By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

I make no apology for returning to the topic of the striking error of physics unearthed by my team of professors, doctors and practitioners of climatology, control theory and statistics. Our discovery the climatology forgot the Sun is shining brings the global-warming scare to an unlamented end. My last article discussing our result attracted more than 800 comments. Here, I propose to answer some of the more frequently-occurring comments, which will be in bold face. Replies are in regular face.

In a temperature feedback loop, the input signal is surface reference temperature before feedback acts. The output signal is equilibrium temperature E after feedback has acted. The feedback factor f (= 1 – R / E) is the ratio of the feedback response fE (= E – R) to E. Then E = R + fE = R(1 – f)–1. By definition, E = RA, where A, the system-gain factor or transfer function, is equal to (1 – f)–1 and to E / R.

But your result is too complex. Please state it in simpler terms.

Erroneously, IPCC (2013, p. 1450) defines temperature feedback as responding only to changes in reference temperature. However, feedback also responds to the entire reference temperature. Climatology thus omits the sunshine from its sums and loses the opportunity to find, directly and reliably, the Holy Grail of climate-sensitivity studies – the system-gain factor.

Lacis+ (2010) imagined that in 1850 feedback response accounted for 75% of the equilibrium warming of ~44 K driven by the pre-industrial non-condensing greenhouse gases, implying a feedback factor 0.75, a system-gain factor 4 and an equilibrium sensitivity 4.2 K. i.e., 4 times reference sensitivity 1.04 K (Andrews 2012). Lacis misattributed to the non-condensing greenhouse gases the large feedback response to the emission temperature from the Sun.

In reality, absolute emission temperature in 1850 with no non-condensing greenhouse gases would have been 243.3 K and the warming from those gases 11.5 K, giving a reference temperature of 254.8 K before feedback. The HadCRUT4 equilibrium temperature after feedback was 287.55 K Thus, the system-gain factor, the ratio of equilibrium to reference temperature, was 287.55 / 254.8, or 1.13.

By 2011, if all warming since 1850 was anthropogenic, reference temperature had risen by 0.68 K to 255.48 K. Equilibrium temperature had risen by the sum of the 0.75 K observed warming (HadCRUT4) and 0.27 K to allow for delay in the emergence of manmade warming: thus, 287.55 + 1.02 = 288.57 K.

Climatology would thus calculate the system-gain factor as 1.02 / 0.68, or 1.5. Yet the models’ current mid-range estimate of 3.4 K warming per CO2 doubling implies an impossible 3.25.

In reality, the system-gain factor was 288.57 / 255.48, or 1.13, much as in 1850. It barely changed over the 161 years 1850-2011 because the 254.8 K reference temperature in 1850 was 375 times the manmade reference sensitivity of 0.68 K from 1850-2011. Sun big, man small: nonlinearities in feedback response are not an issue.

Given 1.04 K reference warming from doubled CO2, equilibrium warming from doubled CO2 is 1.04 x 1.13, or 1.17 K, not the 3.4 [2.1, 4.7] K imagined in the CMIP5 models (Andrews, op. cit.). And that, in just 350 words, is the end of the climate scare. There will be too little warming to cause harm.

The feedback-loop diagram simplifies to this black-box block diagram

But your result is too simple. Bringing 122 years of climatology to an end in 350 words? It can’t be as simple as that. Really it can’t. It has to be complicated. Models take account of a dozen individual feedbacks and the interactions between them. IPCC (2013) mentions “feedback” more than 1000 times. Feedback accounts for 85% of the uncertainty in equilibrium sensitivity (Vial et al. 2013). You can’t just jump straight to the answer without even mentioning, let alone quantifying, even one individual feedback. Look, in climatology we just don’t do simple.

Inanimate feedback processes cannot “know” that they must not respond to the very large emission temperature but only to the comparatively small subsequent perturbations. Once it is accepted that feedback responds to the entire input signal, it becomes possible to derive the system-gain factor reliably and immediately. It is simply the ratio of equilibrium to reference temperature at any chosen time. Equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 (after feedback has acted) is simply the product of the system-gain factor and the reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 (before feedback has acted). And that’s that. To find the system-gain factor, one does not need the value of any individual feedback. We can treat the transfer function between reference and equilibrium temperatures simply as a black box.

But each of the five Assessment Reports of the IPCC is thousands of pages long. You can’t just get the answer that has eluded the world’s experts in a few paragraphs.

To quote a former occupier of the office of President of the United States, “Yes We Can.” The “experts” had borrowed feedback math from control theory without understanding it. James Hansen of NASA first explicitly perpetrated the error of forgetting the sunshine in a lamentable paper of 1984. Michael Schlesinger perpetuated it in a confused paper of 1985. Thereafter, everyone in official climatology copied the mistake without checking it. Correcting the error makes it easy to constrain the system-gain factor and hence equilibrium sensitivity.

But climate sensitivity in models is what it is. The science is settled.

All honest experts in control theory will agree that feedback processes in dynamical systems respond to the entire input signal and not just to some arbitrary fraction of that signal. The math is the same for all feedback-moderated dynamical systems – electronic op-amp circuits, process-control systems, climate. Build a test rig. All you need is an input signal, a feedback loop and an output signal. Set the input signal and the feedback factor to any value you like. Now measure the output signal. The circuit doesn’t respond only to some fraction of the input signal. It responds to all of it. We checked by building our own test rig and then getting a government lab to build one for us and to measure the output under a variety of conditions.

Feedback amplifier test circuit built and operated for us by a government lab

But the circuits you built are too simple. Any undergraduate could have built them. You didn’t need to go to a government lab.

We knew official climatology and its devotees would kick and scream and whinge and throw all their toys out of the stroller when they learned of our result. Trillions are at stake. So we checked what did not really need to be checked. Feedback theory has been around for 100 years. To borrow a phrase, it’s settled science. But we checked anyway. Oh, and we went right back to basics and proved the long-established feedback system-gain equation by two distinct methods.

But you didn’t need to prove the equation by two methods. All you needed to do was to prove it by linear algebra.

Yes, indeed. The proof by linear algebra is very simple. Since the feedback factor is the ratio of the feedback response in Kelvin to equilibrium temperature, the feedback response is the product of the feedback factor and equilibrium temperature. Then equilibrium temperature is the sum of reference temperature and the feedback response. With a little elementary algebraic manipulation, it follows that equilibrium temperature is the product of reference temperature and the reciprocal of (1 minus the feedback factor). That reciprocal is, by definition, the system-gain factor.

But we also obtained the system-gain factor as the sum of an infinite series of powers of the feedback factor. Under the convergence condition that the absolute value of the feedback factor is less than 1, the system-gain factor is the sum of the infinite series of powers of the feedback factor, which is the reciprocal of (1 minus the feedback factor), as before. We are guilty of double-checking. Get over it.

Convergence upon the truth

But the equation you use is not derived from any known physical theory.

Yes, it is. See the above answer. But all you really need to know about feedback is that the system-gain factor is the ratio of equilibrium temperature (before feedback) to reference temperature (after feedback). For 1850 and for 2011, we know both temperatures to quite a small margin of error. So we know the system-gain factor, and from that we can derive equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2.

But climatology’s version of the system-gain equation is derived from the energy-balance equation via a Taylor-series expansion. It can’t be wrong.

It isn’t wrong. It’s just not useful, because there is much more uncertainty in the delta temperatures than in the well constrained absolute temperatures we use. Neither the energy-balance equation nor the leading-order term in the Taylor-series expansion reliably gives the system-gain factor. It is only when you remember the Sun is shining that you can find the value of that factor directly and reliably.

Climatology in the dark

But if you’re saying climatology isn’t wrong, why are you saying it’s wrong?

Climatology’s system-gain equation, using reference and equilibrium temperature changes rather than absolute temperatures, is a correct equation as far as it goes. It is the difference between two instances of the absolute-value equation. But climatology erroneously limits its definition of feedback as responding only to changes, effectively subtracting out the sunshine. Feedback also responds to the absolute input signal, making it easy to find the system-gain factor and thus equilibrium sensitivity.

But you’re starting your calculation from zero Kelvin. You’re literally Switching On The Sun.

No. We have looked out of the window and noticed that the Sun is already Switched On and shining (well, not in Scotland, obviously, but everywhere else). Our calculation starts not with zero Kelvin but with the reference temperature of 254.8 K in 1850. The feedback processes in the climate respond to that temperature and not to any other or lesser temperature. They neither know nor care whether or to what extent they may have existed at any other temperature. They neither know nor care how they might have responded to some other temperature. They respond as they are, and they respond only to the temperature they find. We know the magnitude of the response they engender, for we can measure the equilibrium temperature, calculate the reference temperature and deduct the latter from the former.

But the Earth exhibits bistability. It can have two different temperatures for the same forcing.

Given the variability of the climate, Earth can have several temperatures for a single forcing. But not in the short industrial era. The system-gain factors for 1850 and 2011 are close to identical, indicating that at present there is insufficient inherent instability to disturb our result.

The scrambled account of feedback math in Hansen (1984)

But the feedback system-gain equation is not appropriate for climate sensitivity studies.

Interesting how the true-believers abandon their “settled science” when it suits them. The system-gain equation is mentioned in Hansen (1984), Schlesinger (1985), Bony (2006), IPCC (2007, p. 631 fn.), Bates (2007, 2016), Roe (2009), Monckton of Brenchley (2015ab), etc., etc., etc. If feedback math were not applicable to the climate, there would be no excuse for trying to pretend that equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 is anything like 2.1-4.7 K, still less the values up to 10 K in some extremist papers. As it is, all such values are nonsense anyway, as we have formally proven.

But Wikipedia shows the following feedback-loop block diagram, which proves that feedback only responds to changes, or “disturbances”, in the input signal and not to the whole signal –

A feedback loop diagram from the world’s chief source of fake news

Our professor of control theory trumps the CreepyMedia diagram with the following diagram. And behold, the reference or input signal is at left; the perturbations (in pink) descend from above to their respective summative nodes; and the feedback block (here labeled the “output transducer”) acts on all of these inputs, specifically including the reference signal –

Mainstream block diagram for a control feedback loop

But the models don’t use the system-gain equation. They don’t even use the concept of feedback.

No, they don’t (not these days, at any rate, though until recently their outputs were fed into the system-gain equation to derive equilibrium sensitivity). However, we took some care to calibrate the models’ predicted [2.1, 4.7] K interval of Charney sensitivities using the system-gain equation, which produced exactly the same interval based on the excessive feedback factors derivable from Vial+ 2013. The system-gain equation is, therefore, directly relevant.

The models try valiantly to simulate the multitudinous microphysical processes, many of them at sub-grid scale, that give rise to feedback, as well as the complex interactions between them. But that is a highly uncertain and error-prone method – and even more prone to abuse by artful tweaking than the temperature records themselves: see e.g. Steffen+ (2018) for a deplorable recent example. Besides, no feedback can be quantified or distinguished from other feedbacks or even from the forcings that triggered it by any measurement or observation. The uncertainties are just too many and too large.

Our far simpler and more reliable black-box method proves that the models have, unsurprisingly, failed in their impossible task. By correcting climatology’s error of definition, we have cut the Gordian knot and found the correct equilibrium sensitivity directly and with very little uncertainty.

But you talk of reference and equilibrium temperature when radiative fluxes drive the climate.

Well, they’re called “temperature feedbacks”, denominated in Watts per square meter per Kelvin of the temperature that induced them. They are diagnosed from the models and summed. The feedback sum is multiplied by the Planck sensitivity parameter in Kelvin per Watt per square meter to give the feedback factor. Because the feedback factor is unitless, it makes no difference whether the loop calculation is done in flux densities or temperatures. Besides, our method requires no knowledge of individual feedbacks at all. We find the reference and equilibrium temperatures, whereupon the ratio of equilibrium to reference temperature is the feedback system-gain factor. Anyway, if you want to be pedantic it’s radiative flux densities in Watts per square meter, not fluxes in Watts, that are relevant.

Ten handsome unpersons

But you’re not a scientist.

My co-authors include Professors of climatology, applied control theory and statistics. We also have an expert on the global electricity industry, a doctor of science from MIT, an environmental consultant, an award-winning solar astrophysicist, a nuclear engineer and two control engineers, to say nothing of our pre-submission reviewers, two of whom are the world’s most famous physicists.

But there’s a consensus of expert opinion. All those general-circulation model ensembles and scientific societies and intergovernmental agencies and governments just can’t be wrong.

Yes They Can. In suchlike bodies, totalitarianism prevails (though not for much longer). For them, the Party Line is all, and mightily profitable it is – at taxpayers’ and energy-users’ expense. But the trouble with adherence to the Party Line is that it is a narcotic substitute for independent, rational, scientific thought. The Party Line replace the heady peril of mental exploration and the mounting excitement of the first glimmer of a discovery with a dull, passive, cringing, acquiescent uniformity.

Worse, since the totalitarians who have captured academe ruthlessly enforce the Party Line, they deter terrorized scientists from asking the very questions it is the purpose of scientists to ask. It is no accident that most of my distinguished co-authors now live and move and have their being furth of the dismal scientific establishment of today: for if we were prisoners of that grim, cheerless, regimented, unthinking, inflexible, totalitarian mindset we should not have been free to think the thinkworthy. For these malevolent entities, and the paid or unpaid trolls who mindlessly support them in comments here regardless of the objective truth, punish everyone who dares to think what is to them the utterly unthinkable and then to utter the utterly unutterable. Several of my co-authors have suffered at their hands. Nevertheless, we remain unbowed.

But no one agrees with you.

Here is one of many supportive emails we have had. I get ten supportive emails for every whinger –

“Hi and congratulations on what I believe may have the potential to put the final nail in the coffin of the anthropogenic global warming hysteria. The work of you and your team is very promising and I cannot wait to see how alarmists will go about to attack this. Bring out the popcorn, as we say. The application of feedback theory in this case is simple, physics-wise elegant, mathematically beautiful, and understandable to a wider audience. I am especially excited about how the equation grasps the whole feedback problem without having to deal with all the impossible little details of trying to distinguish which gas does what and without relying on hopelessly complex computer models. And that is why I think it will stick. I will be following this eagerly in the coming months and years and I am considering going to Porto [on 7-8 September: portoconference2018.org: b there or b2] to catch all the latest from others as well, even though your work is the current crown jewel of the anthropogenic global warming debate so far.”

But global temperature is rising as originally predicted.

No, it isn’t –

Our prediction is close to reality: official climatology’s predictions are far out

But you have averaged the two global-temperature datasets that show the least global warming.

Yes, we have. The other three longest-standing datasets – RSS, NOAA and GISS – have all been tampered with to such an extent that they are no longer reliable. They are a waste of taxpayers’ money. We consider the UAH and HadCRUT4 datasets to be less unreliable. IPCC uses the HadCRUT dataset as its normative record. Our result explains why the pause of 18 years 9 months in global warming occurred. Because the underlying anthropogenic warming rate is so small, when natural processes act to reduce warming it is possible for long periods without warming to occur. NOAA’s State of the Climate report in 2008 admitted that if there were no warming for 15 years or more the discrepancy between the models and reality would be significant. It is indeed significant, and now we know why it occurs.

But …

But me no buts. Here’s the end of the global warming scam in a single slide –

The tumult and the shouting dies: The captains and the kings depart …

Lo, all their pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre

## 730 thoughts on “Climatology’s startling error of physics: answers to comments”

1. UzUrBrain says:

Finely an explanation that agrees with my four years of engineering math and 20+ years of designing, developing the process control system, aligning and calibrating and tuning the process control systems for Nuclear power Plants. And my knowledge of process control theory was good enough that the final system needed minimal tuning during the startup phase of the plant. From all of the false theories I have read about this feedback/forcing BS associated with Climate change, I was beginning to think I needed a refresher course in Process control systems. I do not thank any man has designed a process control system to date that can keep a Nuclear power plant, Spacecraft, Airplane, even autonomous automobile as stable as the present inherent climate control system for global temperature.

• Theo says:

Earth’s climate has not always been so hospitable to life over the past four billion years. There have been many mass extinctions, and Snowball Earth episodes lasting hundreds of millions of years, in which average global temperature may have dropped to around -50 degrees C.

• JonScott says:

Extinction is a NATURAL part of the system. Nothing lasts for ever and the natural demise of one genus creates space for another. Irrespective of the actual cause of the demise. Time to send the Canutes back to school because they obviously were not paying attention the first time.

• Greg says:

The problem with this lies here:

Our calculation starts not with zero Kelvin but with the reference temperature of 254.8 K in 1850.

The so-called reference temperature : whatever the Earth would be without GHG feedbacks is unknowable. The only way is to guestimate what the Earth’s albedo would be in that state or know how strong the GHG warming is and work backwards.

It’s circular logic.

• UzUrBrain says:

Why is it not possible to obtain a fairly good approximation from the temperature of Earth’s Moon and other Moons? Especially when I hear celebrated “Scientists” claiming they can determine if there is humanoids on newly discovered planets from the presence of GHG in their atmosphere.

• Theo says:

Please state which scientists have claimed that they can determine the presence of “humanoids” on other planets based upon GHGs in their atmospheres. This claim has escaped my notice.

Thanks!

• UzUrBrain says:

On a Discovery Channel Documentary about the discovery of planets a few years back (not more that 4 or 5) His logic absolutely flabbergasted me as I was responsible for calibrating instruments to NBS traceable requirements while in the military and understood the impossibility of this. His name and university was in the credits, I pulled up the university web page and wrote him a respectful letter asking how this was possible in that you are dealing with single digit parts per million in a device that does is not have that accuracy and all I got back wa gobbledygook professor speak, I am smarter than you lecture. Millions have seen it so millions believe it. Do not remember the title, only that it dealt with the discovery of exoplanets early when it was proven and verified.

• Theo says:

Thanks. Couldn’t find it on YouTube.

Yes, I’m still in the evil clutches of Alphabet.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Usurbrain, we have used a nifty wrinkle in geometric number theory (the spherical-surface areas of equialtitudinal spherical segments are equal) to derive the mean dayside temperature of the Moon: it is around 306 K. On the nightside, it is about 94 K. Mean lunar temperature is about 200 K, not the 270 K imagined by NASA, which has failed to allow for Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals.

Using a similar technique on Earth, the mean dayside temperature is 275 K and the nightside temperature around 246 K (based on a study of Earthlike aquaplanets by Merlis+ (2010), after allowing for the lower albedo in Merlis (0.38 against Lacis’ 0.42). Thus, the mean terrestrial surface temperature in the absence of noncondensing greenhouse gases is about 260.5 K, and the reference temperature after adding 11.5 K of pre-industrial non-condensing greenhouse gases is about 272 K.

This would imply a system-gain factor of 287.55 / 271.95, or 1.06, implying Charney sensitivity 1.10 K. We noted this result in passing in our paper, but adhered to climatology’s erroneous method that does not allow for Hoelder’s inequalities, so as to obtain the system-gain factor 1.13, implying CHarney sensitivity 1.17 K. Hope this helps.

• Richard G. says:

Dear MoB, I greatly appreciate your efforts to de-fuse the climate bomb. Your comment above illustrates my main objection to the foundation of modern climate science. It is founded on several logical fallacies, primarily False Premise and Misplaced Precision.

To use your lunar temperature model as an example, it describes a day side temperature, a night side temperature, and a mean temperature as if these are real and not simply a mathematical abstraction. The mean exists nowhere and equilibrium between day and night exists nowhere.

Like wise the model for the Earth. There is no equilibrium, as the system is continually chasing it’s tail as it seeks an equilibrium that stays out of reach through the diurnal and seasonal cycles. This is actually perpetual Dis-equilibrium, and it pervades the entire atmospheric/hydrospheric system. I therefore propose in the spirit of truth in advertising that the term Equilibrium Temperature be henceforth changed to Disequilibrium Temperature.

It is also patently obvious after the climate gate capers that the HAD-CRUT database is absolutely corrupted by errors. It follows that the Reference Temperature is actually a wild-ass-guess. Thus the derivation of the term Climathemajics.

This from a biologist who gets my own local temperature readings from an old fashioned mercury/glass high/low recording thermometer calibrated in two degrees of accuracy, not tenths or hundredths, and understands that a reading of 55 1/2 degrees is actually translated from : ” Hmm, that looks like less than 56 and way more than 54, so lets say, oh, call it 55 1/2.”

Thanks for so publicly fighting the good fight.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Richard G, there is so much wrong with official climatology’s methods and data that one hardly knows where to start. However, we took the simple approach of accepting ad argumentum all of official climatology except what we could disprove, and then demonstrating what we could disprove.

The influence of the sunshine, once it is taken into account in feedback calculations, is such as to overwhelm small differences in estimates of surface temperature etc. The value of our method is that, within reasonable limits, one can vary all the input parameters without much affecting the final answer.

• Kristi Silber says:

I’m really trying to understand the background of your calculations, and why you believe them to be better than others.

So you are deriving the lunar temperature through mathematics, and believe that is a better estimate than measuring it? Do you take into account the temperature of the craters?

You use a single study of “Earthlike aquaplanets,” compensating for nothing but different albedo, to estimate pre-industrial terrestrial surface temperature? Am I understanding that correctly?

Can you define Hoelder’s inequalities in layman’s terms, and why it should be applied to estimation of climate sensitivity?

Why do you call it “Charney sensitivity”? Was he not the one who first came up with the 1.5-4 C range – and shouldn’t THAT be called the “Charney sensitivity,” it anything?

Where in your calculations of system gain do you account for the heat absorbed by the oceans?

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Ms Silber asks several interesting questions.

First, the lunar temperature. Unfortunately, we were unable to find anything in the Lunar Diviner mission’s papers that stated the lunar global mean surface temperature. Accordingly, we were compelled to compute it. On the dayside, we performed latitudinal calculations using the fundamental equation of radiative transfer and integrated, to find a mean temperature of 306 K. On the nightside, we used the Lunar Diviner data (for the nightside temperature varies little, and it is relatively easy to deduce the mean nightside temperature). That was about 94 K. So the lunar mean surface temperature is about 200 K.

We did a similar dayside calculation for the Earth, again calculating the mean temperature at each latitude and then integrating, using a useful device from geometric number theory that reduced the problem from a double integral (lat. and long.) to a single integral (for the spherical-surface areas of equialtitudinal spherical segments are equal). We used Merlis only to gain an idea of the nightside temperature, which depends far more on the heat capacity of the first 7 m of the ocean, treated as a slab, than on anything else. On Earth, we found that the emission temperature in the absence of greenhouse gases would not be the 243.25 K obtainable by a single global application of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer but more like 260.4 K. This consideration would reduce the system-gain factor from our 1.13 to about 1.06, in turn reducing Charney sensitivity from 1.17 to 1.10 K. We mentioned this result only in passing, as a consideration worthy of further work and, eventually, of a separate paper.

As to Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals, note that on the Moon a single use of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer suggests a lunar mean surface temperature of 270 K. However, it is in fact about 200 K, because the fundamental equation of radiative transfer is a fourth-power relation and the sum of a series of fourth powers differs from the fourth power of the sum of a series.

On Earth, owing to the formidable heat capacity of the ocean, the error is in the opposite direction: the temperature correctly calculated as the sum of a series of fourth powers (one for each spherical segment) is greater than the incorrectly-calculated single global value obtained from that equation.

Equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 concentration is known to climatologists as “Charney sensitivity”. It is the standard metric or yardstick in equilibrium-sensitivity studies.

In our system-gain calculation we do not need to make any allowance for any individual feedback. All we need to know is the reference and equilibrium temperature for any chosen date for which respectable data are available. The system-gain factor is then the ratio of the latter to the former.

To allow for the possibility of time-delay occasioned by the heat capacity of the oceans, we performed not one but two calculations – one for 1850 and the other for 2011. The system-gain factor was the same in both years, at just 1.13 (or 1.50 if one uses the delta system-gain equation rather than the absolute-value equation). Therefore, time delay is not making much difference.

I do hope that these answers help.

• RACookPE1978 says:

Monckton of Brenchley

First, the lunar temperature. Unfortunately, we were unable to find anything in the Lunar Diviner mission’s papers that stated the lunar global mean surface temperature. Accordingly, we were compelled to compute it. On the dayside, we performed latitudinal calculations using the fundamental equation of radiative transfer and integrated, to find a mean temperature of 306 K. On the nightside, we used the Lunar Diviner data (for the nightside temperature varies little, and it is relatively easy to deduce the mean nightside temperature). That was about 94 K. So the lunar mean surface temperature is about 200 K.

But does this not fall to the “insolated, isolated, insulated flat grey body in space” fallacy?
(A grey flat body is assumed uniformly insolated at a uniform rate in a perfect vacuum, and must lose enough energy from one side of the flat body to come in thermal equilibrium with the inbound radiation.)

Should not the moon be calculated as a (near-uniform) sphere illuminated on one side, rotating every 28 days at the earth’s actual orbit and losing energy from its entire surface?
Yes, thermal near-equilibrium can at best only be assumed if the weight, density, thermal mass and thermal conduction of the first 1 meter of the moon’s surface is approximated/estimated/guessed to be uniform. But the result would be 10 degree bands that can be proved useably correct by the Apollo instruments left on the surface.
If anything, the vacuum of the moon and slow rotation of the spherical surface would make a thermal radiation model of the moon easy for any of the GSM models to work.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Cook, we took ten billion spherical segments on the dayside hemisphere and derived the temperature of each by a calculation based on the zenith angle at the centerline of each segment. Then we took the average. Answer: 306 K. For the nightside, we averaged the Diviner measurements. Answer: 94 K. The mean of the two gives about 200 K.

• RACookPE1978 says:

Thank you.

• richard verney says:

Did you account for the varying albedo? If so, how was the albedo assessed at each point?

See:

• ThinkingScientist says:

Hi Christopher,

I don’t think my comments detract from your overall theory and presentation, but I must again take issue with the day, night and average temperatures of the moon that you are using. In doing so I will try and use clear language so others can perhaps see where this is going in terms of definitions.

The Diviner dataset provides detailed lunar temperature profiles from pole-to-pole and every 1 hour in longitude. I have taken the published Diviner dataset profiles and digitized them. I have then performed an integration over the lunar surface and also looked at running 12-hour windows to find the minimum and maximum hemisphere averages. The results of various ways of computing the average are:

1. Entire lunar surface and naively averaging the temperatures gives 180 K
2. Entire lunar surface averaged as T^4 gives 253 K
3. Entire lunar surface averaged as T^4 and weighted by area gives 270 K

To obtain an “average” which relates to the mean energy flux we must obviously use method (3). This agrees with NASA.

The coldest hemisphere lunar surface average (T^4 with area weights) gives 103 K
The hottest hemisphere lunar surface average (T^4 with area weights) gives 320 K

(The two hemispheres do not overlap in the above calculation – just to be clear!)

The naïve average of the hot and cold hemispheres is (103+320)/2 = 211 K
The T^4 average of these two numbers is 270 K – the same answer as integrating over the whole surface, exactly as we would expect.

These numbers and calculations are not in doubt but perhaps the meaning and utility of them is in dispute. If we want to state a single average temperature that summarises the average flux being radiated by the whole moon at any time the correct answer is 270 K. This is rooted in physics. If we want to state what the average thermometer reading on the surface of the moon is we would be using a number closer to 211 K, or your 200 K.

The T^4*area calculation is the one that relates the physical quantity temperature to the physical quantity energy flux in a meaningful way.

Hope that helps everyone. I don’t think this is really any direct relevance to your theory.

For others wanting to know about models with different physical properties of the atmosphere excluded I would suggest they refer back to Manabe & Strickler (1964) “Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Convective Adjustment”, J. Atmospheric Sci. 21 pp 361-385. There you will discover that the temperature with GHG but without weather would be +40 – +60 degC, contradicting the GHG = +33 meme completely. It’s the big effects of evaporation and convection that keep us cool.

Regards,

TS

• Willis Eschenbach says:

TS, I fear that both Lord Monckton and you (along with Manabe & Strickler) have greatly underestimated the complexity of estimating the earth’s blackbody temperature. See here for Dr. Robert Brown’s clear examination of the problems involved in that calculation.

w.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Eschenbach is quite right that the problem of deriving an emission temperature in the absence (and still more in the presence) of greenhouse gases is not easy. Our approach has been to accept official climatology’s method ad argumentum, but to note that if one performs one of the earliest steps recommended by the ever-interesting Dr Brown – namely a T^4 calculation at each point on the sphere – one comes closer to the true value both on the Moon (where the mean temperature is some 70 K less than using official climatology’s single, naive calculation) and on the Earth (where the error appears to be 10-20 K in the opposite direction). Our conclusion is that further work needs to be done on this question, which has little implication for equilibrium sensitivity obtained by our method (it reduces our 1.17 K mid-range estimate to about 1.10 K) but probably has major implications for official climatology’s method.

• richard verney says:

In the case of the Earth, the problem is more acute since the Earth is nothing like a blackbody with all the thermal inertia and lags.

Further, most energy is not absorbed at the surface, eg., the oceans which cover almost ~70% of the planet and where energy is absorbed several metres below the surface and some of this is carried to depth by oceanic overturning, in the atmosphere at cloud height and the height profile of water vapour in the atmosphere, in tropical rain forests little sunlight reaches the surface and solar is absorbed at canopy height and then it is converted powering photosynthesis and tree growth.

Yet further energy absorbed in one place is often reradiated in another place (eg., as a consequence of oceanic currents). and the problem caused by latent energy in evaporation, ice melt etc.

This is a 3D system where the incoming watts are simply not absorbed at one uniform height.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Verney rightly points out some of the numerous complexities in reaching an estimate of global mean emission temperature. However, these complexities have a very small influence compared with the very large influence of official climatology’s failure to make allowance for Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals in arriving at its estimates of emission temperature.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Greg, the values for albedo and reference temperature in the absence of non-condensing greenhouse gases were derived from a GCM by Lacis+ (2010). Assuming today’s insolation and Lacis’ albedo, the emission temperature in the absence of those gases was derived using the fundamental equation of radiative transfer in the usual way.

In practice, it makes very little difference what the reference temperature is: it can vary quite widely without much influencing equilibrium sensitivities.

• Kristi Silber says:

Why do you use Lacis+ GCM, rather than another?

“In practice, it makes very little difference what the reference temperature is: it can vary quite widely without much influencing equilibrium sensitivities.”

What does “quite widely” mean here? Seems strange that your calculations are quite insensitive to actual conditions.

How did you pick the years (just two!) to estimate system gain?

“Lacis misattributed to the non-condensing greenhouse gases the large feedback response to the emission temperature from the Sun.”

It seems to me that once you bring the Sun into the equation, you are creating an open loop. The Sun’s emission is independent of any feedbacks, and that invalidates control theory.

If you are looking at the top-of-atmosphere energy balance, the input is the sun’s energy, and the output is the radiation from the planet into space. This cannot be described by control theory.

If you are looking at the temperature on the surface of the Earth, the actual emission temperature of the Sun is to some extent irrelevant since its energy is greatly modified by the time it hits the surface, and is dependent on some of the same controls that come into play in the feedbacks (clouds, albedo, etc.).

Where am I wrong here? Really, I want to know and understand, and I’d appreciate it if any response is in layman’s terms and refers to actual climate parameters rather than engineering/electronics models.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Ms Silber asks some sensible questions. I am happy to answer them.

We used Lacis+ 2010 as our starting point at the suggestion of Dr Mojib Latif, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at a climate conference organized by the City Government of Moscow last year. The virtue of using Lacis is that the co-authors are known to take a rather extreme position on global warming: few, therefore, would argue with their findings, though we are able to demonstrate that the feedback factor they imagine is absurdly high.

The reason why reference temperature R(1) may vary quite widely is that the influence of the Sun overwhelms the comparatively small influence from greenhouse gases. We allowed R(0), the emission temperature in the absence of greenhouse gases, to vary by 5% up or down on Lacis’ 243.25 K. We then conducted a 30,000-trial Monte Carlo simulation and derived the uncertainty interval of about 0.08 K either side of our mid-range estimate of 1.17 K equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2.

We selected 1850 as the start-point for our calculations because there had been little if any anthropogenic influence before that date and it was at that date that the first global-temperature measurement was conducted, albeit with an uncertainty of some 0.35 K either side of the mid-range estimate.

We selected 2011 as the end-point because that was the year to which IPCC and its contributors updated their data and methods in time for the most recent Assessment Report.

However, we also conducted an empirical campaign based on ten separate estimates of net anthropogenic forcing to various dates, four from IPCC’s reports and six from mainstream, peer-reviewed sources. In all cases the equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 was found to be 1.17 K.

It is incorrect to state that including the emission temperature “creates an open loop”. It does no such thing. Build a test rig (or, if engineering is not your thing, just set up the Bode system-gain equation). Set the gain block to unity. Set the input signal to represent the 243.25 K emission temperature. Set the feedback block to any nonzero value. Measure the output. It is not 243.25 K. The entire difference between the input and output signal, where the gain block has been set to unity, must come from feedback. Case closed.

If Ms Silber thinks control theory is inapplicable to climate, she makes our case for us a fortiori: for in that event there is no basis for imagining that temperature feedbacks operate. Control theory is feedback theory.

As to the complications caused by the multiplicity of forcings and feedbacks, including water vapor, albedo and cloud feedbacks, our black-box method does not need to take them individually into account. All we need to know is the reference and equilibrium temperature for a given year, whereupon the system-gain factor is simply the ratio of the latter to the former.

I do hope these answers help.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Monckton of Brenchley said:

We used Lacis+ 2010 as our starting point at the suggestion of Dr Mojib Latif, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at a climate conference organized by the City Government of Moscow last year.

What? Clear proof of Russian climate collusion, notify Robert Mueller’s team immediately!

w.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Guilty as charged! Where do I collect my money?

• commieBob says:

I’m not convinced that feedback analysis is appropriate in the first place.

What CM et al have done is to accept, for sake of argument, Hansen’s feedback analysis but to demand that it be done correctly. Absolutely brilliant.

The only way CO2 will produce catastrophic warming is if there is positive feedback. Take that away, as CM et al have done and there is no Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW).

• ripshin says:

cB,

Pretty sure the feedback is still considered positive…it’s just much much smaller than “consensus” science thinks…

rip

• commieBob says:

… much much smaller … by around an order of magnitude. 0.08 vs 0.67 or 0.75 link

Given the lack of precision and accuracy of the data, the feedback might as well be zero.

• ripshin says:

Hahn. Agreed. Although, upon consideration, CM’s analysis seems to rest on all other things being equal. Just something to keep in mind, I guess. Not that I truly think insolation changes or orbital fluxes would impact this materially, but just sayin.

rip

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Ripshin makes the fair point that we are not stating that we know so much about the climate that we are sure that Charney sensitivity is 1.17 K. We are saying that, accepting ad argumentum all of official climatology except what we can prove to be in error, and after correcting the error we can prove, Charney sensitivity is 1.17 K plus or minus 0.08 K, to 95.4% certainty.

• ripshin says:

Understood and agreed!

And, I’ll note two things in passing.

First, I’m exceedingly grateful that you are narrow in your conclusions. This is how science (and, as an aside, the law) should be conducted. Conclusions (and verdicts) should be narrowly constructed, giving due consideration to the limitations that produced them (whether, in the case of science it was an experiment, or in the case of law it was the trial/arguments). Broad, sweeping conclusions are almost always filled with errors and fallacies. Your careful description of your conclusion, taking in the caveats, is much appreciated. That a significant portion of “research” of an entire branch of science is, in one fell stroke, invalidated by such a simple and narrow conclusion such as yours is as much a kudos to you and your team as it is a (or should be) a censure to the ringleaders who’ve perpetuated this fallacy. [For some reason, I really wanted to write “farcical aquatic ceremony” there instead of “fallacy”: https://youtu.be/dt-a6sovg_k?t=1m41s ]

Secondly, I found your youtube presentation to be quite charming. You did a nice job, but I have to be frank here: I’m not sure I totally bought the cowboy hat and bolo combo. Once you started speaking, I still knew you were a villian (https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/why-so-many-movie-villains-have-british-accents.html).

At any rate, thanks again for keeping our community here updated and for the constant engagement to answer questions and comments.

Sincerely,

Brian Lindauer (rip)

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Lindauer’s comments are most kind and helpful. He has entirely understood both the limitations and (precisely because of the limitations) the scope and power of our result.

As to the Stetson with its associated gear, that was presented to me by the Republican Party of Montana as a thank-you for making the keynote speech at a fund-raiser for Mr Trump before the Presidential election. I wore it at Camp Constitution because the sunlight was very bright, and it provides better shade even than the excellent Stetson leather baseball cap that i bought in Cannes some years ago, and I have recently had a couple of operations on my eyes, which are more sensitive than usual at present. Also, the schoolkids who were my audience liked it. It is, of course, incongruous when talking of scientific matters, but I shall be giving a highly-focused 20-minute presentation on our result at a high-level scientific conference in Porto next month. That will be professionally filmed and posted up on YouTube, and I shall be soberly suited and looking serious.

• UzUrBrain says:

Math tells me that it has to exceed all Negative Feedback to go into runaway warming. Do not think there is enough for that and geological history also shows no runaway. With levels of CO2 at 7,000 PPM the earth’s temperature was only 15 oC than now. Thus there is a negative feedback. My guess is H20.

• old construction worker says:

I believe you are right. The water cycle is a net negative feedback. We live in a swamp cooler atmosphere.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Many thanks to Commiebob for his comments. It does seem clear from our analysis that net-positive feedback is acting, but that the effect is small.

• CheshireRed says:

Always been my position. WHERE is this highly positive feedback we hear of re CO2 – H2O? It seems to me ‘they’ recognised there’s a trifling amount of human CO2 and any GHE it produces (?) is overwhelmed by natural H2O, so they had to shoe-horn in an ‘explanation’ for it. I’ve never once bought into it.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am very grateful to usurbrain for his kind comment.

If anyone would like a simple account for high-school students, go to:

• HotScot says:

Monckton of Brenchley

Chris, that blew me away.

Whilst I barely understood a word, nor do I suspect did the attendees, I understand why you had to go into the detail you did, for the benefit of your sceptics.

Nor should there be any doubt, the sceptics boot, is now on the other foot.

We ‘sceptics’ are in the ascendancy and are rapidly becoming the mainstream of climate change opinion. It is a bull market for us, invest!

No one believes in the concept of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change any longer other than the deluded hardliners who are being exposed as totalitarian elitist’s, determined to use CAGW to further their despicable ends, change the political world order and impose global governance.

I’ll write to the Swiss Embassy in the UK irrespective of my late submission and I await their reply with interest.

And when I retire back to Scotland in the next 4 or 5 years, I will turn up on your doorstep with a bottle of our finest to toast your good health, even if you’re not there.

Lang may yer lum reek Chris.

Thank you,

HotScot.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Most grateful to HotScot for his very kind comment, and I look forward to sharing a dram with him one day. The math was a bit too much for the high-school students, but the value of spelling it out is that the far larger audience on YouTube can watch the presentation and get some idea of the actually quite simple result.

If we are right, this is the end of the climate scare, which is no doubt why the IPCC has not complied with its own error-reporting protocol to the extent of acknowledging my report of its error.

• old construction worker says:

‘If we are right, this is the end of the climate scare,’ Sad truth, it won’t be. As along as some people want Governance X. Co2 will be the villein.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Well, I am not a quitter. If we have succeeded in demonstrating a major error in official climatology’s math, and if we are right that in consequence of that error the equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 is of order 1.2 K rather than 3.4 K, then that is indeed the end of the scare. One should not underestimate the power of a mathematical proof.

• hanelyp says:

I expect we will not see the final end of the current climate hysteria until after they roll out the next hysteria to blame on modern industry and use as an excuse for a power grab.

• AGW is not Science says:

Sad, but true. They have already gone from “global cooling” to “global warming,” in BOTH cases blaming human industry and in BOTH cases proposing the same “solution” to the non-existent “problem” – limits/controls on energy use. The fact is what they’re after has always been control of energy use, through which they can gain control of *everything.*

• Steve O says:

The True Believers have stated their positions so forcefully. for so long, that they are unable to reverse themselves. They will take their positions to the grave. How could they stand the humiliation of admitting they were wrong? Their brains won’t allow the possibility.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Steve O is right that the true-believers in the New Religion – or, rather, the New Superstition – are not going to be willing to abandon the Party Line without a struggle. However, our result does make it quite plain that equilibrium sensitivity is between one-third and one-half of their mid-range predictions – enough of a reduction to bring the global-warming scare to an end.

The first stage will be to see whether we can get our paper past peer review. There will be a lot of snapping and snarling by true-believing reviewers – indeed, there already has been – but, if the generally feeble opposition to our result from the true-believers here is anything to go by, there is nothing much for us to worry about.

Once our paper has been peer-reviewed and published, it will be up to the wider scientific establishment to see if it can find any significant holes in our argument. That may prove a great deal more difficult than some of them may think.

• AGW is not Science says:

LMOB, I have much faith in the work of you and your team, but unfortunately little faith that the “journal” gatekeepers will allow your work to be published, because they prefer to refuse to publish anything that would kill the “golden goose.”

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to AGW is not Science, we know it will be difficult to persuade the journals that the game is up and the scare is over, but there will come a point where, unless they can produce valid reasons to reject our actually quite simple argument, they will have to publish or face prosecution for fraud.

• Ian Magness says:

You and me both Scottie!
I’m quite partial to older versions of Bunnahabhain.

• sycomputing says:

“Likewise, Science has as its end and object the truth in the physical world…Truth is the objective of science, and objective Truth is the objective of Science.”

Wonderful!

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Thank you, sycomputing, for having said how much you enjoyed my little excursus into the philosophy of science and of religion. For what is the scientist but a seeker after truth, as al-Haytham used to say.

• kevinK says:

“I do not think any man has designed a process control system to date that can keep a Nuclear power plant, Spacecraft, Airplane, even autonomous automobile as stable as the present inherent climate control system for global temperature”

With respect to your experience with control systems, the climate is very stable simply because of the huge thermal mass of the Oceans (caused by the huge volume of the Oceans).

No feedback(s) necessary (or present). It takes a very long time for the temperature of the Ocean to change, and then the other things that respond faster (CO2, polar ice) simply go along for the ride.

Cheers, KevinK.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

KevinK appears to imagine that there are no feedbacks present in the climate. However, it is readily demonstrable that there are. It has been demonstrated. A mere assertion to the contrary, unsupported by any evidence, does not constitute an effective refutation.

2. Meh says:

I understand very little of this, but that prediction-observation -graph looks a bit dishonest to me, seeing how it misses the last 6 years.

• Latitude says:

but it doesn’t miss all the years the IPCC, models, etc were wrong…and that’s the point

• Theo says:

Not dishonest. Just reusing an old graphic.

Extending the graph to July 2018 would only slightly raise the angle of the blue line. It still wouldn’t make it up to the lower MoE line, ie into the IPCC’s yellow prediction zone.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Theo is correct. It is only if one uses the much-tampered-with GISS data to 2018 that the trend-line barely makes it into the very bottom of IPCC’s prediction region.

• Robert W Turner says:

The 1998 El Nino raised the global average temperature above the model predictions, the 2015/16 El Nino raised it to the average of the models (and they cheered that they were accurately modelling global average temp), but since then it has cooled whereas the model predictions continue to warm. They will be lucky if the next major El Nino reaches their lowest forecast models.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Turner makes an excellent point. It does seem clear that a large fraction of the observed warming in most datasets arises from adjustments (whether legitimate or otherwise).

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Meh, we shall of course update our analysis once up-to-date data from IPCC are to hand: but we chose 2011 as our end date because that was the date to which IPCC had derived its predictions and data.

However, we also ran an empirical campaign studying ten distinct estimates of net anthropogenic forcing over various periods, together with the observed industrial-era warming since 1850 for each period. In every case, the Charney sensitivity was found to be 1.17.

• “I understand very little of this, but that prediction-observation -graph looks a bit dishonest to me”

Omission of recent warming is just one of the problems. The FAR century trend was, as usual, based on scenarios. Naturally this plot uses only Scenario A, which is for the highest estimate of GHG increase, which is not what happened 1990-2011. The scenarios are similar to Hansen’s. I have plotted below here the graph with data to date, proper surface data as postulated by IPCC (and TLT for those who like that sort of thing), all three FAR scenario century trends, and the MoB green line.

• Theo says:

Omission of 2011-18 means not only omission of warming but also of cooling.

Surely you’ve noticed that the world has cooled since the totally natural warming associated with super El Nino of 2015=16.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Stokes continues to quibble. Since there have been no reductions in the rate of CO2 concentration growth, it is the business-as-usual scenario that is relevant. On that scenario, the mid-range prediction of medium-term warming made by IPCC in 1990 was 2.8 K or 3.3 K, depending on which version of the medium-term prediction one relies upon. I chose the lesser of the two, so as to be kind to IPCC.

Mr Stokes maintains, disingenuously, that the forcings imagined by IPCC in 1990 have not come to pass. They have, however, but IPCC, realizing that they were not producing the desired warming rate, introduced a very large fudge-factor in the form of the negative aerosol forcings.

• honest liberty says:

and this is what happens MoB when a scholar attempts to discuss logic with a fanatic: they will resort to obfuscation and self-deception to insulate their ego. If we plummeted into another LIA in the next ten years… Mr. Stokes would still blame CO2.

Thanks again sir, you rock!
Nick, you can continue kicking them

• “and this is what happens MoB when a scholar attempts to discuss logic”
A scholar would at least tell you that there were scenarios involved, and that he was choosing the most extreme in terms of GHG growth. And then give some positive justification as to why that choice was justified by the events that unfolded. MoB has given no detail about the scenarios at all.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The accident-prone Mr Stokes should perhaps check to see whether the emissions growth to 2011 was below or above the IPCC’s business-as-usual scenario in 1990. Hint: it was above. IPCC’s prediction, therefore, was way off beam. It has realized this and has approximately halved its medium-term prediction since then – yet, unaccountably and inconsistently, it has left its longer-term predictions unaltered.

• Bellman says:

Monckton of Brenchley,

I seem to remember a few years back you were claiming that the increase in CO2 was well below what the IPCC predicted. Have you changed your mind since then?

