yours
The “Dead sheep”
(Bless – Bet you call all your sheep that)
…. Who dared to call a spade a bloody shovel on here.
And the attack dog duly appeared.
BTW: I must say thank you, I am honoured to have the mighty Richard S Courtney do such….
“Which brings me to the fascinating case of Richard S. Courtney, the noted climate sceptic, British coal PR spokesperson and non-scientist.”
From watchingtheden###s
And
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/02/on-astounding-diplphil-courtney.html
Honoured Richard – that I am
Anthony
Richard S Courtney
“Both Monckton and I have given “The man” clear answers. ”
I think the usefulness in asking questions has run its course for now, and I think anyone look at this thread can form their own options as to how clear the answers have been.
Anthony Banton
Whilst I wouldn’t disagree with what you say, I don’t think ad hominem arguments are relevant or useful in this discussion. It provides a useful distraction from the argument and will just be used as evidence that all critics of Lord Monckton are “paid trolls”.
Bellman…
Thank you, but when they start the ad hom and then accuse others of that, and trolling – the hypocrisy should be called out else this (already) largely echo-chamber of uncritical skeptics will become a total one and drive itself down to the lowest common denominator.
If furtively pseudonymous trolls post here and I attack them, I am not guilty of argumentum ad hominem, because the trolls are anonymous and deserve whatever they get.
Monckton of Brenchley does not appear to understand what an argumentum ad hominem is. In the modern sense it means to draw attention to some aspect of your opponent’s personality in order to imply their argument is invalid. Whether a recipient deserves an insult or not is irrelevant.
Personally I don’t consider any of your insults directed at me to constitute a strict ad hominem argument. Possibly they are an attempt at poisoning the well, but mainly it is just a diversion. Like sledging in cricket, you hope I’ll respond in kind and ignore the actual debate.
Not too many people know that summers in the northern hemisphere are 2C warmer on average than in the southern hemisphere because of the tilt of the earth axis. This skews the global average because there are more land temperature stations in the north. However the UAH satellite data has made this point moot.
This seems odd. The current elliptic earth orbit places the southern hemisphere summer closer to the sun than the northern hemisphere summer. i.e. there is more incoming solar radiation in the southern hemisphere summer than the north. So in theory the southern hemisphere summer should be hotter on land areas.
The SH may be “hotter on land areas.” Presumably the hottest lands are nearest the Equator.
It is all to do with the axial tilt and the amount of water in each Hemisphere.
The SH has a far higher percentage of ocean and this attenuates the SH temperature, when assessed on a Hemispherical basis. Also, of course, there is the Antarctic, which is significantly different to the Arctic.
That would only be true if the land/ocean ratios were the same in both hemispheres.
http://www.silltosash.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/temperature_vs_relative_humidity.png
Summers are warmer in the northern hemisphere because land masses are much larger than ocean compared. Large volumes of water and high RH levels act as a significant heat sink.
Alan Tomalty,
The Earth is coolest (n.b. coolest) when it is closest to the Sun during each year.
Global temperature rises by 3,8 degrees C from January to June then falls by 3.8 degrees C from June to January each and every year. And nobody notices.
This annual and unnoticed variation in global temperature of 3.8 degrees C is nearly double the 2 degrees C rise in global temperature that alarmists claim would be a disaster.
The variation occurs because
(a) the northern hemisphere has more land than the southern hemisphere,
and
(b) land changes temperature more than oceans with the seasons,
and
(c) it is summer in one hemisphere when it is winter in the other.
Richard
Richard Verney,
My account is correct.
My statemenst that said,
“(a) the northern hemisphere has more land than the southern hemisphere,
and
(b) land changes temperature more than oceans with the seasons,”
say the same as your statement saying,
“The SH has a far higher percentage of ocean and this attenuates the SH temperature,
Richard
The Earth is always cool, man. Can ya dig it?
rv,
I seems to me that a significant problem is trying to focus on a single number, the average annual global temperature. We know that the Arctic is warming at a rate that is about 2X the global average. We should therefore expect that other climate zones have their own characteristic temperature and precipitation trends. Being able to say something quantitative about ALL the Earth’s climate zones might provide some insight on just what is actually happening.
