Answers to comments from the original essay on WUWT, here.
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
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.
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.
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’.
Answer came there none.
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.
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.
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.
We have had it ever since the earth has had oceans.
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.
Willis has no discovery. As Dr. Spencer has shown, Willis has at best reinvented the wheel, but more likely done nothing at all.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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.
“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
The Radiative Greenhouse Effect Theory
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
Premise 1:
http://writerbeat.com/articles/15582-To-be-33C-or-not-to-be-33C
Premise 2:
http://writerbeat.com/articles/14306-Greenhouse—We-don-t-need-no-stinkin-greenhouse-Warning-science-ahead-
Premise 3:
http://www.writerbeat.com/articles/21036-S-B-amp-GHG-amp-LWIR-amp-RGHE-amp-CAGW
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.
(SNIPPED) MOD
Moderators, please delete this anonymous contributor’s post, which offends against site policy.
No need to panic Scott.
Get back to what you were doing and leave true science to true experts.
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.
4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279399598_Antarctic_Specific_Features_of_the_Greenhouse_Effect_a_Radiative_Analysis_Using_Measurements_and_Models
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.
Tom,
Do you refer to Maxwell’s 1873 Nature paper, “Molecules”, in which he presented a statistical, kinetic theory of gases? I don’t find in it a theory of warming by gravitational compression of the Earth’s atmosphere.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070209001003/http://www.thecore.nus.edu.sg/landow/victorian/science/science_texts/molecules.html
I’m not familiar with such an hypothesis by Maxwell. Please direct me to his paper containing it.
Thanks!
Try looking at Tallbloke’s Tallshop site. I seem to recall this being discussed on that site perhaps 1 or 2 years ago.
Quoting the OP:
Heh. ;>)
Well put, Viscount.
Well spotted, Julie near Chicago!
“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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
“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.
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.
“…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.
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.
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?
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.
Don’t whine.
I’ll try not to if you just say which satellite data set you think best describes the lower troposphere.
Don’t whine.
“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.
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.
Chimps and humans have found actual nits quite nutritious.
Figurative nits, not so much.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
“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?
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…”
“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.
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.
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.
Seeing as you asked so nicely, here’s the same comparison using HadCRUT 3
Is there a significant difference? Depends on how significant you want. The p-value is 0.027.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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;
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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/
Peter Hadfield:
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I said you didn’t take the rejection well. You deny that and then call the reviewers comments “fatuous”.
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.
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.
“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.
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?”
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].
How about as soon as there’s sufficient funds available to proceed with the Patent applications?
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.
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.
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
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 . . .
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
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.
Thank you Kevin.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The “
peerpal review” literature is simply wrong. There is no gain block in a passive system.No it can not. The gain block is a fundamental element of the Bode feedback model.
The sun has no effect on the transfer function and is therefore irrelevant as the transfer function is independent of the input.
There is no gain block it is therefore passive. To claim otherwise is a violation of conservation of energy.
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.
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.
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.
The first part is correct, the second part is your conclusion based on ignorance which you expose with the following:
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.
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”.
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.
That is all you got. Bluster is not an argument. Now publish the full schematic including values for your “test rigs”.
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.
As I expected you will hide what you did. Mann would be so proud of you.
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”.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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).
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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?
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.
I so enjoy it.
Manyt thanks to Mr Soren for his kind comment. Keep watching this column for updates.
Lord Monckton said:
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?
Asking for a friend …
w.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Rave on, amigo, you’re destroying your reputation, not mine …
w.
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
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
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.
Thank you Christopher, well said.
w.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Monckton of Brenchley said:
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.
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.
Monckton of Brenchley
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 …
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Monckton of Brenchley
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.
Once again, I did NOT say that “the mathematics of feedback is inapplicable”. I said:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Please read the head posting, work through the not very difficult math carefully, and think.
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,
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.
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.
… 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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….
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.
“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.
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
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.
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).
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 . . .
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.
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.
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. 😉
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.