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

As the ever-tiresome and unconstructive Bellhop will have realized by now, in climatology it is necessary to adapt one’s position as the data and the science change. If Bellman were to provide a reference to what I said, for I do not recollect having said any such thing, I should be able to recall the circumstances and provide a more detailed answer.

• Bellman says:

From February 2009,

“It is important to draw the distinction between the increase in CO2 emission, which has been at the high end of the IPCC’s projections, and the corresponding increase in CO2 concentration, which has recently been very near linear, and is running well below the least of the exponential rates of increase projected by the IPCC.

On the current, linear observed trend, CO2 concentration in 2100
will be just 575 ppmv (IPCC central estimate 836 ppmv), requiring the IPCC’s central projection of temperature increase to 2100 to be halved from 3.9 to a harmless 1.9 C°.”

Global Warming is Not Happening

At the hearing of March 25 2009: “Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the air at less than half the rate that the United Nations had imagined. This
century we may warm the world by just half a Fahrenheit degree, if that.”

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Excellent. The CO2 concentration is still heading for about 575 ppmv by 2100, and that alone requires IPCC’s prediction of global warming to be reduced. The emissions, however, are – like it or not – above the business-as-usual scenario in IPCC (1990). The IPCC is, therefore, wrong on the following counts:

1. Despite decades of rhetoric and annual bilious climate conferences, IPCC, UNFCCC, UN et hoc genus omne have utterly failed in their primary mission of bullying the West into making heavy enough cuts in emissions to bring the emissions growth rate even down to its high-end or business-as-usual case.

2. Notwithstanding that emissions are running above the business-as-usual scenario envisioned by IPCC in 1990, CO2 concentrations are – as I had said they would – running at well below IPCC’s then mid-range estimate.

3. As our present result shows, equilibrium sensitivity is approximately one-half to one-third of IPCC’s mid-range estimate.

Now, put these telling facts together and it is indeed perfectly possible that the anthropogenic component in the global warming of the 21st century will be only 0.5 K. However, our present result concentrates solely on the question of equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2. Bearing in mind that consideration alone, we should expect the anthropogenic component in global warming this century to be of order 1.2 K.

However, if one were to bear in mind that IPCC was also wrong about the relationship between emissions and concentrations, one might well conclude that the anthropogenic component in 21st-century warming will be as little as 0.5 K. But that step, though relevant to my testimony before Congress, was not relevant to our present paper, which is narrowly focused.

• Bellman says:

Excellent. The CO2 concentration is still heading for about 575 ppmv by 2100, and that alone requires IPCC’s prediction of global warming to be reduced.

I’m probably missing something here, but I thought that was the whole point of Nick Stokes argument. CO2 is not rising in accord with the original IPCC business as usual scenario, and therefore you would not expect as much warming as they predicted.

Now, put these telling facts together and it is indeed perfectly possible that the anthropogenic component in the global warming of the 21st century will be only 0.5 K.

Yet you accept temperatures are currently rising three times faster than that.

Also, you predicted 0.5°F, not K – though a few minutes later you suggest it could be as much as 2°F.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Bellman continues to be deliberately obtuse. The CO2 emissions, and those from other greenhouse gases, are rising at somewhat above the IPCC’s business-as-usual rate as predicted in 1990. Yet the concentration is not rising as fast as IPCC had predicted. This is one of IPCC’s many mistakes.

However, our paper concentrates only on one mistake: the erroneous definition of “temperature feedback” in IPCC’s reports.

At present, temperatures are rising at 1.6 K/century equivalent on the HadCRUT dataset, less on the RSS dataset and more on the others. However, there has recently been a large el Nino, a naturally-occurring event, which has pushed up the warming rate. Before the el Nino, there had been no warming at all on the satellite datasets for 18 years 9 months, and none on the terrestrial datasets for about 15 years until they were tampered with (for whatever reason) in a fashion calculated to raise the apparent warming rate of recent decades compared with the original measurements.

Since most of the current century has yet to happen, it is interesting that Bellman – who perhaps lacks the statistical knowledge to understand that shorter-term trends tend to fluctuate more than longer-germ trends – assumes, on no evidence, that the current rate of warming will persist throughout the century.

As I have already explained twice (and one does understand that Bellman is calculatedly slow on the uptake, for it is paid to be so), it remains possible that the rate of warming this century will be as little as 0.5 K. However, for present purposes our argument takes no account of IPCC’s predictive failure that led it to assume a far greater concentration of greenhouse gases as a function of the emission rate than has actually occurred. That is why our paper, which is confined to the question how much global warming will occur after temperature feedbacks have acted, finds that equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 will be 1.2 K.

• Bellman says:

Since most of the current century has yet to happen, it is interesting that Bellman – who perhaps lacks the statistical knowledge to understand that shorter-term trends tend to fluctuate more than longer-germ trends – assumes, on no evidence, that the current rate of warming will persist throughout the century.

That’s patent nonsense. I’ve argued here on numerous occasions that short term trends will fluctuate and cannot be used to predict future changes.

it remains possible that the rate of warming this century will be as little as 0.5 K.

Anything’s possible. We might plunge into a new ice-age by the end of the century, or warming might accelerate in line with the 1990 IPCC estimates. The problem is you claim the period from 1990 – 2011 verifies your prediction of 1.2°C / century. If it does that it doesn’t provide evidence for your 0.5°C warming, let alone your 0.5°F projections.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The furtively pseudonymous coward Bellman continues, pointlessly, to pick nits and to lie. It is contemptible. And, when caught out in one of the lies in which it specializes – for that is what cowards do when they are caught out in their bottomless ignorance time and again – it doubles down with further lies.

For the reasons I have explained, our analysis is confined to quantifying the effect of the error of definition on which official climatology has hitherto foolishly relied. Taking that matter on its own, one would expect about 1.2 K of global warming this century, on the assumption that the net centennial warming from all anthropogenic sources is approximately equivalent to the equilibrium warming in response to doubled CO2.

However, there remains the fact that IPCC’s original business-as-usual prediction of CO2 emissions growth is the track currently being followed by inferred CO2 emissions (see e.g. Le Quere’s annual papers), and yet the CO2 concentration growth is well below IPCC’s original business-as-usual prediction. It is for that reason, combined with official climatology’s error of definition, that I consider it possible that anthropogenic global warming this century may prove to be as little as 0.5 K. However, for the purposes of our present paper, 1.2 K this century is enough. If the warming turns out to be 1.6 K – the current HadCRUT4 trend – then our prediction will still be very much closer to reality than IPCC’s original business-as-usual prediction of about 4 K warming over the 21st century.

If one considers IPCC’s medium-term predictions rather than its centennial predictions, then our 1.2 K would be considerably closer to a centennial warming of 1.6 K than IPCC’s 2.8 K/century equivalent or 3.3 K/century equivalent medium-term business-as-usual predictions.

• Bellman says:

it doubles down with further lies.

It would be a real help if you could quote a specific lie. I’m sure I make mistakes and correct them when pointed out, but to be accused of making non-specific lies makes it impossible for me to respond.

on the assumption that the net centennial warming from all anthropogenic sources is approximately equivalent to the equilibrium warming in response to doubled CO2.

And that’s one of my problems, where does that assumption comes from? Logically it should depend on factors such as how much CO2 increases. Even if a sensitivity can be translated into a rate of warming over the 21st century, there is no reason to suppose this would be the same over a shorter period.

However, there remains the fact that IPCC’s original business-as-usual prediction of CO2 emissions growth is the track currently being followed by inferred CO2 emissions (see e.g. Le Quere’s annual papers), and yet the CO2 concentration growth is well below IPCC’s original business-as-usual prediction. It is for that reason, combined with official climatology’s error of definition, that I consider it possible that anthropogenic global warming this century may prove to be as little as 0.5 K.

I still don’t follow the logic of this. You appear to be confusing predicted rates of warming with climate sensitivity. If your argument is that we may only see 0.5°C warming over the 21st century because there will less of an increase in CO2 over that period, you are not saying that climate sensitivity is only 0.5°C.

then our prediction will still be very much closer to reality than IPCC’s original business-as-usual prediction of about 4 K warming over the 21st century.

I assume that’s a typo, the IPCC predicted 3 °C over the 21st century.

If one considers IPCC’s medium-term predictions rather than its centennial predictions, then our 1.2 K would be considerably closer to a centennial warming of 1.6 K than IPCC’s 2.8 K/century equivalent or 3.3 K/century equivalent medium-term business-as-usual predictions.

Again, the IPCC never predicted 3.3 / century mid term warming.

But the main issue is that as you so rightly said else where, you cannot project a short term warming trend over the next century. Your argument is that if warming over the next century is only 1.6 °C, the IPCC will have been wrong and you will have been less wrong. If.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Here are just a few of Bellnan’s lies, uttered from behind its cloak of cowardly anonymity.

1. IPCC predicted 3 K, not 4 K, business-as-usual warming over the 21st century. Yet the business-as-usual diagram quite clearly shows 4 K warming.

2. IPCC never predicted 3.3 K mid-term business-as-usual warming. This lie is repeated twice. Yet IPCC did predict 3.3 K mid-term business-as-usual warming.

3. Bellman, having lied and lied again about IPCC’s predictions, then says it is not interested in IPCC’s predictions. It should at least make some attempt to make its lies self-consistent.

• Bellman says:

1. IPCC predicted 3 K, not 4 K, business-as-usual warming over the 21st century. Yet the business-as-usual diagram quite clearly shows 4 K warming.

The 4K warming is the warming since pre-industrial times, not the warming over the 21st century.

2. IPCC never predicted 3.3 K mid-term business-as-usual warming. This lie is repeated twice. Yet IPCC did predict 3.3 K mid-term business-as-usual warming.

You can assert they did predict it ad infinitum, it doesn’t make it true. I’ve tried to explain why I think you are wrong. You have ignored what I say and just repeat your claim. The facts are that the IPCC FAR do state a figure of 3.3K / century up to 2030. They do not state there will be 1.35°C warming between 1990 and 2030. They did predict, as a crude estimate, 1°C warming up to 2025. Their graph does not show short term warming at a rate of 3.3°C / century.

If I’m wrong then Lord Monckton only has to point to the passage stating that and I’ll withdraw my assertion, but up to now all he has down is make some suppositions based on unrelated parts of the IPCC report to derive his own figure.

3. Bellman, having lied and lied again about IPCC’s predictions, then says it is not interested in IPCC’s predictions. It should at least make some attempt to make its lies self-consistent.

If I said I wasn’t interested in IPCC’s predictions it was in the context of thinking them irrelevant in confirming your predictions. Of course I’m interested in IPCC predictions, I just think their crude predictions from 28 years ago are less interesting than their current predictions.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am glad that Bellman now concedes, contrary to his previous assertions, that IPCC do state a figure of 3.3 K/century up to 2030: or, rather, they state that there will be 1.8 K warming compared with pre-industrial. Now, there had been 0.45 K warming to 1990, as IPCC knew at the time. Therefore, it was predicting 1.35 K warming from 1990-2030, which is equivalent to at least 3.3 K/century. It is pleasing that we are now agreed on this.

And Bellman did indeed spend a lot of time citing IPCC’s predictions, in the hope of demonstrating some imagined inconsistency or another in the head posting. Only when it reallzed that I knew it had misstated IPCC’s position did it suddenly and falsely pretend that it was not, after all, interested in IPCC’s predictions. It is deliberate falsehoods like these that Bellman should work on avoiding, for they undermine whatever case it conceives it is supporting in its equivocations and mendacities here, delivered from behind a coward’s cloak of anonymity.

3. Theo says:

The HadCRU books have also been cooked, but maybe just not extra crisply like the Karlmelized GISS.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Another good point from Theo. If we had confined ourselves to the UAH data, our trend-line would have coincided with the observed trend-line almost exactly.

4. Peter Schell says:

I fear that this debate is no longer one that can be influenced by science and facts. It has become a religion and a handy dog whistle for politicians looking for an excuse to either bring in some sort of social program or to explain how it was not their neglect that is responsible for their city currently being underwater.

and we have an entire generation that has been indoctrinated at a faith and belief level. It will take a lot more than math and science they don’t understand to convince them. The Great Lakes freezing solid and staying frozen through the summer might not be enough.

• Greg says:

Hey, haven’t you heard? The Great Lakes freezing over all summer is EXACTLY what climate models have predicted will happen.

• Greg says:

Sadly, you are right, except that there never was a debate, just a shouting match.

The alarmists have done their best to indoctrinate the younger generation but half the population remain unconvinced. Trump has been elected and proved you do not need to kow-tow the priests of the cult of AGW to get elected.

He has cut off funding to UN climate green slush fund and hopefully at some stage will live up to his promise to pull USA out of Paris “agreement”.

Academics have completely blown there image of fair-minded, objective experts and have mostly come out as dishonest bigoted political activists. And that , folks, is about all we get for our money.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Peter Schell should not underestimate the power of a formal mathematical demonstration of the actually rather elementary error of physics perpetrated by climatology in recent decades. We have demonstrated that global warming in response to doubled CO2, after correcting the error, will only be about 1.2 K. On any view, that is not enough to be regarded as catastrophic.

No doubt the journals will continue to resist publishing our result. But, in the end, they cannot be seen to participate in a fraud. If we are correct, then our result deserves to be published and, if it is not published, questions will arise. If we are wrong, then at least we tried.

• GregK says:

Dear Monckton of Brenchley,

What would the curve look like for CO2 doubling/warming…ie from10ppm to 20ppm, 20 ppm to 40ppm, 50ppm to 100ppm, 100ppm to 200ppm, 500ppm to 1000ppm etc all other things being equal [which they wouldn’t be but..]

Basically what is the nature of the curve ?

• Theo says:

In the lab, it’s a logarithmic curve, with about 1.1 to 1.2 degrees C per doubling. If you start at one ppm, we’re working on the ninth doubling.

In the real, complex climate system, with positive and negative feedback effects, it’s still probably not much different from that value. IPCC however imagines that the ECS range is 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C per doubling.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to GregK’s excellent question, from 50 ppmv to 1000 ppmv the CO2 feedback curve is approximately logarithmic. The latest value of the CO2 radiative forcing is approximately 5 times the natural logarithm of the proportionate change in CO2 concentration: thus, for every doubling of CO2 concentration within the interval [50, 1000] ppmv, the forcing is 5 ln 2, or 3.466 W/m^2. The product of this value and the current Planck sensitivity parameter 0.299 K/W/m^2 is the reference sensitivity to doubled CO2: i.e., 1.0363 K, which I have rounded to 1.04 K in the head posting. Previous values of the coefficient in the forcing function were 5.35 (Myhre et al., 1998, cited in IPCC, 2001) and 6.3 (IPCC up to 1995).

• Helge Ankjær says:

I fear you are right Peter. Especially that between 1 and 2 generations have received AGW, almost intravenously. We have schoolbooks in my country (revised in 2016) where it says that the Arctic ice would disappear in 2013.
How can you have books that were actually revised in 2016 and still they claim that the ice should disappear by 2013? It tells a lot about how big this “climate hysteria” really is.
But now it’s all about fighting, we must get this out. Especially we who live in non english speaking countries. The climate deception is possibly more incorporated here than many English speakers believe. The biggest battle is most likely to be in Europe.

Than you Monckton of Brenchley, thank you so much for never giving up

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am most grateful to Helge Ankjaer for a most generous comment. Once we have succeeded in persuading a learned journal to publish our result, we expect that it will receive quite a bit of publicity.

5. richardw says:

I am so looking forward to UEA’s response! Thank you for the insight, focus, dedication and fearlessness you have shown in putting this together.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Many thanks to RichardW for his generous comment. We shall plug away at this until either we are given a credible explanation showing that we are wrong or we are published.

At an earlier stage in our research, a reviewer broke the scientific code of conduct by sending a copy of our paper to UEA with a request that they should assist him in refuting it. The paper found its way to the vice-chancellor, Professor David Richardson, who, in August 2017, called all 65 members of the environmental sciences faculty together and yelled at them: “This is a catastrophe. If Monckton’s paper is ever published, there will be hell to pay.” He ordered everyone to drop everything they were doing and work on refuting our paper. He has subsequently denied that any such meeting took place, but we received our information from one who was present.

6. Tom Halla says:

Good post. Assuming the same things that produced the 1850 temperature still apply today is a difficult assumption to challenge.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Many thanks to Mr Halla for his kind comment. In fact, we did not assume that the system-gain factors in 1850 and in 2011 were the same: we demonstrated it.

7. DaveKeys says:

I have been looking at the scale of mother nature.

To fill all the rivers and lakes. To dump all the snow on the mountain ranges around the world requires roughly 1350 cubic kilometres of water to be evaporated daily. A 2 meter deep swimming pool would cover an area the size of France. This evaporation plus the rotation produced by the rotation of the earth creates vast ocean currents pulling vast heat from the tropics towards the poles. So much heat it can warm entire continents such as Europe. The scale is enormous which you would expect from a process that regulates the temperature of a planet. The effect of CO2 is like a fart in the wind. CO2 is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The slightest change in energy from the sun would swamp any effect by CO2.

Another scam by the loony left. As out media pushes this bull shine what other lies do they tell us. Do the media ever tell us the truth. The news is just some weird form of show business.

8. richard verney says:

Our result explains why the pause of 18 years 9 months in global warming occurred. Because the underlying anthropogenic warming rate is so small, when natural processes act to reduce warming it is possible for long periods without warming to occur.

This is a rather grandiose claim. So what were the natural processes that exactly offset the forcing caused by the rise in CO2 over the 18 years 9 months?

As I said in a previous post on this paper, we will never be able to assess Climate Sensitivity to CO2 (if there be any at all), until such time as we know and can fully explain natural variation, what its consists of, the upper and lower bounds of each of its constituent forcings and which of these forcings are operating at any given time and in what amount.

There is a reason why there are over 50 different explanations for the pause, and that is that our present understanding of the system, how it is is driven and operates is insufficient.

The fact is that there is no correlation between CO2 and the temperature reconstructions, and we cannot explain the temperature reconstruction from 1850 to date. We cannot explain why it warmed, cooled warmed, cooled etc, and why there is so much multidecadal variation, and at the heart of this is that we do not sufficiently understand natural variation, and the data is not fit for scientific scrutiny such that we cannot eek out the signal to CO2, if any at all, from the noise of natural variation.

• Latitude says:

“we cannot explain the temperature reconstruction from 1850 to date.”

Saying the LIA ended in 1850…1850 is as arbitrary as anything else that’s made up, might as well be some random made up number…
..as far as anyone knows, almost all of this unmeasurable warming….could just be recovery

…and it would explain the pause

• Dave Bidwell says:

The statement may have been worded better. But what they are saying is that although there is a lot of variability, the trend upward is fairly predictable. And since the slope is so gradual, it should not be a surprise that longer periods of little apparent stability occur. There is no need to explain why the short term variations occur because of the “…far simpler and more reliable black-box method…”

• richard verney says:

In order to explain the post 1940 to 1975 cooling, and the ~19 year pause, what one can say is this:

1. IF Climate Sensitivity is high, it follows that the bounds of natural variability are equally high, if not higher; or

2 IF the bounds of natural variability are small, it follows that Climate Sensitivity must likewise be small, or smaller.

I think what Lord Monckton was seeking to point out is the obvious, namely if Climate Sensitivity is low then then it is not surprising that a pause might be observed. Obviously in this scenario, less negative natural variability forcing is required to completely cancel out the (assumed) positive forcing brought about by additional CO2.

When Lord Monckton used to post on the pause I often pointed out the obvious, namely that the longer the pause continues the lower the Climate Sensitivity is likely to be.

Having a low Charney Sensitivity does not explain the thermometer reconstruction from 1850 simply because there is no correlation between temperature change and CO2 in that reconstruction, and there is quite some anti-correlation in it.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Bidwell, it is not our method but our result that helps to explain why the Pause occurred. The weaker the signal from Man, the likelier it is that long periods without warming will occur.

• RobR says:

Richard,

I’m in agreement with your position on not knowing the vagaries of natural variability, but the proposed reduction in sensitivity is congrant with recent unremarkable climate change.

You can not on one hand claim something is unknowable and and expect a definitive answer. Can’t both co-exist in nature?

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Verney has not understood our method. We do not need to know the details he says we need to know. We have taken a black-box approach. All we need to know is the reference temperature and the equilibrium temperature at a given time. The system-gain factor is simply the ratio of the latter to the former. We obtained the same system-gain factor for 1850 and for 2011 and applied it to the published CO2 forcing to obtain 1.17 K warming per doubling of CO2.

It had long been thought that one could only attain to a respectable estimate of equilibrium sensitivity if one knew all the data mentioned by Mr Verney. However, this proves not to be the case. Provided that one uses the absolute-value form of the system-gain equation, rather than the delta form universally used hitherto in climatology, it is quite easy to obtain a reliable and quite well constrained estimate of equilibrium sensitivity.

• looncraz says:

“Explain” in this case is probably a bit of a strong word in a scientific setting… probably more accurate to say that the absolute system-gain equation removes the need for an explanation, whereas AGW theory mandates an explanation that is not forthcoming.

AGW theory mandates that global warming would have been too great for a modest natural cooling event to be sufficient to counter anthropogenic forcing for such a long period of time. In the absence of an explanation as to how such a strong cooling effect arose (volcanic activity, light-blocking aerosols, sudden shift in solar output, etc.), AGW theory is left wanting by predicting far higher than observed temperatures – whereas the absolute system-gain equation remains, at first glance, entirely within the margins of error in relation to observation.

• AGW is not Science says:

To this and you posts on the last thread to which I couldn’t reply to (too many replies there?), I would say the following.

I agree wholeheartedly with the concepts you have expressed regarding the “data” being unfit for a scientific purpose, because it has inconsistencies in numbers of measuring stations, locations of measuring stations, character of measuring stations, types of enclosures, types of temperature reading instruments, finishing materials used for the enclosures, differences in how readings were taken and rounded, etc. On top of that pile of manure we can add the endless “adjustments” by (in the main) those trying to propagate belief in human-induced catastrophe.

However, LMOB has performed an invaluable service, since he has in essence, by accepting all the “climastrologist” nonsense as factual (which incorporates the “worst case” scenario in all of its assumptions), to set a “worst case scenario ceiling,” as it were, which completely implodes the case for catastrophe – and with it, the case for needed “action.”

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am most grateful to AGW Is Not Science for his kind comments. He has understood our approach perfectly: we accept ad argumentum all of official climatology except what we can disprove, compelling the usual suspects to focus solely on their unfortunate error of definition and its consequences.

9. John Harmsworth says:

I’m very sorry but I fail to comprehend how this changes much of anything. So far as I can see the issue is not with perturbations of the math. It is with missing and poorly understood feedbacks. Things like clouds, deep ocean currents and humidity variability and movement seem to be entire mysteries. And climate science spits out computer model outputs based on inputs that appear to deliberately ignore these factors.
It is a bogus pseudo-science which seeks to impoverish humanity and extend control over people’s lives excessively.
It is an horrific mixture of Socialism and Eco-fanaticism which leaves no role for human aspiration or endeavour. It is evil!

• Robert W Turner says:

And it’s a non-linear system.

• RPT says:

Chaotic non-linear!

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Chaotic, yes, but one should not equate a mathematically-chaotic system with a shambolic one. Even the pendulum of a well-regulated clock may behave chaotically in the mathematical sense (see the beautifully-written and magisterial paper by the late Sir James Lighthill on this subject in 1998). Yet the clock still keeps good time.

• richard verney says:

And one that is never in equilibrium.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Verney, global temperature was in equilibrium in 1850: it showed no trend over the next 80 years (HadCRUT4). And one can infer the equilibrium that would have occurred in 2011 after allowing for the mid-range estimate of the radiative imbalance.

• Bob Weber says:

global temperature was in equilibrium in 1850

Prove it.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Already proven. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the HadCRUT4 monthly global mean surface temperature dataset from 1850-1930, a period of eight decades, exhibits a trend vanishingly different from zero.

• RACookPE1978 says:

Monckton of Brenchley

Already proven. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the HadCRUT4 monthly global mean surface temperature dataset from 1850-1930, a period of eight decades, exhibits a trend vanishingly different from zero.

??? All of the graphs I’ve seen for global average temperatures (and temperature proxies) from 1600 – 2000 show an irregular but gradual increase
from the low’s of the LIA around 1650 staggering upwards in 60-70 year increments towards the Modern Warming Period of today. Short cycle peaks in 1830, 1890, 1940-45, 2000-2010-2018.

In fact, if i were to look for a man-made (CO2 induced) “signal” in all this noise, I’d look at the differences in the short cycle cooling periods (1890-1915), 1945-1975, and 2010-2018 (which has been flat – not deceasing as it did the previous short cycles.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The fact remains, in answer to Mr Cook, that the trend on the HadCRUT4 dataset from 1850-1930 is as near zero as makes no difference. As far as I know, there is no similar period since 1930 with a zero trend. Furthermore, even quite large variations in the equilibrium temperature for 1850 would make little difference to the Charney sensitivity.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Since we are concerned with the equilibrium temperature in 1850, looking at the 1940s to 1970s is not particularly helpful. By that stage, anthropogenic effects were beginning to make themselves felt in the temperature records.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Turner, some feedback processes are indeed nonlinear, such as the water-vapor feedback. However, the reference temperature in 1850, before we had much to do with it, was 254.8 K, and that is some 375 times larger than the manmade reference warming from 1850-2011. Once one thus includes the sunshine in the calculation, one can ignore feedbacks altogether without much error, so the nonlinearities simply don’t matter.

• See - owe to Rich says:

I am afraid that actual non-linearity, or non-constantness, is the major flaw in this paper. For consider the thought experiment in which the Earth slowly moves its orbit towards the Sun, or the Sun slowly increases in brightness, either way increasing the “forcing”. Early on, the Earth is very cold, all its water is frozen and the albedo is high. As the forcing increases, nothing much happens by way of feedback – the temperature increases but still it is too cold to melt ice. At a certain point though, ice starts to melt around the equator, and positive feedbacks (less ice, smaller albedo, water vapour GHG effect) compete with a negative feedback (clouds start to form). I think the positive feedback wins.

At some point, when the ice retreats to Lisbon say, the positive feedback is huge and the inhabitants worry about runaway global warming (incorrectly) and how many more hundreds of metres of sea level rise are going to occur (correctly). But later on, when the ice is restricted to the polar regions, as now, the feedback falls again, as the albedo is starting to approach its limit.

So when Monckton et al divide 288K by 255K or whatever to get a sensitivity amplification factor, this is incorrect, because almost no feedbacks occurred on temperatures below 200K or so, yet the equation assumes that they have. What matters for present global warming is present feedbacks, and my money is on them implying a sensitivity closer to 2K per CO2 doubling than to 1K. Which is still highly unalarming in my view.

Rich.

• See - owe to Rich says:

Here are some mathematics on the radiative forcings which underlie temperature, to underpin my comment.

Let T(F) = (F/s)^.25 be the standard conversion from forcing to temperature. Suppose that any feedback is applied to the forcing rather than the temperature. Suppose that the forcing without feedbacks in 2011AD was F1, and that the feedback ratio for forcing was f1. Then the equilibrium temperature was E1 = T(F1(1+f1)). Now suppose that we add a forcing x (e.g. 3.7Wm^-2) due to a doubling of CO2, and that the feedback ratio changed to f2. Then E2 = T((F1+x)(1+f2)). E2-E1 is then the sensitivity to doubled CO2. Now,

E2/E1 = [(F1+x)(1+f2)/F1/(1+f1)]^.25
= [(1+x/F1)(1+(f2-f1)/f1)]^.25
~ 1 + x/(4F1) + (f2-f1)/(4f1)

(1+x/(4F1) is the temperature multiplier if f2=f1, and x E1/(4F1) would be the standard 1.1K for E1 = 288K. But if albedo reduced or water vapour infrared absorption increased then E1(f2-f1)/(4f1) could be at least as big a player as that 1.1K. So it is the fractional change in forcing feedback which matters.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Rich attempts to convert forcing to temperature by taking the fourth root of the ratio of the forcing to the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. That will give a spectacularly wrong answer. The correct approach is to take the product of the forcing and the Planck sensitivity parameter (about 0.3 Kelvin per Watt per square meter at present).

Next, Rich supposes that feedback responds to forcing rather than to temperature. However, in climatology the feedbacks respond to temperature, which is why they are denominated in Watts per square meter per Kelvin of the reference temperature that triggered them.

Thirdly, based on the above two serious errors, Rich concludes that if albedo were to diminish or water vapor feedback were to increase the feedback response “could be” at least as great as the directly-forced reference sensitivity to doubled CO2. But our result shows it couldn’t, under anything like modern conditions.

• See - owe to Rich says:

Milord, that is odd, because I thought that in a summary which you once posted you used the fourth root and SB constant to derive a figure of 255K, but I shall have to look back over your many postings to check that. I don’t see how it gives a spectacularly wrong answer – can you supply figures to support that?

I did indeed use a feedback related to forcing, which is slightly incorrect as you say, but only slightly because of the relationship between forcing and temperature. In any case in a comment further down thread I have reanalyzed it directly in terms of your E = R/(1-f) and find that a problem persists if f varies, but I’ll await your answer to that comment.

• Harry Palmes says:

@See – owe to Rich

After spending many days looking at this, I agree with you. Lord Monckton’s conjecture can explain the equilibrium temperature of 288K from the Emission Temperature of 255K, using a low feedback factor (circa 0.1) acting on the whole 255K input temperature. This is evidently true.

But an equally satisfactory conjecture would be that no feedbacks act until 255K and then they ‘turn on’ to act on input temperatures above 255K. The arithmetic for this works equally well using a feedback factor of 0.75 to also yield the correct equilibrium temperature of 288K

So both conjectures give the correct result. So which one is more likely to be correct?
The warmists can cite some sensible reasons for the latter. For example, water vapour feedback cannot act without any water vapour in the atmosphere (fairly obviously), and that begins at approximately 240K, not 0K.

Conversely I don’t see good reasons to 0K as the datum (Monckton) in place of 255K (IPCC et al)

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Palmes has done us the courtesy of thinking about our result for some time. However, it may be that he has not quite understood the data or the method.

He starts his calculation well before the industrial era, assuming that no feedbacks act until 255 K. However, Lacis+ (2010), using a general=circulation model, concluded that some 8.75 K of feedback response acted until 252 K, and that thereafter three-quarters of the warming to 1850 was attributable to feedback, implying a system-gain factor of 4.0.

However, from 1850-2011 the reference sensitivity was 0.68 K and the inferred equilibrium sensitivity (after allowing for the radiative imbalance) was 1.02 K, implying a system-gain factor of only 1.5, within shouting distance of our 1.13. So, what has happened? Well, once the great ice-sheets had melted and the specific humidity of the atmosphere had increased in response, the climate settled down to something like modern conditions. That is why the system-gain factors for 1850 and for 2011 are near-identical at 1.13 (or 1.50 if one uses the highly-uncertain delta values rather than the far better constrained absolute values of reference and equilibrium temperature).

Our argument may appear naive, but merely because it is simple one should not underestimate its subtleties. It leaves very little room indeed to imagine an equilibrium sensitivity of much more than 1.5 K at most to doubled CO2. And that is just not enough to constitute a problem.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

“See-owe 2 Rich” perpetrates an error common among those who have little understanding of feedback theory. He assumes that the feedback processes must somehow “know” what they would have been at a different moment or how they might have responded to a different temperature. In fact, feedback processes respond simply to the temperature they find. The reference temperature in 1850 was 254.8 K. The equilibrium temperature was 287.55 K. Like it or not, the ratio of the latter to the former was 1.13, and that is the system-gain factor. What is more, that system-gain factor remained the same in 2011, suggesting that under modern conditions nonlinearities in individual feedbacks make little difference to equilibrium sensitivity.

But let us do it Rich’s way. in Lacis+ (2010), it is assumed that feedbacks in response to the emission temperature of 243.25 K were only 8.75 K, owing to the very small specific humidity they expected in the absence of non-condensing greenhouse gases. They then assumed that three-quarters of the warming in response to the non-condensing greenhouse gases was attributable to the feedback response, implying a system-gain factor of 4. However, that feedback factor would only be relevant on an Earth that began by being almost entirely ice-bound and ended up with little more ice in 1850 than there is today.

From 1850-2011, the reference sensitivity to net anthropogenic forcings is about 0.68 K, and the equilibrium sensitivity is about 1.02 K, using mid-range estimates and standard methodology to obtain both values. In that event, using the delta form of the system-gain equation, the system-gain factor is only 1.02 / 0.68, or 1.50, within shouting distance of our result obtained using the far more reliably estimated absolute reference and equilibrium temperatures. Note that using the delta equation the system-gain factor has fallen from 4 to 1.50, reflecting the fact that there is no longer a vast ice-sheet in temperature latitudes. Yet the models’ implicit mid-range system-gain factor is 3.25, well over double the true value and far too close to the value that might have obtained while the great ice-sheets were melting.

It should be as plain as a pikestaff that the very high equilibrium sensitivities predicted by IPCC and the models are simply unjustifiable, whether one uses the delta or the absolute-value system-gain equation.

• See - owe to Rich says:

Milord, I don’t think I perpetrate the error you claim, and perhaps you would be so kind as to show where I did.

But let’s do it Monckton’s way, quid pro quo. So I won’t use forcings , but your E = R/(1-f) formula, where now f is obviously different (but related to my old f), but with f varying.

Then at one time we have E1 = R1/(1-f1) and later after a doubling of CO2 we have E2 = R2/(1-f2). Then E2/E1 = R2(1-f1)/R1/(1-f2), whence sensitivity is

S = E2-E1 = (R2-R1)/R1 + (f2-f1)/(1-f2) + [(R2-R1)(f2-f1)]/[R1(1-f2)]

Now it is evident that if the feedback ratio f is increasing as temperature rises then there is more to S than the (R2-R1)/R1 term, and f2-f1 comes into play.

Perhaps you can show that f2-f1 is tiny? This would imply that the effect of smaller ice sheets and more water vapour is tiny, which may possibly be the case.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Rich should read the head posting. We derived the system-gain factors for 1850 and again for 2011 and they were near-identical at 1.13. Even if one used the delta version of the system-gain equation the value for 2011 was only 1.50. Under anything like modern conditions, therefore, the system-gain factor is in reality near-invariant. We are not concerned with what it might be if it were not near-invariant, for it is in fact near-invariant.

Our professor of statistics allowed for quite wide variations in the underlying quantities, and concluded that, to 2-sigma uncertainty, the bounds of the interval of Charney sensitivity are only 1/12 K either side of our mid-range estimate of 1.17 K. Why, then, should I consider some purely abstract scenario that is not on all fours with observed reality, when we have already carried out a 30,000-trial Monte Carlo simulation?

• See - owe to Rich says:

Milord, thank you, I believe I may paraphrase your reply to say that you are answering my last paragraph about f2-f1 in the affirmative. I shall study the details of the 2011 calculation over the weekend.

• See - owe to Rich says:

No-one yet spotted the algebraic mistake I made in the above equation – the whole of the RHS should be multiplied by E1 (or the LHS divided by E1). I leave it to the reader to draw the inferences of the extra factor.

• See - owe to Rich says:

Milord, I have now studied your 2011 calculation, and that of doubled CO2, in error-summ.pdf linked from https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/30/climatologys-startling-error-an-update .

(In parenthesis, as I explained back in May I disagree with your and IPCC way of doing feedbacks on temperatures because they cannot be physically added together, whereas forcings can, but I leave that aside for now.)

Let us take my previous equation but drop the last product term because it is of second order in small quantities:

E2-E1 ~ E1[(R2-R1)/R1 + (f2-f1)/(1-f2)]

First note that this equation can be used to reproduce your “Equilibrium 2” result. Translating the notation in that PDF to that in this blog, we have:

E1 = 287.55, E2-E1 = 1.02, R1 = 254.8, R2-R1 = 0.68
f1 = 1-R1/E1 = 0.1139, f2 = 1-R2/E2 = 0.1147
E1(R2-R1)/R1 = 0.77K, E1(f2-f1)/(1-f2) = 0.26K (1)

The sum of these two is 1.03K, which agrees to within rounding error with the value 1.02K in the PDF, thereby verifying my mathematics.
Now you will observe that ¾ of that value arises from the ‘R’ term, and ¼ from the ‘f’ term, showing that the change from f1 to f2, though small, had a noticeable effect, so “near invariance” is not the same as “invariance”.

Let us now consider “Equilibrium 3” in the PDF, for doubled CO2. The equations above may be used, except that now R2-R1 = 1.04, E2 is unknown and so f2 is unknown. So

E1(R2-R1)/R1 = 287.55(1.04)/254.8 = 1.17K (2)

and that is the figure you quote as the bottom line of that PDF for Charney sensitivity (for which S seems a reasonable variable name).

Note that in your 1.03K which agrees with (1) you effectively allowed for f2 > f1, but in (2) you assume f2 = f1! Here is a table of correction differences which must be added to (2) depending on the value of f2, the first row being for the f2 estimated in the 2011 “Equilibrium 2” case.

f2 correction
0.1147 0.26K
0.1150 0.36K
0.1160 0.68K
0.1170 1.01K

Now the argument about the value of S turns on the value of f2 at the end of a doubling of CO2. And for this we also need to specify whether the doubling is from pre-industrial 280ppm or from current 400ppm. Since we are currently half way through a doubling from 280ppm, it could be argued that f will change as much from 2011 until 560ppm (in say 2100) as it did from 1850 to 2011, and that would make the correction twice 0.26K, i.e. 0.52K, for a total of 1.67K. Oddly enough, that is quite close to the 1.76K one obtains by using the delta forcing approach with a system gain you quoted as 1.5.

But others may argue differently about the change in f. Further, regarding a doubling to 800ppm, if the correction is 0.26K for each half-doubling then it would be 0.78K after the 1.5 doublings from 280ppm to 800ppm, leading to a warming of 1.17+0.78 = 1.95K compared with today, which is still not too scary, but significantly higher than the value you are quoting.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Rich has failed to appreciate one of the main points of our argument, which is that the values of the delta reference and equilibrium temperatures are subject to very large uncertainties, whereas the values of the absolute reference and equilibrium temperatures are preferable because they are subject to far smaller uncertainties.

For instance, the mid-range estimate of the net anthropogenic forcing to 2011, given in IPCC (2013) as 2.29 K, is very considerably understated because IPCC had introduced a very strongly negative aerosol forcing, two-thirds of which is simply implausible. Professor Lindzen refers to this as the “aerosol fudge-factor”. IPCC is now beginning to concede that that fudge-factor was excessive. If one reduces it by two-thirds, then using the delta-value system-gain equation for 1850-2011 produces the same equilibrium sensitivity as the absolute-value equation – about 1.13.

• See - owe to Rich says:

Monckton has replied fairly quickly and in his haste omitted to respond to any detail of what I wrote, especially the egregious exclusion of an f2-f1 term in Equilibrium 3 when it is clearly visible in Equilibrium 2. Monckton has assured us of his prowess in mathematics, and I am satisfied with those assurances. Therefore given a little more time, should he have the inclination, I am sure he will understand the import of what I write.

As to “large uncertainties”, well they cut both ways. Any peer reviewer is going to say there is uncertainty in f2-f1, and f2 may then be so high as to imply that S is 3K or more (which I don’t believe, but justification re f2 must be made if this paper is to have any value).

• See - owe to Rich says:

Well, Lord Monckton has gone rather quiet on this. I suppose various reasons are possible.

a. He has no good answer and hopes that he can just ignore the issue which I raise.
b. Some of his co-authors have been following this, and being better scientists they realize there is an issue to address, but it will take them and Lord M some time to reach a resolution.
c. More extremely, they are all sitting in a university hall somewhere, probably not that of East Anglia :-), gnashing their teeth and wailing “Who will rid us of this turbulent mathematician who has so cruelly dissected our beautiful equation?”

I think “dissect” is an appropriate word, for I have split the Monckton-style equation for sensitivity into two parts, being an ‘R’ part which depends on the CO2 forcing and an ‘f’ part which depends on the change in the feedback ratio over time, and the ‘f’ part cannot be ignored.

Incidentally, I made a small mistake in my comment of 6:17am yesterday. It is to do with the effect of doubling from 400ppm to 800ppm. When we consider this, the R1 and f1 values should be updated to reflect 2011 rather than 1850, which won’t alter things hugely, and then the correction would only be twice 0.26K rather than three times it. That would leave S at close to 1.7K, which is even less scary.

I hope that the more refined and accurate analysis which I have laid out will lead to a revised Monckton et al paper which is more likely to pass peer review, which I certainly hope to see happen.

Rich

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Rich has not understood my earlier answer. Using the absolute-value equation, the system-gain factors for 1850 and 2011 are so near-identical that one may safely use that value in deriving Charney sensitivity. We simply do not need to know what is going on inside the feedback black box.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

See-owe to Rich has written a series of jumbled equations that are more than a little difficult to follow, not least because he has at least twice corrected them ex post facto. If he will get his act together and set out the equations on which he relies, this time in a form that he himself considers correct, and preferably using the same notation as we have used in the head posting, and putting quantities to the variables, and if he will give a brief and clear statement of why he thinks that his equations demonstrate an error in our approach, and if he will state in clear terms what he conceives that error on our part to be, I shall attempt to answer him.

At present, as best I can understand him, he is saying that he would rather continue relying on the error-prone delta-value system-gain equation exclusively used in climatology, which, however, suffers from the twin defects of great uncertainty in the reference and equilibrium sensitivities and unwarrantably extreme sensitivity to quite small changes in those quantities.

• See - owe to Rich says:

I have just read this, after an enjoyable day in the Cotswolds, and it will be my pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.

• See - owe to Rich says:

OK, Lord Monckton asks for clarification, which is to say, reiteration in a more measured form.

Regarding notation, I shall use the equation E = R/(1-f) at the head of this thread, rather than the notation in his document error-summ.pdf (“the PDF”), though I do take the values of these variables exclusively from that document. So R is the “reference temperature”, including GHG forcing but no feedbacks, f is the feedback ratio, and E is the equilibrium temperature after feedbacks have applied and settled down. The PDF also uses the variable A = 1/(1-f). I use the qualifier ‘1’ to correspond to Monckton’s “Equilibrium 1” date of 1850. Thus,

E1 = R1/(1-f1)

where R1 = 254.8K (called T_{r1} in the PDF), E1 = 287.55K (called T_{q1}), f1 = 1-R1/E1 = 0.1139.

I then use the qualifier ‘2’ to correspond to the “Equilibrium 2” date of 2011. Thus,

E2 = R2/(1-f2)

where R2 = 254.8+0.68 = 255.48K, E2 = 287.55+1.02 = 288.57K, f2 = 1-R2/E2 = 0.1147.

Now, my “dissection” to arrive at E2-E1 was:

E2/E1 = (R2/(1-f2)/(R1/(1-f1))

E2-E1 = E1[ (R2-R1)/R1 + (f2-f1)/(1-f2) + [(R2-R1)(f2-f1)]/[R1(1-f2)] ]
I can spell that out in easier steps if that is required. I then drop the last term because it is the product of two small first-order (but important) quantities:

E2-E1 = E1[ (R2-R1)/R1 + (f2-f1)/(1-f2) ] (*)
This equation (*), which is new as far as I can tell, establishes that a change in equilibrium temperature E arises from two sources, an ‘R’ part and an ‘f’ part. From the figures above we have the two parts being

E1(R2-R1)/R1 = 0.77K
E1(f2-f1)/(1-f2) = 0.26K

Thus E2-E1 = 1.03K which agrees with the PDF’s 1.02K to within rounding error, and corroborates the algebraic manipulations which led to it. I then move on to consideration of “Equilibrium 3”, for a doubling of CO2 from 1850 values. In previous comments I reused the qualifier ‘2’ for this, following the lead of the PDF itself, but it will be clearer if I use ‘3’ instead here.

Thus R3 = R1 + 1.04 = 254.8+1.04 = 255.84K.

Now, the said doubling has not happened yet, so we don’t know what f3 and E3 will be. But if we accept the Monckton et al view of feedback, we know that E3 = R3/(1-f3), and therefore by (*) with ‘2’ replaced by ‘3’,

E3-E1 = E1[ (R3-R1)/R1 + (f3-f1)/(1-f3) ] (**)

In Monckton’s preceding comments at 4.16am and 4.34 am, he made the assertions “the system-gain factors for 1850 and 2011 are so near-identical that one may safely use that value in deriving Charney sensitivity” and “he would rather continue relying on the error-prone delta-value system-gain equation exclusively used in climatology” respectively.

The first assertion is an understandable error, because the values f1 = 0.1139 and f2 = 0.1147 do look very close. But a consequence of Monckton’s desire _not_ to use delta values, means that when one multiplies the small difference f2-f1 (divided by 1-f2 in (*)) by the largeish number E1 = 287.55K one gets a not insignificant number 0.26K which provides a contribution of one quarter of the total E2-E1.

The second assertion is just a misunderstanding of my mathematics, which I hope is cleared up by the present elaboration.

Now, the nub of the matter is the value of S = E3-E1, the total equilibrium warming from a doubling of CO2. The PDF uses the value

1.17K = 287.55(255.84-254.8)/254.8 = E1(R1-R3)/R1

Thus, comparing with (**), it has been assumed that f3 = f1, precisely in line with Monckton’s first assertion above. Yet, if it were the case that f2 = f1, then E2-E1 would be only 0.77K, which is quite a large discrepancy from the PDF’s quoted 1.02K, and one which could not be overlooked. Since f2-f1 is not zero, by the small amount 0.0008 which has these significant consequences, it seems unwise to assume that f3-f1 is zero.

In my earlier comment I argued that f3-f1 should be at least f2-f1, and more likely twice as much because it applies to a whole doubling of CO2 rather than a half doubling. Hence I would add 0.52K to that 1.17K to get 1.69K.

And some climate scientists may find arguments for f3-f1 > 2(f2-f1), while others may find arguments for it being smaller. But, if one accepts this Monckton et al view of sensitivity (and I have expressed reservations), then the argument is all about the value

…………………………f3 – f1…………………….

Hope this helps.

• See - owe to Rich says:

Nigh on four score and seven hours ago our “dissect” comment brought forth on this blog a new idea dedicated to the proposition that all contributions to climate sensitivity are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great personal war testing whether this idea, or any idea so conceived and dedicated, can endure the ignorance, dismissiveness, and obscurantism of Lord Monckton. [With apologies to Abraham Lincoln.]