One can do things the hard way, as Mr Spencer suggests, or the easy way, which we have used. The results will not be much different either way, so we prefer the easy way.
Chris,
I’m not sure that my way is so hard. We pretty much have all the data necessary. It is a question of whether one aggregates all the data to arrive at a single number, or partitions the data to get classes. I’m suggesting that by extracting more information from the available data, further insight may be gained. Who knows, it might end up giving additional support to your easy claim. 🙂
In response to Mr Spencer, our own current paper focuses on a single very large error in official climatology. Removing that error removes the global warming without the need for further work.
Slightly off topic, I would like to ask a dumb question.
Imagine the Earth’s atmosphere without greenhouse gasses. Solar IR radiation will pass through the atmosphere and reach the surface of the earth. The radiation will heat the surface and some will be radiated back into space. Now add co2 to the atmosphere. The co2 will intercept some of the incoming IR from the sun and some of the outgoing reflected IR radiation from the surface. This energy will be re-radiated randomly in all directions. The latter effect (interception of re-radiated energy from the surface) is the conventional explanation of the greenhouse effect since it reflects energy back to the surface that would otherwise be lost to space. However, the former effect (interception of direct solar radiation – not considered in the conventional explanation) would have the reverse effect, and would be larger than the latter. My dumb mathematics suggests that the overall effect of adding co2 would be that less IR reaches the surface. What is wrong?
CO2 significantly absorbs long wavelength infrared from the surface but absorbs little of the visible/ultraviolent coming from the sun.
“What is wrong?”
Very little of the incoming solar energy is in the thermal IR range.
THAT explains WHY if I want to warm myself in the winter I sit by the window where the sun is shining through … NOT.
“I sit by the window where the sun is shining through”
Exactly. You are warmed by sunLight. The spectral energy distribution of insolation is a matter of measured fact, and there is very little in the range that interacts with CO2.
If solar energy was only IR the planet would be damn near absolute zero. It is irrelevant that sunlight hardly interacts with CO2 or not when it comes to feedbacks being solar orientated. The most important part are the shorter, higher energy wavelengths that interact with water and especially the oceans. This is where the feedback comes from as IR longwave energy over longer periods of time.
uh oh. I agree with Nick or Nick agrees with me, I must be wrong?
🙂
It is partly correct because CO2 doesn’t absorb visible or UV light. Visible begins less than 1 micrometre (750nm) whereas UV begins at 400nm.
http://slideplayer.com/slide/4178834/14/images/42/IR+Absorption+Spectrum+of+CO2.jpg
The reason behind your error is because of the wavelength of incoming solar irradiance. Very little incoming solar irradiance is at a wavelength that is absorbed by CO2,
The K&T energy budget cartoon suggests that some 78 w/m2 is absorbed by the atmosphere. See:
However, whilst this cartoon suggests that the 78 w/m2 that is absorbed by the atmosphere is absorbed by greenhouse gases, what it fails to make clear is that almost all of this 78 w/m2 is absorbed by water vapour and clouds. Very little is absorbed by CO2!!! We know that to be the case since we know the absorption bands of CO2.
What is of interest is that CO2 does not appear to be doing anything of significance below the tropopause. See:
One can see how CO2 lights up in the stratosphere, say above 20km to >60km, but below the tropopause (say below 14km) CO2 is not illuminated. The take home is that it appears that CO2 only plays a significant role above the tropopause where it is effective at carrying energy to TOA wherefrom it is radiated to the void of space, but does not carry energy downwards to the surface warming the surface. Below the tropopause it is water vapour that is lit up and it is water vapour (not CO2) that is back radiating to the surface. Below the tropopause the dominant processes are conduction, convection and specific heat/latent heat,
This explains why cold-blooded creatures like lizards ‘sun’ themselves, is is NOT the thermal IR they seek, but, rather, the visible light?
See also the comment I made to Nick just above.
Jim, they like the high energy photons much more than the pokey IR. When the high energy photons are absorbed they quickly thermalize. Which feels warmer, the bright blazing flame in a fireplace or the glowing embers?