Fewer than three score minutes after that comment, Lord Monckton promised that if Rich does A, and Rich does B, and Rich does C, then Lord Monckton shall attempt to answer him. Well, in the comment at August 19 2.45pm Rich did do A, and he did B, and he did C, yet Lord Monckton has not answered.

Granted, no timescale for such reply was put forth. And I understand that this is a very difficult reply for LM to make, because he might actually have to admit that he is wrong, a thing which his many writings and comments attest that he is very loath to do (unlike Willis Eschenbach who has always been very gracious when he has made some error or other). But how many score hours must I await the mighty lord’s reply?

Has LM the Grace to reply courteously, accurately, and with due deference to the truth of my mathematics? Or would that require him to be a Marquess, rather than a Viscount?

Rich (mere commoner and Ph.D.)

• Robert W Turner says:

I view this paper as a 1) mathematical attempt to simplify the problem as much as possible to estimate climate sensitivity (perfectly legitimate) 2) this is exactly what the IPCC has done but Monckton et al. did it correctly.

I say simplified as much as possible because water complicates things and the vast majority of exchangeable heat on this planet is in the oceans and crust, not in the atmosphere. Not only is climate a chaotic nonlinear system, but it is hysteretic, not only sensitive to forcings and feedbacks happening this moment, but sensitive to forcings and feedbacks of the past thousands of years. That’s why it bugs me when decadal trends in temperature are only attributed to forcings in the moment, when in reality they are the product of the culmination of recent geological history.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Turner is quite right. Looking at periods as short as decades is imprudent. One should look at centuries at least.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Harmsworth is worried about “missing and poorly understood feedbacks”. It was precisely for that reason that we found a way of deriving equilibrium sensitivity that did not require any knowledge at all of the value of any individual feedback, or of the interactions between feedbacks. As long as one uses the absolute-value system-gain equation rather than the delta-value equation universally used in climatology, one does not need to know what goes on inside the feedback black box. All one needs is the reference temperature before feedback and the equilibrium temperature after feedback. The system-gain factor is simply the ratio of the latter to the former.

In our submission, the value of our method is that it exposes those elements of official climatology that are indeed “bogus pseudo-science”.

10. Like the report but I have a question:
You used 1850 and 1911. Would using other years show the same thing? Thanks

• richard verney says:

It does make a difference, but not much of a difference since the big adjuster is having the water vapour feedback already operating and locked in as a forcing which was present as at 1850 and which contributed to the 1850 temperature.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Verney, water vapor is (except at the margins) treated as a feedback and not as a direct forcing in climatology.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Shedlock raises a very proper question. We used 1850 as the start date because that was the first year of the HadCRUT4 global mean surface temperature database, and because we had had little if any impact on the climate that early on. We chose 2011 because that was the year to which IPCC brought all its predictions and data up to date for inclusion in the 2013 Fifth Assessment Report, from which we obtained them.

However, we also conducted an empirical campaign based on ten separate estimates of net anthropogenic forcing in the industrial era to various dates. In every instance, the Charney sensitivity was found to be 1.17 K. Mr Shedlock will find the table of results in our paper when it is published.

11. dodgy geezer says:

It’s no good having an answer if people are gong to ignore it.

I suggest that you take that calculation and try to formally embarrass some climate change scientists with it. Try the UK Met Office. Make it a point in Parliament…

• richard verney says:

It has to pass peer review, and this would appear to be extremely difficult.

As I understand matters even prominent skeptics such as Dr Spencer and Professor Curry do not support it! That being the case what is the prospect of getting a panel of peer reviewers to accept the paper for publication?

Despite the simplicity of the point made:

Erroneously, IPCC (2013, p. 1450) defines temperature feedback as responding only to changes in reference temperature. However, feedback also responds to the entire reference temperature.

it is going to be an uphill slog

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Verney, I do not suggest that it will be easy to persuade official climatology of its error. Trillions have been invested on the assumption that there is no major error. However, we shall persist until either we are given a sound reason why we are wrong or we are published. I am not afraid of uphill slogs.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Dodgy Geezer, first and foremost we must give the climatological community a fair chance to assess our result. To this end, we have invited the editors of the journal that is considering our paper to send it to some of the most prominent scientists who have expressly perpetrated in their papers the error we have found. In that way, they will have the fairest chance to respond and to point out any defect in our own argument.

Once that scientific exchange of ideas is complete, either the paper will be found unworthy of publication, in which event pestering scientists or parliamentarians would be wrong, or it will be published and then subjected to what I imagine will be some of the most intense scrutiny ever directed at a scientific result. If the paper survives that scrutiny more or less intact, then it will be open to all of us to draw our elected representatives’ attention to its conclusions.

• John Endicott says:

Or, as I’m sure you are well aware, the paper will not be published for the slightest of reasons that don’t actually reflect on the validity of the paper (Pal review at it’s finest!) in which case you will have to endeavor to find another publisher and try to get it through their Pal review process and so on until you find one that will access the paper honestly.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Endicott is probably right that the reviewers will continue to give us a hard time: but we are expecting them to produce proper scientific arguments against our conclusions this time. The yah-boo we got first time around will not be tolerated again. If we are incorrect, than all the reviewers will have to do is to point out, quietly and straightforwardly, that we have misunderstood or miscalculated something, and to back up their assertions with rational argument.

12. Just two simple questions for a start. In the text above: “Our calculation starts not with zero Kelvin but with the reference temperature of 254.8 K in 1850.” What is this reference temperature? Is it a real surface temperature in 1850? It does not look like. What is the disturbance, which should results to a new equilibrium temperature? The CO2 forcing is a continuos change and not a step change at a certain year like in 1850.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Ollila, the reference temperature in 1850 was derived thus. We relied upon the results in Lacis+ 2010, who found that in the absence of the non-condensing greenhouse gases the albedo of the Earth would be 0.42 against today’s 0.30. Using today’s insolation and Lacis’ albedo, we derived the emission temperature in the absence of those gases: it would be about 243.25 K.

Next, we considered three distinct methods of deriving the warming caused by the presence of the non-condensing greenhouse gases to 1850. The mid-range estimate was about 11.55 K. Adding this to the 243.3 K emission temperature gave a reference temperature of 254.8 K for 1850. The equilibrium temperature that year was 287.55 K (and there would be no trend for another 80 years). The ratio of the latter to the former is the system-gain factor: i.e., 1.13.

Other values for the emission temperature and the warming from the non-condensing greenhouse gases could of course be taken, but at any realistic values there would not be much change in the system-gain factor.

13. Joe Born says:

Suppose that at exactly 7:00:00 PM you want to estimate how far a car traveling down the highway will go in the next minute. If all you know is that it went exactly one mile in the last minute, a pretty reasonable estimate would be one mile.

But now say you know more. Suppose you additionally know that since it left home in city traffic at exactly 3:00:00 PM it has gone precisely 120 miles: its average speed up to now has been only 30 mph, not the 60 mph the last mile implies. Would you change your estimate?

I probably wouldn’t, either. The car is currently going 60 mph, so that’s what I’d base the estimate on.

According to the logic of Lord Monckton and his “team of professors, doctors and practitioners of climatology, control theory and statistics,” though, that would be a “grave error” because I haven’t taken the entire trip into account. Taking that into account would enable them to make a more-informed projection, based on the 30 mph speed for the entire trip, of only half a mile rather than my naive one mile.

Yes, climate isn’t road trips. But ask yourself whether Lord Monckton has really shown you how that distinction makes a difference to the math here. The reason you don’t quite understand how all the feedback and op-amp stuff supports his conclusion is that it doesn’t.

• Latitude says:

..you didn’t account for stopping for pee breaks

• Joe Born says:

Now I get it. That’s what the op amps simulate.

• Jeff Mitchell says:

You didn’t account for the possible use of adult diapers. 🙂

• Dave Bidwell says:

I don’t think Lord Monckton is trying to arrive at the speed in the next minute, or the temperature in the next year. It’s a long term projection/prediction that black boxes the myriad inputs and feedback. He clearly ties the methodology back to Hansen himself who botched it.

• Joe Born says:

I’m afraid you’ve completely misunderstood the analogy. If you watch Lord Monckton’s video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcxcZ8LEm2A), you’ll see that it’s based entirely on the (as it happens, false) premise set forth in the slide at 13:10. His premise is that the reason why “climatology,” as he expresses it, produces such high equilibrium climate sensitivity values is that it computes after-feedback equilibrium temperatures ($T_\mathrm{eq}$) from before-feedback, “reference” temperatures ($T_\mathrm{ref}$).

All rubbish, of course, as his own video would show him if he had the wit to recognize it: the approach he contends they use doesn’t, at least as applied to his numbers, yield the high values the GCMs profess to find. (He unwittingly admits as much in the comment nearby.) But he doesn’t recognize that his premise is false.

So, suspending disbelief, I set forth a road-trip analogy whose purpose was to follow him down that rabbit hole and consider just the math that his (invalid) premise implies. In that analogy the dependent variable, distance, is a function of the independent variable, time, just as his dependent variable, $T_\mathrm{eq}$, is according to that slide a function of his independent variable, $T_\mathrm{ref}$.

Now, the desideratum is the equilibrium-temperature change $\Delta T_\mathrm{eq}$ that results from a carbon-dioxide-concentration doubling, which is associated with just a 1.05 K reference-temperature change $\Delta T_\mathrm{eq}$ out of an “entire” $T_\mathrm{ref}$ value 255.4 K. That small change is indeed analogous to only the next minute out of 4 hours x 60 minutes/hour = 240 minutes.

Yes, he’s looking for a long-term equilibrium-temperature projection, but that projection is tiny in terms of his independent variable, reference temperature. So in terms of that analogy he’s looking ahead only the next minute.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Born, who has never studied feedback theory, presumes to lecture our professor of applied control theory. If only he were less spiteful and more interested in the truth, his comments would have some merit. As it is, he is merely another concern troll, paid – for all I know – to be ignorant, malevolent and silly here: for why would he write such nonsense unless he were paid to confuse with his pathetically off-the-point analogy?

When Mr Born has learned a little elementary math, he will find that the effect of including the emission temperature and the warming from the pre-industrial greenhouse gases in the feedback calculation is to stabilize the system-gain factor, which turns out to be 1.13 both in 1850 and in 2011. Once that has been established, of course it can be applied to derive Charney sensitivity to doubled CO2 compared with 2011, for the small warming that has occurred since 1850 is simply insufficient to lead to a major bifurcation or, as the climate extremists put it, a “tipping point”.

• paul courtney says:

Mr. Born: Your road trip analogy doesn’t consider how the car went from averaging 30mph (or 0, for that matter) to 60mph. Does pushing on the gas pedal count as a “feedback”? Not sure I can make your analogy work, but I can see what’s wrong with it- if the car is to continue at 60 you still push on the pedal, no? If you push on the ‘feedback” pedal and go faster, and you want to know how you got there, do you only consider the bit of extra push? I think he has shown that the IPCC is ignoring the push that got you to 60, and therefore implying that the little extra push produces all of the speed. I’m not sure your analogy can be made to work, but your last comment indicates you’re not looking for understanding.

• Tom Abbott says:

• Rick C PE says:

Try your analogy with a different question – What will your average speed be after the next mile? 60 MPH or still very close to 30?

• RACookPE1978 says:

Rick C PE

Try your analogy with a different question – What will your average speed be after the next mile? 60 MPH or still very close to 30?

Rather: Try your analogy with a different question – What will your instantaneous average speed be after each of the next ten miles? 0 , 10, 15, 20, 25, or 60 MPH? Will any be at the average speed of 30?

• Joe Born says:

You may not realize it, but you’re making my point.

Yes, if the expected happens and the car does indeed travel a full mile in the next minute, the average speed will remain very close to 30 mph, although the speed relevant to estimating how far the car would go in that minute is 60 mph. Lord Monckton wants to use 30 mph to determine it; as he describes it, “climatology” wants to use 60 mph. Obviously, the “climatology” approach is superior.

• paul courtney says:

Mr. Born: Maybe I’m missing something, but this “average speed” that you use is missing his point. He’s not trying to show the average of feedbacks like average mph. Instead, he’s showing that there were forces (feedbacks) that got you to 60 which are ignored by the IPCC when they try to show how it goes from 60 to 70.

• eyesonu says:

jhborn,

I can’t make any sense of what you have written or how it would be relevant to the discussion.

• Gunga Din says:

Well, if Mann was driving the car at the start and you believe what he said about where he started and how fast he was going and how far he had gone (all based on his left rear tire’s tread wear) ….

• HotScot says:

Gunga Din

A left rear tyre a few hundred years old.

• eyesonu says:

Don’t forget he inflated it with C02.

• Theo says:
• Joe Born says:

It’s called an analogy. In my road-trip analogy the dependent variable, distance, is a function of the independent variable, time, just as Lord Monckton’s dependent variable, $T_\mathrm{eq}$, is a function of his independent variable, $T_\mathrm{ref}$.

I fleshed that out in a comment nearby.

• Jeff Mitchell says:

If the average speed for the whole trip is 30 mph it means that the current 60 mph isn’t going to be much of a predictor and it is unknown what will happen in the next minute. So if I drive surface streets at 25 mph (40 kmph), get on a freeway (very fast highway if it isn’t free) at 70 mph (113 kmph, our current speed limit in town) for a couple miles, then back to 30 mph (48 kmph), when I get off, then predictions of the last minute aren’t going to help us much. What we do know is that there is a bunch of variability involved if we look at the whole trip, and that we might want to account for it instead of just looking at the last minute.

• Joe Born says:

You don’t get the point of analogies, do you?

• John Endicott says:

You don’t know how to make an applicable analogy, do you?

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Let us do things Mr Born’s way and use only the delta-value system-gain equation rather than the absolute-value equation that we used.

The reference sensitivity from 1850-2011 was 0.68 K. The equilibrium sensitivity, after due adjustment for the mid-range estimate of the radiative imbalance to 2010 given in Smith+ (2015), is 1.02 K. The system-gain factor is the ratio of the latter to the former: i.e., 1.50. And that is within shouting distance of our 1.13. Indeed, if one removed two-thirds of IPCC’s aerosol fudge-factor from the list of anthropogenic forcings, the ratio would be exactly 1.13. And that would give a Charney sensitivity of 1.17 K. Using 1.50 as the system-gain factor would give 1.55 K, somewhat above our best estimate but well below the bottom of the [2.1, 4.7] K interval of Charney sensitivities in the CMIP5 models (Andrews 2012).

Using the absolute-value equation, we find the system-gain factor to be 1.13 both in 1850 and in 2011. Unless Mr Born imagines that the very low rate of warming that such values imply is going to be sufficient to engender a major “tipping-point” in the climate, it is difficult to imagine how one can justify the absurdly high equilibrium sensitivities posited by the models and by the iPCC.

• Joe Born says:

Lord Monckton replies as though I were arguing that equilibrium climate sensitivity (“ECS”) is high. I’m not. I think it’s low.

The point is whether, as he contends, the reason that what he calls climatology overestimates ECS is that it employs the equation set forth in his video and other various posts.

What his comment demonstrates is that the equation he contends climatology uses results in a value much lower than the GCMs find. So, unwittingly, he has just disproved his own premise.

However, if that premise were true and his numbers were right, then the “climatology” approach of using small-signal values (“perturbations”) would be superior to his of using large-signal values.

This is basic math.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Born continues to demonstrate his ignorance of elementary linear systems theory. Our “premise”, to use his word, is that the delta and absolute-value system-gain equations are both valid – a point that he now seems, at last, to accept – but that official climatology, in defining temperature feedback in such a way as to exclude the absolute-value equation, has denied itself the opportunity to derive the true system-gain factor and hence equilibrium sensitivity by a method simpler and a great deal less error-prone and fiddle-prone than its present bottom-up method of attempting to quantify individual temperature feedbacks and the interactions between them, a method that suffers from the defect of not being Popper-falsifiable in that no feedback can be directly measured to ascertain its value.

Mr Born appears to imagine that using deltas is preferable to using absolute values, and he calls this “basic math”. No: it is basic error. At present, official climatology – e.g. Lacis+ 2010 – imagines that the system gain factor of 4 derivable by using deltas during the ice-melt of the past 9000 years continues to be applicable today. That is not the case, however.

• Jim Gorman says:

jhborn —> Your so-called analogy is totally inept. It does not include any reference to any feedbacks in your trip therefore the math ‘error’ you are trying to prove does not have any basis. You might try adding a speed control loop to your example and then reevaluate your results.

• Inge says:

jhborn I find your analogy and comments very confusing. You start in city traffic and then speed up assuming your speed will increase. It is these assumptions where ‘climatologists’ go completely off the rails. That is why I like Lord Moncktons explanation: he does not make assumptions but calculates them. And he does not exclude the pre-industrial feedback that was already there.

jhborn: “Yes, if the expected happens and the car does indeed travel a full mile in the next minute, the average speed will remain very close to 30 mph…”

Why is that? Do you also assume an hour consists of 30 minutes?
Also, we do not measure distance in mph but rather in miles or kilometers.

14. Take off CO2 it leaves (inverted) LOD
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/Lod-CrT4.gif
but neither of the above two makes any difference to the climate variability, CO2 is just one molecule in 2500 of the rest, and the LOD is measured in ms (milliseconds).
In my view it is the rising temperature that out-gases more of the oceans’ CO2, also the rising temperature inputs more energy into oceans, increasing evaporation and moving large volumes of atmospheric ‘water’ towards the poles, consequently speeding up earth’s rotation (reducing length of day -LOD).

• HotScot says:

vukcevic

My question is, isn’t it as important to understand what doesn’t cause AGW than what does?

Man made CO2 at ~0.0012% of all atmospheric gases is surely inconsequential even if it is doubled to ~0.0024%.

I really don’t understand why CO2 is considered such an overpowering influence on our climate, especially when it’s so unequally mixed.

Kristi would have me believe that energy is transferred between CO2, Nitrogen and Oxygen as well to ‘stabilise’ the planets temperature, which opens up another can of worms it would seem.

• Kristi Silber says:

HotScot: “Kristi would have me believe that energy is transferred between CO2, Nitrogen and Oxygen as well to ‘stabilise’ the planets temperature, which opens up another can of worms it would seem.”

Well, yes, it is rather an important point, isn’t it? That’s why I’m surprised it’s not discussed here. Wondering myself how CO2 could have such an effect, I asked my uncle about it, who is an atmospheric physicist with NOAA (and former chief of the Mauna Loa Observatory). He explained it. After much looking, I lately stumbled on the article by Pieter Tans (whom I met while visiting my uncle’s Boulder lab – a fascinating, voluble talker!), which confirmed what my uncle said.

Does this not clarify some things for you?

• HotScot says:

Kristi Silber

I entirely accept that there is energy transference between molecules. My problem is that with the volume of all the other gases, and their uneven distribution in the atmosphere, there can’t possibly be enough CO2 to ‘stabilise’ the entire atmospheres temperature to a single global number, measured down to a fraction of a degree whilst man’s contribution at 0.0012% of all atmospheric gases somehow imposes complete control of the planets temperature.

That’s what all this is about isn’t it, and if so, it’s simply neither logical nor credible.

What atmospheric scientists like to present is that there is a universally stable atmosphere which never distorts and within which every molecule is evenly distributed. That’s not credible even to me as a layman. One can average everything but you may never observationally encounter the average figure wherever you go other than by coincidence.

We know historic land temperature measurements going back any further than the last 50 years or so are unreliable for a myriad of reasons, indeed, we know there are problems with UHI’s and contamination of measurements by other means even now. Sea surface temperatures, probably even more unreliable because they were for the most part derived from well plied trade routes. Satellite measurements over the last 30 years have also been plagued with problems, calibration, drift, technology change etc. And as for palaeoclimatology, it’s just downright vague, it isn’t possible to determine a temperature down to a single degree with any confidence never mind a fraction of a degree. Similarly, ice cores are constantly being re evaluated as more problems with them emerge.

These are all well known issues yet studies accepting whatever version of these, or combination of them, are trotted out as scientific gospel with no acknowledgement of the variables and inaccuracies.

And amongst all these problems are egotistical, fame seeking scientists who are determined to deliver the magic bullet; politicians who use global warming for their own purposes (at the extreme end, Al Gore who whipped up hysteria with his book and movie then went on to trade in carbon credits to great success on the back of it); our failing media who must find the next daily sensation to report; and activist organisations with their own agenda’s (Patrick Moore has condemned Greenpeace as a terrorist organisation); lobbying groups with their agenda’s, all jumping on the AGW bandwagon because it’s passing.

Meanwhile, as I have pointed out to you before, the only scientifically observed phenomenon that can be directly attributed to increased atmospheric CO2 is global greening. It was something mainstream, alarmist science didn’t anticipate, even now it’s barely acknowledged by the MSM and poo poo’d by alarmist scientist who are now on a mission to demonstrate that additional CO2 is harmful for plant life, flying in the face of centuries of scientific acceptance.

If the scientific community didn’t consider this monumental event, what else aren’t they considering? Indeed, it raises the question, what might concencus scientists be suppressing?

Bizarrely, the author of the NASA study demonstrating the greening phenomenon publicly, Dr. Ranga Myneni, attacked Matt Ridley for reporting it as an entirely positive effect of increased atmospheric CO2 http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/global-greening-versus-global-warming/

Perhaps you can explain this extraordinary turn of events in light of 40 years of failed predictions.

15. Rob Dawg says:

Imagine how much of the the last three decades of crap could have been avoided if climate models used Kelvin. This is not a flippant comment. From the circa 3° absolute background to the hottest corona spheres the miniscule increments around the 270°K range possibly being observed are lost well down in the noise.

• Theo says:

No need for the degree sign with K.

But yes, CACA would be a harder sell if people knew that its pushers were talking about a change from perhaps as high as 288.15 K in AD 1850 to at most 289.15 K today.

And of course the human contribution to a one K increase would be minor, much, if not most, of the gain having occurred before CO2 took off in the mid-20th century, with whatever natural “forcings” caused the warming before then still at work after the rise in vital trace gas began.

• NorwegianSceptic says:

What?! And miss out all those scary graphs? 🙂

16. A remark. IPCC has reported that ECS is applicable only for many century scale calculations and TCC/TCR is applicalbe for the temperature changes during this century for the CO2 forcing. It looks like that you calculate ECS for the year 2011. How do you explain this?

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Olilla raises a fair question. The answer is that for 1850-2011 we make the standard adjustment to the measured period warming to yield the equilibrium warming that would have obtained had it not been for delays in the emergence of anthropogenic warming.

17. Alan Tomalty says:

[Snipped per request of the author. -mod]

• Alan Tomalty says:

It is even worse than that. The downward emittance of photons is so small as to be laughable. The only time that can happen is when the sky is warmer than the surface which is not often. Otherwise since there is a photon energy density gradient between the CO2 molecules and the surface, the cooler atmosphere cannot emit photons to a hotter surface because of this electromagnetic field gradient. The troposphere gets colder with each elevation. To top it all off, the time span of collisions between N2 and O2 and the CO2 molecule leaves very little probability of the CO2 being able to eject a photon upon receiving it because the CO2 molecules are being collided with N2 and O2 at the rate of 6.9 billion per second. They have created a fictitious back radiation amount that defies the laws of physics. The IPCC figures are even worse than all that I have explained in that evapotranspiration is ~ 50% of the total solar flux reaching the surface. That latent heat upon condensation is all released to outer space because convection makes the water vapour (water vapour is lighter than air) and hot air rise. If any of that got back to the surface we would have had runaway global warming already.
The true sensitivity to doubling of CO2 is so small as to be unmeasurable as the future temperature record of UAH will prove.

• The downward radiation by he atmosphere matches with the radiation theory, with the energy balance calculations and with the direct measurements.

• Alan Tomalty says:

Did you bother to look at the NASA diagram and actually read my above post?

• Anthony Banton says:

“It is even worse than that. The downward emittance of photons is so small as to be laughable. The only time that can happen is when the sky is warmer than the surface which is not often.”

No, that is not how the GHE works.

In fact the main (spurious) argument against the GHE by naysayers is that it violates the 2nd LoT – that a cooler body cannot heat a warmer body…..
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-greenhouse-theory-violates-2nd-law.html

Of course the answer is that it doesn’t. The warmer body just cools more slowly because of the LWIR intercepting molecules between ground and space — and no there are plenty in the way when considering a photon’s path-length to space – which is why Richard ought to read up about the Beer-Lambert Law, along with how the GHE works.

• Alan Tomalty says:

The warmer body doesnt cool more slowly. It radiates at its temperature. Easy to test. Set up an inner object medium completely surrounded by another outer medium except that you leave a portal to the inner medium so that you can inject heat into the inner medium and leave a different portal into the outer medium to inject heat into it as well.

Then close the portals. Repeat the experiment a number of times each time putting in a larger amount of heat in the inner portal. However do it differently for the outer portal. Put a lesser amount of heat in the outer portal but the same amount ( as in 1st experiment) each time of (lesser amount than the inner portal) so that the outer medium is always colder than the inner one. Measure the temperature of the inner medium at exactly the same time differential ( pick a time before all temperatures are in equilbrium) each time you do the experiment. The inner medium and outer medium will both eventually equal the temperature of your room . However when you measure the inner medium temperature each time at that same time differential, you will find that the inner medium temperature has cooled at the same rate each time. It will of course take longer each experiment because you injected a larger amount of heat into the inner medium in each experiment. However the rate of cooling of the inner medium is the same. The result is that the inner medium is unaffected by the differences in temperature levels of the outer medium as long as the outer medium is always colder.

• Alan Tomalty says:

Or if you want to do the experiment the other way, put the same amount of heat each time into the inner medium and change the amount of lower inputted heat in the outer medium each time lowering the heat inputted into the outer medium. The result will be that the system will now take the same exact time to reach equilibrium for all the experiments. This will prove that the outer medium had no affect on the radiation of the inner medium.

• Alan Tomalty says:

I should have said that the rate of cooling of the inner medium is unaffected by the outer medium . The actual rate of cooling is never a linear one.

• Anthony Banton says:

Ok – so you have reinvented radiative physics.
Good luck with that.
Here is skeptic (Roy Spencer) proving you wrong and empirical physics correct.

Must make life nice and easy to reinvent the universe to make it fit your ideology.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Surprising though it may seem, I am with Mr Banton here. The greenhouse effect is not a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.

• Gary Ashe says:

Yes it is.

LWIR photons emitted from TOA co2 have an average blackbody thermalising potential of –83c.

Back welling LWIR, is system redundant spectra, inconvenienced a nano-second on its way to space.

• A C Osborn says:

It is very interesting that you took that experiment and the subsequent conclusions at face value.
I assume that you did not bother to read all the dissenting comments.
I have conducted similar experiments and the one thing that you MUST do is to have the Air between the objects stirred, otherwise the air is heated by both the lamp and the plate.
So you are NOT measuring “Back Radiation” but heat transfer by the air between the objects
I had a fan blowing on the objects and there was absolutely no increase in the hot object’s temperature when a warmer object was introduced, turn the fan off and the hot object gets hotter.
Or you MUST have a vacuum to do the experiment correctly.
There was also no measurable change in the rate of cooling when the power is turned off with a warmer object in close proximity to the hotter object if a fan is mixing the air correctly.
With a fan blowing there is also no increase in temperature when aluminum foil is introduced either.

• Bernard Lodge says:

There is a simple question that intuitively proves that a cold object cannot raise the temperature of a warmer object:

How many ice cubes do you need to surround a pan of water with before the water boils?

Everybody knows the answer … even Roy Spencer

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Thanks, Bernard. The question is, which will warmer, an object surrounded by ice at 0°C, or an object surrounded by outer space? Clearly, the object surrounded by ice will be warmer.

Or more to the point, which will be warmer, a planet surrounded by an atmosphere at say -30°C, or the same planet surrounded by outer space?

Heck, when you put on a cold jacket your temperature goes up … why?

Because the cold object is slowing the heat loss of the warm object.

See my post here for a discussion of this question.

Regards,

w.

• Bernard Lodge says:

Willis, good questions as always. Answers as follows:

An object surrounded by ice will we warmer than an object surrounded by space. However, that is not the point.

My example intuitively proves that under no circumstances can a colder object make the temperature of a warmer object actually increase. I think you agree with that based on comments you have made in other threads. That means that the Roy Spencer experiment referred to above is wrong.

The real question, if you could answer it, is: Is an object surrounded by O2 and N2 warmer than an object surrounded by the same O2 and N2 but with one molecule of oxygen replaced by one molecule of CO2?

The reason that is the more important question is that we know the CO2 molecule absorbs energy from the surrounding O2 and H2 molecules and then emit LWIR in all directions. Some of that LWIR goes up to space and is lost to the earth …. which therefore cools. This happens at all altitudes.

Your second statement … that putting on a jacket makes you warmer is also true … but also not the point. That is not the greenhouse effect. The reason it makes you warmer is that the human body has an internal source of heat.

A more appropriate example would be to ask what happens when you wrap a coat around a steel bar which has a temperature of 100 degrees. The answer is that the temperature of the steel bar does not increase … because it does not have an internal source of heat.

A molecule of air does not have an internal source of heat, so the CO2 ‘coat’ you are adding will not make it warmer either.

• richard verney says:

The reason that is the more important question is that we know the CO2 molecule absorbs energy from the surrounding O2 and H2 molecules and then emit LWIR in all directions.

But only at a few discreet wavelengths, and whilst photons do not have a temperature per se their wavelength/frequency is related to a specific BB temperature.

So one has to ask the further question, where is the source of photons which have the appropriate wavelength that they are absorbed by the CO2 molecule?

The surface of this planet, save for a few extremes eg., Antartica, Everest, does not radiate photons at the necessary wavelength to be absorbed by CO2. It is only well above the tropopause where one encounters photons of the requisite wavelength.

See the cross section of the atmosphere and see how CO2 is not illuminated below the tropopause (the dotted 14km line) but is lit up well above the tropopause where it transfers energy to TOA and thence radiated away to the void of space.

• richard verney says:

Willis

Whilst I am not disagreeing with the points that you make, how come is a space blanket only effective when it is wrapped around you?

From a radiative energy perspective, consider the scenario where you are surrounded by people in a circle holding a space blanket pointing towards you at a radius of say 2 metres.

In this scenario, the space blanket does not warm you because the radiative flux is overcome by convection. This is what happens in the lower atmosphere (say below the tropopause). In the lower atmosphere the effect of radiative energy transfers is simply overwhelmed by other energy transfers that take place and which have dominion, in particular conduction and convection.

It is only in the upper atmosphere (where there is little atmosphere) that radiative energy transfers rule.

Willis you have probably seen this, but if not, it is worth a read:

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/tropopause-rules/

In short, the Troposphere is where convection and evaporation / condensation dominate. Driven by ground heating. Radiation simply does not matter here. Any ‘ground heat’ is rapidly taken up by convection and evaporation / precipitation, lofted to the height where radiation takes over, and dumped. We see that every day with the daily temperature cycling in response to 0 to 1400 (ish) W/m^2 solar flux variations.

• Gary Ashe says:

Or 4 x 1 square metre blocks of ice pumping out 1100 watts of LWIR.
And a small household heater pumping out 1100 watts of heat.

In a room.

Which photons thermalise in your skin and which do not.

All the photons are ”heat” in a environ cooler than the ice.

At room temp .only the photons from the heater are heat.

Photons from the ice are redundant energy particles.
And simply deflect around the room.

Only the photons of IR are being absorbed by the mass in and of the room.

• Alan Tomalty says:

The earth surface is not a blackbody, the atmosphere is not closed off and and the atmosphere is not a blackbody either even though Dr. Spencer’s radiative measureent tool treats it like one.

If at one time there was just the right amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to the greenies liking then that would have been what year 1800? okay There was even some CO2 in the atmosphere then, therefore according to their theory there must have been back radiation as well. Hell, since H2O also absorbs IR there has been back radiation since 4 billion years ago in the alarmist theory of physics. So if temperatures in 1800 werent going up there must have been an equilbrium. By that time we were already out of the little ice age. In an equilibrium if any of the surface radiation is caught by CO2 and H2O and sent back to the surface, you will have warming( centre plank of alarmist theory) . However that means you have to have extra emission to space to keep the equilbrium. Even with vast amounts of CO2 being put into the atmosphere in 2018, we don’t even have extra outgoing radiation. And if there was 8000 ppm CO2, 530 million years ago ; how come the earth didnt turn into a hothouse? So how can back radiation exist? It doesn’t. See below for a mathematical physics view of this by Dr. Anderson.

One must be very careful in separating the 3 ways of heating. As Mr Osborn points out , it is very easy to think you are measuring radiative heat transfer when in fact you are measuring conduction/convection. I always get those terms confused when talking about gases. The NASA energy diagram doesnt split up the land and ocean components when talking about emission fluxes but never mind, the diagram has bigger problems. They dont have a number for the CO2 emitted radiation upward which has to be at least = to the back radiation downward.
NASA does give a reasonable number for evapotranspiration but I suspect their convection number from the surface is low . However their total emitted (IR plus conduction) number from the surface exceeds the original solar input. They should split up the IR and conduction
surface emitted numbers.

Getting back to the back radiation problem, if a lower temperature body really could radiate all its IR to a hotter body then surely the higher temperature body would also be able to radiate all its energy to the lower
one. If you say not all then how does the lower temp body know how much to give away? In that case you wouldnt have equilibrium but just a switch in who was hotter or colder. Clearly that is ridiculous. The real reason that stops IR going from the lower temp body to the upper one is that there is a photon electromagnetic field energy density gradient between the CO2 molecules and the surface, ie. the cooler atmosphere cannot emit photons to a hotter surface because of this electromagnetic field gradient. Photons have to have some rules by which to act or they would go anywhere anytime. The total energy of an electromagnetic photon/boson is the sum of its electrical energy and its magnetic energy which are in fact equal to each other. The magnetic energy comes from the magnetic field that surrounds the photon. Photons can’t travel against an energy gradient which is increasing starting from their source.

https://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.com/2018/03/

The above website is from Dr. Charles Anderson. He has singlehandedly destroyed the very foundation of AGW.

I will quote Dr. Anderson

“….the reason that radiant energy only flows from the warmer to the cooler body is because the flow is controlled by an electromagnetic field and an energy gradient in that field.”
“Electromagnetic energy flows from the high energy surface to the low energy surface, as is the case in energy flows generally.”
Also

“The actual radiation that each emits is highly influenced by the fact that the other black body emitter is nearby.
In reality, photons are a manifestation of an electromagnetic field. Thermal radiation is emitted from a material or a molecule due to dipole vibrations and the vibration effect of higher order poles, though the higher order poles have much shorter electromagnetic ranges than do the dipoles in vibration. The acceleration and deceleration of charges in dipoles is the primary source of the electromagnetic field that generates photons. An energy density eH = a TH4 in the vacuum immediately outside the surface of the inner sphere and an energy density of eC = a TC4 immediately inside the surface of the outer spherical shell cause a gradient in the electromagnetic field (the energy density of an electromagnetic field in vacuum is proportional to the magnitude of the electric field squared) from the inner sphere surface to the surface of the outer spherical shell. The total energy gradient between the two surfaces is given by

ΔE = 4πRH2eH – 4πRC2eC

and

4πRH2 PH = (σ/a) ΔE, where PH is the power emitted per unit area from the inner sphere surface, so

PH = σTH4 – (RC2/RH2) σTC4

And

4πRH2PH = 4πRC2PC

Where PC is the power per unit area incident upon the inner wall of the spherical shell at the lower temperature, so

PC = (RH2/RC2) σTH4 – σTC4

It is the energy gradient that is fundamental here and it determines the flow of energy and hence the incidence of photons upon the outer spherical shell. ”

The argument wasnt about at what temperature the equilibrium ended up at. Or even that the hot body got colder and the cold body got hotter. We all agree on those facts. The argument is whether a colder body can radiate IR to a hotter body. According to the “gradient electromagnetic field theory” this is not possible.

• Alan Tomalty says:

So how can back radiation exist? It doesn’t . I should have added

“except for the few times when the atmosphere is hotter than the surface.”

• Alan Tomalty says:

And i should have said radiates at the 4th power of its temperature

• Jim Gorman says:

Let me add my two cents. Assume the atmosphere was a perfect one way mirror for radiation from the sun. The space between the mirror and the earth would quickly rise to unbearable temps. So what do you call an imperfect one way mirror. I call it an insulator. What does an insulator do? It slows down radiation loss. What does that mean? The temps between the insulator and the earth will rise.

What we are trying to find is the R-value of that insulation so we can determine the temp rise. It doesn’t violate the 2nd law, it simply makes it more complicated to calculate the values.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Gorman is of course correct. The greenhouse effect is no violation of the second law.

• jordan says:

Alan – I think we only need to consider delta T and delta-J (radiative power kW/m2). If you can go with this, it should be possible to recognise the possibility of a sustained increase in radiative power from the atmosphere if there is a large enough and sustained rise in temperature within the body of the atmosphere.

Note, there is no need to suggest regions of the atmosphere are warmer than the surface in absolute T.

The enhanced greenhouse effect postulates such a rise in temperature, where The source of additional energy supposed to be increased absorption of OLR due to increased opacity of the atmosphere to OLR. This is shown in full technicolour in IPCC AR4 Figure 9.1 and became known as the tropospheric hot spot, bearing in mind the diagram shows predicted rate of change of temperature.

No tropospheric hot spot therefore should be refutation of the postulated enhanced greenhouse effect: no tropospheric hotspot means no source for the supposed additional downward LR.

So all we need to look for is a sustained rise in temperature aloft (greater than the surface rise) to make a case that ANY warming at the surface is attributable to change of CO2. Even better would be confirmation of the “scaling ratio” in the regions where the effect is expected to be most pronounced.

Christie et al carried out this test some 10 years ago and reported the models were in error.

• Anthony Banton says:

“No tropospheric hot spot therefore should be refutation of the postulated enhanced greenhouse effect: no tropospheric hotspot means no source for the supposed additional downward LR.”

Yes there is – and also it is not dependent on the GHE.
It would occur due to any surface warming as it is the release of LH aloft from enhanced TROPICAL convection. Note it is the not the Troposphere in general.
Also “no source for the supposed additional downward LR” comment shows ignorance of the radiative thermodynamics in play – at the top of the troposphere, where the tropical “hotspot” is (300-200mb) the atmosphere would cool to space not back-radiate to the surface.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/5/054007/meta

https://cdn.iopscience.com/images/1748-9326/10/5/054007/Full/erl510711f1_online.jpg

Figure 1. Temperature trend 1960–2012 versus latitude and pressure. The value for each latitude and pressure is the medians of the trends at individual stations in that (10°) latitude bin. Units are °C per decade.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Banton has found one of the very few papers that purports to discover a tropical mid-troposphere hot spot. However, the paper concerned does not report a dataset: it reports a more than somewhat questionable meta-analysis using kriging, a technique that is of dubious applicability to the climate.

Nearly all of the datasets show no tropical mid-troposphere hot spot, though all the models predict it. What is more, as Dr Christy has shown, the rate of warming in the tropical mid-troposphere falls below the rates predicted in more than 100 models – another powerful indication that the putative tropical mid-troposphere “hot spot” does not in fact exist.

• jordan says:

Anthony Banton – you blew your credibility when you cited Sherwood et al. The last IPCC assigned low confidence to his approach of using wind speed as a proxy for deltaT. -Sherwood doesn’t seem to be able to make up his mind whether wind speed or wind shear is best to get the result he is looking for as his papers flip-flop between the two. He doesn’t report any robustness testing: for his methods: how would Sherwood’s results come out if he dropped the wind data and relied only on temperature? Not good I suspect.

The IPCC figure I referred to above provides a clear prediction that CO2 will cause a hotspot pattern. You try to obfuscate by suggesting other agents can do the same. But the logic remains unaltered: no hotspot means CO2 is not an active agent in warming the climate.

No hotspot means no source for the imagined additional downwelling radiation. If you cannot grasp that basic point, then I suggest it is you who needs to learn more radiative physics.

• Sunsettommy says:

No, Sherwood’s paper is horrid as shown in these TWO links below:

Desperation — who needs thermometers? Sherwood finds missing hot spot with homogenized “wind” data

http://joannenova.com.au/2015/05/desperation-who-needs-thermometers-sherwood-finds-missing-hot-spot-with-homogenized-wind-data/

and,

A rebuttal to Steven Sherwood and the solar forcing pundits of the IPCC AR5 draft leak

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/16/a-rebuttal-to-steven-sherwood-and-the-solar-forcing-pundits-of-the-ipcc-ar5-draft-leak/

Trying to create temperature data out of wind speed data to prove the “hot spot” exist is hilarious.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I have much sympathy with Mr Tomalty’s point about the rather small influence of Man on climate, but the merit of our method is that it provides a simple and formal proof that official climatology has erred. After correction of that error, global warming – at 1.2 K per CO2 doubling – is just not going to be sufficient to make any more detailed calculation of the strength of the CO2 forcing worthwhile.

That is why we have adopted the disciplined approach of accepting all of official climatology except what we can prove to be false.

• Alan Tomalty says:

Mod please delete my original post on this.

• David L. Hagen says:

Alan Tomalty Re “large back radiation flux”
Go back and study foundational radiative absorption-emission physics.
Then study Line By Line atmospheric radiative transfer models. For review see:
See Clough, S.A., Shephard, M.W., Mlawer, E.J., Delamere, J.S., Iacono, M.J., Cady-Pereira, K., Boukabara, S. and Brown, P.D., 2005. Atmospheric radiative transfer modeling: a summary of the AER codes. Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, 91(2), pp.233-244.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b2a5/c8dd360d50cb900d39b28a5a68639df02edf.pdf
Saunders, R., Rayer, P., Brunel, P., Von Engeln, A., Bormann, N., Strow, L., Hannon, S., Heilliette, S., Liu, X., Miskolczi, F. and Han, Y., 2007. A comparison of radiative transfer models for simulating Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) radiances. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 112(D1).
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2006JD007088

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Banton is among the first to spot our little joke. In fact, our James Morrison looks very similar to the other James Morrison.

• Anthony Watts says:

Nonetheless, I fixed the image, since many on the opposite side of the argument have long lost the capability for humor.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Most grateful!

• Theo says:
• Theo says:

When it comes to Jim Morrisons, there is but one.

• Gary Ashe says:

Sheesh at first glance i thought it was M Bolan, they are ringers Theo.

18. M Montgomery says:

Right on. I missed the original. But this is great. Congratulations and thanks for this INTELLIGENT work of true science.

Alas, I fear you’re proofs will fall on corrupt ears. Social engineering on the left always moves to the path that saves face, keeps them in power and the money flowing, whatever it takes. Ad hominem attacks and anecdotal non-science will continue, if not escalate. We got record fires in CA, don’t ya know. And a President to impeach. ‘Tis the season. [sarc]

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Montgomery is very kind. And he should not despair. The power of a formal mathematical proof is immense. If we are right, then this is the end of the climate scare, and no amount of fudging and mudging on the part of the usual suspects will make one iota of difference. The truth will find a way.

19. Joe Chang says:

I wait with great anticipation for announcement of publication in a peer-review journal,
or open admission that the peer-review process is irrevocably broken

• Latitude says:

You could say it was designed that way…

“evaluation of scientific, academic, or professional work by others working in the same field”

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Chang, I am proposing to be very open about the results of peer review. Indeed, in an earlier posting I revealed the spectacularly uncomplimentary (and rather unprofessional) comments of reviewers to date.

I have undertaken to report back here even if the results of the review show that it is we who are in error.

20. ralfellis says:

Christopher,

But if the primary climate feedback is actually ice-sheet albedo, rather than CO2, then the calculations will be very different. The ice-albedo feedback has no feedback loop with temperature – it is a ‘constant’ that only varies with ice sheet extent, and as the insolation strength varies during the year.

In addition, an ice-sheet feedback has a natural limit, which is when the northern ice sheets have all melted. So at the peak of each interglacial, the albedo feedback mechanism has little effect. But a harsh winter that lasts into late spring, like last winter, may well give an albedo feedback fingerprint on the climate.

Ralph

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Ellis has identified an error not in our approach but in that of official climatology, which obtains the system-gain factor applicable to the disintegration of the great ice-sheets and then applies it to the present even though the ice-sheets have all but vanished.

We do not need to know the details or magnitude of any individual temperature feedback. Our black-box approach requires us to do no more than carry out the far easier task of deriving equilibrium and reference sensitivities for two dates, one at the beginning and one towards the end of the industrial era.

• Martin Mayer says:

… one at the beginning and one towards the end of the industrial era.

I hope the present is nowhere near the end of the industrial era. Life is so much better now! Unlike the Greens, I don’t want living conditions to go back to — “poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Mayer, I am not predicting widespread deindustrialization, much though the climate Communists would like that – until the flicked the switch and the light failed to come on, and the fridge died, and the TV didn’t work, and the car wouldn’t run, and the hospital couldn’t do X-rays or MRI scans or operations, and the farmers couldn’t plow the fields. Then there would be weeping and gnashing of dentures, yea verily.

21. venusnotwarmer says:

100s of billions of warmish research grants, and they have the first equation totally wrong

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Actually, official climatology’s delta system-gain equation is not wrong, but it is not useful. Climatology’s error lies in its defining feedback in such a way as to exclude the absolute-value system-gain equation, which is not only valid and consistent with the delta equation that is derived from it but also useful in that it allows the system-gain factor to be reliably derived, with very little uncertainty, from absolute reference and equilibrium temperatures that are easily obtained.

22. Rick C PE says:

“But climatology’s version of the system-gain equation is derived from the energy-balance equation via a Taylor-series expansion. It can’t be wrong.

“It isn’t wrong. It’s just not useful, because there is much more uncertainty in the delta temperatures than in the well constrained absolute temperatures we use.”

This seems to be the main point of the argument. Both the Reference temperature and the equilibrium temperature must be known to calculate the feedback by the total reference input form while the change in reference temperature and the change in equilibrium temperature must be know to calculate the feedback by the difference equation. If all four of these values were known exactly both equations would give the same result. However, none of these values is known exactly, they are all subject to uncertainty. But this uncertainty has a much larger impact on the difference method than it does on the total input approach used by Monckton et. al. Plus or minus 1K in R or E results in very little change in A per the Monckton version, but +/- 1K in Delta R and Delta E results in a large change in A and thus a large uncertainty in the difference method.

• jordan says:

Rick – the two should converge to the same result. But (you say) the difference method is particularly sensitive to uncertainties. Conclusion: total input is the favoured method as it gives us the best estimate.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am most grateful to Rick C PE and to Jordan, both of whom have admirably grasped and expressed one of the main points of the argument.

23. David A Smith says:

Thank you for coming back with more on this.

I have been considering some of the disagreements on the original post. I was specifically thinking of the comments about the feedback responding to changes.

Expressed in my own words the feedback would only apply to deviations from the set point. In an industrial process we would use a difference amplifier to generate a voltage proportional to the difference between the set point and the actual process value.

For example: if we wanted to regulate a water level in a tank that had a draw (say from a hose), then a transducer would measure that water level. This measurement would be compared to the set point and the speed of the pump sending water into the tank would be adjusted to try to bring the water level back to the desired level (the set point). Too much flow into the tank and the output of the difference amplifier goes down and the pump slows down; too little flow and the output from the difference amplifier goes up and the pump speeds up. Yes, the output of the difference amplifier is inverted; more positive when there is too little of something and more negative when there is too much of something.

The problem in using control theory to describe climate is figuring out what the set point is and knowing what the difference is. The problem I had was trying to figure out how control theory would even apply. In an industrial control situation too much of something (e.g.: water level) results in a negative feedback. In climate more of something results in a lot of feedbacks, positive and negative, that end up with a net positive feedback. Hmm…

1) The regulated parameter in climate is not temperature. Temperature is just an intermediary and is only relevant because it is of interest to tiny humans. The regulated value is the energy level of the Earth climate system. How do I know this? It is the parameter that increases when more energy is input into the climate system. When more energy is put in, the system tries to return to set point by emitting more energy. Emitting more or less energy is nature’s way of trying to return to set point. But what set point is it trying to return to?
2) The set point is the universal set point. It is the temperature everything will return to if there is no energy input. The set point is absolute zero. The climate is trying to regulate to absolute zero. It can’t get there because there is continuous energy input. The difference amplifier of the climate system sees all energy inputs, not part of it, because the difference from set point is calculated from absolute zero.

All sources of energy participate in the feedback since they are all perturbations from absolute zero. The sun counts.

• Schrodinger's Cat says:

I like that explanation. It makes perfect sense to me. I always thought that the sun coming over the horizon each day was the biggest temperature (or energy) perturbation in nature.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Schroedinger’s Cat is right: one must take account of the emission temperature in deriving the system-gain factor.

• richard verney says:

It is, but the fantasy world in which K&T reside, in their energy budget cartoon, is a world where the sun always shines (albeit it is a feint sun!).

The sun never comes over the horizon to warm the day, and there are no changes of patterns of cloudiness anywhere (night or day) and no oceanic currents or jet streams and the like. There is simply no weather, nor differences that would drive weather.

• JimG1 says:

David,
So does geothermal energy, the only other energy input to the system. I have seen estimates of how small these are assumed to be but the key word is assumed since we really have no idea. With the relatively constant input from the sun, whatever the actual input is from geothermal and its storage and transportation in the oceanic system could be an important part of the thermal regulation of our environment, Milankovich changes in solar irradiance and tectonic plate movements and resultant changes in ocean currents being longer term regulators. Lots of other variables probably also come into play over long time frames.

• UzUrBrain says:

I have always wondered that also. You do not have to go very deep in a cave for the temperature to become unbearable, deadly. and there are still many miles before you get to anything that is molten and that is not even 1/1000 of the distance to the center. The crust is not that good of an insulator. Heat, energy has to be coming out.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Actually, some very good work has been done at the University of Rochester in New York State on the question of the impact of geothermal energy. Strictly speaking, it ought not to be left out of account. In practice, it is implicit in our calculations, for it makes a contribution to equilibrium temperatures.

• Gary Ashe says:

But could a large increase in Geo-thermal activity on the ocean floor between your start / finish dates cause the increase, could it be mistook for radiative surface forced increase in temperature in climatology please M of B.

• David A Smith says:

Jim,

I agree on all your points.

Removing all energy inputs: be it solar energy, geothermal, and others will result in the system seeking zero kelvin. In that case all the other modifiers such as ocean currents, cloud cover, and Milankovich cycles, and many others, become meaningless. All they can do is delay the return to set point. Set point is sought by emitting energy.

• JimG1 says:

David and Monckton of Benchley,
There are only two inputs, solar and geothermal. All the others I mentioned are modifiers in one way or another. The difference with some of these factors is time. Milankovich cycles and tectonic plate movements are very long term. Cloud formation/albedo changes can be much shorter term, like 11 year solar irradiance, though small, and possibly geothermal. But still, two actual energy inputs. The when on the inputs and modifiers may be as important as the how and why given that they all interact. When they all act, or the strongest of those have influence in the same direction is when we get major climate shifts.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Smith is right. The fact that the Sun is shining ought to be taken into account. One should use absolute temperatures.

But one may denominate the feedback-loop calculation in temperatures just as readily as in radiative flux densities: for we are dealing with feedback processes denominated in Watts per square meter per Kelvin of the directly-forced warming that triggers them.

24. eyesonu says:

Christopher Monckton
I hope you have knocked “Humpty Dumpty” off the wall and all the king’s whores and all the king’s menn will never be able to put “Humpty Dumpty” back together again. But it won’t be for a lack of trying. May “Humpty” lie in crumbles and be a lesson for science and its practitioners !

In science:

Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics. The law describes a process known as entropy, a measure of the number of specific ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of “disorder”. The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. After his fall and subsequent shattering, the inability to put him together again is representative of this principle, as it would be highly unlikely (though not impossible) to return him to his earlier state of lower entropy, as the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty

25. Christopher Monckton of Brenchley articles always have eye catching graphics.

… and the writing style is most elegant and charming.

That being said, I’m a big fan of fantasy illustration and a fan of polished, distinctive language use.

Not the response you might prefer, but there, I wrote it.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Most grateful to Mr Kernodle for his kind words. The graphical studio will be very pleased. But I do hope he is not suggesting that the illustrations are fantasies.

26. CheshireRed says:

It always struck me that the big problem with AGW theory was its total dependence on high climate sensitivity, driven by amplified feedbacks. I’ve asked so many times on so many platforms: ‘where are these feedbacks’? ‘Show me don’t tell me’.
Nobody has been able to demonstrate observable positive feedbacks at the levels required to drive consistent and repeatable amplification of H2O and therefore potentially ‘catastrophic’ warming. Literally nobody.
Like wind power being compromised by its obvious intermittency, so too AGW has always been compromised by the total failure to demonstrate real world positive feedbacks and amplification, and this fatal flaw has always been hidden in plain view. Game over.

• Rud Istvan says:

Agree. See my comment upthread (or downthread, dependingnon which way are reading). It is possible to demonstrate a weak wvf, but nothing else. See the climate chapter of ebook Arts of Truth, or essays Cloudy Clouds and Humidity is still Wet in ebook Blowing Smoke for details and references. And the climate models are just wrong on all of this, provable several ways.

• al in kansas says:

The amplification is due to water vapor being a strong GHG. They are correct that it is a positive feedback, bur they have missed most of the story. CO2 is not the only thing that would have feedback, anything that would cause initial warming would trigger warming feedback IF water is available to evaporate. Look at a map of the earth. The tropics where the majority of the solar input is. Part Sahara desert, no water, no feedback, relatively high albedo.
The rest ocean or mostly tropical rain forest. Rain forest, low albedo, ocean, close to 0 albedo. Evaporation only limited by temperature and solar input. Important, the earth climate system has an UNLIMITED amount of potential GHG (water vapor) available to it. What actually happens? The warm moist air rises, condenses into clouds and shuts off the solar input. Your positive feedback just went negative. See Willis’s thunderstorm hypothesis. I think he has nailed it. Also, plain fair weather cumulus, standard Kansas summer weather, water vapor turned into a governor limiting the warming of the day as with thunderstorms. The AGW crowds model of the climate is analogous to the electrical feedback amplifier as discussed above, but this is model is a fundamentally incorrect model of the climate.
The bottom line, Yes we already have runaway warming from positive water vapor feedback.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Al in Kansas is right to praise Willis Eschenbach for his work on the negative feedback from earlier tropical afternoon convection with warming. I do hope Willis will publish his results in a journal. His discovery is one of the reasons why the water vapor feedback is nothing like as strongly positive as IPCC et al. would like us to imagine.

• Theo says:

Willis has no discovery. As Dr. Spencer has shown, Willis has at best reinvented the wheel, but more likely done nothing at all.

• richard verney says:

I too am wary as to how much credit should be given to Willis on this, since when I went to school in the 1970s, I was taught, when studying climate regions, that behavoir as being the profile of the tropical day, ie., sun up, the day warms, the sea evaporates, clouds form leading to thunder storms and rain, which in turn cools the day.

The only thing is that no one suggested that this was a thermostat countering global warming and climate change since in those days there was no global warming, but I was taught about possible global cooling.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Verney is too ungenerous to Mr Eschenbach, who has a commendable habit of studying the data and thinking about what he learns. Mr Eschenbach has noticed that when the weather is warmer the tropical afternoon convection occurs earlier. He has hypothesized that this mechanism has a thermostatic effect. That is a not unreasonable conclusion to draw. And, unlike most commenters here, Mr Eschenbach starts not from some preconceived political position but from the data.

27. Rud Istvan says:

A longish comment in three parts, repeating perspectives offered in your previous posts on this topic plus on the predecessor irreducible equation posts. So important I left iPad for Mac to compose it.

1. I fully support your logic, math, and general conclusion. The math just is, and your team checked it (twice) using electronic simulator circuits. A killer math verification.

2. There are AFAIK three basic ways to estimate the all important ECS. Yours, energy budgets (most recent Lewis and Curry in J. Climate, which painstakingly responds to all the warmunist criticisms of their previous paper, revised best estimate ~1.5), and climate models (most recent the AR5 CMIP5 archive ). Some helpful language for your rejecting the climate models:
A. We know they run hot where it matters most, the tropical troposphere (incorrect stratosphere correction Santer ~2x, correct Christie [29 March 2017 testimony] ~3x).
B. We know why the models run hot (see my several previous guest posts here for details and illustrations). In sum, computational intractability forces large grid cells, which forces sub grid process parameterization— such as Eschenbach’s all important convection cells (Tstorms).
C. We know the IPCC recent warming attribution cannot be correct. The ~1975-2000 warming is ‘all’ attributed to anthropogenic CO2. Yet it is essentially indistinguishable from the warming ~1920-1945. But AR4 WG1 SPM fig 4 showed the earlier warming was mostly natural–not enough change in CO2.
As a subcomment to (C), note that about 35% of all the increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1958 (Mauna Loa) occurred this century. BUT except for the now cooled 2015-16 El Nino blip, there has been essentially no warming this century.
This leaves us rejecting the climate models and relying on your ‘corrected error’ and/or energy budgets.

3. It would greatly strengthen your argument if your results ‘corresponded’ with the newest energy budget stuff. It does not (yet). That is a weakness that IMO can and should be corrected.
Lets accept for the sake of argument that your A = 1.13. (There are quibbles not germaine to this comment that could raise A a bit toward 1.2.) The main issue is your asserted deltaR2 = 1.04K. As I have commented before to your previous posts on this, other more basic values you posted early in this series, and more prominently in your irreducible equation series, enable a calculation of R2 = 1.16K. Professor Lindzen in his late scholarly writings used R2 = 1.2K (the no feedback delta T to doubled CO2). Using ’rounded up’ Lindzen for the sake of illustrative argument, 1.2 * 1.13 = 1.36 ECS. Now, this is below most recent Lewis and Curry but is STILL WITHIN their uncertainty window, providing a very useful supporting triangulation from an independent method. And the result still signals the death knell for warmunist alarm, our mutual goal.

Final sidebar observation. If R2 is ‘really’ 1.16, your posted ECS=1.17 result implies there is NO positive feedback at all. I do think clouds are zero or slightly negative. Dessler’s 2010 paper showed this even though he erroneously concluded otherwise (R^2 of 0.02, come on). But even given Eschenbach’s convective thermoregulation, I personally do not find that plausible for the water vapor feedback. For example, over oceans humidity really does observationally follow Clausius Clapeyron near earths surface. As detailed in previous comments, the AR5 ECS ~3 translates to Bode f = 0.65. This comes about 0.5 from water vapor feedback (AR4 wvf ‘doubles’ no feedback ~1.2 to ~2.4=> f=0.5, so (given AR5 has all else save clouds at ~0), clouds residual is f= 0.15. If clouds are actually f=0, and water vapor is something less than half of f=0.5 (Eschenbach mechanism), then the Bode net result of f<0.25 translates to an ECS <1.6, again footing nicely to energy budget ranged estimates and within striking distance of yours. Again demolishing warmunist alarm.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am most grateful to Mr Istvan for his valuable and detailed response, which is helpful in numerous ways. I shall not respond to all of his points, many of which (such as the absence of the tropical mid-troposphere “hot spot”, which I had the honor to name) are taken into account in our paper.

But I should respond to his suggestion that 1.04 K is too low a value for reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 before the operation of feedback. This value is in fact derived from the CMIP5 ensemble and based on Andrews+ 2012.

If, however, one were to use his suggested value 1.16 K, then Charney sensitivity would be the product of that value and our system-gain factor 1.13, i.e. 1.3 K. But the most up-to-date value is that of the CMIP5 models, which is why we have used it.

28. UzUrBrain says:

The one thing I have never seen explained is that we have Multiple Feedback mechanisms in this problem. The feedback from H2O and the feedback from CO2. It is my understanding that H2O is 20 Times larger. Back in my use of Vacuum tubes we placed a “Swamping resistor” on the amplifier to create negative FB. This negative feedback made the gain of the amplifier linear and greatly stabilized the voltage gain. They were included in Transistor amplifiers and then later in OP amps, and built right in the chip of the Integrated Circuit that replaced discrete components. In performing calculations we used just the Total FB and some even recommended just ignoring the FB of the Swamping resistor as it was less than 1/10 of the positive FB or gain.

But instead of an OP amp with a swamping device, we have a Negative Amp or “NON amp” and an UN-Swamping resistor.

Everyone agrees that the feedback of CO2 is positive. The feedback of H2O is Negative, BUT 20 times larger. That makes my engineering mind tell me that we have a stable system established by the H20 feedback [so elegantly explained in many articles on this site], and a Feedback device [CO2] that will not act as a swamping resistor but the opposite and create a system with instability, and decreased linearity. This nonlinearity is expressed in the atmosphere as the various localised excursions in temperature, atmospheric pressure, jet streams, hurricanes, tornadoes, El Niño, La Nina, etc. including all of the “Climate Weirdings” the environmentalists are declaring today.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Fortunately, our method does not need to take any account of the values of individual temperature feedbacks or of the interactions between them. We are using a black-box approach. All we have to do is derive the reference and equilibrium temperatures and the system-gain factor is the ratio of the latter to the former.

29. Dr. Deanster says:

2 things …. but first, I want to say I’m inclined to believe you are correct … but I still would like two simple calculations using your method.

1) You only use 2 data points … 1850 and 2011, and come up with a ratio of 1.13 in both cases. I would like to see the the results of several other randomly selected data points, like, what is the ratio for 1936, and what is the ratio for 1975, 1998, and 2001. I purposely chose those points as reported Highs and Lows of temperatures separtated by time. Can you show that the ratio is still 1.13, or really close to 1.13 for those time points??

2) Since you claim that your method produces a constant 1.13 ratio, and given that the request in above #1 is satisfied, … seems like an EXCELLENT opportunity to show what the real global temperature using the base temperature changes and your 1.13 ratio. I would think it should show a graph that is very similar to UAH.

Show these two relatively simple requests, and I am sold sold sold!!

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Dr Deanster raises two excellent questions (an excellent question being one that I can answer). In fact, we verified our result by conducting an empirical campaign based on ten published estimates of net anthropogenic forcings from the pre-industrial era to various end dates, and on the HadCRUT4 warming to each of those dates. In every instance, the equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 proved to be 1.17 K.

The second question invites us to show a graph comparing our predicted warming rate with the observed warming rate. In fact, there is just such a graph in the head posting. It is based on the convention – not tested or warranted, but convenient – that the net anthropogenic warming from all sources to 2100 will be about the same as the equilibrium warming in response to doubled CO2. Dr Deanster will see that our hindcast is considerably closer to observation than the wide but overegged interval presented by IPCC in 1990.

Of course, IPCC has reduced its short-term predictions since then – yet it has left is long-term predictions puzzlingly unaltered.

30. Nick Schroeder, BSME, PE says:

“Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserved to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science.”
Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980), pg 91

Premise 1:
The earth is 33 C warmer with an atmosphere than without. (288 K – 255 K = 33 C)
So, just how does that work?

Premise 2:
There is an up/down/”back” CO2/GHG LWIR energy loop between the surface and the atmosphere that “traps” and recirculates energy through molecular level QED processes warming both the atmosphere and the surface.
And what powers that energy loop?

Premise 3:
The surface radiates as a 288 K ideal black body with an emission of 390 W/m^2. (K-T 289 K & 396 W/m^2)

Premises 1, 2 & 3 are demonstrably false.

No 33 C warmer + No up/down/”back” GHG LWIR energy loop + No ideal BB upwelling surface radiation = ZERO RGHE & ZERO carbon dioxide warming & ZERO mankind caused climate change.

Nick Schroeder, BSME, PE

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Schroeder, we have adopted all of official climatology except what we can demonstrate to be false. We do not necessarily agree with all of it, but we have accepted it ad argumentum. That greatly reduces the scope for disagreement, and focuses the argument on the error we have found in official climatology’s method.

31. ScottM says:

(SNIPPED) MOD

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Moderators, please delete this anonymous contributor’s post, which offends against site policy.

• Warren says:

No need to panic Scott.
Get back to what you were doing and leave true science to true experts.

32. Tom Anderson says:

Now that CAGWT has been properly hoist by its own petard, what is next? Dr. Timothy Ball stated in a post last September, “Climate models are abstract models, … made up of a [sic] multiple models interacting with each other. …” They “have virtually no data.”

Christopher Monckton’s post today (15 August 2018) states that “In a temperature feedback loop, the input signal is surface reference temperature …”

What is next might be what is the “reference temperature R”? It seems to have become lost in the 3-card Monte climate shuffle. The temperature at which carbon dioxide interacts with infrared solar radiation reasonably seems a threshold question, without which all the rest is sound and fury signifying nothing, at the very best.

There is already a full 33°C greenhouse effect. James Clerk Maxwell’s 1872 theory (warming by gravitational compression of the Earth’s atmosphere) has been tested, validated, developed and well established for the last 146 years. It works on every planet with a thick atmosphere but seems to be phenomenon non grata on these pages.

A fatal flaw in this parvenu greenhouse-gas (GHG) premise is its sleight-of-hand with the threshold question about the TEMPERATURE at which carbon dioxide interacts with infrared solar radiation at its peak absorption/emission wavelength, 15μm. It has been calculable since the early 20th century by the Einstein-Planck relation and Wien’s Displacement Law. Skipping the math, CO2 absorbs, retains, and emits 15μm IR solar radiation at 193K, or -80°C. Its observed effect has been COOLING in the upper troposphere and at the poles where it reaches a 1:1 ratio with water vapor – globally the major greenhouse gas by a 29:1 weighted average (97:1 in the tropics).

1. Vide, e.g., U.S. Standard Atmosphere, 1976, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1976.

2. The Einstein-Planck relation states that radiant energy (E) is proportional to its frequency (v) times Planck’s constant (h) and is written E = hv. The more intense (hotter) energy fields in which photons flow are at higher frequencies and shorter wave¬lengths. Frequency relates inversely to wavelength (λ), and “v” may be written as the speed of light divided by the frequency’s wavelength: c/λ. Wilhelm Wien’s peak displacement law states that the relation of peak wavelength to temperature for each black body frequency is expressed by λ = b/T, with b Wien’s displacement constant (b ≈ 2900×K) and temperature T in Kelvins. To solve for tempera¬ture, T = b/λ; so CO2, interacting with radiant energy prin¬ci¬pally at a peak 15μm wavelength (range: 13.5μm to 17μm), absorbs and emits photons at a tem¬per¬a¬ture of 2900×K ÷ 15 ≈ 193K or ≈ -80°C.

3. Salby, Dr. Murry L., Physics of the atmosphere and climate (London, Cambridge U. Press, 2012), p. 213, and numerous commentaries by Dr. Freeman Dyson.

5. The H2O-CO2 ratio in the tropics is 97:1. Lighfoot, H. Douglas & Orval A. Mamer, “Back radiation versus CO2 as the cause of climate change.” Energy & Environment, 0(0). © The Author(s) 1-12-2017 DOI: 10.1177/9958305X17722790, p. 3.

33. Julie near Chicago says:

Quoting the OP:

“…a former occupier of the office of President of the United States….”

Heh. ;>)

Well put, Viscount.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Well spotted, Julie near Chicago!

34. “Our prediction is close to reality: official climatology’s predictions are far out”

Wrong in so many ways:
1. “Our prediction” isn’t a prediction at all. It is a graph made in 2018 concerning results for 1990 to 2011.
2. “Our prediction” isn’t of the time course from 1990 to 2011. It is an equilibrium sensitivity slope.
3. “reality” is a weird mix of surface and troposphere estimates (cherry-picked as described in the article). It is not what IPCC was actually predicting (nor MoB), which was surface temperature.
4. The claimed “IPCC prediction” was in fact a FAR (1990) estimate of the average rate of change expected over the next century, on the highest scenario of GHG increase (which didn’t happen). It was not a forecast of the next twenty years. Other scenarios, closer to what happened, gave average century rates of 0.2°C/decade and 0.1°C/decade.
5. As some are noticing, stopping the plot at end 2011 is rather selective, ending after two strong La Nina’s, and leaving out the recovery and subsequent warming.

• Theo says:

“Surface temperature” is a joke.

It’s a mashed up farrago of good and bad stations near the land surface and pretend “data” for much of the planet, with made-up data for below the sea surface at various depths, places and times, “observed” in different ways.

Worse than worthless kludge, manipulated such that it’s pure tamperature, not anything remotely resembling past temperature reality.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Stokes quibbles. Yes, our prediction was a hindcast. And we have adopted the convention that the centennial rate of warming from all anthropogenic sources is approximately equal to the equilibrium warming from doubled CO2. The use of one surface and one lower-troposphere dataset is legitimate, since the lower troposphere includes the surface. The IPCC interval of predictions in the graph was in fact the lower of two estimates of warming in the early decades of the 21st century. And the plot stops at 2011 because that is the date of the second of our two temperature equilibria.

• “The use of one surface and one lower-troposphere dataset is legitimate, since the lower troposphere includes the surface. “
It isn’t legitimate. If you want to see how a prediction worked out, you measure what they predicted, which is surface temperature. Not something that “includes” the surface.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Stokes continues to quibble. If we had used the HadCRUT4 dataset alone, the warming from 1990-2011 would have been 1.6 +/- 0.15 K.

• Pierre says:

Logic tells me that the GHE happens in the atmosphere and not the surface and the surface temperature is a reflection of the suns energy input and the slowed energy escape due to the GHE.

Yes we live on the surface where the temperature counts. I can’t see how the surface temperature rate of increase can exceed the rate of increase in the atmospheric temperature and be caused by CO2 or feedbacks.

From my rough eye estimates, the rate of surface temperature increases have exceeded the slope of UAH increase so, in my mind, it must be due to factors other than CO2. Man made, perhaps but not CO2.

Common sense tells me that the “We live at the surface and its the only temp that counts” might tug at the heart strings but it does not indict CO2 as the only cause in the surface temperature increases I see in these graphs. What I see does not have a catastrophic element from CO2 at all.

I no longer have the math skills to keep up with these arguments but my logic favors LM at this point.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Most grateful to Pierre for his support. To establish that there is a distinction between the surface and lower-troposphere warming rates, one must not cherry-pick one’s datasets, as the useless Bellman has done. One must average the UAH and RSS datasets, and one must average the HadCRUT and NOAA datasets (GISS is simply too unreliable to be useful). The fact is that even the absurdly overegged GISS dataset scrapes along the very bottom of IPCC’s 1990 zone of prediction.

• Bellman says:

So using UAH and HadCRUT is cherry picking?

I used those two as they were the same two sets you used to verify your prediction. I assumed you didn’t want me to use RSS as you keep saying it has been tampered with to such an extent that it is no longer reliable.

So the obvious question, why did you only use UAH and HadCRUT for your verification if one must average UAH, RSS, HadCRUT and NOAA

• Bellman says:

But fair enough, if you use the average of RSS and UAH, satellites have not differed significantly from surface data sets.

If you want to avoid cherry picking just UAH, the trend of the average of all four approved data sets between 1990 and 2011 is 1.6°C / century. Close to the second IPCC’s prediction (according to Monckton’s speedometer) of 1.8°C / century than to Monckton’s current prediction of 1.2°C / century.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

IPCC’s prediction in 1990 was not 1.8 K/century but 2.8 K/century, or 3.3 K/century depending on which medium-term business-as-usual scenario one uses. If the outturn was – as I had pointed out to Bellman some time ago – 1.6 K on the HadCRUT4 dataset, then our 1.2 K estimate is a great deal closer to that outturn than IPCC’s 2.8 K or 3.3 K. The more Bellman tries to tamper with the data, the more he draws attention to the abject failure of IPCC’s original predictions.

And let him answer me this. Given that IPCC has itself been compelled to halve its original business-as-usual prediction for the medium term, why has it made no corresponding reduction in its longer-term predictions? If Bellman were really intent on discovering the truth, that would be a more important question than hoping against hope to trip us up in our result.

• Bellman says:

IPCC’s prediction in 1990 was not 1.8 K/century but 2.8 K/century, or 3.3 K/century depending on which medium-term business-as-usual scenario one uses.

I specifically said it was the second IPCC report that predicted 1.8°C / century warming. I took the value arguendo from your own “speedometer” graph, published at a time when you seemed to have no problems with looking at how the first three IPCC reports compared with reality. Now for some reason you only want to look at the first report.

1.6 K on the HadCRUT4 dataset, then our 1.2 K estimate is a great deal closer to that outturn than IPCC’s 2.8 K or 3.3 K.

It is, but that’s not what I’m interested in. My interest is on how good your prediction is. You gave a very precise prediction, a warming rate of 1.05 – 1.35°C / century. If the actual trend is 1.6°C / century that might suggest a problem with your result.

You accept that the result might be wrong as it was built on assumptions accepted for the sake of argument, but only want to say that the result could be too high. The evidence of your own verification suggests it could be too low.

The more Bellman tries to tamper with the data…

Lucky that I am pseudonymous or I might consider that libelous.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The furtively pseudonymous Bellman, having been caught out over and over again in an interminable and increasingly pathetic series of futile inconsistencies, now yet again attempts to impugn my comment about the predictions in IPCC’s First Assessment Report by referring to the lesser predictions in a subsequent Assessment Report.

Yes, IPCC has been compelled to reduce its medium-term predictions, repeatedly, as its earlier predictions were falsified by events. Yet, inconsistently, it has utterly failed to reduce – commensurately or at all – its longer-term predictions. The cowardly Bellman, however, regards IPCC’s inconsistency as acceptable, for he is a slave to the climate-Communist party line, and, like all good slaves to the party line, he lies and lies and lies again.

• Bellman says:

…now yet again attempts to impugn my comment about the predictions in IPCC’s First Assessment Report by referring to the lesser predictions in a subsequent Assessment Report.

I question why you where happy to look at the predictions of the first 3 IPCC reports 2 years ago, but now insist that only the oldest one is relevant today.

The cowardly Bellman, however, regards IPCC’s inconsistency as acceptable, for he is a slave to the climate-Communist party line, and, like all good slaves to the party line, he lies and lies and lies again.

Could you at least point to an example of a lie before making such an accusation.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Bellman knows full well what its lies are. It is contemptible. And it is a craven, poltroonish coward. For it will not admit who it is.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The sillier and sillier Bellman has failed – as usual – to understand the simplest proposition. If the RSS dataset shows much the same rate of warming as, say, NASA GISS, then how can he assert that the lower troposphere is warming at a rate sufficiently below the surface rate to make any difference?

• Bellman says:

1. I said nothing about the rate of warming of the lower troposphere making a difference to your prediction. I merely questioned how it could be legitimate to use the lower troposphere to test a prediction based on surface warming. You claim was that it was legitimate because the lower troposphere included the surface.

2. You are saying that as long as RSS shows similar warming to surface data sets it is OK to use it as a test of surface warming. But you don’t use RSS, and call it unreliable, but prefer to use the UAH data set which we have established is warming at a significantly slower rate than all surface data sets.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Don’t whine.

• Bellman says:

I’ll try not to if you just say which satellite data set you think best describes the lower troposphere.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Don’t whine.

• Bellman says:

The use of one surface and one lower-troposphere dataset is legitimate, since the lower troposphere includes the surface.

That argument doesn’t make sense to me. The surface is a subset of the lower troposphere but not equal to it. You might just as well say it’s legitimate to use global temperature to represent the UK as the UK is part of the globe.

And the plot stops at 2011 because that is the date of the second of our two temperature equilibria.

But shouldn’t the predicted rate of warming apply to any long term warming? If there’s variation in medium term trends, how do you determine you ahven’t accidentally chosen a period that just happens to be close to your value?

If you test it from 1990 to present the rate increases to around 1.5°C /century.

The rate from 1979 to 2011 was 1.44°C / century.

All these values are outside your original predicted range of 1.2±0.15°C / century, but well within the IPCC 2001 range of 2.1±1.0°C / century.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Bellman is back, picking nits as usual. If he had studied the temperature datasets as long and as closely as we have, he would not have crammed so many elementary errors into a single comment.

Error 1: Bellman says, “The surface is a subset of the lower troposphere but not equal to it.” For that argument to be credible, he would have to demonstrate that the satellite datasets consistently show a warming rate different from the surface datasets to a statistically significant degree. This he has failed to do.

Error 2: Bellman objects to our having chosen a starting date and an ending date for our calculation, even though the reasons for these dates are explained in this series. He should also know that we studied ten different ending dates, sourced either from IPCC or from the peer-reviewed journals, and the equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 was 1.17 K in all ten cases.

Error 3. Bellman appears unaware that the period 1850-2011 encompasses very nearly the entire period of significant anthropogenic influence on climate.

Error 4. Bellman imagines that IPCC’s medium-term prediction was 2.1 +/- 1.0 K/century equivalent. In fact, the mid-range estimate was 2.8 K.

It would be better if Bellman were to approach these questions with an open mind rather than an open mouth, and preferably after having researched the points he wishes to make before making a fool of himself by making them.

• Theo says:

Chimps and humans have found actual nits quite nutritious.

Figurative nits, not so much.

• Anthony Banton says:

OK more Monckton, talking the hind-leg off a donkey and repeating what he said before, such that all are bamboozled with his skilful snake-oil auction.
FI:

“Error 1: Bellman says, “The surface is a subset of the lower troposphere but not equal to it.” For that argument to be credible, he would have to demonstrate that the satellite datasets consistently show a warming rate different from the surface datasets to a statistically significant degree. This he has failed to do.”

The surface dataset is blatently obviously a subset of the lower troposhere. The only one that matters. It IS the surface, where we live, where ice is, where the minimum temperature is recorded beneath a nocturnal inversion FI …. and where the greatest warming is taking place. Monckton – the warming of global minimum temp is 2x that of global maxes and therefore comprises the greater part of it over land – which itself is warming at 2x the rate of over oceans.
I wont insult your intelligence (as you frequently do of others) in posting a link to explain it.
A TLT product completely omits the bottom 5 feet.
This is without getting into which TLT dataset one prefers, let alone which version (UAH is up at V6 point something or other and RSS V4). Oh, sorry of course you dissmiss Carl Mears since V4.0 as being (.pejorative.).
Oh, and hypocrcicy (typical naysayers differing standards between them and their critics) ….
“… demonstrate that the satellite datasets consistently show a warming rate different from the surface datasets to a statistically significant degree”.
And where is your demonstration of anything you have “shown” has “statistical relevance”?
Like something a basic as error bars??
Glaring in the omission my friend.

“Error 2: Bellman objects to our having chosen a starting date and an ending date for our calculation, even though the reasons for these dates are explained in this series. He should also know that we studied ten different ending dates, sourced either from IPCC or from the peer-reviewed journals, and the equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 was 1.17 K in all ten cases.”
OK you need to show that … it’s part of the above – SHOWING statical relevance, and if it does as you say why did you not?

“Error 3. Bellman appears unaware that the period 1850-2011 encompasses very nearly the entire period of significant anthropogenic influence on climate.”
I doubt that he wasn’t “aware” of that, however it also includes a period of -ve forcing of anthroprogenic influence, Vis pollultion of the atmosphere with SW reflecting, albedo increasing aerosol, which meant that the CO2 forcing did not come into play (negated NV) to a large enough degree to be apparent until the ’80’s.
So we have just ~40 years of data that reflects that.
Also the IPCC trend prediction was a 100 year one and your’s falls a tad short. So no apple v apples there.

“Error 4. Bellman imagines that IPCC’s medium-term prediction was 2.1 +/- 1.0 K/century equivalent. In fact, the mid-range estimate was 2.8 K.”
The IPCC’s projection is a range (I note yours is not – and as such should have error bars). Their projection (not “prediction” as it depends on the emission pathway, which cannot be know) is between 1.5 to 4.5C. If you want to focus on a “mid-term”, then as above give your error bar end values.

“It would be better if Bellman were to approach these questions with an open mind rather than an open mouth, and preferably after having researched the points he wishes to make before making a fool of himself by making them”
It would be “better” if Monckton” conducted himself here as if he were TALKING to peer-reviewers – as he obviously considers that to be the case, because overwhelmingly they fawn over his Lordship and are unquestioning. That is not the case in the real scientific world. Validation is not achieved here – despite coming back ad nauseum for it. And being so petulantly uncivil is not only unworthy of the discourse, it is fundamentally unworthy of a person.

Oh, and I look forward to Christopher’s erstwhile friend Richard S Courtney to turn up with the “Troll” accusation.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The hapless Mr Banton is, as usual, way out of his depth. Glug, glug, glug.

Here are just some of his elementary errors of physics and of statistics:

1. Despite a lot of bluster, Mr Banton has failed to provide any evidence that the satellite datasets produce global-warming trends markedly different from the surface datasets.

2. Mr Banton should read the head posting before presuming to comment on it. Of course there are error-bars on our estimate of Charney sensitivity.

3. If Mr Banton is talking of error-bars on the HadCRUT4 dataset, they are about 0.15 K at present. Error bars for the other datasets are not published, as far as I know.

3. Mr Banton appears to find it reprehensible that our empirical campaign using ten distinct published estimates of net anthropogenic forcing over various periods found Charney sensitivity to be 1.17 K in each instance. But he offers not a shred of evidence that we are incorrect: merely some yah-boo. But yah-boo is not how science is done.

4. Mr Banton asserts, without evidence, that IPCC’s projection as shown in our graph in the head posting was a centennial projection. It wasn’t. It was a medium-term projection to 2025.

5. Mr Banton states his faith in the notion – poorly supported in the literature, but asserted by IPCC – that the aerosol fudge-factor that artificially reduces net anthropogenic forcing by an implausibly large amount and thus increases apparent equilibrium sensitivity is correct. That, however, is one of the numerous uncertainties that bedevil any attempt to use the delta system-gain equation rather than the absolute-value equation erroneously ruled out by IPCC’s definition of feedback.

6. Mr Banton falsely states that IPCC’s prediction (or projection, if that is what he wants to call it) does not have a mid-range estimate of 2.8 K. Well, it does. Read AR1. Actually, there are two mid-range estimates on the business-as-usual scenario. The other estimate is 3.3 K, even more absurdly out of line with observed reality than the lesser prediction that we were kind enough to use.

7. Mr Banton seems to reserve to himself the right to be rude. Well, as he knows full well, I give as good as I get. He has, as usual, contributed nothing of value to the discussion. Glug, glug, glug.

• Bellman says:

Well, it does. Read AR1. Actually, there are two mid-range estimates on the business-as-usual scenario. The other estimate is 3.3 K, even more absurdly out of line with observed reality than the lesser prediction that we were kind enough to use.

Lord Monckton still seems to be having problems understanding his error with regard to his calculated 3.3°C / century IPCC prediction. The first IPCC report makes two predictions for short term warming.

On page xxii they state that there will likely be an increase in global mean temperature of about 1°C from present levels by 2025 and that this is equivalent to about 2° warming since per-industreal times.

On page xxivthey state that the best estimate is that temperatures will have risen 1.8°C by 2030 from pre-industrial times. This page does not state this as warming since present.

Lord Monckton uses the first prediction to calculate a warming rate of around 2.8°C / century, but then uses the second prediction to calculate a faster warming rate of 3.3°C / century. This is obviously wrong as the second prediction is for less warming relative to the pre-industreal age.

In order to make this strong claim that the second prediction was for more warming he imagines the IPCC were using a completely different value for present temperature in the second prediction than in the first. He thinks that in the second prediction the IPCC were assuming that present temperatures were only 0.45°C warmer than the pre-industrial era, rather than the 1°C they used in the first prediction.

If on the other hand you were to assume they hadn’t changed their minds about what pre-industrial means, you could use page xxiv to imagine they were only predicting 0.8°C warming to 2030, which would give you a predicted warming rate of only 2°C / century up to 2030.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The pathetic Bellman should ask its kindergarten mistress to read AR1 to it.

AR1 gives two business-as-usual medium-term scenarios. On page xxiv it says, “The numbers given below are based on high-resolution models, scaled to be consistent with our best estimates of global mean warming of 1.8 K by 2030 [vs. pre-industrial temperatures] … ” There had been 0.45 K warming to 1990: therefore, IPCC was predicting 1.8 – 0.45 = 1.35 K over four decades, or 0.33 K/decade, exactly as I had stated.

AR1 also gives a second business-as-usual medium term scenario, this time on p. xii: “Based on current models we predict [note the word “predict”, not “project”]: under the IPCC Business-as-Usual … emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3 K per decade … This will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1 K above the present value [note that this is not pre-industrial] by 2025.” Thus, IPCC was this time predicting 1 K over 3.6 decades, or 0.28 K/decade.

If Bellman can think of nothing better to do than attempt to pick inconsequential nits, it might as well pick the nits correctly.

• Bellman says:

There had been 0.45 K warming to 1990: therefore, IPCC was predicting 1.8 – 0.45 = 1.35 K

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley seems to keep missing the central point here. Nowhere on page xxiv or anywhere I can find does the first IPCC report say that they are using a figure of 0.45°C warming from pre-industrial times to 1990. Common sense suggests they assumed the same 1°C warming on page xxiv as they imply on page xxii.

If the IPCC had decided over the cause of a couple of pages that warming since pre-industrial times was only have what they had previously claimed I think they would have stated that fact clearly on page xxiv. Instead the only reference to a 0.45°C figure comes 200 pages later, on page 199, where they are talking about instrument measurements, not modeled warming, and give a figure from the late 19th century of 0.45 ± 0.15°C.

The ever resourceful Monckton has taken this figure, ignored the error margins, ignored the fact that this isn’t talking about warming since pre-industrial times and ignored the fact that the IPCC are clearly talking about modeled warming, and stitched it into the best estimate figure from page xxiv, in order to sate that the IPCC predicted warming at a rate of 3.3°C / century.

And yes this is nit picking. Nobody would think the predictions in the 1990 IPCC report are that accurate, but as it’s so inconsequential, I have to wonder why Monckton defends his own figure so tenaciously?

• Bellman says:

Thanks for the complement. Picking nits is good for keeping you fur clean.

Error 1: Bellman says, “The surface is a subset of the lower troposphere but not equal to it.” For that argument to be credible, he would have to demonstrate that the satellite datasets consistently show a warming rate different from the surface datasets to a statistically significant degree. This he has failed to do.

Sorry but I don’t have to demonstrate anything. You are the one claiming that satellite data is the same as surface, because the lower troposphere contains the surface. But in any event, the fact that the satellite data has often been presented as demonstrating the invalidity of the surface data set suggests that some here think there is a significant difference.

Error 2: Bellman objects to our having chosen a starting date and an ending date for our calculation, even though the reasons for these dates are explained in this series. He should also know that we studied ten different ending dates, sourced either from IPCC or from the peer-reviewed journals, and the equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 was 1.17 K in all ten cases.

We weren’t talking about your use of dates for determining sensitivity. We were talking about your choice of dates to verify your figure. Your claim as I understand it is that a warming rate between 1990 and 2011 was close enough to your prediction to confirm it’s accuracy.

Error 3. Bellman appears unaware that the period 1850-2011 encompasses very nearly the entire period of significant anthropogenic influence on climate.

You’ve lost me. I said nothing about the 1850 – 2011 period.

Error 4. Bellman imagines that IPCC’s medium-term prediction was 2.1 +/- 1.0 K/century equivalent. In fact, the mid-range estimate was 2.8 K.

I based theIPCC 2001 prediction on a blog post from WUWT, written by a Monckton of Brenchley

IPCC (2001), on page 8, predicted that in the 36 years 1990-2025 the world would warm by 0.75 [0.4, 1.1] C°, equivalent to 2.1 [1.1, 3.1] C°/century. This predicted interval is 4.5 [2.3, 6.6] times observed warming since January 2001.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/25/introducing-the-global-warming-speedometer/

I didn’t think to verify that with the actual IPCC report. Could you give a page number for the 2.8 K / century short term figure. I did notice on page 13 they say “… anthropogenic warming is likely to be in the range 0.1°C to 0.2°C / decade over the next few decades under the IS92a scenario…”

• Bellman says:

he would have to demonstrate that the satellite datasets consistently show a warming rate different from the surface datasets to a statistically significant degree.

For what it’s worth, here’s a graph I put together showing the difference between HadCRUT and UAH annual figures.

https://i.imgur.com/eZIJvkj.png

That seems to me to be a reasonably significant difference in the rate of warming. What conclusions you draw from that is another question. It could mean the lower troposphere is not warming as fast as the surface, or it could mean there’s a problem with one or other of the data sets.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Bellman is, as usual, missing the obvious. Until the HadCRUT dataset was heavily revised to make it look as though the recent warming rate was greater than what had been originally published, it tracked the satellite datasets quite well.

As an indication of the extent to which the HadCRUT dataset was tampered with, the HadCRUT3 dataset showed 60 years of zero trend after 1850, but the present dataset shows 80 years of zero trend after 1850.

• Bellman says:

Seeing as you asked so nicely, here’s the same comparison using HadCRUT 3

https://i.imgur.com/8vw5TNg.png

Is there a significant difference? Depends on how significant you want. The p-value is 0.027.

• richard verney says:

This is why I have used HADCRUT 3 when commenting upon the assumption that the temperature at 1850 was in equilibrium. (My comments set out in your previous post on this paper).

Whilst the data sets are not worth a pinch of salt, for what they are worth, it is clear that the temperature as at 1850 was not in equilibrium.

As from January 1850 the temperatures rose, and rose sharply for the next 2.5 years with a temperature increase of about 0.8degC. During this period there was a rise of less than 1 ppm in CO2, and the temperature could not have risen month on month if it was in equilibrium as at 1850. Obviously something caused the temperature to rise, and that something demonstrates that as at 1850 the temperature was not in equilibrium. Should you disagree, please explain what caused the temperature to rise during the period 1850 to ~mid 1852, and please explain how in the light of that causative driver the temperature can be said to be in equilibrium as at 1850.

Now it may be the case that if one takes a cherry pick interval such as 80 years there is no observed warming trend. But that does not necessarily mean that the temperature as at 1850 was in equilibrium.

One theoretical explanation behind there being no warming trend could be that Climate Sensitivity to CO2 is high and that the forcing due to the rise in CO2 over that 80 year period was say 0.7degC, but just perchance there was a negative forcing due to natural variability during this period which produced a downward forcing of 0.7degC. The net effect of the high positive CO2 forcing of 0.7deg C being cancelled out by the high negative natural variation forcing of 0.7 degC, such that there was no warming trend during the observed 80 year period.

We just do not know until such time as we fully understand natural variation.

PS. I am not saying that the fundamental premise behind your paper is wrong, but I am sceptical of the claim that the temperature as at 1850 was in equilibrium.

• richard verney says:

The satellite record only goes back to 1979, so it is extremely limited.

It is extremely unfortunate that it does not go back to the highs of the 1930s/early 1940s, and does not cover the cooling between ~1940 to ~1975. If it did, we might see some very different trends.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Verney ought to know by now that taking a trend only a few years long and trying to draw long-term conclusions from it is silly. Internal variability is sufficient to cause strong short-term uptrends and downtrends. What matters is the long-term trend. Like it or not, the HadCRUT4 trend from 1850 to 1930 is very, very close to a zero trend. Therefore, it is permissible to ignore the intermediate fluctuations and take it that there was a temperature equilibrium in 1850. Recall that we have a professor of statistics among our co-authors. Perhaps Mr Verney is a professor of statistics too. But I doubt it: for otherwise he would not cite a very short-term trend as a disturbance significant enough to constitute a departure from temperature equilibrium.

• richard verney says:

As you well know, contrary to your assertion, I am not drawing any long term conclusion from a short term trend. If anything, I am doing the very opposite, in order to assess whether your assertion that in 1850 the temperature was in equilibrium, ie., not changing, not subject to change, is correct, or not.

You state:

Internal variability is sufficient to cause strong short-term uptrends and downtrends.

This statement is an implicit admission that the temperature is not in equilibrium. Had it been in equilibrium, there would have been no change in temperature. No change is the essential characteristic of a system being in very equilibrium. A common definition is:

A condition in which all acting influences are cancelled by others, resulting in a stable, balanced, or unchanging system.

You cherry pick a period of 80 years to carry out an assessment, but this is but a blink of an eye in a system that is more than 4 billion years of age.