A very interesting graph, Richard.
One that blows the “CO2 drives the climate” theory into the weeds.
Is this measured under clear skies, cloudy skies or an average across the planet? I expect to see this between the surface and clouds, where the water in clouds would be absorbing surface emissions anyway. Under clear sky conditions, I would expect to see a larger fraction of the effect coming from CO2.
As I’ve pointed out to you before you have completely misinterpreted the Clough graph, I suggest you read the paper.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/15/global-warming-today-is-now-haunted-by-an-almost-unbelievable-deceptive-beginning/#comment-2410382
As Clough says:
“A critical perspective for interpreting the effects of carbon dioxide in the troposphere for atmospheres with significant amounts of water vapor is the recognition that the effect of carbon dioxide is to moderate the strong cooling associated with water vapor.”
This doesn’t necessary mean CO2 is responsible because it drops to ~zero value at different wavelengths where H2O absorption is present, but CO2 absorption definitely isn’t.
What is causing it to drop to ~zero where H2O is present, but CO2 isn’t?
RV,
Are there any cartoon graphs broken down showing non-averaged values as similar to the one you offered on Global Energy Flows?
I would like to see a ‘presentation’ of instantaneous energy flows on a typical clear sky and at the same geographical location on an overcast day. Pick a couple of typical locations (land and sea) and season/temp. Midday would let us see what’s really happening.
Averages will allow an extreme flood to be averaged with extreme drought to show all is just lovely with daily sprinkles. An average is a prescription for fraud or misconception. LMAO with a global average in atmospheric science. ROFLMAO combining land and sea!
You say, An average is a prescription for fraud or misconception. LMAO with a global average in atmospheric science. ROFLMAO combining land and sea!
Take care. Your observation about averages is very often correct, in climate science as elsewhere. But don’t fall into the trap, as others here have also done, that it is always wrong. Upthread, at least two commentators complain that the climate varies all the time so that using an average temperature is meaningless, as if to to rubbish the significance or relevance of the current debate.
Averaging temperature over a decade or more is a perfectly respectable way of factoring out natural short term oscillations in the long term energy balance between the incoming Sun’s energy flow and the outgoing flow of radiation to space. In that specific case, averaging a temperature over a long period is an exactly correct proxy measure for the long term heat content of a part of the system.
Many thanks Rich, Richard, Nick and Jim.
Mr Borodin asks “what is wrong” with the notion that interception of incoming solar radiance by CO2 actually prevents warming that would otherwise occur.
What happens is this. The solar irradiance enters the atmosphere. Getting on for half of it is in the near-infrared. If a near-infrared photon – whether on the way down on on the way up – interacts with a CO2 molecule, it sets up a quantum resonance or oscillation in the bending vibrational mode of that molecule, and the oscillation, being molecular motion, is by definition heat. It is like turning on a little radiator that would otherwise have remained off.
The rest of the radiation, whatever its wavelengths, will continue toward the surface, where it will be displaced to peak in the near-infrared before its outgoing journey. And the near-infrared is precisely the waveband characteristic of CO2. So more little radiators will be turned on.
The question, therefore, is not whether returning to the atmosphere some of the CO2 that was already present causes warming. The question is how much warming it will cause. Our answer is, “Not a lot.”
I must beg to differ. CO2 does not absorb strongly in the near IR incoming solar spectrum. Water does.
There is some minor absorption by CO2 at~2000nm/2microns/5000cm-1, but this is definitely not the fundamental bend of CO2 which takes place at 15000nm/15microns/267cm-1. According to Jordan Werbe-fuentes et al, CO2 absorption in the near IR results in the asymmetric stretch, and serves mostly to warm the mesosphere.
“Not a lot”, is nevertheless correct.
The solar irradiance enters the atmosphere. Getting on for half of it is in the near-infrared. If a near-infrared photon – whether on the way down on on the way up – interacts with a CO2 molecule, it sets up a quantum resonance or oscillation in the bending vibrational mode of that molecule, and the oscillation, being molecular motion, is by definition heat. It is like turning on a little radiator that would otherwise have remained off.