You state;

The least-squares linear-regression trend on the HadCRUT4 monthly global mean surface temperature dataset from 1850-1930, a period of eight decades, exhibits a trend vanishingly different from zero.

But if you were to perform the least squares linear regression using today’s temperature (whichever set you wish to use) but going back approximately 2,000 years (or 3,200 years), one would find that there was no trend and the result would be vanishingly different from zero:

See the oft quoted climatology for the Holocene:

Once again, 2,000 years is but a blink in the eye given that the planet has had an atmosphere for some 4 billion years.

Whilst this is not your fault, the Lacis paper is fundamentally misconceived, and it is simply not possible to begin to assess Climate Sensitivity to CO2 without (1) properly knowing the temperature at various points of time (which we do not know given that all the thermometer reconstructions are worthless and not fit for scientific scrutiny), and (2) knowing everything there is to know about natural variation, what drives it at any given instance of time. Without those conditions being met, we cannot eek out the signal to CO2, if any at all, from the noise of natural variation. The entire temperature change from 1850 can quite conceivably be explained as the consequence of natural variability, and nothing more than that. Presently, it is impossible to prove that that is not the case.

That said, I fully understand the tactic of accepting ad argumentum all of official climatology except what we could disprove, and then demonstrating what we could disprove and the fundamental point that you make in your paper, and the significance that this fundamental point carries with it, should your paper pass peer review.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am glad that Mr Verney now recognizes his mistake in trying to assert that because of minor up and down fluctuations in surface temperature over a few years there was no equilibrium temperature in 1850.

• richard verney says:

I have not made a mistake. The mistake is all yours, but it appears that you are too entrenched to acknowledge the obvious. .

To take your logic, if you look at the HADCRUT 3 trend between February 1882 to 1887, the temperature is in equilibrium because there is no trend when a least squares linear regression is performed, such that one can conclude that the eruption of Krakatoa had no climate impact whatsoever.

The inescapable fact is that the temperature is not in equilibrium in January 1850 as is demonstrated by the fact that it was different in February that year, different in March that year and so forth for the next 2.5 years in which temperatures rose by about 0.8 deg C.

You have not explained how something can change when it is in equilibrium. The reason you have failed to explain this is presumably because you are unable to do so given the very definition of equilibrium itself.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Verney is tediously going round in circles. It matters not that there are short-term fluctuations in temperature over a few years: to establish an equilibrium one must verify that, over several decades, there has been no trend. That is the case for 1850. We very much doubt whether the reviewers will attempt to quibble as pathetically as to argue that the surface temperature in 1850 was not, for the purpose of climate-sensitivity studies, an equilibrium temperature.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Bellman, having been caught out in multiple errors, now whines and wriggles like a stuck pig. It is incapable of demonstrating that the satellite temperature record shows a mean trend significantly different from the terrestrial record. it is disappointed that our predicted warming rate is so very much closer to observation than IPCC’s original overblown medium-term business-as-usual predictions. Well, get over it.

It is unaware that the period 1850-2011 encompasses very nearly the entire period of significant anthropogenic influence, wherefore, since the system-gain factors at the beginning and end of the period are identical, there is no particular reason to imagine a substantial change will occur in the policy-relevant future.

It makes the elementary mistake of attempting to demonstrate that my statement that IPCC (1990) was incorrect in predicting 2.8 K/century equivalent warming by citing not IPCC (1990) b but, bizarrely, IPCC (2001).

Really, it is wasting its time here. But it does serve as a useful advertisement for the mindless stupidity of the climate-Communist drones who adhere to the Party Line long after it is apparent to all rational beings that the Party Line is nonsense.

• Bellman says:

Monckton of Brenchly,

It is incapable of demonstrating that the satellite temperature record shows a mean trend significantly different from the terrestrial record.

See my post above.

It is unaware that the period 1850-2011 encompasses very nearly the entire period of significant anthropogenic influence, wherefore, since the system-gain factors at the beginning and end of the period are identical, there is no particular reason to imagine a substantial change will occur in the policy-relevant future.

Once again, I’m not talking about how you derived your sensitivity value, I’m talking about how you verified it. You might not be able to imagine why your sensitivity figure will change but if the actual rate of warming has changed you have to establish why you think the period 1990 to 2011 is a better verification period than say 1979 to 2018.

It makes the elementary mistake of attempting to demonstrate that my statement that IPCC (1990) was incorrect in predicting 2.8 K/century equivalent warming by citing not IPCC (1990) b but, bizarrely, IPCC (2001).

My assumption was that 2001 would be a better test of current IPCC predictions than 1990. You want to compare a 30 year old prediction with your one year old one. Yet you won’t stand by your own much lower predictions made 10 years ago.

Really, it is wasting its time here. But it does serve as a useful advertisement for the mindless stupidity of the climate-Communist drones who adhere to the Party Line long after it is apparent to all rational beings that the Party Line is nonsense.

I expect you are right about wasting my time, but then it’s my time and I can waste it how I chose. As I’ve said before I don’t mind the ad hominems, but I do wonder if you realize what sort of an an advert you are making for your argument.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Bellman continues to be incapable of demonstrating that the satellite temperature trend is significantly different from the surface temperature trend.

It imagines that I am guilty of ad-hominems, but, since it hides behind a furtive cloak of anonymity, whatever I say about it is not ad hominem, for the homo is too frit to say who it is. Many climate Communists behave thus.

It tries to cover its silly mistake in using IPCC’s 2001 report when I had cited IPCC’s 1990 report. It is right that IPCC has realized that its original medium-term predictions were wildly excessive, but it has no explanation of why the IPCC has failed commensurately to reduce its long-term predictions.

It asks how we verified our value for equilibrium sensitivity. We found it for two distinct years 161 years apart, and the values were near-identical. We found it also for ten separate estimates of net anthropogenic forcing over ten separate periods in the industrial era, and in each case the equilibrium sensitivity was 1.17 K. We observed that our prediction was closer to observation than IPCC’s original wild predictions, on the basis of which the scare got its boots on.

Bellman is not interested in the objective truth. It is interested only in picking nits, and doing so with a level of discourtesy and ignorance that would be embarrassing to it if it were to disclose who it is and how much it is being paid to waste its time here. It serves a useful purpose though: for the intellectual feebleness and vapidity of its contributions is a reminder to everyone here of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the climate-Communist cause it is no doubt handsomely paid to espouse.

• Bellman says:

Bellman continues to be incapable of demonstrating that the satellite temperature trend is significantly different from the surface temperature trend.

Perhaps because Monckton doesn’t make clear what he wants Bellman to demonstrate. I demonstrated that UAH6 was significantly different to HadCRUT4.6. I assumed that was what you wanted as they are the two data sets you use to verify your prediction. Now it seems in true Scotsman style I need to demonstrate that the true satellite data is significantly different to the true surface data.

It tries to cover its silly mistake in using IPCC’s 2001 report when I had cited IPCC’s 1990 report.

It was no mistake. I deliberately chose the 2001 report as its prediction was closer to your prediction. I specifically said I was using the 2001 report, but you ignored that and quoted the 1990 report. I think it draws attention to the question why you only use 1990 for comparison and ignore later reports. When you introduced your “speedometer of warming” graph, you were quite happy to quote the 1990, 1995 and 2001 IPCC reports. Why now keep claiming the IPCC says this or that when you are only quoting a 30 year old report.

It asks how we verified our value for equilibrium sensitivity.

Once again I’m not sure if you understand what verification means. You derived you results from various periods and found they were consistent, but that doesn’t verify your result. I assumed that when you said of the 1990-2011 trend “Our prediction is close to reality”, you were using that period as a verification of your result.

and doing so with a level of discourtesy and ignorance that would be embarrassing to it if it were to disclose who it is and how much it is being paid to waste its time here.

It’s irrelevant to my argument who I am or how much I’m paid, but to keep you happy I’ll disclose the second part of the question. I’m paid precisely nothing to waste my time here. I do it purely for my own enjoyment and in the hope it will cause some anonymous readers of this blog to ask their own questions.

It serves a useful purpose though: for the intellectual feebleness and vapidity of its contributions is a reminder to everyone here of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the climate-Communist cause …

Now to my way of thinking, if you really believed my contributions were so self evidently feeble, you wouldn’t need to keep stating it as a fact.

That’s why I’ve tried to avoid, for the most part, drawing attention to your sneering and impersonal insults, because I think they speak for themselves. Also because I strongly suspect they are an attempt to draw me into a deflecting argument.

Before I go back to ignoring your name calling, I’ll offer this as a helpful piece of advice – not everyone who reads these comments are going to be as appreciative of your abrasive style as some of the regular contributors here. I always assume there are a silent majority of open minded readers who may well be trying to decide the rights and wrongs of these discussions.

• AnthonyB says:

Bellman:
Welcome to the club that calls out Monckton’s hubristic discourtesy – it is an MO of his, this I gleaned from reading his “replies” (on this and other Blogs – who now no longer tolerate him) both to myself and to others who have the temerity to be critical of his efforts to discredit climate science at all costs. He at first obfuscates with loquaciousness then with nasty disdain.
You were right when you said last thread that this brings no good – but the problem is with him it is unavoidable as pressing him to give a clear answer brings on this behaviour – and it is right that I call him out for it.
He did it when “bang-to-rights” in the “Potholer54 affair” I return to below.

However….
The good Lord included the following peer-reviewer’s comments.
They suffice to rubbish this particular snake-oil selling fest.

“Simply inserting emission temperature in place of anthropogenic surface warming in the equations, and proceeding as before, is 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 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.”

“[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.”

“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.”

“The authors would do well to educate themselves on the literature evaluating the linearity or otherwise of feedbacks.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Climatology’s startling error of physics”
LOL only from within the rabbit-hole.

Now on the no-show of Monckton on these pages at the invitation of Anthony to respond to Potholer54’s (Peter Hadfield) debunking of much of his snake-oil selling …

Do be a tad skeptical denizens and read the post here …..
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/11/monckton-responds-to-potholer54/

“The rebuttals I made are not “inconsequential aspects of my talks” as Mr. Monckton claims; they include almost every major topic he covers, from the melting of Arctic and glacial ice, to the role of the sun and the correlation between CO2 and temperature. His only recourse in his WUWT response was therefore to call me names, attack my character and my competence, and question my financing and my motivation… anything but answer the documentary evidence I presented. And then he adds one more error — a ridiculous claim that I asked my “small band of followers” to “check the scientific literature for themselves to establish that the Earth has been warming and that CO2 is “largely responsible.”

“…. His only recourse in his WUWT response was therefore to call me names, attack my character and my competence, and question my financing and my motivation… anything but answer the documentary evidence I presented.”

Indeed Peter – the Monckton MO. Like assuming I was a socialist (by no means) in a reply to me last thread.
No, I’m someone with who is motivated by knowledge and experience in meteorology.
That seems not to be valid in his world, because his classics and journalistic degrees trump (no pun intended) any expertise I or the likes of Bellman and NS bring to the subject.
An accusation of political group-identity … which of course he concludes because of his ideological group-identity.

Nobody has, and I expect, ever will get a straight answer from him. The best I’ve seen not involving ad hom is “and your scientific point is?”
So, really no point trying. Peter Hadfield did, on this very forum, with his adoring fans watching.
Bang-to-rights and ultimately silent.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Banton – if it be he – is altogether inadequate scientifically to assail our scientific argument. Therefore, he resorts to rebarbative repetition of points already comprehensively answered, and adds nothing except ad-hominem attacks. He is a pathetic true-believer, a worthily inept and probably paid tool of climate Communism, for why else would he put up such half-witted posts here? However, the matter is now out of his hands. Our paper has been sent out for review and I shall report back in due course on how the process goes, whether or not the reviews are favorable.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The furtively pseudonymous and relentlessly silly Bellman whines that I have pointed out how silly and intellectually inadequate it is. Since it is anonymous, I can address my comments to it in the plainest language and it has no cause for complaint, for it is too much of a coward to reveal its identity. It denies that it is paid; but, based on the many lies it has uttered here, one suspects that its denial is as untruthful is all of its other utterances.

Let us see what grown-up reviewers rather than cowardly intellectual pygmies have to say.

• Bellman says:

I should take it as a complement that you think my amateur scribblings are worth paying for, and believe me if someone were to offer me money to keep doing this I’d be happy to accept it, but your obsession with my funding makes me more convinced it’s best to remain pseudonymous. If you you knew my real name I could imagine I’d be subjected to all sorts of harassment as you tried to prove I was secretly being paid by some anonymous benefactor.

“Let us see what grown-up reviewers rather than cowardly intellectual pygmies have to say.”

I agree totally with that. It’s the experts you need to convince, not me. But I thought your paper already had been reviewed and rejected, and you didn’t take the rejection well.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The useless Bellman, if paid, is certainly overpaid. And it is a coward. What a snivelingly pathetic excuse it now offers for hurling insults from behind a poltroon’s cloak of anonymity. Bellman is contemptible.

In a previous posting, I very fairly and openly (unlike the coward Bellman) revealed exactly what the reviewers had said of our paper. If, as Bellman incorrectly asserts, we had not “taken the rejection well”, we’d hardly have been willing to share the reviewers’ largely fatuous comments here, and we’d not have been willing to submit the paper to another journal for fear that we’d be mistreated again.

As it is, the exposure of the reviewers’ comments has attracted approving comments from a small handful of paid trolls or climate Communists here, while others less wedded to the Party Line have found the reviewers’ comments deplorably lacking in scientific rigor.

I shall be posting up the next lot of reviewers’ comments as well, regardless of whether they are favorable. For, although Bellman is entirely uninterested in the scientific truth, others here are interested. And the more silly and manifestly vexatious comments he makes, the more they realize that it is we and not he and his fellow climate Communists who are correct.

• Bellman says:

I said you didn’t take the rejection well. You deny that and then call the reviewers comments “fatuous”.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Don’t be pathetic. By widespread consent in the previous thread, the reviewers’ comments were indeed fatuous. They ought to have been ashamed of themselves. But we had expected little better from official climatology. However, we are persisting and, in due course, unless an error can be found in our approach (and that has not happened yet), we shall insist upon publication.

• Dr. Deanster says:

Nick ….. the problem with the whole climate change debacle, is that politics and the media do not treat the IPPC reports as what they are, which are in reality, exercises in academic exploration into possibilities. So as you say …. an “estimate” based on such n such parameters and assumptions, becomes a “prediction” in the MSM. The “possibility” that CO2 may be an important factor in climate temperature becomes “the gospel truth” (or propaganda) and a political rallying point to political groups and the MSM who support them.

Nick … it is NOT a coincidence that practically ALL the advocated for CAGW are also advocates for single payer healthcare, higher taxes, larger government control, etc ….. and basically ascribe to socialism. CAGW is just another tactic to gain control of authority to push through the major points of the socialistic agenda.

• Chris says:

“Nick … it is NOT a coincidence that practically ALL the advocated for CAGW are also advocates for single payer healthcare, higher taxes, larger government control, etc ….. and basically ascribe to socialism.”

Proof of that claim? For example, the government of low tax, no welfare Singapore says that AGW is occurring, they’ve signed the Paris agreement, and are pushing hard to make their commitments. Nothing whatsoever to do with socialism.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

To find one or two counterexamples to the general rule is not to disprove the rule. The overwhelming majority of climate-change true-believers are totalitarians – many of them outright Communists. They have never forgiven the West for winning the Cold War against Russian Communism, and, as Patrick Moore has said, he found that he had to leave Greenpeace, of which he had been one of the founders, when the Communists moved in and took it over. Communists no more care about the environment than the Fascists who first used environmentalism as a method of totally controlling every aspect of every citizen’s life, making all of us prisoners of an ever-expanding, ever-more-costly bureaucracy.

Christopher Monckton, you have published Summary studies in peer-reviewed “science” journals, haven’t you? That is legitimate science, and jolly well does make you a scientist. I believe you are actually one of the experts included in IPCC reports, so let us have no more idiocy about you are not a scientist. You certainly are.

This “basic” stuff is physics, which science is so simple, it reduces to mathematics. Most of us are terrible in math, so you have to be a genius to do physics professionally. I am very good with math, but I struggled with a lot of this. I think I got the basic idea.

But if you think it is amazing that something this basic was overlooked, consider the matter of “hide the decline” and the hockey stick. What Mann did was measure tree rings as a proxy for temperature. They are a better proxy for rainfall, but why has NOBODY realized that he was saying “OMG, trees are growing, we’re all gonna die?”

Geologists used to know that warmer temperatures mean more biodiversity and more life. Warm periods were climate optimums. Last year a climate geologists said that a climate optimum was an extreme temperature. Even heavily-censored Wikipedia gets “Eocene climate optimum” right last I checked.

Why don’t climate skeptics EVER say “what have you got against the well-being of the living world? Why do we have to kill everything?”

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to LadyLifeGrows, I have published original research in several reviewed journals and academic textbooks:

1. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2007) Quantification of climate sensitivity (invited paper), UK Quarterly Economic Bulletin.
2. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2007) Foreword (invited), in The Climate Caper, by Garth Paltridge, Connor Court, Sydney, ISBN 978-1-921421-25-9.
3. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2008) Climate sensitivity reconsidered (invited paper), Physics and Society 37:3, 6-19.
4. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2009) Let cool heads prevail (invited paper), J. Chartered Insur. Inst, London, April/May.
5. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2011) Global brightening and climate sensitivity (invited paper). In: Proceedings of the 42nd Annual International Seminars on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies, World Federation of Scientists (A. Zichichi and R. Ragaini, eds.), World Scientific, London.
6. Mörner, N.-A. (2011), Sea level is not rising [Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, ed.], Centre for Democracy and Independence, London.
7. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2011) Global brightening and climate sensitivity (invited paper), In: Evidence-Based Climate Science (D. Easterbrook, ed.).
8. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2013) Political science: drawbacks of apriorism in intergovernmental climatology (invited paper), Energy & Envir. 25:6&7, 1177-1204.
9. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2013) Is CO2 mitigation cost-effective? (invited paper) in: Proceedings of the 45th Annual International Seminar on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies, World Federation of Scientists (A. Zichichi and R. Ragaini, eds.), World Scientific, London, 167-185 (2013), ISBN 978 981 4531 77 1.
10. Legates, D.R., W.W.-H. Soon, Briggs, & C.W. Monckton of Brenchley, (2013) Climate consensus and misinformation: a rejoinder to “Agnotology Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change”, Sci. Educ., doi:10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9.
11. IPCC (2013), Fifth Assessment Report: Expert reviewer.
12. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2014) Our influence on sea level is negligible (invited paper), Coordinates Journal of Marine Navigation, November.
13. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher, W.W.-H. Soon, D.R. Legates, & W.M. Briggs (2015) Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple model. Science Bulletin, 60, 122-135, doi:10.1007/s11434-014-0699-2.
14. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2015) The temperature feedback problem (invited paper). Energy & Envir. 26:5, 829-840.
15. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2015) Resilience, not CO2 mitigation, is the imperative (invited paper), in Urban Water Reuse Handbook (J. Eslamian, ed.) [in press].
16. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher, W.W.-H. Soon, D.R. Legates, & W.M. Briggs, (2015) Keeping it simple: the value of an irreducibly simple climate model. Science Bulletin 60:1378-1390, doi:10.1007/s11434-015-0856-2
17. Soon, W.W-H, & Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2015) Disinvestment? Schmisinvestment! Coal, oil and gas are the best guarantors of life, liberty and happiness. In: The Illiberal Movement to Turn a Generation Against Fossil Fuels, Rachelle Peterson [Ed.], National Association of Scholars, Washington DC
18. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2015) The Thermageddon cult strikes again. In: Planetary Influence on the Sun and the Earth, and a Modern Book-Burning, N-A Mörner and R. Tattersall [Eds.], Nova Sci. Publ., 2015.
19. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2015) What is science and what is not? In: Planetary Influence on the Sun and the Earth, and a Modern Book-Burning, N-A Mörner and R. Tattersall [Eds.], Nova Sci. Publ., 2015.
20. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher (2017) Foreword (invited) in Inconvenient Facts, by Gregory Wrightstone.
21. Monckton of Brenchley, Christopher, Soon W.W-H, Legates DN, Briggs WM, Limburg M, Henney A, Whitfield J, Morrison J (2018) Feedbacks and climate sensitivity [currently under peer review].

• Warren says:

How about as soon as there’s sufficient funds available to proceed with the Patent applications?

36. jim hogg says:

Effectively one claim of settled climate science has been exchanged for another. Each is as hubristic as the other. I’m guessing that the future won’t comply with either plan/claim/projection and we won’t be able to work out why, or, if it does, by chance, we’ll still not know why. It’s certainly worth having a crack at making sense of it, but humility that matches our ignorance would be welcome.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Hogg is, in effect, arguing that all who prove – say – the theorem of Pythagoras are hubristic. Nonsense. We have demonstrated a significant error in official climatology’s definition of temperature feedback; we have quantified its effect; and, under the assumptions and caveats given in our paper, some of which are in the head posting, we have shown that global warming will be small, slow, harmless and net-beneficial. We have set out our working in full in the paper and quite extensively in these columns. If Mr Hogg has any particular scientific challenge to our conclusions, let him state it. Otherwise, his comment is mere yah-boo and, therefore, valueless.

37. KevinK says:

Oh, good grief, your government lab test rig is a perf board with an op-amp and some resistors ? Holy Shades of Radio Shack ™……

Really, this is showing what exactly ?

Proper experimental procedure would be to also include full measurements of the voltage and currents flowing through those little red and black “knob thingies” on the right side of your test rig.

Me suspects those are the connections to the EXTERNAL POWER SUPPLY which enables the amplifier which produces the GAIN. Me further suspects that the energy (time multiplied by voltage multiplied by current) coming from those “knob thingies” are the real source of your “system gain” and or “feedback”.

Proper experimental procedure would be to disconnect any wires attached to those “knob thingies” and repeat your experiments. Then report all results. For reference your diagrams explaining your find DO NOT SHOW any red and black “knob thingies” (technically known in the trade as terminal posts, but I enjoy writing knob thingies, probably a little leftover teenage boy in me).

Again, as a degreed electrical engineer with many circuits using feedback (analog in the old days but mostly done in the digital domain these days) under my belt; THE BODE FEEDBACK EQUATIONS ARE NOT APPLICABLE TO A SYSTEM WITHOUT GAIN PROVIDED FROM AN EXTERNAL ENERGY SOURCE.

Feel free to make an “official government lab test rig” without the power supply (red and black thingies, but I repeat myself) and report your results.

Also, please identify which government lab made this, under what funding source and with what contract in place. I work some on “G” work and we have to account for every nut and washer we buy, who paid for these parts ?

Also, you assert quite strongly that the Bode Feedback Equations apply to other Natural Systems, please provide some examples ?

Does a heavy rain shower produce positive feedback which produces even more rain and so on ?

Or does it simply rain until the accumulated moisture in the atmosphere has reached ground level ?

I appreciate your attempts to “lessen the impact” of the climate scientist’s predictions while trying to appear all “sciency”, but this is a very poor approach and will just provide more “mud” for the official climate science community to throw at the “deniers”. “Stupid deniers, they used Radio Shack ™ parts while we used an expensive computer and years of programming”…..

Cheers, KevinK

• Warren says:

KevinK our lab and every electronics consultant we deal with uses the progression schematic/breadboard/perfboard.
You clearly don’t understand the purpose of the device and the stability requirements.
What are you so worried about anyway?
Your comment has an air of desperation . . .

• KevinK says:

Warren, we stopped using perf boards back in the 1980’s. We do; schematic -> circuit board (sometimes many many layers) -> revisions -> product (sometimes in orbit above the Earth).

You need to get some better electronic consultants, perfboards, really ????

If you built this “test rig” that “simulates” the atmosphere you should be ashamed of yourself.

Again, turn off your power supply and show us the “gain factor” ??????

Purpose and stability; lets see you are trying to demonstrate the Bode Equations on essentially direct current signals. There are no significant stability requirements, you are far below the gain and phase margin requirements. You are trying to use an externally powered amplifier to show that the atmosphere acts like an op amp with the power supply turned off. EXCEPT you need the power supply turned ON to make your experiment work.

A “Radio Shack ™” high school science fair experiment just makes you all look very very foolish….

But as they said in the movie; “stupid is as stupid does”.

If you all want to compound the stupidity shown by the climate scientists by showing that you are “only half as stupid” by all means enjoy yourselves…..

The BODE FEEDBACK EQUATIONS DO NOT APPLY TO THE CLIMATE, and nothing shown so far disproves that. The fact that peer reviewed papers “claim” these equations apply does not make it so.

But if you want to “fight” the scary “drowning polar bear” graphics with equally inaccurate “Bode Feedback Equations” graphics have at it…. You will simply look like another person that claims to “understand” the climate with enough hubris to “believe” they (and only they) can explain it.

Also, Warren, do you care to identify which government lab built this high school science fair project “test rig” that simulates the climate ? I do on occasion interact with government labs to perform tasks, I sure want to avoid you all.

Have you any firm examples where the BODE EQUATIONS apply to a natural system ?

Boulders rolling down hill perhaps ? Waves crashing on a beach ? Predator/Prey population dynamics ?

Any possibly arguable examples where the Bode Equations might possibly apply ?

Rainbows ? Unicorn horn growth versus temperature ? Anything come to mind ???

You all have done nothing but make the folks that are (rightfully) suspect of the Radiative Greenhouse Effect HYPOTHESIS look like complete “nutters” and added yourselves to the “nutters” list.

Hey, my local high school is having a science fair, want to stop by with your perf-board “model” of the climate ?

Cheers, Kevin

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

KevinK continues to imagine, contrary to the scientific literature, that the Bode system-gain equation is inapplicable to any dynamical system except an electronic circuit. In this he is simply incorrect, and at odds with the learned literature, and yet without having offered anything recognizable as a proof of his assertion or as a disproof of that literature.

KevinK, like all who have small minds and large mouths, is utterly incapable of comprehending the value of simplicity, wherever simplicity is possible. Our test rigs were simple because the phenomenon we were testing is simple. We did not really need to build the rigs at all, but we did so in order to verify that we had understood the relevant theory. The test rigs were just one element in the verification process that is essential in any proper scientific inquiry.

KevinK seems to know nothing at all about even the most elementary feedback amplifier circuit. The power supply is fed to the input. It is climatology, not we, that switched off the power supply by subtracting the solar-driven emission temperature from the feedback loop. Perhaps he should read the head posting and then take an elementary course in feedback theory before trying to comment here again. He does not impress.

• Greg F says:

Thank you Kevin.

The BODE FEEDBACK EQUATIONS DO NOT APPLY TO THE CLIMATE

Let me add the Bode feedback equations do not apply to any system that doesn’t have an active element. The greenhouse effect is totally passive. The fundamental mistake was using Bode to begin with. This whole thing is so totally wrong.

The “lab” test rig looks like something out of the 80’s. Surprised they still make DIP packages. You would be hard pressed to find any electronics today with DIP packages. In a socket no less. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. The sad part is there are prototype PCB houses that specialize in small runs. I just checked and a 50 mm x 50 mm double sided board (min quantity 5) are $5 per piece. So for$25 you could have something that doesn’t look like a high school project.

For an electrical engineer ‘feedback’ has a very specific meaning. There can be no feedback in a passive system which is what the greenhouse effect is. Climate science has simply hijacked the terminology and inappropriately used the Bode feedback equations.

• Theo says:

Greg and Chris M of B,

It’s possible that the more honest and alert among the climate consensus Team have noticed their grave error. Which is why the latest run of GIGO models claim not to assume anything, but to derive all from first physical principles.

But that’s a blatant ruse, in any case physically impossible in the present infantile state of our climatological knowledge and computational power.

All GCMs ultimately rely upon the false assumption exposed by Chris’ team.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Theo, the value of the system-gain equation is that it provides a simple method of verifying whether the models’ bottom-up approach, attempting to quantify numerous individual feedbacks none of which can be measured or distinguished by measurement or observation from the others or even from the forcings that triggered them, is producing credible answers. We find that the models’ method, which is self-evidently prone to very large uncertainty, is proving inadequate, in that equilibrium sensitivities considerably above any realistic value are being predicted.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

in response to Greg F, it is simply incorrect to state, even if one shouts it in capital letters, that the Bode system-gain equation does not apply to the climate. The peer-reviewed literature is quite clear that it does apply. A mere screaming assertion that it does not apply does not constitute a respectable refutation.

Feedback can respond to the input signal regardless of whether there is a gain block. While the sun is shining, there will be an input signal. So the system is not passive but active.

Nor is it correct to describe the greenhouse effect as passive. It inhibits the radiation of energy to space, retaining it in the atmosphere-ocean system and thereby warming that system.

However, let us suppose ad argumentum (and per impossibile) that feedback does not apply to the climate. In that event, equilibrium sensitivity will be little different from the value we have derived: for our conclusion is that, though feedbacks operate, they make very little difference to equilibrium sensitivity under modern conditions.

• Greg F says:

it is simply incorrect to state, even if one shouts it in capital letters, that the Bode system-gain equation does not apply to the climate. The peer-reviewed literature is quite clear that it does apply.

The “peer pal review” literature is simply wrong. There is no gain block in a passive system.

Feedback can respond to the input signal regardless of whether there is a gain block.

No it can not. The gain block is a fundamental element of the Bode feedback model.

While the sun is shining, there will be an input signal. So the system is not passive but active.

The sun has no effect on the transfer function and is therefore irrelevant as the transfer function is independent of the input.

Nor is it correct to describe the greenhouse effect as passive.

There is no gain block it is therefore passive. To claim otherwise is a violation of conservation of energy.

It inhibits the radiation of energy to space, retaining it in the atmosphere-ocean system and thereby warming that system.

There is a long history of using electrical analogies for mechanical, acoustical, and thermal systems. For thermal systems the electrical analogies are:

Voltage = delta T
Current = heat flow
Resistance = thermal resistance
Capacitor = thermal capacitance

To model energy retained in the “atmosphere-ocean system” the capacitor is the equivalent electrical analogy. The rate at which energy enters and leaves the system would be modeled by the electrically analog current which would be determined by the resistance.

A simple passive model of the greenhouse effect would include 2 variable resistors and a capacitor. If we imagine 3 nodes A, B, and C with the elements connected as follows:

A – Input from the sun (Voltage) connected to one terminal on one of the resistors (R1)
B – One terminal of each of the 3 elements with R2 representing the resistance to the flow of energy out of the system (greenhouse effect).
C – The second terminal of the second resistor (R2) and the capacitor.

Energy would enter the system through R1 and charge the capacitor while R2 would represent the energy flowing out of the system as long wave radiation. The voltage across the 2 resistors will determine the current (heat flow) in and out of the system. Since R2 controls the heat flow out of the system an increase in the greenhouse effect would be modeled by an increase in the value of R2. The increase in the value of R2 would result in an increase in the voltage across the capacitor until it reached equilibrium.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Greg F continues to make assertions that have been disproven a) in repeated scientific papers; b) by our two test rigs; c) by elementary theoretical considerations.

Let us enumerate his latest errors.

1. Greg F says there is no gain block in a passive system. But the climate is an active system. Like it or not, there is an input signal, which at the outset is the emission temperature provided by the Sun in the absence of any non-condensing greenhouse gases. To this input signal we add the warming caused by the presence of the pre-industrial gases, and then the warming caused by the industrial-era gases. Using this method, the gain block may be set to unity without loss of generality. Now, we know the equilibrium temperature for 1850 because it was measured, and we can infer the equilibrium temperature for 2011 after allowing for the mid-range estimate of the radiative imbalance. In 1850 and again in 2011, we can then take the ratio of the equilibrium temperature to the reference temperature, and that is the system-gain factor. All of this is in every material respect consistent with the Bode system-gain equation.

2. Greg F says the gain block is essential to the Bode equation and that, therefore, feedback cannot respond to the input signal unless there is also a gain present. This is arrant nonsense. We built our own test rig to make sure of this point,and then we commissioned a government laboratory to do the same, because we knew feedback theory is counterintuitive and that people are prone to get it wrong. We tested whether feedback responds to the input signal in the absence of a gain block by setting the value of that block to unity, and the predicted feedback response was duly measured at the output node. It should be self-evident even to the meanest intelligence that if the gain block will work at a gain of 1.00001 it will also work at a gain of 1.0000. There is nothing special in the Bode system-gain equation that stops the feedback loop from working if the gain block is set to unity, now, is there?

3. Greg says the transfer function is independent of the input. For heaven’s sake, do the math. If the output exceeds the input and the gain block is set to 1, then a feedback response is present and, therefore, the feedback block has a nonzero value.

4. Greg proposes a feedback amplifier circuit. Let him build one, then, and he will find that he has very greatly misunderstood how feedback amplifier circuits operate.

• Greg F says:

But the climate is an active system.

No it is not. The only significant active element is the sun. There are no significant sources of energy in the climate system. Repeating this will not make it true.

Greg F says the gain block is essential to the Bode equation and that, therefore, feedback cannot respond to the input signal unless there is also a gain present.

The first part is correct, the second part is your conclusion based on ignorance which you expose with the following:

It should be self-evident even to the meanest intelligence that if the gain block will work at a gain of 1.00001 it will also work at a gain of 1.0000. There is nothing special in the Bode system-gain equation that stops the feedback loop from working if the gain block is set to unity, now, is there?

And I never said it would not work with a gain of 1. What I did say is the gain block is an active element. It is an element that is capable of adding energy to the system. A gain of 1 is nothing special, typically called a voltage follower. An analog audio mixer circuit will typically have a gain of less than one. Bode still applies. The issue you don’t seem to grasp is there is no active element in the climate system that can be represented by the gain block.

I posted the generally accepted analog’s for modeling thermal systems. I provided an example showing each element and its thermal analog. You failed to comment at all. Further, you made no attempt to justify the gain block nor identify its equivalent analog.

Greg proposes a feedback amplifier circuit. Let him build one, then, and he will find that he has very greatly misunderstood how feedback amplifier circuits operate.

I never proposed a feedback amplifier circuit. I did propose a passive model and identified the elements of the model which you dutifully ignored.

I have been designing amplifier circuits since the 70’s. Your insult is duly noted. At this point I am going to request you publish the full schematic including values for your “test rigs”.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Greg is plainly hopelessly out of his depth. The method we have followed, whether he is capable of understanding it or not, is mainstream control theory. Every step of the argument is demonstrated formally in our paper, leaving no room for doubt. Furthermore, we built not one but two test rigs, one of them at a government laboratory, to confirm that we had understood the theory correctly. And that’s that.

• Greg F says:

Greg is plainly hopelessly out of his depth.

That is all you got. Bluster is not an argument. Now publish the full schematic including values for your “test rigs”.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The full details of our test rigs will appear as an appendix to our paper when it is published in due course.

Greg, who does not write at all clearly, seems to be saying that greenhouse-gas forcing does not constitute what he calls an “active element” in the climatic feedback-amplifier “circuit”. I do not propose to get into the tedious arguments about whether CO2 etc. cause forcings. They do – get over it. And the temperature response to those forcings is added to the emission temperature to give the input or reference temperature. I fail to see why the solar emission temperature and the temperature caused by greenhouse-gas forcings should be regarded as different animals – one active, the other passive.

• Greg F says:

The full details of our test rigs will appear as an appendix to our paper when it is published in due course.

As I expected you will hide what you did. Mann would be so proud of you.

I fail to see why the solar emission temperature and the temperature caused by greenhouse-gas forcings should be regarded as different animals – one active, the other passive.

That is the problem. You “fail to see” despite every EE telling you you’re wrong.

Now publish the full schematic including values for your “test rigs”.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Greg F is descending into mere spite. As I have already explained, the full details of our test rigs will appear as an appendix to our paper when it is published in due course. We are under no obligation to publish those details until then. Since the rigs were designed by a control engineer and by a government laboratory respectively, they were perfectly adequate for the simple purpose for which they were designed.

And we have the benefit of a professor of applied control theory, two control engineers and a nuclear engineer, all of whom – contrary to Greg F’s silly assertion that no engineers agree with us – are in agreement with our approach. Indeed, even if Greg F had read no more than the first comment in this thread, he would see that our analysis is supported by specialists in the field who are willing to state their agreement with us here. He had no more basis, therefore, for his assertion that no engineer supports us than for his assertion that emission temperature is “active” while any change in that temperature is “passive”.

In any event, the question whether directly-forced warming from greenhouse gases is “active” or “passive” is more a question for climatology than for control theory. Since Greg F is quite unable to give any explanation of why the emission temperature and the directly-forced warming from greenhouse gases should be given distinct treatment as inputs to the feedback loop, he will just have to put up with the fact that his betters in the field – including a professor who is probably the world’s foremost specialist on the application of feedback theory to climate, and who kindly acted as one of our pre-submission reviewers – consider that we are correct in our interpretation.

• Greg F says:

Greg F is descending into mere spite. As I have already explained, the full details of our test rigs will appear as an appendix to our paper when it is published in due course.

You and I know the chance of you getting this published is close to zero. How convenient. Never published, never seen.

Quite frankly I am sick of your dubious appeals to authority. Now publish the full schematic including values for your “test rigs”.

• Greg F says:

In any event, the question whether directly-forced warming from greenhouse gases is “active” or “passive” is more a question for climatology than for control theory.

No, it is proof you don’t even understand what the words mean.

1. Active – can add energy.
2. Passive – cannot add energy.

Greenhouse gases do not add energy, they act to slow the rate of energy transfer. Therefore the greenhouse effect is passive.

• Yes this is the exact analogy used in my Transport of Heat and Mass class senior year at the glorious University of Michigan ME course. I made a similar comment to LMOB a month ago.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

KevinK seems to know very little about feedback theory, and still less about civilized scientific discourse.

To deal with the feedback theory first, KevinK says, in childish capitals, that “the Bode feedback equations are not applicable to a system without gain provided from an external energy source”. In reality, however, the gain block may be set to any desired value. If it works at a gain of 1.0001, it will work at a gain of 1.0000 (which effectively removes the gain block). And there is nothing to stop us from simply adding any change in the input signal to that signal before it passes to the summative node, instead of representing it by a gain block. This point has already been explained to KevinK in a previous thread, but he appears not to have built an electronic circuit to test these matters before pontificating inaccurately about them.

KevinK also seems to have some difficulty in understanding what a temperature feedback is. I refer him to the documents of the IPCC, though he should note that its definition of “climate feedback” is erroneously restrictive. And he has a further difficulty in understanding that feedback theory applies to all feedback-moderated dynamical systems. He may like to read Roe (2009), or Bony (2006), or Bates (2007, 2016).

Next, the civilized discourse. KevinK has not read the government laboratory’s report, yet he makes various assertions about the methodology that would only have been appropriate if he had read the report. His attitude is neither civilized nor scientific. Impertinently, he asks how much the test rig cost and who paid for it. Though that is none of his business, he may like to know that the government in question paid for it, because it agreed to forego its fee as long as I did not use its name. It did the research without knowing that the subject was climatology and, when I told it that the climate was the topic, it decided it did not want its name used.

Finally, KevinK is needlessly impolite. His rudeness weakens an already very weak case. Let him learn some manners, as well as some linear systems theory and some elementary climatology, before he posts again here.

• Bob Weber says:

THE BODE FEEDBACK EQUATIONS ARE NOT APPLICABLE TO A SYSTEM WITHOUT GAIN PROVIDED FROM AN EXTERNAL ENERGY SOURCE.

Thank you Kevin for your outstanding common sense.

Bob Weber

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Weber is, as usual, simply wrong. The Bode system-gain equation requires an input signal, a gain block, a feedback block and an output signal. The input signal is, at the outset, the emission temperature from the Sun. The gain block may be set to unity if desired, removing it from the equation and simplifying the math, for one simply adds any additional warming to the emission temperature before passing it to the summative node. This makes no difference to the math.

Now, if we know the input signal and the output signal at any chosen time, we may at once deduce the system-gain factor by taking the ratio of the latter to the former. All of this is fully consistent with Bode. After all, we have the benefit of assistance from two control engineers and a professor of control theory, so making false assertions here about the feedback loop will not assist Mr Weber. He is simply insufficiently informed.

• Bob Weber says:

is, as usual, simply wrong.

I see no evidence that you’ve ever shown me I was wrong before, and invoking control engineers and so on is an appeal to authority, not an argument.

for one simply adds any additional warming to the emission temperature before passing it to the summative node.

This is wrong because there is no positive feedback gain to the sun’s energy.

The sun’s energy can only be reflected or absorbed. The absorbed solar energy in the ocean emerges after the sunlight is converted to heat at depth – it’s emergence to the air is delayed. The emergent heat, via evaporation and OLR, heats the air.

This emergent heat is not a positive feedback, as no more net energy can leave than is originally delivered by the sun a few days, weeks, months, or years earlier. The ridiculous RGE idea is a misappropriation of this energy that gets misattributed to atmospheric CO2.

You cannot provide a mechanism for ocean warming from CO2. It’s not just that it’s such a puny portion of the air, but even if all 0.04% of the atmosphere’s CO2 was hovering just above the ocean it would make no difference. What you’re inferring is the even tinier fraction of total CO2 that is near the ocean surface can transfer all the heat necessary for ocean warming. I say there is no evidence for that, and plenty of evidence variable solar energy is doing the warming.

This is what I mean about you not understanding the natural world, and no number of downvotes is going to change that.

There is no positive feedback in an open dissipative system. NONE. No amount of dressing it up or groupthink will change that.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Weber continues to struggle with elementary concepts of feedback network analysis. To some extent I sympathize, for I had to struggle to learn the main points. Fortunately, I have three able instructors as co-authors, and they keep me straight.

It is simply incorrect for Mr Weber to assert that there is no positive feedback response to the Sun’s energy. Read the literature rather than merely making stuff up. Lacis et al. (2010) choose an albedo that implies an emission temperature of 243.25 K, yet they find that the reference temperature before accounting for the non-condensing greenhouse gases is 252 K. The difference of 8.75 K – small because at that stage there was little water vapor in the atmosphere – is attributable to feedback.

Once the non-condensing greenhouse gases are added, the directly-forced warming of around a further 8.9 K is enough to melt the great ice-sheets. Accordingly, a large positive feedback response is generated, none of which would occur unless the Sun were shining.

Mr Weber has not stated what qualifications he has to pontificate on feedbacks. Our professor of applied control theory, however, is exceptionally well qualified. It is his analysis that we are using in our paper.

Recall that we built not one but two test rigs, one of them at a government laboratory of more than usual competence. Both rigs demonstrated that, even where the value of the gain block was set to unity, effectively removing it, the feedback response was exactly as the Bode system-gain equation would lead us to believe it should be.

Mr Weber should cease to preach at me and by implication my co-authors, for it is he who is in error. Let him build a test rig and see for himself. Or let him simply set the gain block to unity in the Bode system-gain equation but set the input signal and the feedback block to nonzero values, and then calculate the output signal. It is really as simple as that.

• Bob Weber says:

You are simply incapable of thinking straight about the climate.

Everything about the water cycle is solar driven first. Calling solar driven water vapor a positive feedback is tantamount to double counting the solar input.

I’m a degreed electrical engineer as I told you before, with a specialty in circuits and systems, and I have a business degree. I designed electrical power supplies, feedback controlled analog audio amplifiers and filters, circuit boards, and heat sinks for over 15 years. I have also designed and constructed complete business financial plans from scratch. On top of that I’m a mechanic and halfway decent carpenter when need be.

I will continue to preach to you as you need it, badly.

I have never seen an article writer here be so aggressively rude and condescending in the face of rejection. You and your team have been rejected by a sizeable part of the readership today. Learn from it.

There is no positive feedback on earth from solar energy. Everything called a feedback is solar energy derived first, and is always negative.

Clouds via water vapor are a negative feedback restricting sunlight.

Your preaching to me about applying positive feedback(s) to an open system is a sick joke.

• Bob Weber says:

FYI the only control system remotely pertinent to the climate is the sun-ocean relationship. I’ve done the heavy lifting establishing the decadal scale solar-ocean warming/cooling threshold, now working on the main differential equation, a control equation of sorts – with no feedbacks:

https://s20.postimg.cc/bydip3d4t/Figure_16_SC24_v_SST.jpg

• Jim Gorman says:

In another article about this I made the comment that I am not convinced that a feedback system is the correct ‘system’ to use. Your mention of a heat sink is very pertinent.

I understand Lord Moncton’s use of the feedback system in order to show how wrong traditional climate science is. However, I also think the entire use of feedback is misplaced.

Think of a gain block with a gain of one. The signal input (S) becomes the output (O). Now we subtract a feedback signal (F) from the output. What is the resultant output signal? It is (S-F).

Now let’s connect that feedback signal ‘F’ to the input in phase. The input is then ( S+F) and what is the output? It is ‘S’. (S+F-F). If F is fed back 180 degrees out of phase the output would be S-2F.

Now how do you get a gain higher than 1? You must have an external power source greater than the input or the input signal is smaller than the power supply by using the power supply to bias the input which leaves some headroom for actually amplifying the signal. In this case the input would be S=P-B.

As I stated earlier, this seems to be more a question of thermodynamics and should be modeled by a simple heat sink or insulation calculations (ok, maybe not so simple).

• Jim Gorman says:

I forgot to say that since CO2 is so much smaller than water vapor it is like putting a piece of paper along with 24 inches of fiberglass insulation. Which has a bigger effect?

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Gorman is entitled to his view that official climatology is wrong to use feedback, but we have accepted all of official climatology except what we can prove to be erroneous. We have the benefit of advice from a professor of control theory, two control engineers and a government laboratory.

As carefully explained in the head posting, with very clear diagrams, one can set the gain block to unity, thereby removing it, and then simply increase the reference or input signal to take account of the warming provided by greenhouse gases. All of this has been very carefully tested, and seems to us to be incontestable. If Mr Gorman wishes to contest it, then he will be welcome to write and submit for peer review an attempt at a riposte to our paper when it is eventually published.

• Jim Gorman says:

I’m not arguing with your method of proving current climate science incorrect. However, please remember that proving current theories incorrect does not prove that your methods are correct. Lots of work to be done here and “settled” science isn’t.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Gorman appears not to realize that we have proven, and proven definitively and beyond all argument, that feedback processes respond not only to some arbitrary change in the input signal but also to the entire input signal. Once that is accepted, as it must be, the rest of our argument follows. It is formally demonstrated every step of the way.

We have, of course, accepted for the sake of argument all of official climatology except what we can disprove. Subject to that caveat, our result is 95.4% certain to represent the equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2. Mr Gorman is, of course, free to write his own papers questioning any aspect he likes of official climatology, but, even if official climatology is wrong in respects other than that which we have identified, demonstrated, quantified and corrected, it is most unlikely that correcting any further error on its part would make much difference in policy terms. The scare is over.

38. Theo says:

Lord Christopher,

I’ve searched in vain for the names of your co-authors. Would you please be kind enough as to list them and their affiliations, as they will appear if and when your joint paper be published.

Thanks!

39. Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy says:

It is another time-pass article with zero result. He tries to mis-use the word “climatology” to build something which the author himself does not understand.

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Dr Reddy does not offer any scientific arguments, so it is not possible for me to respond to him. In English, the word “climatology” is taken to mean the study of the climate. That, like it or not, is what the head posting is about. I understand our argument, and so do our co-authors, but I am not sure that Dr Reddy understands it.

• John Endicott says:

Dr. R, if Lord M “does not understand” than by all means explain what exactly you are claiming he doesn’t understand and/or where exactly his article misses the boat here (IE back up your claims). Or are you afraid that all who read your “explanation” will quickly come to the realization that it is you that fails to understand?

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Most grateful to Mr Endicott for his support. One wishes that those who want to criticize would at least go to the trouble of saying what it is that they criticize and why, rather than indulging in mere Mosherian yah-boo.

40. Timo Soren says:

I so enjoy it.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Manyt thanks to Mr Soren for his kind comment. Keep watching this column for updates.

41. Willis Eschenbach says:

Lord Monckton said:

In reality, absolute emission temperature in 1850 with no non-condensing greenhouse gases would have been 243.3 K …

So now we know, not just the absolute temperature in 1850, but what that 1850 temperature would have been without GHGs, to the nearest tenth of a degree?

w.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Eschenbach, let’s just do the math. Lacis+ (2010) ran a GCM to deduce the albedo in the absence of non-condensing greenhouse gases. They reckoned it was 0.418, compared with today’s 0.298. Assuming today’s insolation of 1364.625 W/m^2, the fundamental equation of radiative transfer gives the emission temperature of 243.25 K.

Of course, one could make a number of other assumptions. One could start with Ray Pierrehumbert’s iceball Earth, with albedo 0.66, for instance. One could vary the insolation. One could correct climatology’s error in not allowing for Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals. But, on the stated assumptions, the emission temperature is 243.25 K.

Even quite large variations either side of this value do not greatly affect equilibrium sensitivity. For the main point, strangely avoided by Mr Eschenbach, is that the emission temperature is large and the anthropogenic perturbation is very small in comparison.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Christopher, thanks for your reply. I see I wasn’t clear. Let me try again.

In 2010, Lacis ran the notoriously inaccurate and simplistic GISS Model E GCM to see what would happen without non-condensing GHGs. They got answers … and?

The problem is, given the very poor track record of the GCMs in simulating the actual earth, how large are the uncertainties in simulating some imaginary earth in 1850, with an imaginary atmosphere that has never been seen on earth?

I hold that the uncertainties are both very large and that they are unknown.

As a result, it is a scientific bridge too far to claim that their answer gives a temperature of “243.25K”. We most likely don’t know the answer to within 10K, much less a hundredth of a K.

And that was my only point. You are giving numbers based on a poor GCM, numbers with far too many significant figures, and without providing any uncertainty estimates, and the bad news is … that ain’t science.

Finally, I take umbrage at your claim that I am “strangely avoiding” your main point. I am merely indicating one specific problem with your claims. I do not “avoid” a damn thing, and I’m surprised that you accuse me of such underhanded behavior.

w.

• Theo says:

Willis,

IMO it should be obvious that the starting reference temperature hardly matters.

Secondly, I would have thought it equally obvious that it doesn’t matter how realistic any of the numbers involved are. The genius of Chris, et al is that they accept as given the garbage of IPCC, then hoist the Commie bastards by their own smelly petard.

In the interests of full disclosure, my first full time job was killing SE Asian Communists, which worthy work you shirked, if I’m not mistaken.

(I have deleted many of your UNAPPROVED comments that were replies to Eschenbauch, because of over the top name calling and uncivil tone) MOD

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Theo, you decided to go halfway around the world to kill people who never did you any harm. You killing them did NOT stop them. My friends, who also made your mistake, died … and that didn’t stop them either. Charles de Gaulle told Kennedy he was mad to get into a land war in Asia, and he was right. It was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time against the wrong people, and guess what?

(Snipped out the unnecessary section as it was getting too personal, promoting more angry replies) MOD

It is also a measure of the weakness of your scientific arguments that you even think you have to bring it up. Stick to the science, this nonsense is not doing your reputation any good at all. It merely points out that you feel guilty for what you did. Otherwise, you wouldn’t feel the need to boast about it.

w.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

GOOD HEAVENS, THEO, TAKE A PROZAC, YOU’RE GONNA BUST A BLOOD VESSEL! None of this is important enough to destroy your health as you are doing by allowing your guilt to drive you into this bizarre attack mode.

Here’s the thing of import here. When a man starts throwing mud as you are doing, it’s a sure sign that he’s out of scientific arguments. Get back to the science and I’m glad to discuss it. But I’ll pass on replying to your snarling nastiness …

w.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Theo, I’ll just pass on your nasty, untrue accusations … my daddy told me, “Son, never wrestle with a pig. You’ll just get dirty, and the pig enjoys it”.

w.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Rave on, amigo, you’re destroying your reputation, not mine …

w.

• Theo says:

Mods,

If in your infinite wisdom you chose to support Willis’ repulsive suggestion that my 58,000 comrades who died to stem the Communist tide in SE Asia were simpleton dupes or tools of Yankee imperialism, then I’ll be proud never to comment on this pro-communist, creationist, antiscientific blog again.

(Snipped out the long off topic rant) MOD

• Theo says:

Mods,

The more I think about it, the more ticked I am, to put it mildly.

The deserter Willis pathetically tries to make himself some kind of noble hero because he imagines, without ever having been in country, that the North Vietnamese Communists were the good guys. Same as he tries to come across as the opponent of the obvious fact that the sun is the main driver of Earth’s climate.

Disgusting and revolting. Obviously the coward has never met any refugees from the SE Asian Communists. It’s all about justifying his cowardice.

Please ban me if you support this scumbag apologist for mass murderers.

In fact, the fact that you even allow the coward to spew such lies makes me want never to comment here again.

So I won’t.

(The problem YOU have is that you went well off topic with your military service and history, repeatedly denigrate Willis with name calling. Let this go, get back on topic) MOD

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Let us not wander off topic into the Vietnam war. Many servicemen gallantly, though ultimately unsuccessfully, opposed the invasion of South Vietnam by the Communists from the North.

Let us all work towards replacing totalitarian rule by democracy wherever possible, for no democracy in the modern sense is likely to go to war against any other such democracy.

And let us stick to the topic here rather than hurling insults at each other on an unrelated and painful subject that is extraneous to the climate debate.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Thank you Christopher, well said.

w.

• Tom Abbott says:

Theo, I’m a Vietnam veteran, too. Don’t let one person who obviously doesn’t know what he is talking about with regard to the Vietnam war, get you upset. In the proper forum, I would be more than happy to take your side and argue every aspect of the Vietnam war with our detractors, but this is not the proper forum.

I hope you will reconsider and continue posting as you add a lot to the conversation.

Btw, as a final shot, the U.S. military won the military battle in South Vietnam in 1973.

South Vietnam fell (1975) two years *after* all U.S. combat troops had left the country under the Paris Peace Agreement, when the Democrats in Congress sold South Vietnam down the communist river by cutting their monetary aid to the bone and refusing to come to their aid when North Vietnam broke the peace treaty (which the U.S. was morally and legally obligated by the treaty to do).

We had South Vietnam secured and the Democrats threw it all away. Like they did in Iraq.

The U.S. had the war in Iraq won, the country subdued and then Barack Obama and the Democrats took over and everything went to hell because of their inability to understand how, when and why to defend U.S. interests.

Democrats should *never* be in charge of national security. They fail every time.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

MOD, thanks for the snip. I fear I responded too strongly to Theo’s totally off-topic rant about a far-away long-ago war which wounded us all.

w.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The emission temperature, under the assumptions stated in the head posting, is 243.25 K. However, the assumptions may be wrong. However, even a very wide departure from the value derived from Lacis’ paper has remarkably little effect on equilibrium sensitivity. In our paper we varied the emission temperature by 5% up or down from 243.25 K, but this variation made little difference to equilibrium sensitivity, which, to 2 sigma confidence following a 30,000-trial Monte Carlo simulation, fell on 1.17 [1.08, 1.25] K.

I also ran an experiment assuming an iceball Earth of albedo 0.66, the highest in the literature (Pierrehumbert 2011). Even then, Charney sensitivity was only about 1.5 K. It really doesn’t make very much difference once the calculation is done correctly, using the absolute-value system-gain equation rather than the delta equation. That is the main point, which is why the precise value of the emission temperature does not matter much to our calculation. We had to start somewhere, though, and we had to find a source that would be accepted by the usual suspects, and Lacis was that source, and the emission temperature deducible from that source, under the stated conditions is – like it or not – 243.25 K.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Lord M, thanks again for your comment. Let me explain why I’ve avoided commenting on the conclusions of either of your posts.

I think that the fundamental assertion of modern climate science is wrong. This is the idea that

∆T = lambda ∆F

where T is temperature, F is forcing, and lambda is assumed to be a constant called “climate sensitivity”.

I do NOT think that this is an accurate description of the climate. Instead, I think that lambda varies with temperature and other factors in a very complex way. See my post “The Cold Equations” for a discussion of only a few of the problems with their assertion.

As a result, I have absolutely no interest in debating the “exact value” of what I see as an imaginary constant. Since your work is all about how you think the climate sensitivity IS a constant but you think its value is different than what other people say … sorry, but I’ll have to pass. To me, such arguments are all based on a false premise, including yours, the premise that

∆T = lambda ∆F

Here’s an example. Turn on the furnace in a cold house. At first, the temperature starts changing as a function of the amount of gas burned. In this case, ∆T does indeed equal lambda ∆F.

BUT! Once the house temperature is up to the setting of the thermostat, the temperature becomes totally decoupled from the amount of gas burned. The temperature stays right around the thermostat setting while the amount of gas burned goes up and down based on other factors. And as a result, in that temperature range,

∆T ≠ lambda ∆F

This is what I say is happening with the earth … and as a result, I fear that I have no dog in your fight as to whether climate sensitivity is large or small. Instead, I think climate sensitivity is a meaningless number based on an incorrect understanding of how the climate works.

And this is why I am not, as you claim, “avoiding” your conclusions. I simply think that your conclusions are incorrect because they are based on a very fundamental misconception about how the climate system works … so I’ve just left that part of your argument alone.

My best regards to you,

w.

• Willis,
“Turn on the furnace in a cold house. At first, the temperature starts changing as a function of the amount of gas burned. In this case, ∆T does indeed equal lambda ∆F.”

This is why I think, when you write out this expression, you should write the meta stuff – what people say about it. Your example is right; under those circumstances λ is not constant. That is transient sensitivity, and you need to define various circumstances to make λ meaningful. There isn’t just a single number.

But the formula usually is used for equilibrium sensitivity. That corresponds to how warm your house will eventually be at the greater fuel rate (omitting the thermostat, which is a distraction). Lord M isn’t careful about this, but that is what ECS means. There is an assumption that other things are kept constant, as is usually required. And of course, that may not be achieved. But that is the theoretical construct.

Indeed, even then it may be that a satisfactory constant can’t be established to high accuracy. Climate scientists try, but few would claim success as of now, and few again would claim that success is certain in the future.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Eschenbach has misunderstood our method. We do not say that equilibrium sensitivity is a constant, for it obviously isn’t.

Based upon the data described in the head posting, we say that, under something like modern conditions (note well that stipulation), equilibrium sensitivity is demonstrablyu near-invariant and is considerably below the entire interval imagined in the climate models.

We make the assertion of near-invariance for the following reasons:

1. Using published data in the absolute-value system-gain equation, the system-gain factor or transfer function for 1850 is 1.13.
2. Using published data in the absolute-value equation, the system-gain factor for 2011 is still 1.13.
3. 1.13 is much the same as 1.13.
4. Using published data in the delta equation exclusively used in climatology, whose definition of feedback erroneously excludes the absolute-value equation, the system-gain factor for 2011 is 1.50.
5. However, there are far greater uncertainties in attempting to derive the deltas than the absolute values of reference and equilibrium temperature. For one thing, we do not know what fraction of recent warming was anthropogenic: only 0.3% of papers in the reviewed journals say most of it was manmade. For caution, we have assumed ad argumentum that all of it was manmade. Likewise, there is very large uncertainty as to the value of the radiative imbalance. And the net anthropogenic forcing is also very uncertain, and is influenced by a very large aerosol fudge-factor that has the effect of artificially depressing net anthropogenic forcing and correspondingly increasing apparent sensitivities. Therefore, we prefer the absolute-value equation that climatology does not currently recognize at all: and that equation indicates that equilibrium sensitivity is of order 1.2 K. It might be 1.5 K, but it is most unlikely to reach even the 2.1 K CMIP5 lower estimate.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Monckton of Brenchley said:

Mr Eschenbach has misunderstood our method. We do not say that equilibrium sensitivity is a constant, for it obviously isn’t.

Based upon the data described in the head posting, we say that, under something like modern conditions (note well that stipulation), equilibrium sensitivity is demonstrably near-invariant …

I guess I’m dense, but “near-invariant” seems to be pretty much the same as “constant”. However, Lord Monckton has misunderstood my point, likely my lack of clarity. Let me have another go at it.

My point is that I think “equilibrium sensitivity” is MEANINGLESS because, just like a house with a thermostat, the temperature of the Earth is disconnected from the forcing. In a house with a thermostat, the temperature is NOT a function of the forcing … and the same is true for the Earth. In other words,

∆T ≠ lambda ∆F

As a result, I find the arguments about the exact value of the “near-invariant” equilibrium sensitivity “lambda” (including Lord Monckton’s) to be arguments about angels dancing on the head of a pin.

Best to all, including of course the irrepressible and always interesting Lord M …

w.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Eschenbach is being uncharacteristically obtuse. At present, IPCC et hoc genus omne imagine that the feedback system-gain factor relevant at the time when the great ice-sheets were melting – i.e. 4.0, if Lacis+ 2010 are to be believed, is applicable to the present. It is we who acknowledge that the system-gain factor is inconstant over geological time, and they who are trying to persuade the world that the system-gain factor that applied when the ice-sheets were melting is applicable today when, on the evidence outlined in the head posting, it is not. Why, then, does Mr Eschenbach direct his criticism at me and not at official climatology?

We conducted the simple calculations described briefly in the head posting and we deduced that – under something like modern conditions – the system-gain factor is demonstrably near-invariant, whichever form of the system-gain equation is used. Therefore, absent any sudden bifurcation or phase transition, the system-gain factor over any policy-relevant time-horizon is likely to remain near-invariant at a value far too low to give any ground for concern. For various reasons it is unlikely to be absolutely invariant, but it is not at all likely to depart from the value found for 1850 and for 2011 at any time in the policy-relevant timeframe.

Mr Eschenbach is of course entitled to his opinion that there is no such thing as equilibrium sensitivity. But official climatology thinks there is such a thing, and then exaggerates its value. Our approach is that of classical logic: we accept – sed solum ad argumentum – everything in official climatology except what we can disprove, and then we derive equilibrium sensitivity by taking advantage of the absolute-value system-gain equation that climatology denies to itself by its erroneously restrictive definition of feedback as responding only to perturbations.

Of course Mr Eschenbach is fully entitled not to get to grips with any of this, on the ground that he thinks it impossible to discern how much warming our sins of emission may cause. But we are not asserting that we know how much global warming we may cause. We are asserting that, on the assumptions long adopted by official climatology, corrected only in the respects we have identified, official climatology ought not to predict a very large equilibrium sensitivity: it should predict only a small equilibrium sensitivity.

Socratic elenchus such as this has the merit of being terrifyingly rigorous and the disadvantage of being monstrously annoying to all who would rather believe that the truth cannot be reached by such methods.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Monckton of Brenchley

Mr Eschenbach is being uncharacteristically obtuse.

Lord Monckton is being uncharacteristically antagonistic. Christopher, starting your comment with a personal attack is a sure sign that you think you are on uncertain ground …

At present, IPCC et hoc genus omne imagine that the feedback system-gain factor relevant at the time when the great ice-sheets were melting – i.e. 4.0, if Lacis+ 2010 are to be believed, is applicable to the present. It is we who acknowledge that the system-gain factor is inconstant over geological time, and they who are trying to persuade the world that the system-gain factor that applied when the ice-sheets were melting is applicable today when, on the evidence outlined in the head posting, it is not. Why, then, does Mr Eschenbach direct his criticism at me and not at official climatology?

Good heavens, I have directed these exact same criticisms at “official climatology” over and over again. If you don’t know that then you have no business discussing my work.

Mr Eschenbach is of course entitled to his opinion that there is no such thing as equilibrium sensitivity. But official climatology thinks there is such a thing, and then exaggerates its value. Our approach is that of classical logic: we accept – sed solum ad argumentum – everything in official climatology except what we can disprove, and then we derive equilibrium sensitivity by taking advantage of the absolute-value system-gain equation that climatology denies to itself by its erroneously restrictive definition of feedback as responding only to perturbations.

I say that “equilibrium sensitivity” is as inapplicable an idea in the climate as it is in a house with a furnace and a thermostat. Once the house temperature is up to the thermostat setting, the temperature is entirely decoupled from the forcing … which means that there is no “equilibrium sensitivity”.

Here’s another example. If I get in my car and set my cruise control to 60 mph, as the car is accelerating there is a direct and at least semi-linear relationship between the amount of fuel to the engine and the speed of the car. You could call it the “fuel sensitivity”

But once the car hits 60 mph, all bets are off, and the fuel use is decoupled from the speed. At that point, just as with the current state of the earth, there is no such thing as a meaningful “fuel sensitivity”. Doesn’t exist.

Yes, “official climatology” thinks there is such a thing … and it also thought that there would be no Arctic ice by now … so freakin’ what? Why should I be bound by what “official climatology” thinks?

Sure, you can accept their premises for the sake of argument and show the number that they get is wrong … but given that their underlying understanding of the system is simplistic and incorrect, I fear that your result is no more meaningful than theirs.

Of course Mr Eschenbach is fully entitled not to get to grips with any of this, on the ground that he thinks it impossible to discern how much warming our sins of emission may cause.

“Not to get to grips with this”??? What are you smoking? I’ve told you exactly why I think that the current idea that temperature is a linear function of forcing is totally incorrect. I’ve written post after post on the subject. Your claim that I haven’t engaged with these ideas is nonsense.

But we are not asserting that we know how much global warming we may cause. We are asserting that, on the assumptions long adopted by official climatology, corrected only in the respects we have identified, official climatology ought not to predict a very large equilibrium sensitivity: it should predict only a small equilibrium sensitivity.

And in the process, you are repeating the mainstream incorrect assertion that indeed the temperature is a linear function of the forcing … which nobody has ever shown to be true.

It is very dangerous to take on someone’s assumptions to try to prove that they are wrong. I’m reminded of the old joke …

If we count a tail as a leg, how many legs does a cow have?

The answer is four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg … and because of that, agreeing “for the sake of argument” that a tail is a leg is NOT going to take you in the direction of the correct answer.

Socratic elenchus such as this has the merit of being terrifyingly rigorous and the disadvantage of being monstrously annoying to all who would rather believe that the truth cannot be reached by such methods.

Hey, I believe that the truth can be reached by Socratic lunches, although as a teaching method I think it sucks … I just don’t believe that you are reaching the truth in this case no matter how much Latin you throw at the problem.

Consider the following scenario. CO2 provides a bit more heat to the tropical surface. In response to the extra forcing, tropical clouds form earlier and reflect more sun back to space. As a result, the average temperature is unchanged.

What is the “equilibrium sensitivity” of the climate to the CO2 forcing in that example? Well, in this case ∆F > 0, and ∆T = 0, so given the (incorrect) canonical equation that

∆T = lambda ∆F

we find that the “equilibrium sensitivity” of the system is … well … zero.

Lord Monckton, all of your calculations assume, not show but assume, that there are no thermostatic climate phenomena at play. I have shown, not assumed but shown by a variety of analyses of actual observations, that in fact there are a host of these emergent phenomena which keep the system within very narrow bounds (e.g. ± 0.1% over the 20th century).

You are trying to apply feedback calculations to a dynamic system which is thermostatically controlled to very tight tolerances (± 0.1% over decades) … and that is a fools errand, as the examples of a house thermostat and a car cruise control show quite clearly.

Best regards,

w.

PS—For a further discussion of why both Lord Monckton’s calculations and those of mainstream scientists are in error because the system is thermoregulated, see my post called The Details Are In The Devil

• richard verney says:

Willis

You make a number of very good observations,

This planet was not in equilibrium in 1850 (since the planet is never in equilibrium), but that said there are a host of emergent phenomena which keep the system within very narrow bounds in each epoch.

One can have no faith in the correctness of the Lacis paper, it being the product of models and assumptions based upon an incomplete understanding of the climate system.

But that said, what Lord Monckton is seeking to demonstrate is that Climate Sensitivity, in the 19th, 20th and 21st century, does not exceed about 1.2 deg C. Of course, in the real world, there may be no sensitivity to CO2 at all, and it is conceivable that all temperature change, that has taken place throughout the Holocene, including that of the last 170 years, is simply the result of natural variation. That possibility cannot be demonstrated to be wrong.

Even though I have concerns over some of the basic concepts, I do consider that Lord Monckton’s paper (if accepted by Peer Review) is significant.

He accuses you (and indeed he accuses me) of not understanding his method, whereas we both understand his method.

What surprises me is that Lord Monckton seems to be so entrenched in not accepting points which points do not directly undermine the calculation that he has made, on the basis of assumptions that he makes and which assumptions under pin/lie behind his calculation.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Verney says “The planet was not in equilibrium in 1850.” Sigh. One imagines that he means the temperature. But the temperature was in equilibrium in 1850, for there was a near-zero trend over the following 80 years. We are certainly not expecting much trouble from the peer-reviewers over that conclusion.

Mr Verney then says there may be no sensitivity to CO2 at all. In this, he is entitled to his opinion: but our approach has been to accept ad argumentum everything in official climatology except what we can disprove. That minimizes the scope for disagreement.

Mr Verney then preaches at me. To such preaching I do not reply. He is entitled to his opinion, I suppose.

• richard verney says:

I mean the whole climate/planetary system was not in equilibrium, and that is why the temperature was not in equilibrium in 1850, and why it changed by about 0.8deg C in just 2.5 years (HADCRUT 3 Unadjusted global mean).

If you can read English, which I believe that you are competent at, you will note that I do not say there is no sensitivity to CO2. You simply, presumably deliberately, misstate what I said, namely there may be no sensitivity to CO2, at all which is something very different. I note that this concept (Climate Sensitivity to CO2) is yet to be proved.

I am not preaching to you. I am simply stating an impression which you are giving to me when I read your comments (ie., seems to be).

It is simply a fact that a system in equilibrium does not change (inherent from the definition of equilibrium) and it is simply a fact (if HADCRUT 3 is reliable) that the temperature increased throughout 1850, 1851 and through to mid 1852 by some 0.8 degC. This is more than the error margin you suggest applies to the data, such that there is a statistically significant change in temperature which change was brought about by the system not being in equilibrium in 1850.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Verney makes the naive point that the climate system is a dynamical system: i.e., that it changes its state over time. However, whether he likes it or not, official climatology bases its calculations on a presumed equilibrium temperature as a starting-point, and it then seeks to derive a second equilibrium temperature, the difference between the two being the equilibrium sensitivity. If Mr Verney considers that he knows better than official climatology in this regard, then he should direct his concerns not to me but to the IPCC Secretariat, whose email addresses will be found at ipcc.ch.

Our method, as I have made repeatedly clear, accepts ad argumentum – i.e., for the sake of argument only – that everything in official climatology is correct except what we can demonstrate to be false. In that way, we have forestalled all attempts to challenge our result on the basis that our interlocutors themselves disagree with certain elements of official climatology of which we have availed ourselves in reaching our result.

Let Mr Verney preach to IPCC and not to me.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Eschenbach continues to fail to understand our approach. For instance, he says we are asserting that the feedback response is a linear function of the forcing. No, we aren’t. We have derived plausible estimates of reference and equilibrium temperatures for two well-separated dates in the industrial era and we have derived the system-gain factors applicable to each. Our method does not care whether feedbacks are linear or nonlinear. It does not care about the individual feedbacks at all. Since the difference between the reference and equilibrium temperatures is the feedback response, the ratio of the equilibrium to the reference temperature is the system-gain factor. The system-gain factors for 1850 and 2011, thus derived, are near-identical, indicating that under something like modern conditions such nonlinearities as exist in individual feedbacks are not of great significance in deriving equilibrium sensitivities.

Next, Mr Eschenbach effectively contradicts himself by saying that because the climate is in essence near-perfectly thermostatic the mathematics of feedback is in any event inapplicable – or, as he puts it, “a fool’s errand”. Here, in effect, he makes our argument for us a fortiori: for if feedback mathematics is inapplicable the equilibrium sensitivity will be equal to the reference sensitivity imagined by official climatology, which is at present about 1.04 K per CO2 doubling. In reaching that conclusion, he is in effect agreeing with us that one can ignore altogether the feedbacks in the climate system for the purposes of deriving equilibrium sensitivity, and without much error.

But of course, since Mr Eschenbach appears not to believe in the concept of equilibrium sensitivity, that is really all he needs to say. But we are not writing our paper for him: we are writing it for people who do consider that CO2 and other greenhouse gases have a warming effect, and we are explaining to them that their definition of temperature feedback is erroneously restrictive in that it carefully excludes the action of feedbacks on the entire input signal.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Monckton of Brenchley

Mr Eschenbach continues to fail to understand our approach. For instance, he says we are asserting that the feedback response is a linear function of the forcing. No, we aren’t.

I said nothing of the sort. In fact, I said nothing at all about the “feedback response”. This is why I ask people to QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS THAT YOU ARE REFERRING TO.

Next, Mr Eschenbach effectively contradicts himself by saying that because the climate is in essence near-perfectly thermostatic the mathematics of feedback is in any event inapplicable – or, as he puts it, “a fool’s errand”. Here, in effect, he makes our argument for us a fortiori: for if feedback mathematics is inapplicable the equilibrium sensitivity will be equal to the reference sensitivity imagined by official climatology, which is at present about 1.04 K per CO2 doubling. In reaching that conclusion, he is in effect agreeing with us that one can ignore altogether the feedbacks in the climate system for the purposes of deriving equilibrium sensitivity, and without much error.

Once again, I did NOT say that “the mathematics of feedback is inapplicable”. I said:

You are trying to apply feedback calculations to a dynamic system which is thermostatically controlled to very tight tolerances (± 0.1% over decades) … and that is a fools errand, as the examples of a house thermostat and a car cruise control show quite clearly.

What I meant was that there is no such creature as “equilibrium sensitivity”, simply because ∆T is NOT a function of ∆F, linear or otherwise, with feedbacks or without. Just as there is no “equilibrium fuel sensitivity” with a house thermostat or with a cruise control, in a thermostatically controlled situation, an equilibrium sensitivity of the Earth has no existence and no meaning.

But of course, since Mr Eschenbach appears not to believe in the concept of equilibrium sensitivity, that is really all he needs to say. But we are not writing our paper for him: we are writing it for people who do consider that CO2 and other greenhouse gases have a warming effect, and we are explaining to them that their definition of temperature feedback is erroneously restrictive in that it carefully excludes the action of feedbacks on the entire input signal.

I believe in the concept of equilibrium sensitivity. I simply see no evidence that the earth has an equilibrium sensitivity, nor do I see any theoretical reason to think that it does. The idea that such an intricately complex system, a system which is clearly temperature regulated to an incredibly stable ± 0.1% over centuries, is ruled by incoming forcing alone and everything else cancels out is … well … let me call it “ridiculously simplistic” and leave it at that.

Regards to all,

w.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

It is not at all clear what Mr Eschenbach is complaining of in our approach. He may wish that the system-gain factor was not near-invariant in the industrial era, as we have found it to be. And he may wish, therefore, that everyone should stop trying to derive equilibrium sensitivities because they are in his opinion unknowable. But he mischaracterizes our result when he implies that we consider the climate system to be ruled by “incoming forcing alone” (whatever that may be).

Our approach is very simple. We use data and methods from official climatology to derive reference and equilibrium temperatures (i.e. before and after feedback has acted) for 1850 and 2011, and we find that the system-gain factor (the ratio of equilibrium to reference temperature) is much the same in both years, at about 1.13. Whether he likes it or not, once one knows the reference and equilibrium sensitivities at a given moment one does not need to know anything about the individual feedback responses whose sum constitutes the entire difference between the two sensitivities. If Mr Eschenbach considers that feedback does not constitute the entire difference between reference and equilibrium sensitivities at a given moment, then he should direct his concerns to the IPCC secretariat, not to me.

Official climatology, in the shape of the CMIP5 ensemble (Andrews 2012), says that the reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 is 1.04 K. If Mr Eschenbach considers that value inappropriate, his beef is with the modelers, not with me.

Since we have already established the system-gain factor, we may simply take the product of that factor and the reference sensitivity to CO2 to find the Charney sensitivity. That is how official climatology does things. Again, if Mr Eschenbach disagrees with official climatology, we quite understand: but his complaint should be directed to official climatology and not to us.

It is really very difficult to discern what point Mr Eschenbach is making, but, as best I can make it out, he disagrees chiefly with official climatology and not with us, and he has not appreciated that our method renders unnecessary the consideration of most – if not all – of the complications he would have liked us to take into account.

• “The scope of the climate impact becomes apparent in just 10 years. During the first year alone, global mean surface temperature falls by 4.6 °C. After 50 years, the global temperature stands at -21 °C, a decrease by 34.8 °C. Atmospheric water vapor is at ~10% of the control climate value (22.6 to 2.2 mm). Global cloud cover increases from its 58% control value to more than 75%; the global sea ice fraction goes from 4.6% to 46.7%, causing the planetary albedo of Earth to increase from ~29% to 41.8%. This has the effect to reduce the absorbed solar energy to further exacerbate the global cooling. After 50 years, one third of the ocean surface still remains ice-free, even though the global surface temperature is colder than -21 °C. At tropical latitudes, incident solar radiation is enough to keep the ocean from freezing.”

Yes Willis, this the result Lacis got. In one year GMAT falls over 2/3 of the way to the last glacial maximum. We could do the math, or not even bother, because the result is so obviously preposterous. GMAT falling .38C per month. Global cloud cover increasing despite necessary enormous drops in the vapor capacity of cooling air.

Eight years ago I was on the fence. This Lacis work, more than anything else, convinced me that the models were totally wrong.

• Theo says:

Gymno,

As you must know, Lacis is chief among those who perpetrated the “CO2 control knob” on climate myth.

Were there justice in the world, these mass murderous enemies of humanity would be rotting the deepest dungeons on our planet.

42. Michael Carter says:

usurbrain wrote:

“Math tells me that it has to exceed all Negative Feedback to go into runaway warming. Do not think there is enough for that and geological history also shows no runaway. With levels of CO2 at 7,000 PPM the earth’s temperature was only 15 oC than now. Thus there is a negative feedback. My guess is H20.”backs

Logic tells me the same. There are both positive and negative feedbacks (yes, plural, there are many more than just clouds/water vapour) operating at any one time. The planet has gone through multiple warm-to-cold cycles under a wide range of environmental conditions. There has never been a “runaway” either way n- hot or cold.

When heat energy state reaches a high, negative feedback dominates and visa versa. Its the net effect (+ or -) at any one time that matters

This is environmental science 101 for goodness sake

Regards

M

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Carter is, of course, correct that we are in no danger of runaway anthropogenic global warming. Once official climatology’s error in defining feedback is corrected, there will be too little warming to trigger what the thermo-totalitarians call a “tipping point” and what grown-up scientists call a phase transition or a bifurcation. As Mr Eschenbach has so often and so rightly demonstrated in these columns, the climate system is near-perfectly thermostatic, and our result provides the theoretical demonstration that explains Mr Eschenbach’s observations.

43. It seems that a big issue is a significant misunderstanding about what the small signal response really means. This has nothing to do with the size of incremental forcing, relative to the size of the total forcing, but to the size of the combined forcing, feedback and output, relative to the operating point and what the implicit power supply can support.

This fundamental misunderstanding seems to be at the root of how they can rationalize an incremental gain several times larger than the gain applied to all of the other solar forcing.

44. Here is the data for comparison of the FAR “predictions”, what happened through to june 2018, and the MoB “prediction”, though I can’t work out how the latter was actually calculated, since the paper is about equilibrium. I have offset to make all trend lines pass through 0 at 1990. Data is plotted monthly. I have used red colors for surface, pinkish for TLT and blue for IPCC FAR trends. These are 0.3 °C/decade for their scenario A, 0.2 for B and 0.1 for C. The scenarios are similar to Hansen’s, so the scenario actually followed is closest to B.

As you can see, the scenario B trend is followed well, despite the fact that the trend was supposed to be the average for a century, not these decades.

https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www.moyhu.org/2018/08/mob.png

• Theo says:

Nick,

Are you really unaware that Scenario B has not actually happened?

And that the only reason that observations have temporarily approached its line is because of an historic super El Nino?

Sorry, but pathetic.

• “Are you really unaware that Scenario B has not actually happened?”
No. I think it is closest. But if you followed only Lord M, you wouldn’t know that the numbers were conditional on scenarios at all. To use any scenario result in a hindcast, you have to make some determination of what scenario came closest to what panned out. There is no attempt to do that here.

On the ENSO issue, there were several big events in the period, Niño and Niña. You can’t just rub out the ones you don’t like.

• Theo says:

Nick,

I don’t follow Lord C as to anything.

The fact is that, based upon the actual scenarios and predictions of climastrologer liars, they’re all falsified up the ying yang.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Stokes continues to quibble. The business-as-usual scenario is what has happened in real life, for there has been no reduction in the rate of CO2 emission, though there has been an attempt by IPCC to fudge the negative aerosol forcings to make it look as though the net anthropogenic forcings are lower than it had originally predicted. On the business-as-usual scenario, IPCC predicted the interval of Charney sensitivities displayed in the graph in the head posting.

• ” The business-as-usual scenario is what has happened in real life”

Here is what IPCC said about Scen B:

“In Scenario B the energy supply mix shifts towards lower carbon fuels, notably natural gas. Large efficiency increases are achieved. Carbon monoxide controls are stringent, deforestation is reversed and the Montreal Protocol implemented with full participation”

✓ natural gas ✓ CO controls ✓ efficiency increases
✓? deforestation ✓ Montreal Protocol

• Theo says:

Nick,

Please quantify each of those supposed check marks.

You know as well as I do that your check marks are totally bogus.

The USA has indeed migrated from coal and oil to gas, but what effect has that had globally?

• And so it goes. Lord M didn’t even mention that there were scenarios, let alone try to justify the choice of scen A. It is I who has to quantify. Please quantify the choice of scenario A.

In fact, the scenario is described qualitatively, and qualitatively, it qualifies.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Stokes continues to quibble. Business as usual has obtained since 1990, in that greenhouse-gas concentrations continue to increase at an undiminished rate: therefore we used the lesser of the two medium-term business-as-usual scenarios as the basis for IPCC’s projections in 1990, which were wildly excessive.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Stokes continues to quibble. He overlooks the fact that the climate does not respond to the boxes he has ticked: it responds to greenhouse-gas concentrations. After water vapor, which is treated as a feedback, the principal greenhouse gas is CO2. Its concentration continues to increase as though there had been no measures to restrict our sins of emission: for the great majority of the world is exempt from such restrictions, and the rest of the world is largely non-compliant.

• “Mr Stokes continues to quibble. He overlooks the fact that the climate does not respond to the boxes he has ticked: it responds to greenhouse-gas concentrations.”

It is hardly a quibble. The different scenarios imply trends of, respectively, 0.3, 0.2 and 0.1 °C/decade (averaged to 2100). Forced to apply to 1990-2012 (which they don’t), that means A is too high, B is about right, and C (and D) are too low. Yes, GHG concentrations are the forcing – so let’s hear why they fit scen A rather than B. The boxes I ticked are the IPCC descriptors that they convert to GHG concentrations; if the descriptors fit, then it is likely the GHG concentrations do too. But that is what you need to verify before just plucking out one scenario to display, and not even mentioning that there are others.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Stokes continues to quibble. In fact, the total GHG emissions as measured in the annual papers by le Quere et al. are above the business-as-usual curve as given in AR1.

• Derg says:

Why are there scenarios at all?

Don’t we have a repeatable test? Is scenario A at a certain level of CO2? and B is at a different level of CO2

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The truth is that the CO2 concentration increase continues to follow the business-as-usual path as plotted in AR1. For this reason, I have thought it legitimate to compare IPCC’s business-as-usual medium-term predictions with the observed outturn and with the hindcast based on our own result.

• richard verney says:

I may be mistaken on this, but I seem to recall that as at 2018 there is little divergence between scenarios A and B. These two scenarios begin to diverge more significantly circa 2030 onwards.

Of course, there has been no cut back in CO2 emissions, and to that extent there has been BAU, but perhaps slightly attenuated by the failure to understand sinks and the negative feedback of CO2 greening.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Verney recollects incorrectly.

• “Don’t we have a repeatable test? Is scenario A at a certain level of CO2?”

Yes. And it should be applied. Climate projections use scenarios because it isn’t known what decisions will be made in the future about burning fuels. But now, we do know what was done, so the right (or nearest) scenario can be chosen. It isn’t just CO2, but all GHGs. Lord M is content to wave around a broad descriptor (“business as usual”). But it wasn’t. Scen A assumed CFCs would go on increasing; others assumed that Montreal would prove effective (it did). Scen A assumed the fuel mix would remain the same – scen B anticipated a move to natural gas (which happened). Scen A assumed no efficiency improvement. Etc. There are basic investigations that need to be done.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Stokes is, as usual, incorrect. The total GHG forcing to the present is above the curve for business as usual in AR1. That is why we hold IPCC’s feet to the fire for its business-as-usual prediction.

45. Bob says:

Hopefully this will shed some insight from the engineering world on the topic…

Regarding how feedback control systems rely on the entire ‘system’, here is a real-world example from switching power conversion (these systems are inherently non-linear) in which one needs to measure the loop gain and phase margins to ensure stability but at the same time the system is operating as intended in the application. (Note: the math backs up the validity of accurate gain and phase results from linear small-signal analysis despite the fact that the power conversion circuit is non-linear).

In order to ensure the system is stable, the measurement needs to be done at the small-signal level even though the system is operating with high voltages, fast power switches and dynamic line and loads.

Rather than breaking the loop to inject a swept-frequency test signal superimposed on an external DC level that maintains the entire system as it functions in the real world (which is impossible to do since the loop is dynamically controlling the output voltage independent of load and line variations), the technique of isolated small-signal injection is used where the test signal is superimposed while keeping the loop closed to maintain the system integrity. This is typically done with a small broad-band current transformer where the secondary is across a low resistance at an appropriate point in the loop.

Only in this way can you simultaneously run the ‘system’ under its true operating conditions and measure the response to a swept frequency small signal across decades of frequency, thus creating a true Bode plot under true operating conditions for the entire system.

The implication is that when you measure with this technique you are actually looking at the performance of the ENTIRE SYSTEM, not just the effect of the small signal injection around the loop. If changing the DC operating point due to any environmental change or line or load condition causes a change in loop stability, then you will be able to measure the effect.

You can do all the sophisticated computer modeling you want prior to this test (and we do and the results are remarkably accurate without breadboarding, etc) but if you want to know how the real system (that is, ALL of the system and not just the DC operating point but the effects of temperature, humidity, shock, vibration, etc) functions for gain and phase margins before you ship it in high volume production, then you do it with the entire system in operation and affecting the small-signal results.

There is a wealth of information available on this technique – check out Ridley Engineering for real-world examples of this…

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am most grateful to Bob for his description of small-signal injection. That, in effect, is what we have done in taking the absolute input and output signals for 1850 and then adding the very small perturbations since them to derive new absolute input and output signals.

• Bob says:

Lord M,

The reason for my post was twofold.

First, to clarify how a control system actually functions, at least as measured for stability, in the real world. Not everyone has actually measured their closed loop control dynamics by observing the true open-loop response – they often model it then let it go because doing the measurement may involve extreme expense and complexity.

Second, because I saw a parallel to your approach and the technique I described.

In a purely theoretical sense, you can certainly determine stability of a closed loop system with negative feedback by just measuring the response of the system to small signal injection as described.

What I left out, of course, was that you need to use a Frequency Response Analyzer to measure the injected and return small signals in the midst of a high noise environment – which is why the analyzers used are such special purpose designs. Not just any old spectrum analyzer will do.

So the parallel to what you have demonstrated seems to me to be that whereas the others published their equivalent of just observing the analogous small signal perturbations around the system’s equilibrium, you have essentially observed what the entire system, including effects of the initial operating conditions carried forward in time, does with the small signal perturbations added in.

On the one hand, they are not wrong to examine the system performance in the fashion they did – it is theoretically correct in analogous fashion to a paper study of stability based on small signal stimulus and measurement.

But if you want to know whether a system is stable IN THE REAL WORLD, you need to add in how the system operates IN SITU with small signal perturbations.

That is what you have done and it seems reasonable to me.

Consequently, you have added further, more real-world insight into the phenomenon of climate change.

Bob

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Bob has expressed the position admirably. The delta-value system-gain equation used exclusively in climatology is not incorrect: it’s just not particularly useful, because ascertaining the delta reference and equilibrium temperatures is fraught with absurdly large uncertainties. However, the uncertainties in ascertaining absolute reference and equilibrium temperatures for use in the absolute-value equation are far smaller. And, as Bob says, one should in any event do what we have done and compate the isolated small-signal analysis using the delta-value system-gain equation with the whole-system response using the absolute-value system-gain equation. Then, and only then, does one get the whole picture.

• Bob says:

One final analogy that seems to fit (I know that pushing an analogy too far destroys its impact) but for the EE’s familiar with control theory this seems too rich not to share.

In the very early days of the space program at NASA, satellites and eventually astronauts were launched into space on vehicles loaded with rudimentary electronics.

The power systems architects designed a common DC voltage bus that could feed all of the various electronic modules being flown which in turn had their own DC-DC/DC-AC converters to supply the voltages for the module.

Whereas on the earth the DC source might be battery powered, converted from a wind generator, a geothermal source or a hydroelectric plant (I myself favor powering a DC generator from the shaft of a waterwheel on the old mill pond), on a spacecraft you likely used solar panels or even a radio isotope.

But back in the good old days there was no body of knowledge available to determine the stability of the closed-loop, negative feedback control in the DC-DC/AC controllers, so occasionally and unpredictably – they went unstable and crashed the electronic module.

The solution to this problem was found by the pioneering work of Dr Middlebrook at Cal Tech/JPL.

Middlebrook took on a PhD student, Gene Wester, and they began to work on determining stability criteria for these non-linear switching power converters.

They were successful and as the years passed, Dr Middlebrook created a world-renowned power lab at Cal Tech and populated it with gifted graduate students.

He published pounds of IEEE papers on his work over the years (my stack was well over a foot tall on my desk) and when I asked him why he hadn’t written a book yet on the subject, he just smiled and said, “The discipline is too young and there is much more work to be done”.

But those of us working in power conversion already had absorbed enough of his insights so that we could design, model, test and ship reliably stable power converters.

As long as they didn’t run off of a common DC bus.

All of the small-signal linear control analysis we were using was perfectly adequate when we were examining what was happening inside the control loop, isolated from everything else in the system.

One of Middlebrook’s PhD students, Slobodan Cuk, had developed the mathematical technique of “State-Space Averaging” and shown the validity of our approach.

But for space systems that ran from a common DC bus, when the system was all hooked together, it turned out some of the DC-DC converters which had been shown to be stable in isolation now became unstable.

How could that be?

It turned out that the DC source was closely followed by an L-C filter which filtered noise off the bus as it was routed around the spacecraft.

Clearly, when you looked at the schematic of the entire system, you could see that the L-C filter was outside of the control loops in the individual converters.

But Middlebrook applied his considerable genius to a thorough analysis of the ENTIRE SYSTEM and was able to determine and then proved that although the L-C filter was outside the loop physically, it was in fact within the loop gain equations for each converter and could cause instabilities.

The solution then was to incorporate within each converter’s loop gain the effect of the outboard filter and synthesize an appropriate compensation network that accommodated the entire, real-world system.

As a result the space program no longer suffered from unexplainable stability failures in their power converters and the result has been safe, reliable and less expensive spacecraft – both manned and unmanned.

If the analogy still holds, I think it further shows the importance of the work being done by Lord M’s team.

Bob

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am most grateful to Bob for his learned and constructive intervention, which is one of the most fascinating contributions to this thread. It seems to me that the analogy that Bob describes is very similar to what our professor of control theory did (I can claim no credit for it) when he simplified the feedback loop by removing the gain block from it and simply adding any change in input or reference temperature to that temperature before inputting it to the summative node within the feedback loop.

It was necessary for us to simplify the math in this and other respects, because the reviewers and editors were having difficulty in understanding our argument. The professor’s distinguished contribution has solved the problem by making the argument a great deal simpler and clearer.

46. dh-mtl says:

There is one thing that bothers me about this entire discussion of the ‘system-gain factor’, and ‘water-vapor feed-back’.

There seems to be an underlying premise that without non-condensing green-house gases there would be no water vapor in the atmosphere.

This is clearly a ludicrous assumption. In the absence of non-condensing green-house gases, there will still be a substantial amount of water vapor in the air, as a substantial part of the earth, under direct sunlight, especially the lower latitudes, will be hot enough to have a substantial partial pressure of water water vapor. This water vapor itself will act like a green-house gas, with a feed-back effect.