The CO2 bending mode doesn’t absorb in the near IR, certainly not in the solar irradiance.
The CO2 bending mode is a resonance mode. Resonance is induced by interaction with a photon at an appropriate wavelength. If the CO2 molecule does not resonate in the bending mode in response to near-infrared photons, then the CO2 forcing has been very greatly overstated and equilibrium sensitivities will be a great deal smaller than we have found.
CO2 does not intercept incoming solar radiation, but O2 and O3 can. In UV spectra. UV is more energetic than visible or IR; so the net energy absorbed must heat the upper atmosphere considerably.
The effect of IR GHG (CO2 and H2O) is often described as ‘trapping heat‘. In fact it would be O2 and N2 which trap heat! (if any heat is ‘trapped’). Because as soon as a GHG molecule absorbs a photon, the energy then in the molecule will be thermalized. That is to say, shared with other molecules via very frequent particle collisions (most of the atmosphere is N2 and O2). Once it’s been thermalized (shared with other molecules) there’s insufficient energy in the GHG molecule to re-emit at the same wavelength. Energy can still be emitted (by all gases: H2O, CO2, O2, N2) according to black body formula(s). But only GHG: H2O and CO2 are able to emit radiation associated with transitions in bond energetics. Black body emissions are lower over a wide spectra (but there are far more molecules doing it), while GHG emissions entirely depend on CO2 and H2O. Emissions increase with temperature.
PS: Please correct me if any of that is wrong.
“No, we’re not going to discuss Monckton’s result here. We don’t do simple.” Sounds like McIntyre.
Every time I hear the phrase “fundamentally flawed” my BS detector goes off. And, usually I am correct on that front because the stater usually never mentions what the flaw is.
That being said were these the best critiques or the worst? Are reviewers comments usually so hand waiving dismissive on scientific papers? I am curious though, why only two points of measurement? Shouldn’t it be valid for all points or all years?
Its a bit like the Arts examiner who wrote ‘irrelevant’ in the margin when wanting to criticise
some argument.
Were there any reviewers who thought the paper had any merit?
So far the GCM’s look like bad guesses.
Looking for something better is the way to go.
You might think it was McIntyre. I couldn’t possibly comment.
The reason why we chose just two years for our calculations was that 1850 was the earliest year for which we could obtain a tolerably reliable global mean surface equilibrium temperature; before that date Man had had little or no influence; and yet that date was close enough to the present to enjoy climatic features broadly consistent with today’s; and we chose 2011 because that was the year to which IPCC brought all the data up to date in preparation for the Fifth Assessment Report of 2013. In the intervening years, data for the net anthropogenic forcing, for instance, were not so readily available.
Nevertheless, we conducted an empirical campaign examining ten years at various dates from 1850 to the present for which reasonably “official” estimates of net anthropogenic forcing were available. We then ran calculations for each of these ten years and, in every case, the Charney sensitivity worked out at 1.17 K.
The reason why there is so very little variation between the different results is that – always provided that we are correct in our contention that feedback processes respond to temperatures and not merely to temperature changes – the emission temperature plus the warming from the pre-industrial greenhouse gases is so much larger than our tiny perturbation that the calculation of the feedback system-gain factor is dominated by that pre-existing temperature.
Do watch the video, and you will see everything explained.
Monkton Thanks for the answer. Sounds like an acceptable way to validate to me.
““No, we’re not going to discuss Monckton’s result here. We don’t do simple.” Sounds like McIntyre.”
No it doesn’t.
I’m a scientist, with about 40 peer-reviewed publications.
I take the view that if there are two explanations of an observation/problem then it is almost certain that the simpler explanation is correct.
One of the greatest physicists of the 20th century said “it doesn’t matter how elegant your theory, or how intelligent you are, if it doesn’t fit the observed facts it is wrong”.
I’m with Lord Monckton.