Thus to determine the ‘system-gain factor’ for anthropogenic global warming, one must determine the Reference Temperature (from the equations in the paper), not only considering non-condensing green-house gases, in the absence of AGW greenhouse gases, but also considering the amount of water-vapour that would be in the atmosphere, absent any non-condensing green-house gases.

If this was done the Reference Temperature would be much higher than Monckton calculates, and the consequent system-gain factor would be much smaller than even the 1.13 that he calculates.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to dh-mtl, there is no premise that without non-condensing greenhouse gases there would be no atmospheric water vapor. On the contrary, Lacis+ (2010), running a general-circulation model, gave the albedo in the absence of non-condensing greenhouse gases as 0.418. At today’s insolation, that would give an emission temperature in the absence of those gases of 243.25 K. However, Lacis’ stated reference temperature without greenhouse gases is 252 K, the difference being accounted for by the water-vapor and ice-albedo feedbacks.

However, at present official climatology calculates the emission temperature by a single global application of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer, when the correct approach is to allow for Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals by performing individual latitudinal calculations and integrating. Once correction is made in this respect, the reference temperature would indeed by some 10-20 K higher than we have assumed, cutting the system-gain factor to about 1.06.

• dh-mtl says:

Monckton of Brenchley

Your reply above demonstrates that the equation that you propose above does not represent the physical situation.

The system gain is primarily due to green-house gases, of which water vapor, is, by far, the most important. And, because the saturation vapor pressure of water vapor in air increases exponentially with temperature, this gain should be highly non-linear with temperature, also increasing exponentially with temperature. In fact it is the classic case of a run-away system, based on water-vapor alone, with or without the contribution of non-condensing green-house gasses.

The non-condensing green-house gases are a minor contributor to this gain. And the feed-back to increasing green house gases represents a ‘gain on the gain’. Thus the gain on the system that you represent is quite different from the ‘gain on the gain’ that feedback with respect to non-condensing green-house gases represents.

In any event, the fact that this system, which should be a ‘run-away’ system, given the exponential relationship between the saturation vapor pressure of water in air and increasing atmospheric temperature, has not ‘run-away’ over the substantial variations in historical climate shows that the system behavior is limited, and the system gain is limited.

The factors that can limit the system gain are:
1. Increasing green-house gases will only increase the gain on the system until the absorption bands are saturated. Where we are with respect to saturation of the absorption bands, I don’t know.

2. The negative effects on temperature of increasing amounts of water vapor in the air:
a. increasing cloud cover and thus increasing albedo, and;
b. increasing water vapor in the air greatly increases the atmosphere’s capacity to transport energy and distribute it throughout the atmosphere. This enhances the atmosphere’s ability to ‘shed’ excess energy, thus counter-acting higher temperatures.

These negative factors also increase exponentially with increasing temperature.

Thus I would expect that the system gain is highly non-linear. I would also argue, given the fact that the earth’s temperature hasn’t long ago spiraled out of control, that the system-gain relative to green-house gases, is limited, and indeed, at current temperatures, is as likely to be negative as positive.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Unfortunately, just about everything that dh-mtl says is untrue.

First, climatology treats water vapor (except in one or two marginal instances that are too small to matter) as a feedback, not as a direct forcing.

Secondly, though the Clausius-Clapeyron relation suggests that the space occupied by the atmosphere may hold about 7% per Kelvin more water vapor as it warms, this rate of increase is only observed near the surface, where the spectral lines of water vapor are overlain by other processes. In the crucial tropical mid-troposphere, where the models predict double or triple the tropical surface warming rate if and only if Man is the cause, the specific humidity has been declining. This fact mandates at best a weakly positive water vapor feedback.

Thirdly, because the total feedback is only weakly net-positive, a runaway warming is not possible.

Fourthly, the system gain in the current understanding is chiefly from temperature feedback, not from direct radiative forcings. In our own method, the reference temperature includes all directly-forced warming, so that all of the system gain is by definition from feedback, but there is very little of it.

Fifthly, as long as CO2 continues to be added to the atmosphere some warming will result, though the warming for each additional molecule will be less than that for each of its predecessors.

Sixthly, whether or not dh-mtl imagines that the feedback system gain is nonlinear, we have demonstrated that from 1850 to 2011 the system gain factor is near-invariant at only 1.13.

• dh-mtl says:

Moncton of Brenchly,

Thank you for the additional explanations.

I now understand that I did not fully understand the conventions used in climate science.

From your explanation I see that, by definition, water vapor, as a green-house gas, is considered a feed-back, while the effect of non-condensing green-house gases is by definition a forcing and converted into an equivalent temperature that is included in the reference temperature. If this case, I agree with your method and your result.

However, I also stand by my statements that:
1. Assuming that the only effect of water vapor is as a green-house gas, then the system should be a run away system. The fact that the climate system is in fact stable proves that green house gases (whether natural or anthropogenic, the system doesn’t know) will not cause run away temperature increases.

2. The reason that the system does not go unstable is a result of the negative feed-back effects on temperature of increasing water vapor, namely the increased albedo due to clouds, and the effect of water vapor on energy transport throughout the atmosphere.

Although, as you calculate, the overall system gain is 1.13, I am not convinced that the marginal gain is that high, or even positive. For the marginal gain to be 1.13, one must assume that the change in temperature since 1850 is solely dependent on green-house gases, and is not due to other forcings.

Cheers,

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am delighted that dh-mtl has safely reached harbor. Water vapor is indeed treated (except to a marginal degree that does not really affect the calculation) as a feedback, which is why Mojib Latif recommended to us that we should consider the non-condensing greenhouse gases separately.

Our result demonstrates that there is absolutely no basis for considering the Earth’s climate to be in any sense a runaway system. The reason why it is not a runaway system is that the feedback response, though positive, is too small to induce runaway effects.

We derive the system gain very straightforwardly as the ratio of the equilibrium to the reference temperature. To the extent that the difference between these two is not caused by temperature feedback but by natural causes, to that extent our case for a low system-gain factor and a low equilibrium sensitivity is made a fortiori.

• richard verney says:

There is very little water vapour above about 8 km, ie., mid tropopause. See;

Water vapour plays a significant role at below about 7 km.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

… which is why it is so perplexing that official climatology continues to imagine that there will be a tropical mid-troposphere hot spot. Without such a hot spot, the value of the water vapor feedback is very greatly reduced from official climatology’s value.

47. Wiliam Haas says:

To me, the most important conclusion is that based on temperature measurements since 1850, the climate sensitivity of CO2 including feedbacks cannot be more than 1.2 degrees C. One can argue that the value is a lot less than that but based on measurements the value cannot be more than 1.2 degrees C. Considering that what has gone on in the past as best we can ascertain form the paleoclimate record, 1.2 degrees C is somewhat trivial. If the climate sensitivity of CO2 is greater than 1.2 degrees C than that should have shown up in the data but it has not,

The next step would be to examine the paleoclimate record and as a first iteration, assuming that the climate sensitivity of CO2 including all feedbacks is 1.2 degrees C, then what part of global warming must of been caused by other means. The 1.2 degrees C is assuming that all global warming is caused by an increase on CO2. I believe that the record will show that a portion of global warming must have been caused by other means. So for a first iteration one can correct the 1.2 degrees C value based on measurements that would imply that a portion of the warming was caused by means other than CO2. One can continue the iterations to arrive at a value for the climate sensitivity of CO2 based on the idea that some of the warming has been caused by other means.

Some have speculated that from half to 90% of the warming that we have been experiencing has been caused by means other than an increase in CO2 which would result in a climate sensitivity of CO2 of less than from .6 to .12 degrees C which is still more trivial. There has been a lot of other rational thrown around that based on the physics involved, the climate sensitivity of CO2 is some even smaller number close to zero and may even be negative since an increase in CO2 will cause a slight decrease in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Haas suggests that one should take the current equilibrium sensitivity of 1.2 K as a constant and then apply it to the paleoclimate. However, conditions in the paleoclimate were very different from those that obtain today: therefore one would expect the feedbacks to have been markedly different.

We have shown that, under modern conditions, the feedback system-gain factor is near-invariant at 1.13, but that value would not necessarily have obtained in the paleoclimate.

• Wiliam Haas says:

Your analysis assumes that the natural contribution to global warming is zero. That may be acceptable so as to compute a limit as to how great the climate sensitivity of CO2 could possible actually be. Your next step should be to compute what the climate sensitivity of CO2 actually is and to do that you need to include a natural contribution to global warming that most likely is not zero. I am merely suggesting an approach to estimating the natural contribution. Before the industrial revolution, CO2 was still CO2 and H2O was still H2O. The sun and the oceans were not much different than they were today. We can derive estimates as to what global temperatures were and what CO2 levels were before the industrial revolution. By analyzing this past data we should be able to estimate what the natural contribution to global warming has been in the past and then apply that information to the present.

The primary feedback to warming caused by an increase in CO2 is an increase in H2O. That physics was the same before the start of the industrial revolution as it was after the start of the industrial revolution. I doubt that the climate sensitivity of CO2 was some how greater before the start of the industrial revolution than it was after the start of the industrial revolution so that the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 cannot be more than 1.2K applies both before and after the start of the industrial revolution.

What you have shown is that the feedback issue appears to be of little consequence.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Haas says we should proceed, having established that feedback is of little consequence to equilibrium sensitivity, to incorporate the natural contribution to global warming. This is one of very many requests by commenters here that we should complicate our result. We see no need to do so. Once feedback is removed from the chessboard, there will be so small an equilibrium sensitivity that there is no longer any need to worry about global warming.

48. Bob Weber says:

This is total crap. I would advise people to run for the hills – CM is 100% wrong.

If you haven’t caught the plot, it’s to convince you through basically b*llsh*ttery that the warmth since 1990 is attributable to CO2, with his special lower number. In other words he is selling you lighter-weight warmist CO2 snake oil.

As an EE and audio design engineer for 15 years I worked with feedback amplifiers, designed power supplies, heat sinks, circuits, whole systems, so I entered the climate arena with a very good practical theoretical and hands-on understanding of the transfer of electromagnetic energy through a system. My solar work is based on the understanding the earth as an open system to the sun’s variable electromagnetic energy, with the only real feedbacks of interest being the solar-generated water vapor, clouds, and resulting ice, snow cover, and earth’s greening flora. Those feedbacks are nothing compared to the sun’s variation over time, with CO2 especially irrelevant by comparison, except to flora.

Monckton’s CO2 obsession is a liability. He doesn’t even understand that the pause he has written about so often was caused by low solar activity, less electromagnetic energy over time, or why it warmed since 1990 (his myopic timeframe), when there was higher solar electromagnetic energy over time.

His work has no relationship to geophysics whatsoever.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The furtively pseudonmyous “coolclimateinfo” is loutish as well as ignorant. Moderators, please delete his unpleasantly ad-hom comment as contrary to site policy. In the meantime, here are some responses.

Since climatology has many facets, we have concentrated on just one – feedback – in our current paper. Therefore, we have accepted the current official estimates of radiative forcings, including that from CO2, but only for the sake of argument. That does not mean we endorse the official values, for that is a question we have not studied. Specialists in that question, including Professors Happer and Harde, have found the official values to be overstated, but that is a separate question.

We are able to prove, considering only the question of feedback, that the global warming to be expected from doubled CO2 under modern conditions will be small. If we are right, the question whether CO2 causes direct reference warming at the currently-estimated rate of 1.04 K per doubling becomes purely academic.

• Bob Weber says:

The furtively pseudonmyous “coolclimateinfo” is loutish as well as ignorant.

I’ve seen you play this card before… It is not my fault that the login of this new system uses my word press name, and not my name as I wish it did, Bob Weber.

It is you who is ignorant of the natural world.

Moderators, please delete his unpleasantly ad-hom comment as contrary to site policy.

I’ve seen you play this card before when things don’t go your way crybaby.

Therefore, we have accepted the current official estimates of radiative forcings, including that from CO2, but only for the sake of argument.

For the sake of argument, you are a liability, period.

Also, I find it interesting and very revealing that you would seek to actually censor an unfavorable comment here at WUWT, which makes you no different in my book than the warmists in the press, social media, and politics, who also want to control speech.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Now that Mr Weber has provided his name, there is no need for his comments to be deleted. However, they are expressed in a childishly intemperate fashion. He has no understanding of our approach and is, therefore, spitting into the wind.

• Bob Weber says:

Your approach is clear – it’s still a fantasy. There is no feedback gain from natural feedbacks, it’s an open system to sunlight, where the only largely unaccounted for source of heat are seamounts, and all the largely inconsequential feedbacks are negative.

The truth is you’re not talking about the natural world, only a fantasy.

Very childlike….

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

If Mr Weber is correct that temperature feedbacks do not increase global temperature, then he makes our low-sensitivity argument for us a fortiori. However, we have accepted ad argumentum all of official climatology except what we can demonstrate to be false. Official climatology says feedbacks cause warming. We agree, but we can demonstrate that they do not cause anything like as much warming as official climatology imagines.

• John Endicott says:

“is not my fault that the login of this new system uses my word press name, and not my name as I wish it did, ”

Mr. Weber, I believe you can edit your name when you make a post. The Name, email and website fields are openly editable every time you post a reply as far as I can determine. The mods won’t take kindly to those who do change the name every time they post, but I’m sure they have no problem with you editing it to be your real name.

• Bob Weber says:

Thank you sir. My name is in the first box, as before the system changed, so I’m not sure how to make it change. I just now logged out of WP at JC’s site, so we’ll see if that makes the difference.

Nope. thanx again John

• Pierre says:

coolclimateinfo opined: “If you haven’t caught the plot, it’s to convince you through basically b*llsh*ttery that the warmth since 1990 is attributable to CO2, with his special lower number. In other words he is selling you lighter-weight warmist CO2 snake oil.”

You’re tilting the wrong windmill. CM is not trying to sell any such thing. He himself does not buy what the hell he wrote from a real world perspective. HE says that. He does not have to believe a bit of the extraneous warmist details of GHE that most of the posters here disagree with and are eviscerating him about. It’s got to be very hard from his perspective to run the argument he is running but the fight he chose is killing the CAGW part of the warmist pseudo science within their make believe world.

Your argument with CM is the fact that he chose to fight on their turf instead of draw a line in the sand between the real climate and their make believe climate. He has been there and done that and the result is very similar to the comments from the sceptics whom don’t understand how political science works.

I think its ingenious to point out a simple mathematical mistake and inject that into their political science world. I recognize his argument as, simple science being framed within a political argument. CAGW is a political construct, not a science construct. Those on the warmist side know exactly what he is doing even if so many sceptics do not. You will never win where he is fighting with a complex science theory.

I recognize the approach. Read the book Marketing Warfare by Trout and Ries or On War by Carl Von Clausewitz.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Pierre has understood our approach correctly in all respects. It is very easy to make the mistake – often made by commenters on all sides here – of imagining that one’s own view of the climate is correct in all respects, if only the rest of the world would recognize it.

However, I am trained in Socratic elenchus and other logical and rhetorical techniques. The starting-point of elenchus is to accept ad argumentum everything that one’s interlocutor holds dear, except what one can demonstrate to be false. The formal application of this method to science will be found in Karl Popper’s “Logik der Forschung”. Once one understands that masterwork, one can apply the four Popperian sieves to any scientific proposition. We can demonstrate that official climatology’s definition of temperature feedback is false, in that it is crafted so as to exclude the response of feedback processes to the entire input signal. To this extent, therefore, official climatology is at odds with mainstream science. Once that point is accepted, as it must be, it is a relatively simple matter to quantify the effect of official climatology’s departure from mainstream science: and, to ensure that the quantification has the greatest possible likelihood of being accepted, one does not impose one’s view on all other matters of climate science upon official climatology. One focuses on the one error of official climatology – an error large enough to render all of its conclusions about equilibrium sensitivity and the imagined consequent damage “null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane and empty of meaning of all time” (as Pope Innocent X once said of the Treaty of Westphalia).

• Warren says:

Pierre is one of the smartest here by clearly recognising Monckton’s strategy while many others here flounder in their own self-importance!
Well said Pierre . . .

49. K. C. says:

As a former SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) engineer many moons ago, the processes involved in your paper seem to me to be very similar to a module used in PLC’s (Programmable Logic Controllers – used to control industrial processes like water treatment works for example, and the SCADA system is the interface between the PLC and human beings) called a PID Loop Controller – a proportional–integral–derivative controller which is a control loop feedback mechanism.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

KC has a point, though one should bear in mind the differences as well as the similarities between an electronic circuit and the climate. Chief among these is that one can usually measure what is going on at any point in an electronic circuit, or even at several points at the same time. In the climate, there is far less observational certainty. That is why we have adopted the approach of using the absolute-value version of the system-gain equation rather than the delta version, becuase absolute values of reference and equilibrium temperature are obtainable to a far greater certainty than the delta values.

• K. C. says:

Indeed! That’s why I stated there is a similarity rather than being the same 🙂

It’s also why I found your work to be understandable and why I think you and your team’s work is so much better than the overly-complex spaghetti mess produced by the warmists.

There is a reason why process engineers didn’t go down the overly complicated convulsions the warmists did. Imagine if instead of a PLC’s PID Loop Controller, they came up with some overly complex behemoth circuitry using warmist ‘thinking’. I shudder to think what that Heath Robinson contraption would be like. 😉

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am most grateful to K.C. It is always good news when a specialist in the field is willing to indicate his agreement with our approach, which does indeed have the merit of simplicity.

50. DW Rice says:

Lord M says:

“The other three longest-standing datasets – RSS, NOAA and GISS – have all been tampered with to such an extent that they are no longer reliable.”
________________

Two points on this. (Apologies if they have been covered elsewhere, they’re not exactly subtle.)

1. RSS and UAH both made significant changes to their methods of calculating temperatures in the lower troposphere (TLT) recently. Both published peer reviewed articles in support of these changes. Both data sets are officially archived by the American Meteorological Society. Obviously one or both of these is wrong with respect to post ~2000 trends. But it appears that, as far as Lord M is concerned, the only thing that makes RSS “no longer reliable” is the fact that the changes it made resulted in an increase in the warming trend. Hardly a quantitative dismissal.

2. The somewhat garish “IPCC Observed MofB” chart that the above quoted passage refers to starts at 1990 and stops in 2012, missing out on all the many record warm temperatures since 2012. In fact, if you use the rather odd method of averaging HadCRUT4 (surface) with UAH (TLT) data, the linear trend from January 1990 to June 2018 is +1.50 C/century, which is even faster than the IPCC prediction!

I’m all for scepticism (or skepticism, if you prefer), but this is just silly.

• DW Rice says:

Just noticed I misread the chart (due to garishness!). The claim is that the IPCC forecast was 2.78 C/century from 1990, so the 1.5 C/Century observed to the present is still short of that by -1.28 C/Century. Hands up for that.

However, I believe the 2.78 C/century was originally a full century average projection, in other words, the the best estimate average rate of warming expected over the course of the 21st century. It was also the 1990 IPCC forecast, which was revised downwards in subsequent reports.

In 2007 (AR3) the IPCC forecast was: “For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios.” https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html

In the decade or so since 2007 temperatures have risen quite a bit faster than that, but this is influenced by the big El Nino at the recent end; so the rate from 1900 is probably more reflective. Combining HadCRUT4 and UAH gives 1.5 C/century since 1990 which is close to the IPCC forecast.

However, the 2007 IPCC forecast was based on surface temperatures, not TLT. So the rate of warming since 1990 that it references in HadCRUT4 is even closer, 1.7C century.

• DW Rice says:

That’s the rate from 1990, not ‘1900’, sorry.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

No, the 2.78 K/century equivalent was not a centennial projection: it was a projection to 2025, which is not that far away. And the IPCC projection is from its First Assessment Report in 1990.

IPCC has approximately halved its medium-term projection since then, but has left its longer-term projection interval puzzlingly unaltered.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Rice should understand that if one is considering the data for the period 1990-2011 one should consider the warming for that period too, and not for some other period.

If one were to study the period 1990-2018, one would need the net anthropogenic forcing to 2018, which would of course be somewhat higher than in 2011. Mr Rice is free to source those data and redo the calculations in the head posting. The result will not differ greatly from ours.

51. Ulric Lyons says:

So if the actual feedback to net changes in climate forcing is negative, none of this is correct either.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

If the net feedback response is negative, then our result – that equilibrium sensitivity is very considerably below the models’ estimates – is true a fortiori. However, it is not net-negative, as we have determined by comparing the reference and equilibrium temperatures in 1850. Since the equilibrium temperature is larger than the reference temperature, the system-gain factor – and therefore the feedback factor – is positive.

• Ulric Lyons says:

You have assumed and not determined a positive feedback to net changes in climate forcing, and you have excluded the possibility of a negative feedback.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

We have assumed nothing except what official climatology assumes, wherever we cannot prove that what official climatology assumes is incorrect.

In 1850 the reference temperature was well below the equilibrium temperature. The entire difference was occasioned by net-positive feedback.

• There is no such thing as “official climatology”
..
It’s a fantasy creation on your part. You cannot assume something that doesn’t exist. That is a serious logic error.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Don’t be silly. Climatology, perhaps more than any other science, has an official wing, whose Bible is the leaden, multi-thousand-page reports of the Intergummintal Panel on Climate Change.

• Ulric Lyons says:

“In 1850 the reference temperature was well below the equilibrium temperature. The entire difference was occasioned by net-positive feedback.”

Leaving aside the effects of thermal reservoirs such as oceans, and given the gross reference temperature of the irrational uniformly heated Earth without albedo of 278.6K. Water vapour then provides radiative gains, and also losses through cloud albedo. If these gains and losses were even balanced at unity, poleward heat transport could easily make up the difference between 278.6K and 289K.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

It is not at all clear why Mr Lyons is interested in an Earth without albedo. The albedo of the Earth in the absence of the non-condensing greenhouse gases would be 0.418 (Lacis+ 2010). That is hardly zero.

Furthermore, to the extent that natural factors diminish the difference between reference and equilibrium temperature, to that extent our low-sensitivity case is made for us a fortiori, because the system-gain factor will be even lower than the 1.13 we have found. This possibility is of course discussed in our paper, in the context of official climatology’s failure to take account of Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals in deriving its estimates of emission temperature.

• Ulric Lyons says:

“It is not at all clear why Mr Lyons is interested in an Earth without albedo.”

It’s called factorising the problem. Start with a theoretical black-body temperature of 278.6K, which is then reduced to 254.8K by the 0.3 total albedo. That is standard climatology. 😉

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

It’s called irrelevantizing the problem. The albedo on which we based our calculations was not a zero albedo; nor was it an albedo of 0.3, as today. It was an albedo of 0.418, given in Lacis+ 2010 as being applicable to the Earth without greenhouse gases.

it is not at all clear, therefore, why Mr Lyons is interested in an Earth without albedo.

• There is “climatology” but none of it is “official” and none of it is “unofficial.” Monckton has constructed a straw man argument using a bogus definition of “official climatology”.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Mr Petersen, in English (not, perhaps, his first language) the word “official” is applied to governmental documents, such as those published by various governments or government entities, such as the Bank of England or the UK Climate Change Committee or by committees of Parliament or Congress. The same applies a fortiori to intergovernmental documents, such as those of IPCC, UNFCCC, the World Bank, et hoc genus omne.

Since there is a large body of such documents devoted to global warming, I refer to these documents and their contents collectively as “official climatology”. Get over it.

• Ulric Lyons says:

“it is not at all clear, therefore, why Mr Lyons is interested in an Earth without albedo”

Only because you still don’t understand standard climatology.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Lyons, on being caught out in an error yet again, yet again resorts to mere yah-boo. The head posting refers to an Earth without non-condensing greenhouse gases, but with the hydrosphere, cryosphere and atmosphere in place. The head posting explains that Lacis+ (2010) used a general-circulation model to derive the albedo in that scenario, which – like it or not – is not a zero albedo. Indeed, it is an albedo appreciably above today’s 0.3, at 0.418.

I fail to discern any reason, therefore, for messing about with some other value of albedo, or with no albedo at all: for even if the Earth were a bare rock there would be an albedo similar to that of Mars and somewhat greater than that of the Moon.

And, as I have said before, if the emission temperature of the Earth were higher than we have calculated, as Mr Lyons has suggested, then the ineluctable consequence would be that the system-gain factor and hence equilibrium sensitivity would be still lower than we have found it, though not by much. Mr Lyons’ point, therefore, is either irrelevant to his cause or somewhat damaging to it, but it has little relevance to our calculation.

• Ulric Lyons says:

Emission temperature is seen to be dependent on the theoretical maximum of 278.6K, minus the albedo.

• Your definition of “official” is lacking. It does not cover “official” religious doctrine from various churches , nor does it cover “official” academic and scientific matters. For example does “official” science declare a photon a wave or a particle? In a similar vein, there is no “official” economics, nor is there an “official” political science. Claiming any particular scientific viewpoint “official” is ludicrous.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Peterson, yet another picker of non-existent nits, should understand that when I talk of official “climatology” I am not talking of religion (except in the sense that climate extremists believe without doubting whatever the Holy Books of IPeCaC have revealed); nor am I talking of academe in general; nor am I talking of science in general; nor am I talking of “political science” (except to the extent that climatology has become politicized, though the politicians will run for cover once our paper is published); I am talking of climatology. Not difficult, really.

And if Mr Peterson is not aware that governments and related national and international intitutions all take much the same line on the global warming question, he should read – to take just one instance – the list of signatories to the Paris climate accord. Yes, there is such a thing as “official climatology”, and it is erroneous, over-politicized, and totalitarian. But it is doomed. It got the science wrong because it put politics before science, as totalitarianism has done time and time again in the past.

52. Steve O says:

“But the models don’t use the system-gain equation. They don’t even use the concept of feedback.
“No, they don’t (not these days, at any rate…”

— If the climate models have quietly abandoned their feedback equation, using an impossibly complex and error-prone method instead, that’s a fairly good indication that it was wrong.

Even if their new methods were valid and accurate, an honest and open scientific establishment operating in the best interests of society should have announced, “Everybody, all the scientific support for CAGW prior to last year is invalid because the math was wrong. But, we have a new approach that shows the same thing. So the science is still settled. It was wrong before, but it’s right now. And it’s still settled.”

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Steve O makes a fair point. It is precisely because the models no longer use the concept of feedback explicitly that we are able to second-guess their predictions by applying feedback theory to them.

• Steve O says:

Yes, if they still relied on those equations, they would insist on Trial by Combat and would fight to the death for the sake of their reputations.

53. Mike Menlo says:

But feedback in climate is not linear and may have inflection points. Even if 1850 to 2011 is one factor, 2011 on could be very different.

But the models don’t have a feedback factor, they attempt to model physical behavior and the feedback factor is a result of the interaction of multiple complex systems being modeled. So, if the models match when back-casted, but differ in forecast, this could be due to non linear feedback response.

In other words, the models may be wrong, but nothing you say here proves that they are wrong.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

We have demonstrated that, under modern conditions, the feedback system-gain factor is near-invariant at about 1.13. The reason why nonlinearities in feedbacks don’t make much difference is that our influence is so very small compared with that of the Sun and the pre-industrial non-condensing greenhouse gases.

The head posting already points out that the models no longer use feedback mathematics. But that does not prevent us from using a black-box approach to demonstrate that their attempts to obtain equilibrium sensitivity by attempting to quantify individual feedbacks have led to absurdly overblown predictions that have no physical basis in the current climate.

In other words, the models are wrong and we have demonstrated that fact. We have also demonstrated that IPCC’s definition of temperature feedback is erroneous, in that it rules out the use of absolute reference and equilibrium temperatures in the system-gain equation.

54. JimG1 says:

I’m just wondering if there is not some way to combine automatic interaction detection analysis with bayesian decision tree analysis to determine WHEN major causal variables are/ have been working together and acting upon temperature/climate resulting in inflection points? Any ideas out there? I’m sure the problem is reliable historical data/proxies for the longer periods of time and predicting those changes in causal vaiables that lead to changes in climate. Multivariate regression suffers from multicolinearity due to the causal variables being interrelated. But then AID and bayesian suffer from a lack of classical statistical significance testing ability. But using a probability tree might be useful even if only to give one ideas for further different forms of analysis. With only two actual energy inputs and a myriad of modifying variables, I still believe that determination of when these variables act together or oppose one and other is a key to understanding what is going on.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Under modern conditions, with small and slow warming such as has occurred since 1850, there is no reason to suppose that any phase transition or bifurcation will occur. If there were such a bifurcation, the models would not detect it in any event until after it had occurred.

Our result demonstrates that, in the absence of any such deus ex machina to throw off our calculations and those of the models, the models are predicting warming rates that are simply impossible under anything like modern conditions.

• JimG1 says:

I have no argument there. This post has been excellent and drawn excellent comment and commentators therefore I was hoping to obtain some input from those here regarding further potential analysis of the climate issues I’ve raised. The present AGW line is so flawed as to be laughable and completely misses the mark being more political/religious in nature than scientific. I was hoping that the questions I am asking might lead to actual scientific inquiry. Thank you for the post. It is excellent.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am most grateful to JimG1 for his kind comment.

The problem with attempting to conduct the further enquiry he suggests is that, with very little warming, the more obvious temperature-related bifurcations, such as a very substantial loss of Greenland or Antarctic ice, are not likely to occur within a policy-relevant time-horizon, if at all.

Furthermore, the climate behaves as a mathematically chaotic object, whose bifurcations are deterministic but indeterminable by any currently-known method. JimG1 may care to study even the simplest chaotic object – such as the Mandelbrot set, or the Verhulst population model, or an oscillating pendulum. Since even these cannot be predicted except with very perfect knowledge of the initial conditions – a knowledge that is altogether unattainable in the climate at anything like sufficient resolution – it is in practice impossible for us to predict bifurcations.

Accordingly, our analysis assumes – as does that of the models – that unless a large warming occurs we cannot predict whether or what bifurcations will occur, however much research we do.

55. Steven Mosher says:

hilarious
referees his own fight and supplies bogus data from the two worst datasets

• JimG1 says:

SM,
Cheap shot. No specifics. I actually expect more from you, most/some of the time.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mosher is a spent farce.

• JimG1 says:

Responding to comments on one’s analysis is not in the leftist play book, particularly if they are at all critical. Even displaying critical input is usually not going to happen, so the comment regarding you being your own referee should be taken with regards to the source of the comment.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Well, we have submitted our paper to a leading climate journal, and we have recommended that it be sent out for review to those who have in the past made the error that we have identified, so that it can be subjected to the harshest and most skilful scrutiny. The likes of Mosher are irrelevant. They have nothing to contribute but bile. Their day is done, and they know it.

• Philip Schaeffer says:

“They have nothing to contribute but bile.”

Lol, that’s rich coming from you.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Philip, while LMOB (and many others including myself) may indeed contribute to the global bile production at times, he (Lord Monckton) generally contributes much, much more than that.

Steve Mosher, sadly, often contributes nothing but bile. This is a shame, because Steve is a smart guy who is frequently worth listening to … when he eschews his normal drive-by commenting style and actually contributes something.

w.

• John Endicott says:

JimG1, Based on his drive-by posting history, sadly, that’s exactly what I expect from him most of the time.

• Sun Spot says:

Mosher I’m detecting fear, is Mr. Monckton being correct the source of that fear ?

• Warren says:

Referee; don’t you mean debate?
Then again debate is not a word you’d be willing to use because it would undermine your fanatical attachment to CAGW theory.
It’s only going to get worse for you Steve.
You’re beginning to realise that now.

56. looncraz says:

An 1850 starting point for calculating sensitivity may be an issue given the LIA. The math should be redone using multiple starting points to generate a range of likely equilibrium values.

Further, the math should be done for the entire range of probable starting and ending values.

If I weren’t in the middle of a move, I’d write the code to spit this out real quick… but I’m already wasting time just writing comments… ugh..

• Derg says:

I think the world is waiting for some kind of accuracy of predictions. Now global warming has morphed into Climate Change to which I keep asking is where are the stronger hurricanes and when are they going to become more numerous?

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The reason for starting in 1850 is that it is the first date for which global temperature records were kept. If the little Ice Age were to have depressed the temperature in 1850 and there has been a natural recovery since, our case is made a fortiori, because we had assumed ad argumentum that all warming since 1850 was anthropogenic.

• richard verney says:

Clearly it was not all anthropogenic since temperatures warmed by about 0.8degC through to about 1879, and during this period (1850 to 1879) there was only an increase of some 3 ppm of CO2 (according to ice cores). This general warming trend might have continued further but for Krakatoa.

And because our data sets are so poor, we do not know whether the temperature today is any different to that of the late 1930s/early 1940s, and because we do not know sufficient about natural variation, we do not know whether all the real warming between 1850 to date, is simply the result of natural variation.

Just for the sake of argument, what if there is cooling between now and say 2050 such that even on HADCRUT data, the temperature in 2050 is the same as it was in 1940? If this were to happen, what would this say about your calculation? What if within error bounds the temperature in 2050 is the same as in 1880? What would that say about your calculation?

Now I would not say that that proves that there is no Climate Sensitivity to CO2 Even though some 99% of all manmade CO2 emissions would have occurred since 1940), but it does suggest that there may be no Climate Sensitivity to CO2, or such sensitivity as there may be is very small.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Verney still does not understand our central premise, which is that we accept all of official climatology’s data, methods and results ad argumentum – i.e., for the sake of argument, without warranting their truth – so as to focus the discussion solely on the error of physics that we have identified. I repeat that if some perhaps considerable fraction of the warming since 1850 was natural then our case is made for us a fortiori – i.e., our case is even stronger than if we assume what official climatology assumes. And if, as Mr Verney predicts, there is cooling between now and 2050, then whose estimate of equilibrium sensitivity is closer to observed reality – ours, or those of official climatology?

57. Phil. says:

Build a test rig. All you need is an input signal, a feedback loop and an output signal. Set the input signal and the feedback factor to any value you like. Now measure the output signal. The circuit doesn’t respond only to some fraction of the input signal. It responds to all of it. We checked by building our own test rig and then getting a government lab to build one for us and to measure the output under a variety of conditions.

Unfortunately that will not work, you’ve omitted the input power. When I built such circuits I would typically use 15V, this limits the output to 15V. If you want to model the earth the equivalent of the solar input is the input power (and the loss to space will be limited to that input power).

• And if you connect the forcing input to the 15V supply pin, you have a physical realization of the climate feedback model. Will any amount feedback be capable of producing more output power than input power when the input is connected to the power supply pin?

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Don’t be too mechanistic. We use temperatures in the feedback loop. The power supply is in Watts per square meter, but the units in which we operate the loop are Kelvin, to keep matters simple. If there is an input temperature (which there is, because, like it or not, the Sun is shining), and if there is a separately-powered feedback block (which there is, because of water vapor, ice-albedo and cloud feedback), the output signal will exceed the input signal.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

An input signal cannot occur without input power. The Sun is shining.

• Yes, and this input signal is not the implicit power supply that Bode assumes exists to power the gain. Using temperature as feedback doesn’t fix this, but only adds another layer of obfuscation. The testable fact is that the climate system is quite linear in it’s response of W/m^2 of surface emissions to W/m^2 of forcing and this is demonstrably true from pole to pole and season to season.

The problem is a failure to accommodate COE between the input and output of the modeled gain block. The Bode model assumes infinite input impedance, thus no power is consumed by the input terminal. In contrast to the climate, the input forcing+feedback, both expressed in W/m^2, are the source of the output emissions, also expressed in W/m^2, making the effective input impedance of the climate gain block zero.

Once more, you’re trying to explain feedback within the vernacular of consensus climate science by focusing on temperature, rather than Joules. Temperature isn’t conserved, only energy is, but the broken language of climate science makes it hard to express this unavoidable reality.

Perhaps what confuses many is that temperature is linear to stored energy, but stored energy is not directly involved with the Joules conserved by the energy balance, only emissions are and emissions are proportional to the temperature (stored energy) raised to the forth power which is far from linear to forcing and Bode only applies to linear systems. Temperature doesn’t force the system, only incident energy forces the system.

The temperature feedback model, like the energy one, certainly shows how you must account for all of the forcing and not just small changes. While the model seems to work for a specific set of conditions, it still suffers from a failure to represent the physical reality of how the system operates over all relevant conditions.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

co2isnotevil said:

The testable fact is that the climate system is quite linear in it’s response of W/m^2 of surface emissions to W/m^2 of forcing and this is demonstrably true from pole to pole and season to season.

I’m sorry, but this is neither true nor demonstrable. See my posts here and here for a demonstration that your claim is NOT demonstrably true …

w.

• Willis,

You should know by now that I don’t make idle claims that I can’t support with definitive science. Here’s the demonstrably definitive data that supports my position. I’ve shown this many times. What is is that you fail to understand about this data?

This plot shows with no ambiguity whatsoever that the ratio between surface emissions and planet emissions are a mostly constant 0.62 from pole to pole. To be clear, this data is not mine, but originated from GISS as part of the ISCCP cloud project.

Each little red dot is the average temperature plotted against the planets emissions for each 2.5 degree slice of latitude from pole to pole. The larger dots are 3 decade averages for each slice. The evidence is unambiguous that the average output emissions for any point in space above the surface relates to to the average temperature of that surface according to equation:

Po = 0.62*o*T^4

The term o*T^4 are the BB emissions of the surface at it’s average temperature of T. Replacing o*T^4 with the emissions of the surface, Ps, we get,

Po/Ps = 0.62

This is the very definition of a linear relationship between the output emissions, Po and the emissions of the surface, Ps.

• Willis Eschenbach says:

Thanks, Christopher. See my graph here. Things are nowhere near as simple as your graph claims.

w.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

CO2isnotevil appears not to have understood our method. We remove the gain block altogether (or, if you like, we set it to unity, which amounts to the same thing) and then simply add any change in temperature to the input temperature before it passes to the summative node and then to the feedback loop.

And, as several commenters have pointed out in earlier threads, it matters not whether one performs the calculation in Joules per second per square meter (i.e., in energy densities) or in Kelvin (i.e., in temperatures), just as one can perform calculations on an electronic circuit using current or voltage, or even a mixture of the two. The result is the same either way. We use temperatures because it is simpler to do so. After all, feedbacks are denominated in Watts per square meter per Kelvin of the temperature or temperature change that induces them, and in any event the feedback factor, the product of the feedback sum in Watts per square meter per Kelvin and the Planck sensitivity parameter in Kelvin per Watt per square meter, is unitless anyway. Let us not multiply complications when the matter can be simply and reliably represented simply by using temperatures.

• “We remove the gain block altogether (or, if you like, we set it to unity, which amounts to the same thing)”
No, it isn’t the same thing. And that is why the diagrams like the top colourful one are just nuts. You can’t have a meaningful feedback loop without amplification.

Unity gain here means unit voltage (or temperature) gain. But the key is that there is current ( or flux) gain, and so power gain. That is essential because feedback works by feeding back a fraction of surplus power. I don’t see in any of the EE talk at WUWT mention of the proper way of analysing these circuits, with is as a two port network. There ire necessarily two inputs (current and voltage, or temperature and flux) and two outputs, and the transfer matrix is what describes the circuit response. I deal with that and the climate analogue here.

Ulric Lyons linked a good article on unity gain amplifiers here. They are not equivalent to no amplifier at all. Two years ago Bernie Hutchins described an amplifier that he had built and analysed which had two unit gain stages and positive feedback, giving a total gain of three.

• Nick,

“You can’t have a meaningful feedback loop without amplification”

Exactly correct and there’s no amplifier in the Earth system because an amplifier REQUIRES an implicit source of Joules to power the gain. Amplification requires adding energy to the system, while all the passive Earth system can do is redistribute existing energy. This is an immutable truth and the failure to accept this reality is behind much of the deception coming from the IPCC.

You don’t seem to understand that modeling a transistor amplifier as a linear 2-port ‘small signal’ device means that the signals are limited to what the implicit power supply can support and maintain linearity. Take away the implicit power supply and the conditions required to model the transistor amplifier as a small signal device disappear.

You can’t ignore this truth just because it falsifies a high ECS. The way science works is that when a hypothesis is falsified, the hypothesis must be modified. The hypothesis of an absurdly high ECS is in dire need of being modified. The IPCC will not modify their hypothesis because it would need to be modified by so much that their reason for alarm disappears and it’s the alarm that sustains their existence.

• “Amplification requires adding energy to the system, while all the passive Earth system can do is redistribute existing energy.”
In signal terms, there is no distinction here. The Earth has a flow of energy through (sunlight), just as an amplifier has a power supply. I have shown various electronic analogues here. A thermionic triode valve has a flow of current through (like sunlight). The grid modulates this current, (like GHGs modulate IR flux). A small power input gives an amplified signal output.

“means that the signals are limited to what the implicit power supply can support and maintain linearity”
I do understand that very well. In this case the power supply is a flux of 240 W/m2, and the perturbation is a forcing of about 2 W/m2. A long way from clipping.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Stokes, in asserting on no evidence that one cannot have a meaningful feedback loop without a gain block (at least, I assume that that is what he means when he says one cannot have a meaningful feedback block without amplification) is simply incorrect. His statement, like so many contributed by him to these threads, is flat-out false.

We tested the matter on two test rigs, one of them at a government laboratory. We did not need the test rigs, because the theory is entirely plain and the mathematics not particularly difficult. But we built and ran them anyway, because we know that those who are paid to try to conceal what we have unearthed will do as Mr Stokes has done and flatly deny what is not only self-evident from the system-gain equation but was also demonstrated by our two test rigs.

There is nothing to prevent one from removing the gain block from a feedback loop and simply adding any change in the input signal to that signal before it enters the loop at the summative node. We explicitly tested this scenario by setting the gain block to unity (so no gain) and setting the feedback block to a nonzero value.

And we have the benefit of a more than usually competent professor of control theory at our backs. It was he who proposed the simplification of the Bode diagram that appears in the head posting.

What is sad about all this is that Mr Stokes has a doctorate in linear systems theory. He knows perfectly well that he is not telling the truth.

• “There is nothing to prevent one from removing the gain block from a feedback loop “
OK, please do it. It’s no use waving around your circuits with op amps (not just one, all that is needed, but 2). Produce a circuit that has meaningful feedback made of just resistances. You don’t even need to show it working; a clear description will do.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Stokes continues to pretend to struggle with the perfectly straightforward notion that in a feedback amplifier circuit the amplifier gain may be set to unity; or, equivalently, that the gain block may be removed from the circuit and any change in the input signal added to that signal before it is input to the summative node.

The elements of a Bode feedback amplifier circuit are these –

1. The input signal.
2. The summative input node.
3. The gain block (these days usually denoted by G).
4. The output node.
5. The feedback block (these days usually denoted by H).
6. The output signal.

The circuit and the elementary linear algebra by which it is governed will be found in ch. 3 of Bode (1945) and illustrated in Fig. 3.1. Similar arrangements of the elements of the circuit can be found in any number of textbooks of elementary network analysis. None of this is in the least controversial.

To simplify the math still further, we have removed the gain block (in our circuits, one can do this by setting the variable open-loop gain factor G to unity) and we have added any change in the input signal to that signal before it is input to the summative node. Since the removal of the gain block renders the input and output nodes equipotential, the summative node can then be described as a single input/output node.

Of course, we might proceed instead by way of argumentum ex hypothesi. At any given moment for which a reference temperature (by definition before the action of feedback is accounted for) and an equilibrium temperature (by definition after the action of feedback has been accounted for) are available, the transfer function between the reference and equilibrium temperature is the ratio of the latter to the former. One does not need to know anything about open-loop gain factors or feedback loops or summative nodes or nonlinear feedback response or any suchlike arcana. Mr Stokes will perhaps find it simpler to treat all these matters simply as a black box, as explained in the head posting.

All that is then necessary is to find reference and equilibrium temperatures for at least two years in the industrial era, one close to the beginning and one close to the end, and to derive the transfer functions for each of the two years, for that will reveal the extent to which any nonlinearities in the feedback response have altered the transfer function over time. That is the approach we took in our paper. For once it is accepted, as it must be, that feedback acts on the entire input signal as well as on any perturbation thereto, it is the simplest and most direct way to derive equilibrium sensitivities.

• “I assume that that is what he means when he says one cannot have a meaningful feedback block without amplification) is simply incorrect. His statement, like so many contributed by him to these threads, is flat-out false.”

Still no response to the challenge. Please show a circuit that has no amplifier but meaningful feedback.

58. al in kansas says:

And to overview, we are discussing surface temperature data sets that, at best, have 1 sigma error bars of +/-0.5C (+/-0.2C satellite), the length of which are 150 years for surface and 35 years satellite, when 12,000 yeas old proxies indicate past temperatures 1.5C or more higher and variations of 1C-2C over a few hundred year periods. Color me extremely skeptical. With this high a signal to noise ratio, none of this would pass any science course that I was ever taught. Sub MOA accuracy and precision claimed when the target is a barn door at 10 foot range. It all looks very myopic to me.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Al in Kansas (very flat, Kansas), the error bars on the HadCRUT4 dataset, which are commendably published monthly, are +/- 0.35 K in 1850 and about +/- 0.15 K now. These values are small enough not to perturb our result significantly, because the major influence on temperature feedbacks is the fact that the Sun is shining, and that overwhelms everything else.

It would be best if Al in Kansas actually did some calculations using our method to see whether or not the variances either side of the mid-range estimates make much difference. He will find that even quite large variances make remarkably little difference. Does he really suppose that we did not conduct sensitivity analyses to make sure?

Indeed, we went further. We conducted a 30,000-trial Monte Carlo simulation, and determined to 95.4% confidence that, on the assumption that official climatology has made no error other than that which we have identified and quantified, equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 concentration is just 1.17 +/- 0.08 K.

We even imagined, just out of interest, that the Earth started out as an iceball. Even then, equilibrium sensitivity is below 1.5 K. In reality, we should probably have started much nearer to the present than the waterbelt Earth imagined by Lacis et al. (2010). In that event, equilibrium sensitivity would be more like 1.1 K. Either way, not enough to be worth worrying about.

59. Another significant mismatch between the climate feedback model and Bode’s model of a linear feedback amplifier is time.

In the ideal Bode model that he climate feedback model is derived from, there’s no modeled delays and the input, output and feedback are all considered concurrent. In fact, when you start to model this delay, phase shift is introduced which can turn negative feedback into positive feedback or visa-versa.

When the first Joule from the Sun arrives at the surface in the morning, it’s GHG warming effect doesn’t come into effect until the surface emits the energy, is intercepted by GHG molecules and bounces around for a while until it’s returned to the surface well after the energy was initially absorbed by the surface.

This delay is crucial as the delayed energy is the source of the surface energy that’s returned back to the surface slowing down the rate of cooling and not Bode’s implicit power supply. The COE constraint this infers is conveniently ignored because to acknowledge it falsifies using the feedback model to support an absurdly high ECS and falsification doesn’t seem to be part of what the IPCC accepts are legitimate science.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

To allow for possible variation over time, we calculated equilibrium and reference sensitivities for two widely-separated dates in the industrial era. The system-gain factor proved to be near-identical for both dates.

• It’s not the variability over time I’m talking about, but the delay between emissions and their return to the surface. This delay binds energy returned to the surface with prior emissions and the COE constraint this imposes by limiting feedback+planet_emissions to the emissions by the surface are what the IPCC ignores.

The failure to accommodate this delayed energy as the source of feedback power is another obfuscation allowing feedback+planet_emissions to rise to infinity, which is otherwise impossible without an infinite power supply. This can be corrected by applying COE between the input and output of the gain block.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

All such complications as co2isnotevil mentions are entirely unnecessary to our method. We simply do not need to know what is inside the black box. All we need to know is that the feedback response is by definition the difference between equilibrium and reference temperature; that the system gain factor is the ratio of the former to the latter, and that the values of equilibrium and reference temperatures were approximately what we found them to be in 1850 and again in 2011.

Could one reach the same result by a more complicated method, worrying about conservation of energy etc.? Very probably: but there is simply no need to do so.

60. Ewan Macdonald says:

Actually the sun has been shining in Scotland for most of the last six weeks!

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

What a delight is my beloved Scotland on those rare occasions when that funny yellow thing in the sky puts in an appearance! When the Victorians built an observatory near the summit of Beinn Nibheis, they found to their dismay that the stars were visible only only 18 nights per year, and they abandoned the observatory, whose ruins can be seen to this day, a monument to Shakespeare’s apercu that “The rain it raineth every day”.

61. Dr. Deanster says:

Lord Monckton …… one last question …. how to you come up with 11.5 for the greenhouse gases. Not trying to sound ignorant, I know it water vapor and CO2 and other GHG s …. but how does that compute to 11.5C.? Is there a reference for this?

Just trying to learn something here for future debates.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Dr Deanster, as is his wont, asks all the interesting questions. In our paper, we derived three values for the warming from the non-condensing greenhouse gases up to 1850. The first method was a simple subtraction sum. In Lacis+ 2010 the emission temperature without greenhouse gases was 243.25 K and the reference temperature after adding in the gases but before feedback was 252 K, giving 8.75 K. Our mid-range estimate was derived by taking the 30 W/m^2 total forcing to date from CO2 given in Schmidt+ 2010, deducting from it the CO2 forcing of 1.68 W/m^2 from 1850-2011 and then multiplying the result by the ratio of total net anthropogenic forcing to CO2 forcing: i.e., 2.29 / 1.68. That gave us an approximation of the net greenhouse-gas forcing to 1850, which we then multiplied by the Planck parameter 0.3 to give the greenhouse-gas warming to 1850. There was a third method, which gave about 13.5 K warming from the non-condensing greenhouse gases to the same year. It does not matter much which of these three methods one uses: the equilibrium sensitivity barely changes, for the feedback response to the sunshine is more important than anything else.

62. MikeW says:

As a climate scientist myself, I can report that, even if the equilibrium warming from doubled CO2 is slight (1.17K), we still face an extreme climate threat. Results from my own consensus climate models prove that even a Slight Warming of Doom (SWOD) caused by the CO2 from fossil fuels will result in widespread weather disasters and other environmental catastrophes within 50-100 years unless we act now. The only way to prevent SWOD is to send me lots of money, and to transfer ownership and control of all fossil fuels to me. Anyone who disputes my claims is a climate denier.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Brilliant! Give MikeW the money now!

63. ( I clicked a “cookies” warning at the bottom of the screen and blew away a more elaborate comment , but I’ve said it all before in various forms and forums . ) To be brief :

This is still curve fitting not fundamental testable quantitative physics .

The energy balance equations must include gravitational energy ( which computes as a negative ) if one believes in conservation of energy .

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Armstrong, like many here, has his pet theories, most of which take the form of insisting that one must do the calculation in a fashion more complicated than what we have used. But I am not sure that he is right. What I can say is that we have not in any way indulged in curve-fitting: we have derived our results in a straightforward and replicable fashion from published data.

• Actually , I’m just following Lavoisier who turned alchemy into chemistry by bringing his tax accounting background to bear and requiring a QUANTITATIVE audit trail from inputs to outputs .

I simply start at the geometry computing the portion of our celestial sphere subtended by the Sun from our orbit , and it’s estimated effective temperature , and quickly calculate the 278.6 +- 2.3 gray body temperature around our orbit . This is simply by StefanBoltzmann based on a total of about 1361 w%m^2 impinging on a point in our orbit .

The next parameter to add is spectrum , color . In terms of energy , which computes linearly , the equilibrium will be reached when absorption from the sun equals emission to the whole celestial sphere . those 2 values are given by the dot ( scalar ) products of the color spectrum of the ball with the power spectrum of the Sun ( absorption ) and the Planck thermal spectrum for the temperature which balances that absorption . This is a straightforward generalization of the — unforgivably crude at this point in discussion when actual measured spectra of the planet from the outside are available — 255K meme . This slide . http://cosy.com/Science/AGWpptHypotheticalSpectra.jpg , tries to illustrate that computation , but it would be really nice if someone ran the computation for an observed spectrum . I’m busy getting ready to present CoSy the language in Edinburgh next month .

In any case , that’s where the physics comes to full stop . Very few seem to understand even that basic computation of the temperature of a colored ball . Much less present a testable quantitative equation for how some spectral phenomenon “traps” a higher temperature on the interior of the ball than that calculated for its surface .

And that is the gap that gravitational energy quantitatively fills . Again , if you believe in conservation of energy , it cannot be left out of the equations .

I guess it can be said we both build on published data . Mine are the measured temperature and radius of the Sun and our distance from it . But that’s the end of the classical physical audit trail at this point . Getting a best measurement of the planet’s absorptivity=emissivity spectrum as seen from outside would nail down the temperature which can be ascribed to the solar input .

• RACookPE1978 says:

Gee. So accurate. For a flat earth perfectly insolated on one side, perfectly insulated on the other side, of uniform mass and emmissivity.

The earth is round, it does rotate about its axis, and a single average temperature for a flat earth is only a thought experiment.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Armstrong has made the elementary mistake of neglecting to divide the solar forcing by 4, the ratio of the surface area of the terrestrial sphere to its great circle.

• As I have tried to make clear all my APL ( ala K ) expressions are in terms of the actual spherical geometry . The next spectral term which needs to be added is Lambertian corrections .

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In Mr Armstrong’s earlier statement of his method, he had plainly not described a spherical temperature, for he had failed to divide by 4. He had also failed to provide a proper, explicit, quantified albedo. Nor is it at all clear that he had accounted for Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals.

• If I effectively “didn’t divide by 4” , how did I come up with the correct answer for the gray body temperature in our orbit : 278.6 +- 2.3 — or do you disagree with those numbers ?

Or do you disagree with that answer ?

I suspect you of not knowing what a “dot” or “scalar” product is — essential for determining the absorption or emission of a colored object irradiated by an arbitrary power spectrum .

That is , I question your ability to calculate the temperature of a billiard ball under a sunlamp .

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The emission temperature of the Earth is given in numerous authorities as 255 K, and we make it more like 265-275 K after allowing for Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals. However, Mr Armstrong’s earlier account of how he reached 278 K gave a reasonably clear indication that he had not divided by 4. Nor was it clear that he had made any adjustment for Hoelder’s inequalities.

• Simply false . Here’s my computation in CoSy RPN APL in x86 Forth ( which is the reason for having to explicitly convert floats )

f( 1361 1366.46 1364.625 )f 4. _f %f P>Tsb 278.32 278.59 278.50

where
: sb ( -- StefanBoltzmanConstant ) 5.6704e-8 _f ; : P>Tsb ( Power -- Temperature ) sb %f .25 _f ^f ; | SB power to temperature

were I not to divide by 4 , the results would be
f( 1361 1366.46 1364.625 )f P>Tsb 393.60 393.99 393.86

I simply use the disk equivalent when the full spherical geometry is not required .

The fact that you don’t recognize the ~ 278.+ value indicates that you don’t understand how to calculate even the temperature of a gray , ie: flat spectrum , ball in our orbit .

I don’t give a …. about that embarrassingly crude amateurish useless 255K meme . You seem to be indicating you do not understand the generalization of the computation which produces that meme to the temperature of an arbitrarily colored ball in our orbit . And the only effect on our temperature of CO2 or any GHG is its effect on that color , ie: spectrum as seen from space .

It does not and cannot explain why the bottoms of atmospheres are hotter than the radiative balances computed for their spectrums . That can only be , and quantitatively is explained if you believe in conservation of energy and account for gravitational .

I’ve generally seen the term “gish gallop” used by warmists who can’t recognize the least bit of math or physics . But what in the hell does “Hölder’s inequality” , which I see is a generalization of the Triangle Inequality to Lp spaces ( I’m with Hilbert : we live in L2 ) got to do with anything at issue ?

I see you created an interesting tessellation puzzle about 20 years ago . Have you ever looked at my logo which I solved in APL about 40 years ago ?

Hint it’s a cube . Can you tell how many dimensions ? The hard part was figuring out how to draw arbitrary dimensional cubes with a single continuous line which a result of Euler implied must be possible for even dimensions .

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Armstrong is becoming muddled. Hoelder’s inequalities (not “inequality”, as he put it) cover many matters. The relevant inequality when deriving the mean dayside temperature of a planetary body is the fact that the fourth power of a sum is not the same as a sum of fourth powers. Official climatology makes the mistake of not allowing for Hoelder’s inequalities when deriving its 255 K global mean emission temperature.

Mr Armstrong accuses me of “not recognizing” 287.5 K as the temperature of the surface of a blackbody sphere (albedo 0) at 1 A.U. from the Sun. He does so on no evidence. In case he is himself in doubt about how it is calculated, I shall be happy to enlighten him. The insolation is 1364.625 Watts per square meter. Divide that by 4, the ratio of the surface area of the sphere to its great circle. Divide by the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. Take the fourth root. Job done. The answer is not correct, of course, because it takes no account of Hoelder’s inequalities.

Furthermore, as I pointed out to Mr Armstrong some way upthread, it is not in the least useful to know the incorrectly calculated mean surface temperature of a sphere of albedo 0. For the Earth has an albedo; and it would have had an even greater albedo in the absence of the non-condensing greenhouse gases. I did not say I did not understand how the 278.5 K temperature was arrived at. I said that it was not in the least useful, both because the relevant albedo is not 0 but 0.418 and because 278.5 K is, in any event, incorrect.

• I will take 287.5 !

What do you think that computation :
f( .... ....... 1364.625 )f 4. _f %f P>Tsb ...... ..... 278.50
right there is ? Using your ridiculously over precise value .
to be even more explicit , see the

4. _f %f

. As I mentioned , because CoSy is executing right at the x86 register level the

_f

is needed to take the 4. off the floating point stack and make it a CoSy list , and the

 %f

needs the

f

because the arithmetic functions have yet to be made generic . But I think it’s pretty damn recognizable anyway .

You persist in going on about the “divide by 4” when I presented the exact calculation I have consistently presented and the FACT that NOT dividing by 4 gives 393.86 . Clearly you are having trouble connecting A with B .

And you STILL appear not to understand that a GRAY , ie: Flat Spectrum , ball , however light or dark comes to the same temperature as a BLACK ( except for a singularity at reflectivity = 1 ) .

Really , this is embarrassing . Bottom line , you are demonstrating again and again that you do not in fact know how to calculate the temperature of an arbitrarily colored billiard ball under a sunlamp — and thus not a dream of analytically understanding the temperature physics of planets .

Like Willis , I am finding you impossible to have a rational mutually respectful convergent discussion with .

( don’t know how to format fixed font aesthetically inline , so … sorry . )

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Armstrong, like Mr Eschenbach, is prone to assume that he is right even when he is wrong, and then to hold my feet to the fire when I point out, in the most straightforward way, that he is wrong.

Since Mr Armstrong’s use of scientific terms is more than somewhat cavalier, making his ramblings more than a little difficult to follow, perhaps he will explain what he means when he says that a graybody, i.e., a body whose albedo is on the open interval (0, 1), has the same temperature regardless of its albedo.

It would also be helpful if he would define the term “flat spectrum ball”, with which I confess I am not familiar.

The lunar regolith is predominantly gray. Yet there is an albedo of 0.11. And there is no ocean to retain dayside heat at night. Therefore (overlooking the small heat capacity of the regolith) the lunar mean surface temperature is about 200 K, after due allowance for Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals.

Above all, what on Earth is the point he is trying to make, and of what possible relevance is it to the head posting? Could he please ask someone to assist him in putting it into straightforward scientific English?

• Jeez I don’t have time for this . I need to nail down my plans EuroForth in Edinburgh the weekend of the 14th and a Dog&Pony on http://CoSy.com , the shortest path from the chip to the math , in London the following week . I invite anybody who’ll be in the area .

“albedo” should be noted WRT a particular power spectrum and object color , ie: asorption=emission spectrum , call it F for filter . It’s a dot product between the 2 .

By the same token , the emission of an object to a given sink will be determined by its power spectrum to that of the sink , will be the Planck thermal spectrum for its temperature modified by that same F . The sink , in the case of a planet can be considered to have a ~3K Planck spectrum — essentially flat 0 .

In the case of a planet passively heated by the Sun , the equilibrium temperature will be reached when , copying and editing from http://cosy.com/Science/ComputationalEarthPhysics.html#EqTempEq

dot[ aeSpectrum ; sourceSpectrum ] = dot[ aeSpectrum ; Planck objectTemp ]

Noch einmal : this is a straightforward generalization of the computation which produces the 255K meme to arbitrary spectra .

By Kirchoff ( & Stewart & others ) , based on Ritchie’s 1830s experiment , a = e at each wavelength .

For a gray ie: FLAT SPECTRUM body , where

a = e = Constant
across all wavelengths , they , it , drops out of the equation .

A gray body , properly defined , no matter how light or dark , comes to exactly the same temperature as a black body ( except for the singularity a 0 ae ) .

The retardation of this field by the red herring of the stupidly crude 255K meme based on a step function spectrum when actual measured spectra of the planet from the outside exist cannot be overstated . Effort should go to refining our measurement of that absorptivity=emissivity spectrum ( which is admittedly difficult — as I’ve chatted with David Crisp , who runs NOAA OCO-2 CO2 measuring satellite program about ) .

Then and only then , when these distinctly undergraduate facts and computations are universally understood can one move forward towards a quantitative analytical model of the planet — because they are also the quantitative relationships which hold for any voxel in a complete analytical model .

Anybody over in Britain who’d like to get together and discuss this physics and work towards an APL level analytical model of planetary physics as discussed in , eg: http://cosy.com/y12/NewsLetter2012.html , while I’m over there , let me know . It would be fun and might get something done .

64. Kristi Silber says:

This is a long quotation, but it deserves repeating…

“In suchlike bodies, totalitarianism prevails (though not for much longer). For them, the Party Line is all, and mightily profitable it is – at taxpayers’ and energy-users’ expense. But the trouble with adherence to the Party Line is that it is a narcotic substitute for independent, rational, scientific thought. The Party Line replace the heady peril of mental exploration and the mounting excitement of the first glimmer of a discovery with a dull, passive, cringing, acquiescent uniformity.

“Worse, since the totalitarians who have captured academe ruthlessly enforce the Party Line, they deter terrorized scientists from asking the very questions it is the purpose of scientists to ask. It is no accident that most of my distinguished co-authors now live and move and have their being furth [?] of the dismal scientific establishment of today: for if we were prisoners of that grim, cheerless, regimented, unthinking, inflexible, totalitarian mindset we should not have been free to think the thinkworthy. For these malevolent entities, and the paid or unpaid trolls who mindlessly support them in comments here regardless of the objective truth, punish everyone who dares to think what is to them the utterly unthinkable and then to utter the utterly unutterable. Several of my co-authors have suffered at their hands. Nevertheless, we remain unbowed.”

WOW! This is quite a plethora of assertions. And what rhetoric! “Terrorized scientists”! “Malevolent entities”! So scientists all over the world are subject to mindless, totalitarian, acquiescent uniformity? What “Party Line” controls them all, when they come from such disparate nations as China and America? Are scientists all socialists, is that the idea? What is the mechanism by which they are colluding – is there some secret authority that determines research outcomes? How come they debate each other at all? (And they do, as anyone familiar with the literature can attest.) Why do some results of research contradict each other? Why do some contrarian scientists more or less agree with AGW theory and only differ from the consensus in their ideas of its “catastrophic” nature – are they, too, being misled into groupthink?

Who exactly are all Monckton’s co-authors, and how have several “suffered”?

It’s this kind of attack, asserting that thousands researchers are completely lacking in scientific integrity – or independent thought of any kind – that I despise. There is no evidence provided, it’s simply thrown out there as if it were fact. What does this say for the ability of Monckton to think with reason supported by evidence? What is this but pushing an agenda of his own?

Why don’t skeptics question and debate such assumptions? Do they all really believe this tripe? Why? Are they aware of Monckton’s predilection for misquoting people, or his repeated public misinterpretation of research? I’ve given links to the evidence before, but people seem to simply ignore them, even saying that they are smearing Monckton’s reputation, but without even bothering to look at the evidence. (Search youtube for potholer54 monckton)

I suppose I would fall within Monckton’s category of mindless trolls, according to him. What gives him so much insight into my views and character that he knows me better than I know myself? What conceit! Is it not he who would like to quash (true) skepticism?

)

• Warren says:

You know WUWT is for sceptics and one is unlikely to be banned here unless one is persistently malicious.
You’re welcome here because you’re sceptical of most sceptics in a ‘reasonable’ manner.
Monckton is welcome here because he’s sceptical of the mainstream and has interesting alternate theories and (like you) he makes claims about the conduct of others but in a ‘reasonable’ manner.
We don’t really care what you or Monckton say about others as long as you’re reasonable and have something intelligent to say and value open debate here.

• Kristi Silber says:

Warren,

“We don’t really care…”

I don’t see how you can speak for all skeptics here, but that is beside the point. My point is that when such claims are made, and made again and again, they can come to seem like the truth even when there is no evidence to back them up. This is what has happened – many people believe that scientists are mindless drones with no integrity, just pushing an agenda. It serves as a justification for ignoring data or asserting that it is fraudulent, even when there is no evidence that’s the case. This is not productive in the search for truth.

To say that such a diatribe is in a “reasonable manner” is stretching things, to say the least…and very unlike anything I would do.

• Arjan Duiker says:

Kristy Silber,

The argument that Cristopher Monckton makes is a straight forward argument.
Why can’t one just acknowledge the possibility of a fundamental error in the foundation of climate science or modelling.
I would say, please stay to the content of the matter.

To me, it looks like there are people out there that would rather live in fear of climate change instead of looking for evidence that refutes it.
I wonder why.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Amen to that!

• Dr. Deanster says:

Kristi …. Anyone who has engaged in Ph.D. Level academia is well aware of the unintentional, or in some cases intentional tendency to bend research to fit the desired outcome. There is money involved, and where there is money involved, there will be corruption.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

And Amen to that!

• Warren says:

Monckton graciously and comprehensively answered your two early blocks of questions (August 16, 2018 4:57 pm and August 16, 2018 5:12 pm).
When can we expect a comment from you or do you accept his answers as authoritative and definitive?

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Ms Silber is being as churlish as she is naive. If she is unaware of the Communist takeover of the universities, including the science departments, she has perhaps spent very little time in one recently. One of my co-authors, solely because he had his name on a paper that gave the first hint of our result, suffered a vicious campaign of personal vilification and libel of the worst kind on the front pages of the Marxstream media – e.g. the New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Pest, the Boston Glob, Nature, Science, the Journal of Education and many others, and his institution threatened him with dismissal until I intervened and bullied his bosses a lot more firmly than they could bully him. Another of our co-authors was dismissed from his university on a trumped-up charge just one month after a reviewer of our paper had breached the code of confidentiality by sending our paper to his university, where it created consternation. Another co-author continues to be mercilessly bullied by his university. Others have had their CreepyMedia pages trashed by paid Communists.

I say Ms Silber is churlish because, much earlier in this thread, she asked me a series of perfectly proper questions, to which I provided detailed answers. Now she resorts to recycling hate-speech against me by a third party of known Communist credentials who was not interested in the slightest in the objective truth. Ms Silber should ask her kindergarten mistress to read to her the section on “the community of women” in the Communist Manifesto and perhaps reconsider her current allegiance.

• Philip Mulholland says:

Kristi
I believe that the noble lord is honouring his family roots from the Scottish Borders with this fine use of Furth a guid Scots word.
See also outwith as in “there is a green hill far away outwith a city wall”.

65. Zeyanne says:

Concerning the point
“But global temperature is rising as originally predicted.”

Is there any scientific reason why you show a graph ending in 2012?

Or is it just to hide the fact that there was a sudden increase in temperature between 2012 and now, which makes the IPCC projection look much better than your feedback model?

• John Endicott says:

“We selected 2011 as the end-point because that was the year to which IPCC and its contributors updated their data and methods in time for the most recent Assessment Report.

However, we also conducted an empirical campaign based on ten separate estimates of net anthropogenic forcing to various dates, four from IPCC’s reports and six from mainstream, peer-reviewed sources. In all cases the equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 was found to be 1.17 K.”

In other words he didn’t choose 2011, the IPCC chose it. The point is to show where the IPCC/official climatology has got it wrong, so it makes sense to use the same time frame they used for comparisons sake.

As for your other claim (that IPCC projection looks better once you add temps to the present), that has also been discussed up thread:

Theo said
Extending the graph to July 2018 would only slightly raise the angle of the blue line. It still wouldn’t make it up to the lower MoE line, ie into the IPCC’s yellow prediction zone.

to which Monckton of Brenchley added:
Theo is correct. It is only if one uses the much-tampered-with GISS data to 2018 that the trend-line barely makes it into the very bottom of IPCC’s prediction region.

“The 1998 El Nino raised the global average temperature above the model predictions, the 2015/16 El Nino raised it to the average of the models (and they cheered that they were accurately modelling global average temp), but since then it has cooled whereas the model predictions continue to warm. They will be lucky if the next major El Nino reaches their lowest forecast models”

• zeyanne says:

Sorry, I don’t buy it. Extending to 2018 changes the slope quote a bit, at least that’s what linear regression with XmGrace tels me. Di you have any proof that it doesn’t affect the lope? That would be weird…

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

See my reply to Zeyanne a little upthread. There has been some warming since 2011, but there has also been a sharp increase in net anthropogenic radiative forcing.

• Warren says:

“a sudden increase in temperature between 2012 and now”
Are you referring to this sudden increase:
Do you know something even mainstream climate science doesn’t?
Ok explain to us dummies how elevated CO2 can cause a “sudden” increase in the globe’s temperature over a 6 or 7 year period?
No one is attempting to “hide” anything and you should go back to whatever you do which clearly doesn’t involve physics or climatology.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In response to Zeyanne, global temperature is not rising as originally predicted by IPCC. And yes, there is a scientific reason why our analysis goes to 2011. That is the date to which IPCC, regarded as Gospel by the true-believers in the New Superstition, updated its data and predictions.

Were we to update the calculation, we would need a generally-accepted estimate of the net anthropogenic forcing to 2018. At present, none is available. The nearest one might come to that is the net anthropogenic forcing to date in the Giss ModelE general-circulation model. That is approximately 2.5 Watts per square meter compared with the 2.3 we used. The surface temperature change is 0.85 K instead of the 0.75 K to 2011. So the result would not be significantly different from the 2011 result, particularly if one allowed for the fact that the official estimates of net anthropogenic radiative forcing are artificially depressed by the use of what Professor Lindzen has called the “negative aerosol forcing fudge factor” calculated artificially to increase apparent climate sensitivity.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

A kindergarten version of our result is being prepared for the likes of the furtively pseudonymous “Dr Strangelove”.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

One did not realize that Dr Strangelove refers to itself as “Dr Warlock”. Perhaps it had better pay closer attention to its atmospheric physics lessons in future. It does not appear capable of mustering anything resembling a scientific argument.

66. Michael Keal says:

Lord Monkton, I once had the pleasure of shaking your hand and hearing you speak at the Climate Conference in Conway Hall some years ago. I’m delighted to learn that you’re still very much in the fight! Today you have swung the sword of truth in the comments below with aplomb but more importantly, I believe, you have finally found the wooden stake needed to plunge into the heart of the climate zombie which, in spite of many deadly attacks on it that are founded in reason and logic, still staggers on, seemingly unstoppable, de-industrialising, even destroying and at the very least definitively stultifying first world economies, where it selectively chooses to roam.

The strength of the IPCC’s paradigm lies in its simplicity. It avoids the myriad of complexities that go to make up the inner workings of the Earth’s climate making it easy to use as a vehicle to act politically and impose disastrously wrong energy policies on poor bamboozled benighted unsuspecting voters.

I predict with high confidence that you will succeed in getting published.

And the wooden stake? It is of course the error in the IPCC’s own paradigm. The one they need to predict climatic doom. By finding and correcting this carefully hidden fatal flaw, you have turned their own logic against them. This is only possible by staying within their paradigm. In other words, by keeping things simple, the way they do, so a judge in a future court case can understand.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

I am most grateful to Mr Keal for his kind comments. I hope that he will join us in Porto, Portugal, on 7-8 September. The same team of eminent scientists and distinguished researchers will be there. And all of us have very interesting results to report.

67. Ulric Lyons says:

C.M. writes:
“As to Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals, note that on the Moon a single use of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer suggests a lunar mean surface temperature of 270 K. However, it is in fact about 200 K, because the fundamental equation of radiative transfer is a fourth-power relation and the sum of a series of fourth powers differs from the fourth power of the sum of a series.”

Dayside lunar surface temperature is close to being in equilibrium with solar irradiance. Which would yield an average temperature of 394K*0.5^0.25 = 331.3K. The average of that and the nightside average surface temperature of ~90K is around 211K. Similar to what Earth would be with no atmosphere and no oceans and similar regolith heat capacity.
Though if we imagine that the Moon and Earth are uniformly heated by the Sun, then the effective black body temperature would be far higher; 394K*0.25^0.25 = 278.6K.
Which with 0.3 albedo becomes the 254.8K figure that we are all familiar with.
(278.6*0.7^0.25 = 254.8)

So clearly we need heat capacity to account for the Lunar average surface temperature, but here on Earth, the difference between 254.8K and 288K is all down to the greenhouse effect apparently.

• John Endicott says:

you read but you do not comprehend.

He’s saying there that the Lunar average surface temperature could be considered similar to what Earth would if you took away the atmosphere and took away the oceans and left Earth with a similar “regolith heat capacity”.

He’s explaining where the 254.8K value comes from. That’s *one* value, there isn’t a difference (which requires *two* values) that you “need heat capacity to account for”. The difference comes from comparing that one value with the one for the Earth as we know it (the one that has Atmosphere & Oceans). So you are basically comparing apples and oranges in your failure to comprehend what was written.

Or in other words. 254.8K is used for the Lunar (with heat capacity) and Earth (with heat capacity and no oceans or atmosphere). Notice that both Lunar and Earth have the “regolith heat capacity”, so it’s already accounted for in both.

• Ulric Lyons says:

He said nothing of the sort.

The calculation of the 254.8K figure has nothing to do with heat capacity, it is purely a product of the radiative calculation of an imaginary uniformly heated Earth. Looks like you failed to comprehend my maths.

254.8K cannot be used for the Moon as it does not have 30% albedo, hello?

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Lyons has not understood how we arrive at our value of 254.8 K for the reference temperature in 1850. We begin by deriving the emission temperature using the method adopted by official climatology. That method is unsound, but it is what official climatology uses. In our paper we have flagged up the problems with that method and have presented a tentative alternative calculation, with a note to the effect that further work is needed.

Then we add the reference sensitivity to the non-condensing greenhouse gases as they were in 1850 before we had appreciably perturbed them. That gives us our 254.8 K. Correction of the emission temperature to take account of both Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals and the heat capacity of the night-side ocean would increase this value to 272 K, making our case for low equilibrium sensitivity a fortiori.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

In answer to Mr Lyons, we have taken the straightforward approach taken by official climatology, which is to the effect that the difference between the reference and equilibrium temperatures is entirely accounted for by temperature feedback. To the extent that some of that difference is attributable to other causes, our case for low equilibrium sensitivity is made for us a fortiori.

• Ulric Lyons says:

That doesn’t answer my point about the large difference in black-body temperature between the spheroid body heated on half of its surface by the Sun, and the unphysical uniformly heated body. Only the former plus the thermal reservoir explains the low mean surface temperature of the Moon.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The surface temperature on the Moon – we make it a mean 200 K – is less than the 270 K on Earth owing to the difference of three orders of magnitude between the heat capacities of the regolith and of the ocean respectively. However, all such considerations are automatically taken into account in our black-box approach. There is a reference temperature before feedback acts and an equilibrium temperature after feedback has acted. We derive both of these using methods standard in official climatology. The ratio of the latter to the former is the system-gain factor. That quantity barely changes throughout the industrial era. We may, therefore, use it to obtain a very reasonable approximation to Charney sensitivity. And that’s it.

• Ulric Lyons says:

It has nothing to do with heat capacity, 270K is purely the irrational uniformly heated figure of 278.6K minus the surface albedo. Other sources have given 207K as the actual mean, I reached ~211K by applying the physics correctly:
‘Dayside lunar surface temperature is close to being in equilibrium with solar irradiance. Which would yield an average temperature of 394K*0.5^0.25 = 331.3K. The average of that and the nightside average surface temperature of ~90K is around 211K. Similar to what Earth would be with no atmosphere and no oceans and similar regolith heat capacity.’

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Lyons is an inveterate quibbler. NASA gives the lunar mean surface temperature as 270 K, when if Nikolov and Zeller are right it is close to 200 K. If other sources make it 207 K or 211 K, so what? There is still an enormous difference between NASA’s value and the true value.

On Earth, however, the vast heat capacity of the ocean makes a considerable difference on the nightside by inhibiting heat loss (let Mr Lyons do a radiative-transfer calculation on the top 7 m of the ocean treated as a slab and he will see what I mean).

Therefore, it is likely that the true mean emission temperature of the Earth in the absence of the non-condensing greenhouse gases is not 243.3 K but more like 260.4 K. This difference causes a tiny reduction of about a fourteenth of a Kelvin in Charney sensitivity calculated correctly by our method, but it probably causes a much larger reduction using official climatology’s current incorrect method.

• Ulric Lyons says:

So according to C.M., exposing how the uniformly heated Moon calculation results in a mean Lunar surface temperature that is far too high, is being an inveterate quibbler. I’m now concerned that the physics and the maths has gone right over your head.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Lyons did not expose anything of the kind: he quibbled about whether the lunar mean surface temperature was 200 K, as I had said it was, or 207 or 211 K, as he said it was.

• Ulric Lyons says:

Drivel. The bogus 270K figure is based upon the impossible uniformly heated Moon calculation, and the near correct figure is based upon the calculation of the actual hemispheric heating of the Moon’s mean surface temperature. That exposes the biggest error in climate physics, which you pass off as quibbling, which is most surreal.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Lyons is being characteristically disingenuous. It was I, not he, who had first pointed out in this thread that using a single instance of the fundamental equation of radiative transfer the mean surface temperature of the Moon was 270 K, but that after allowing for Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals a more accurate value was 200 K.

Mr Lyons cannot deny that he knows this, because he acknowledged it upthread.

Mr Lyons thereupon quibbled repeatedly to the effect that 207 or 211 K was preferable. I pointed out, reasonably enough, that these values were far closer to the value I had already given than to Nasa’s 270 K.

Now it appears that Mr Lyons is trying to claim credit for having pointed out that the lunar temperature is well below 270 K, when, as he well knows, it was I who had first mentioned that figure as being incorrect.

It will thus be evident to all why I have characterized him as a quibbler.

• Ulric Lyons says:

“Mr Lyons is being characteristically disingenuous.”

Yet another emotional projection, as we can see by the following from M of B:

“Now it appears that Mr Lyons is trying to claim credit for having pointed out that the lunar temperature is well below 270 K, when, as he well knows, it was I who had first mentioned that figure as being incorrect.”

Obviously you pointed out the lower figure first else I would not have been able to quote you at the head of this thread. But here you are needlessly quibbling about who said it first, while accusing me of being a quibbler yet again. Personal attacks in such debates are invariably emotional projections.

Though it should be clear to other readers that you are arguing that the difference is due to ‘Hoelder’s inequalities’, while I am arguing that SB has been applied erroneously.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Lyons continues to be disingenuous at best, mendacious at worst. He had plainly but falsely implied that the correction of the erroneous 270 K estimate of the lunar mean surface temperature was an expose of “the biggest error in physics” and had then accused me passing off that error as quibbling, when in fact it was I, as he now at last admits, who had originally pointed out the discrepancy between the incorrect value 270 K and our own corrected estimate 200 K.

Mr Lyons had earlier quibbled to the effect that the correct value was 207 or 211 K, and had tried to draft his quibble in such a way as to suggest that I had made an enormous mistake when, even if one of his two values were correct, it was not greatly different from mine, as I had pointed out at the time.

He has been caught out in an attempted mendacity that has failed. Let him stop digging. He is providing much amusement for those watching this thread with great interest, but not much enlightenment.

• Phil. says:

NASA describes the lunar temperature as a (cos(zenith angle))^0.25 which shows good agreement with the Diviner results.
The value of 270K is referred to as the Blackbody temperature which is the temperature you get when thermal equilibrium exists between the power absorbed from the sun and the power emitted by the moon’s surface. That is a different quantity than the mean surface temperature.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

The erroneous value of 270 K for the “blackbody” surface temperature, usually known in climatology as the “emission temperature”, actually assumes not a blackbody at all but a Bond albedo of 0.11. The value is erroneous because no allowance is made for Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals. The current lunar surface temperature, which is actually quite close to the true emission temperature, is about 200 K. Official climatology was simply wrong about the lunar emission temperature – and quite badly wrong at that.

On Earth, owing to the presence of the ocean, the error is in the opposite direction. Official climatology’s estimate of the emission temperature is about 255 K, but it is actually somewhere between 265 and 275 K, again after correction for Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals. This difference is highly significant for official climatology’s method of deriving equilibrium sensitivity, but near-irrelevant for our method, reducing that sensitivity by only 0.07 K.

• Ulric Lyons says:

M of B now turns rather rabid with his emotional projections.
My explanation for the apparent low mean surface temperature of the Moon challenges convention, yours does not. The fact that we both agreed that it is well below 270K, or who said it first, is entirely beside the point, but you continue to relentlessly jabber on about it. How sad.

• Ulric,

Confusion seems to exist because if you take the surface of the Moon that’s in equilibrium with the Sun, put it in a hypothetical blender and mix it up, the resulting temperature will a linear average of the temperature of the lunar surface being mixed. The linear relationship between stored energy and temperature is known first principles, i.e. 1 calorie (4.1 Joules) increases the temperature of 1gm of water by 1C.

The problem is that this ‘average’ temperature is meaningless relative to the radiant balance and it’s the radiant balance that matters relative to the sensitivity. The radiant average temperature is the SB equivalent temperature of the average emitted radiation. Rather than a linear average of temperature, the resulting average should be:

Tavg = ((Td^4 + Tn^4) / 2)^.25

Where Td is the average temperature of the day side and Tn is the temperature of the night side. This can be generalized to N equal area measurements as,

Tavg = ((T0^4 + T1^4 + … + TN^4) / N )^.25

If the point of using a temperature centric analysis is to show how broken it is, then CM did well. If the point was to legitimize a broken analysis, and I don’t think it was, then it was a disservice to the scientific truth.

The bottom line is that an obsession about quantifying everything in terms of temperature sends you down the wrong path and ‘consensus’ climate science has been following this broken path for decades. Focusing on Joules is far more correct relative to the underlying physics and which makes the Hölder Inequality moot as there are no exponents in the summation of averages.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Lyons, faced with a straightforward, scientific reply, descends – as he so often does – to mere yah-boo. He is well out of his depth here.

68. Dr. Deanster says:

Lord Monckton , .. here is another nice way to look at your equation that I would really love to hear the response from your naysayers. According to the addendum provided in the previous article, you show how climate models currently apply a gain factor of 3.25 to a doubling of CO2 effect of 1.04. If we are to accept that gain increases with temperature then the 3.25 gain factor decreases by a factor of (3.25/288-273) or approximately 0.325 per degree above where water freezes, thus removing the primary GHG effect. Thus, if we start in 2011, and go backwards to 1850 using the current model assumption, we subtract the 0.7K worth of reference increase * 3..0 gain for a total 2.1K. Thus the observed global temperature for 1850 should have been 288K-2.1K which is approximately 286K … a full 1K less than 287K

In reality, it is obvious that the ocean must be playing a larger role in the overall climate than radiative forcing theory would consider. 255K is below, and we’ll add the 0.7K of CO2 and make it 256 K, is still almost 20K below the freezing point of water. As such, there simply is no way the GHG system, which is mostly water vapor, could have even started to have an effect at that temperature, as all water would be ice. That would leave only sublimation as the source of water vapor in the atmosphere, The only way we even have a GHG system is for the ocean to store up enough energy to allow water to exist in liquid, and to sustain water surface temperatures high enough to allow evaporation.

All told, CO2 contribution to the system is 1.04K, whereas everything else … err water vapor, is supplying the other 21K that raises out temp from 255 to 287.

69. Dr. Deanster says:

double post

70. Phil Salmon says:

This great work by Lord Monckton brings into light the role of positive feedback. In climatology the simplistic assumption is made that positive feedback will cause runaway unidirectional change. This is wrong. In a complex system positive feedback typically causes oscillation. To see why, consider one of natures purest examples of a system which oscillates regularly from its own internal dynamics, not from any external forcing.

Cepheid variable stars: what light do they shed on back-radiation, feedbacks and climate oscillations?

What is a Cepheid variable star?

Cepheid variable stars as any astronomers know are God’s gift to cosmology since they’re so incredibly useful to star-gazers. Why? – because they tell you exactly how far away they are. Cepheids pulsate in brightness, and the frequency of their pulsation (which is in the range of days to months) is nicely correlated to their size. So if you see a Cepheid anywhere in the sky, measure its pulsation rate and you have its size (actual luminosity). Combine this with its apparent brightness and bingo – you know its distance from us. Priceless information for mapping the size and layout (and expansion) of the visible universe.

https://youtu.be/T6b72sFW0jk

It struck me that Cepheid variable stars were a nice example of a natural system that oscillates from internal dynamics, not requiring any external forcing. What external forcing could a star possibly experience? Unless it happened to be next door to a pulsar or another Cepheid – which would be rare. (But then – how would that object be pulsating …?) So the strong and regular oscillations in diameter and brightness of Cepheids must be a pure example of oscillation from internal nonlinear dynamics.

Why is a Cepheid variable variable?

There is a nice description at the wiki page of Cepheids:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepheid_variable

of the mechanism of their oscillation in brightness. The root of it lies in the opacity of the different ions of helium. Helium at solar temperatures can lose either one (He+) or both (He2+) of its electrons. The electron-bald He2+ ion needs higher temperatures to form than He+, and is also more opaque to radiation. These two facts together make helium ionisation in a Cepheid Star take on the nonlinear pattern characteristics of a Turing reaction – one that becomes oscillatory in time. Here’s the oscillation sequence:

1. Radiative heating forms He2+ in the star’s exterior

2. He2+ ions have higher opacity, so trap more radiation, heating itself up further

3. The increasing temperature forces expansion of the star

4. Expansion diminishes radiation intensity, so cooling occurs and some of the He2+ reverts to the more transparent He+.

5. Greater transparency lets more radiation escape, further increasing the cooling

6. The cooling star contracts

7. Contraction once again increases radiation intensity to the star’s peripheral helium, heating it back up.

So the pulsating intensity of the Cepheid comes from endlessly repeating excursions of self-heating from absorption/back-radiation from the more opaque He2+ ion clouds. In a way, this could be seen as an illustration of radiative warming of earth’s atmosphere by CO2. Is not the He2+ ion an elegant analog of CO2 in its radiative warming effect? And also an example of warming propelled by a positive feedback?

But on getting to the part about positive feedback, the He2+ – CO2 analogy breaks down, in an important way. The positive feedback by which He2+ ions drive heating of the Cepheid star’s exterior, is intermittent. The operation of the opacity driven heating feedback set in motion processes – most notably expansion of the star – which counteracted the heating by diminishing the radiation intensity in the cloud of helium. So it did not lead to endless warming but instead it was self-cancelling and led to a regular oscillation, a series of short runs of positive feedback each one self-terminating and reversing to a starting position.

This is an important general insight into the role and effect of positive feedbacks in complex nonlinear systems. It is well known to chemists who study nonlinear oscillatory systems such as the Belousov-Zhabotinsky thin film reaction [ref. 1] and the surface catalysed oxidation of CO on a platinum substrate (what happens in a car exhaust’s catalytic converter) [ref. 2]. Positive feedbacks in such complex-chaotic systems are always intermittent and set in motion their immediate reversal, cyclically, leading to regular monotonic oscillation. Negative feedbacks by contrast dampen regular monotonic oscillations (they are referred to as friction or damping) and cause emergence of more complex chaotic pattern. The combination of positive and negative feedbacks in a complex-chaotic system result in the elusive apparent oscillations that feint at certain patterns or frequencies but are nested in chaos. These patterns don’t necessarily come from external forcing. They can arise from the Feigenbaum numbers of pure chaos mathematics [ref. 3]

The Cepheid variable star is a perfect example of positive feedback leading to monotonic oscillation in a dissipative out-of-equilibrium nonlinear system. It never reaches equilibrium and its predominantly positive feedback landscape makes its oscillatory pattern monotonic rather than chaotic-quasi periodic. This is great for astronomers.

Returning to the climate sensitivity, The profound error that Monckton has uncovered is linked to the failure to treat the system as a chaotic-nonlinear system. Otherwise there would be no talk of equilibrium – the system never reaches equilibrium. Neither does a Cepheid star. (How would you define equilibrium sensitivity to Helium forcing in a Cepheid?)

References

1. Lin AL, Bertram M, Martinez K, Swinney HL, Ardelea A, Carey GF. Resonant phase patterns in a reaction-diffusion system. Physical Review Letters. 2000 May 1;84(18):4240.

http://chaos.ph.utexas.edu/manuscripts/1063306441.pdf

2. Kim M, Bertram M, Pollmann M, von Oertzen A, Mikhailov AS, Rotermund HH, Ertl G. Controlling chemical turbulence by global delayed feedback: pattern formation in catalytic CO oxidation on Pt (110). Science. 2001 May 18;292(5520):1357-60.

3. Testa J, Pérez J, Jeffries C. Evidence for universal chaotic behavior of a driven nonlinear oscillator. Physical Review Letters. 1982 Mar 15;48(11):714.

https://cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt18m504mf/qt18m504mf.pdf

• Ulric Lyons says:

4 and 5 are negative feedbacks. Too much negative feedback drives oscillation, known as ‘motorboating’.

• philsalmon says:

Exactly. 4 and 5 work together as the negative feedbacks that stop and reverse the expansion.
It is the combination of positive and negative feedback that makes the system oscillate. Positive feedbacks give the system excitability. Negative feedbacks give the system friction or damping.

• Ulric Lyons says:

But if the negative feedback was smaller the oscillation would also be smaller. Make the negative feedback just right and the oscillation would cease.

• philsalmon says:

And yet the Cepheids oscillate.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

It is actually feedback factors around unity that cause oscillation. Negative feedback stabilizes the system. Recall that the response curve of output signals in the presence of feedback factors is a rectangular hyperbola.

Besides, if individual feedbacks in the climate are negative, the feedback sum and hence the feedback factor are net-positive, but nothing like strong enough to induce oscillation.

• Ulric Lyons says:

“Besides, if individual feedbacks in the climate are negative, the feedback sum and hence the feedback factor are net-positive, but nothing like strong enough to induce oscillation.”

-3^2 in maths is positive, but you cannot add negative feedbacks to produce a net positive feedback. Excess negative feedback drives oscillation, like motor-boating in a servo control. Earth’s negative feedbacks are the ocean cycles, which are amplified by the changes in cloud cover and water vapour that they drive. The AMO is a negative feedback to solar variability, it’s normally warm during solar minima.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Mr Lyons raises a legitimate concern. I expressed myself badly. I had meant to say that even though some feedbacks may be negative the feedback sum is net-positive, though weakly so.

• Dr. Deanster says:

Given my knowledge of natural systems, I’d speculate that the farther a signal deviates from what is center, the more feedbacks work to bring the signal back to the center. In this case, if the climate cools, positive feedbacks will dominate and work to warm the system, as the system warms, negative feedbacks kick in to prevent overheating. Hence, this is why you do not see any runaway warming or cooling in the historical record. The entire system is governed such that the extremes are already known. This is why CAGW theory is a fail upon arrival.

• Monckton of Brenchley says:

Dr Deanster is correct. The cryostratigraphic evidence is that global mean surface temperature has varied by little more than 3 K either side of the 810,000-year mean, suggesting that powerful thermostatic processes are at work. In the present state of the climate, feedback is weakly net-positive and is thus nothing like great enough to engender a runaway climate, even if there were no thermostatic processes acting to stabilize the system.

• Ulric Lyons says:

Dr Deanster is not correct, a climate dynamic feedback that opposes cooling is also a negative feedback. Like the doubling of mean El Nino episode frequency during the Maunder and Dalton solar minima, which would be helping to drive a warm AMO. There is no evidence for climate