I like full-Earth-scale analyses, to eliminate scale-up effects and other complexities when possible. Some parallel thoughts follow:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/02/opening-up-the-climate-policy-envelope/#comment-2395564
[excerpted]
I said “Based on all the evidence, climate is relatively insensitive to increasing atmospheric CO2.” That does not mean climate sensitivity is zero – rather that it is small so any resulting warming will NOT be dangerous.
The CAGW hypo is also falsified as follows:
The upper-bound estimate of Transient Climate Sensitivity of ~1.1C/(2xCO2) by Christy and McNider (2017) is highly credible for the satellite era from ~1979 to mid-2017. This upper bound was calculated assuming (conservatively, for the sake of simplicity and clarity) that ALL the observed warming in the satellite era was due to increasing atmospheric CO2. This maximum climate sensitivity is so low that there is NO credible global warming crisis.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/2017_christy_mcnider-1.pdf
Earth cooled from ~1945 to ~1977, even as atmospheric CO2 accelerated, so the CAGW hypo is already falsified by a full-Earth-scale test. Incidentally, using the same assumptions as Christy and McNider, the TCS for the period ~1945 to ~1977 is approx. MINUS 1C/(2xCO2).
The “Pause” in global temperatures since ~1997, even as atmospheric CO2 accelerated, also proves that TCS is very low – near-zero.
So even as atmospheric CO2 has steadily accelerated, there have been multi-decadal periods when global temperature has gone down, up and sideways. Again, there is NO evidence of a global warming crisis, but ample evidence of a natural and irregularly cyclical global temperature phenomenon.
Furthermore, I proved in 2008 that the velocity dCO2/dt changes contemporaneously with global temperature, and its integral the atmospheric CO2 trend changes ~9 months later. This clear signal can only exist if climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 (“TCS”) is very small.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah5/from:1979/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
See also Humlum et al (2013) for a similar observation.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1551019291642294&set=a.1012901982120697.1073741826.100002027142240&type=3&theater
Practically speaking, if TCS exists at all in significance, it must be very low, probably a positive number less than 0.5C/(2xCO2).
I have studied this subject since 1985 and found NO credible evidence that catastrophic human-made global warming exists in reality. None! I have seen much exaggeration, fraud, falsification of data and other academic misconduct practiced by those who are promoting the false CAGW mantra.
The global warming alarmists have a perfectly NEGATIVE predictive track record. Every one of their very-scary predictions of runaway warming and wilder weather has FAILED to materialize.
In summary, the catastrophic human-made global warming crisis has already been disproved – the catastrophic global warming crisis exists only in the fevered minds of its proponents.
“So even as atmospheric CO2 has steadily accelerated, there have been multi-decadal periods when global temperature has gone down, up and sideways. Again, there is NO evidence of a global warming crisis, but ample evidence of a natural and irregularly cyclical global temperature phenomenon.”
If there was no natural fluctuation temperatures would be in lock-step, but there are natural fluctuations, aren’t there?
“cyclical… phenomenon” go down exactly as far as they go up. That isn’t happening.
RyanS is right. Though there have been long periods without warming – the 18 years 9 months of the Great Pause being a good recent example – the trend is generally upward. Though the uptrend is not sufficient for us to be sure that it is chiefly anthropogenic, our calculations assume ad argumentum that all of it is anthropogenic. If not all of it were anthropogenic, then Charney sensitivity would be less than we have calculated.
Ryan, all we are doing is examining a brief moment in geologic time, and during that period global temperatures have, on average, increased.
If we examined a different period, the temperatures would have decreased, as they did from ~1945 to ~1977.
Attributing ALL the apparent warming to increased atmospheric CO2 provides an UPPER BOUND on climate sensitivity to CO2, but does not precisely quantify it.
Let’s assume, hypothetically, that global cooling in the near future returns average global temperature to the same levels that existed circa 1940, when fossil fuel combustion strongly accelerated. [This actually happened for a period circa 2008.]
What would your calculated Upper Bound climate sensitivity be then?
Near -Zero or Zero?
Or still ~1.1C/doubling?
What if this hypothetical cooling took global temperatures back to the same levels as circa 1850?
Same questions.
The subject calculation is just one of several ways of calculating an Upper Bound to climate sensitivity. Christy and McNider 2017 provided another Upper Bound of ~1.1C/doubling..
The main conclusion is that from the different credible calculations, Earth’s climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 is LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO ~1.1C/doubling and there is NO credible global warming crisis.
Over the relatively short period in geologic time that man has burned significant quantities of fossil fuels, temperatures on average have increased slightly. This could in fact be purely coincidental, and the warming was due to natural causes rather than CO2, and the actual sensitivity of client to increasing atm. CO2 could be near-zero.
We do not know. We do know there is no cause for alarm.
Ryan wrote:
“cyclical… phenomenon” go down exactly as far as they go up. That isn’t happening.”
I wrote “irregularly cyclical”, so I reject your comment as off-topic. It is silly to suggest that the climate system is that simple – we all know it is not.
I suspect one can’t accurately calculate climate sensitivity from a doubling of CO2 because such an experiment has never been run, and one simply can’t assume the same or even similar results from current or recent conditions. The geological past doesn’t help much because the time scales involved and the resolution in the geological record is inadequate.
Critical variables in the climate system, and how they react to changes in conditions, are unknown. The rest is guesswork, although the IPCC should really know this.
If we are correct in our central assertion that temperature feedbacks respond to temperature and not just to temperature change, then it is possible to constrain the interval of Charney sensitivity, as we have done in the head posting, by using a top-down approach to derive the feedback system-gain factor rather than the bottom-up approach currently used in the models.
I agree that the bottom-up approach can’t work – indeed, one only has to look at the discrepancy between predicted and observed warming to see that it is not working. But our method works, and gives a result respectably close to the observed temperature trend.
Instead of trying to crack the climate journals, perhaps you should approach those of another field – control, engineering or statistics?
Pointing out how close your figure is to the lab effect of CO2 is important in that it uses the climatologists prime weapon against them.
TinyCO2 makes a good point, but we’re not sure we’d be received kindly by, say, a journal of control theory, not because there is anything wrong with our feedback analysis (there isn’t, or our professor of control theory would intervene) but because the journal would not be confident that we had correctly represented the climatic aspects of our result.
That may illustrate where you need to bolster the paper anyway (I’m not sure that climate scientists understand the climate aspects of the sun either). Other fields may have more sympathetic ears than climate journals although academics tend to stick together, but even if they don’t accept the paper, they may concede that your concept is valid. They may go away and wonder about how strong the official science is. Cracks in the dam and all that.
I’m not sure that we need to bolster the paper all that much: it uses what climatology would recognize as mainstream climate science, so there is little for climatologists to argue with on that score. The problem is that climatologists tend to have little or no understanding of feedback theory, which involves among other things a knowledge of how infinite series work. They have been misled as to the definition of feedback for decades, so our correction to the definition comes to them as a painful and embarrassing surprise.
in the end, this question will be settled by control theorists brave enough to take on the climatological establishment and tell it it is wrong.
Just curious: Have you perhaps considered something along the lines of ‘Journal of Geophysical Research’, or the AAPG (Tulsa, Ok) monthly journal (I am a member of AAPG), or the SEG publication, ‘Geophysics’?
AAPG published a comprehensive volume, “Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change”, and might be a bit more, for lack of a better term, ‘sympathetic’, to the statements in your paper.
Just a thought — — — my half-pfennig on the topic.
The problem with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists is that, however impartial they are, they will be seen as a vested interest. So we are trying for publication in a mainstream climate journal. Only then will the Marxstream media even think about reporting what we have discovered. Nothing less will do, I’m afraid.
Meanwhile, we are quietly disseminating our result in quarters where it matters.
“How climatologists forgot the Sun was shining”
Great! Thx.
Who needs “positive feedbacks” on a live suspending planet friendly shone at by a sympathizing sun.
Is anyone aware of any full-time climate scientists anywhere in the world, who have been presented with these arguments are thought “Doh – why didn’t we see that before!”.
Yes, but for understandable reasons they’d rather not be named. The viciousness of the true-believers in Marxist academe should not be underestimated. Already one of our co-authors has been dismissed from his university on a trumped-up charge because his name was found on our paper. In due course, the fraud authorities will be asked to investigate. But first we want to make quite sure that we’re right. And that means going through a fairer peer-review process than we have had so far.
Since “climate science” funding would not exist in anything close to its current size without some sort of impending crisis and related wealth/power transfer scheme, I think it’s safe to say that climate “scientists” have all been pre-selected to only see the world one way and only allow one conclusion. Any of them who suggested this post might be correct would be immediately out of a job, so what they think is not of use, even if they’re occasionally right.
““[Test rigs] are all very well, but simply show that one can construct systems for which the one-dimensional energy-balance equations are exactly true. There is no information contained therein to say whether these models are relevant to the real climate.””
Hahah. And yet he just described every climate model in existence.
Amen to that. The absence of any self-critical faculty is the hallmark of academic totalitarians everywhere.
I don’t know why I think of homodyne signal processing when I see the IPCC theory. Have they by any chance mixed in some sort of radio theory by accident or design?
It is a question of math. Does the math hold for both delta T and T absolute. If you can show this to be the case then the argument is won.
When this question first came up I did a couple of test cases sufficient to show that the equations held true in both cases for specific cases. I did not try to solve the general case but this should be possible by algebraic methods.
The problem with oral arguments is that most people lack the training to reduce them to aaformal proof and thus the results are ambiguous. A mathematical proof however is much harder to get wrong.
Ferd Berple may like to download our two-pager. One page gives a general scientific overview of our result; the other provides an outline of the very proof that he seeks.
Does the math hold for both delta T and T absolute.
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As I recall the proof I saw in my head was to reduce the feedback equation to an infinite geometric series and show the equivalence between absoluteabsoluteabsolute – 0).
It was a matter of writing it out but I didn’t have room in the margin ….
Typo. show the equivalence between delta T and T absolute – 0.
It’s all a question of doing your calculations in the right fermat.
I appreciated your pun.
Ah, if only Pierre review were possible …
roman imperium soldiers banner:
SOL lucet omnibus –
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… praeter climatologistibus.
Since T abs = 0 absolute + delta T
And the feedback equation is proven for delta T, and the climate system must be in equilibrium at 0 absolute, from this we can conclude ththat the feedback equation is equally proven for T absolute.
By the equivalence principle if A=B and C is true for A then C is true for B.
I am really most grateful to Ferd Berple for thinking of ways to prove, rigorously, our contention that feedback processes respond to the absolute input signal. He may also like to recall that system-gain equation states that the output signal is the product of the input signal and the sum of the infinite series {f + f^2 + f^3 + … + f ^infinity}, where the feedback factor f is the fraction of the output signal represented by the feedback response. The sum of that well-kent infinite series, of course, is simply the system-gain factor A = 1 / (1 – f). Therefore, the output signal is the product of the input signal and the system-gain factor.
One can also derive the form of A by looking at the loop diagram and noting that the output signal is the sum of the input signal and (f x the output signal). A little algebraic manipulation shows that the output signal is thus the ratio of the input signal to (1 – f), or, in other words, the product of the input signal and the system-gain factor A = 1 / (1 – f).
It is at once self-evident from these two distinct approaches that there is nothing inherent in the feedback system-gain equation itself that prevents the equation from having as its input an absolute temperature rather than merely a temperature change. If an absolute temperature is the input, an absolute temperature is the output. if a temperature change is the input, then a temperature change is the output.
Next, one can derive climatology’s variant equation (with deltas as the input and output) by taking the difference between successive instances of the mainstream equation (with absolute temps as the input and output).
Thus: Mainstream 2: Tq2 = (Tr1 + deltaTr1) A.
and: Mainstream 1: Tq1 = (Tr1 ) A.
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Climatology’s equat: deltaTq1 = (deltaTr1) A.
Tr1, which includes the emission temperature, has been subtracted out. Therefore, the variant equation cannot use it to derive the system-gain factor as we have done. But our derivation is still correct.
Now, what this means, of course, is that, provided that A is the same for mainstream equations 1 and 2, those equations are entirely consistent with climatology’s equation, which is simply the difference between them. Since the mainstream equations are valid, so is climatology’s variant. Since climatology’s variant is thus equal to their difference, they are consistent with it.
Therefore, all the hogwash about climatology’s equation being derived from the energy-balance equation via a Taylor-series expansion is supremely irrelevant to our argument, because the mainstream equation is in no way inconsistent with that approach.
Are there any further steps that Ferd would add to make the demonstration rigorous? Or is the above sufficient?
The counter-argument being put against our approach is that because the feedback equation is derived via only the leading order of a Taylor-series expansion rather than via the entire expansion the feedback system-gain factor derived from it is only of local application on the curve represented by the expansion.
However, as one can see from the above analysis, one can derive the feedback equation from first principles without reference to the Taylor-series expansion, which is why the equation is capable of modeling absolute input and output temperatures as well as deltas.
I should be most grateful for any thoughts from Ferd, or from others here, on making the demonstration more rigorous.
Of course, we also tested the underlying theory by building our own rig, and then by getting a government laboratory to do the same. Both rigs gave output values exactly as theory would predict.
But, of course, all this comes as a nasty shock to those who have been brought up on IPCC’s definition of feedback processes as responding to perturbations only.
“But, of course, all this comes as a nasty shock to those who have been brought up on IPCC’s definition of feedback processes as responding to perturbations only.”
Yes, Joules are Joules and there is no reason why the effect from the next W/m^2 of forcing would be any different then the average effect from all accumulated W/m^2 of forcing, which is 1.6 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing, corresponding to an ECS of about 0.3 per W/m^2 or about 1.1C for doubling CO2.
The fudging comes in by defining forcing to be zero in the steady state. If Pi is the input at TOA, Po is the output at TOA and E is the energy stored by the planet,
Pi = Po + dE/dt
The IPCC considers forcing to be instantaneous Pi – Po which is dE/dt. What they neglect to consider is the complete relationship between E and Po, where while T is linearly proportional to E, Po is proportional to T^4 thus dE/dt is not proportional to dT/dt as assumed by the IPCC’s fake science.
As I understand it, the good Lord Monckton discovered the GCM feedback from a footnote in one of the IPCC reports. Apart from that, alarmists don’t write their methods nor formulas down. It’s all smoke & mirrors, hocus pocus, and computer code. They claim their GCMs project from emergent behaviour of the Laws of Physics which they wrote as computer code. So the actual behaviour of GHG, their climate models, are hidden in computer code. It’s a neat trick:
The gist of this is that they can deny their models do feedbacks like this (above). They have plausible deniability; much like the witch doctor of olde.
Mr Pawelek is correct. Those here who have been denying that the variant system-gain equation used in climatology is used in climatology may like to direct their attention to the more than customarily inspissate footnote on p. 631 of IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007). There, they will find the equation whose relevance to the derivation of Charney sensitivity they so pathetically deny.
The unusually thick footnote saying,
“Under these simplifying assumptions the amplification of the global warming from a feedback parameter λ (in Wm-2 °C–1) with no other feedbacks operating is 1 / (1 + λ/λp) , where λp is the ‘uniform temperature’ radiative cooling response (of value approximately –3.2 W m–2 °C–1; Bony et al., 2006). If n independent feedbacks operate, λ is replaced by (λ1 + λ2 +…λn ).”
The footnote is indeed poorly drafted and, like much else in IPCC’s reports, calculatedly obscurantist. However, its existence gives the lie to those who have been trying to maintain that climatology doesn’t use the system-gain equation.
Yes one shouldn’t be too obscurantist. But the part that interested my was the start where it says “Under these simplifying assumptions…”. To me that suggests the simple equations are not used to determine sensitivity.
The sentence to which this refers says “The water vapour feedback, operating alone on top of this, would at least double the response.” But then goes on to say it’s a lot more complicated than that.
We have short-circuited all the complexity by restoring the Sun and the pre-industrial greenhouse gases to the equation. Then one may derive the feedback system-gain factor directly without having to consider the values of individual temperature feedbacks. Our method is, therefore, much less prone to error than that of IPCC.