Nicholas Lewis gave a keynote lecture with the Title “How sensitive is the climate to greenhouse gases?” – Is it really necessary to reach zero emissions in 2050? At our “Ontgroeningsdag” event on 7 March 2019 in Amsterdam. Video follows.
Nicholas Lewis gave a keynote lecture with the Title “How sensitive is the climate to greenhouse gases?” – Is it really necessary to reach zero emissions in 2050? At our “Ontgroeningsdag” event on 7 March 2019 in Amsterdam. Video follows.
1.) Lewis might actually believe the recent AGW temperature data that he shows in his Climate Model Spaghetti Graph (no warming pause…but there has been a 20 year pause according to satellite and balloon records)…but he would employ THEIR data even if he didn’t believe it in order to avoid “denier” status (by a few microns). In this exercise he’s able to defend a significantly lower Carbon Sensitivity while using their fudged data.
2.) Lewis mentions positive water vapor feedback (with increasing temperature – warmer air CAN hold more moisture) without mentioning that atmospheric water content is measurable and is not increasing. And consequently, there is no hot spot “fingerprint” of AGW in the tropical mid-troposphere.
3.) Lewis mentions the costs of warming as if there are a bunch of obvious climate associated costs. There isn’t any data showing net rising costs from climate change as we recover from the devastating LIA. Enumerating the benefits would be easy.
I’m pointing out here some of what it takes to remain respectable enough in Science today to still get published.
This is what happens when our institutions break down and truth and facts no longer hold the power that they should.
This has the same smell as the abuse of power exercised by the Church in Europe over most of the last millennium. Hopefully circumstances will shortly allow for a Science Reformation. I hope we don’t have to suffer millions of casualties during this Inquisition.
If you would like a copy of Lewis’s slide deck try this Link:
https://www.nicholaslewis.org/how-sensitive-is-the-climate-to-greenhouse-gases/
Isn’t the use of the word “greenhouse” in terms of warming wrong with regards to CO2?
The “airborne fraction” and “transient climate response to cumulative emissions” are not supported by empirical evidence and that in turn means that carbon budgets are not supported by empirical evidence either.
Airborne fraction: (2 links)
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/31/the-carbon-cycle-measurement-problem/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/19/co2responsiveness/
Transient Climate Response to Cumulative Emissions (2 links)
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/06/tcre/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/03/tcruparody/
Carbon Budgets (1 link)
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/01/14/carbonbudget/
I love it. At ~5:30, he admits that you have to go along with the “assessment” that humans cause ’50 to Over 100%’ of the warming to be PUBLISHED. In the next breathe, he dismisses that you need evidence to prove that warming is due to other causes. If you can’t determine what is ‘other’, how the hell do you know what is ‘manmade’. In a few seconds, you see that you must agree to baseless facts just to get a seat at the table.
How about aerosols cooling he earth.
After Pinatubo 1991 the cooling was obvious for more than a year.
It released 20 M tons SO2 to the air.
And how about warming by reducing the release of SO2?
Since 1980 the reduction of SO2 is from 145M to 100 M tons to 2010.
It could explain the solar Brightening , in Sweden we have 17% more sun/less cloud and a energy budget going from 900 KWh/m2 and year to 1000 KWh/m2 and year.
What else could have given us more sun?
Nic Lewis,
By just looking at temperature data in last 150 years, how do you know how much warming is man-made vs. natural? You have to look at TOA radiative flux changes before you can blame CO2 for temperature changes. Lindzen and Spencer studied this independently. They both found strong negative feedback. It means TCR less than 1 K per 2x CO2. Read their papers. IMO they are the most important papers on climate sensitivity.
Nic Lewis explains that it’s possible that solar forcing is more influential than we currently understand but there isn’t enough evidence to quantify it. He’s correct on this. If he starts introducing guesswork into his analysis then it will not be taken seriously.
Lindzen and Spencer could be right and TCR might be no more than 1K per 2xCO2. On the other hand, Nic Lewis estimate of 1.4 k could be right. If I had to put money on it I’d back Nic to be nearer the mark.
As he said … I’m not convinced. His whole presentation is about effects of CO2, yet there is no evidence that CO2 plays any significant role at all in the changes in atmospheric temperature. He seems to have bought into the GHG theory that GHGs are the control knobs of climate. There simply is no evidence of such. In contrast, the data are pretty convincing that it is the ocean SST that determines the atmospheric temp above, and there is NO EVIDENCE that CO2 warms the ocean SST.
I was trying to poke holes in my thoughts and wandered over to wonder boy
Gavin Schmidts site, where he had a post that talked about a study of skin temperature as a function of LW rad. As he notes, since they couldn’t do a real experiment on the subject, they took a proxy, skin temp on cloud vs clear, with the thought that cloudy days have more LW rad. They laughingly found a difference of some .002C change with a 100W/m2 increase in DWLW from clouds. I would ask, what about evaporation. We know it is evaporation that cools the skin layer, so a slight decrease in evaporation due to less SW warming as results of clouds, could just as easily be the culprit. Further, if a 100W/m2 DWLR change is seen from clouds, vs the 1.7W/m2 increase from a change in CO2 … errr .that doesn’t speak well of CO2s ability to do squat.
IMO … Spencer and Lindzen, and Nic Lewis are wrong. the TCR is more towards ZERO … like maybe .3 or .4, or maybe even zero itself. I’ve still seen absolutely NO convincing evidence that CO2 is a big enough player in the Climate System to amount to squat.
Lewis is looking only at the effect (temperature change) and an inferred cause (atmospheric CO2) that does not correlate well with the effect (1910-1940 warming, 1940-1977 cooling, 2000-2015 pause)
Lindzen and Spencer are looking at the effect and the proximate cause (radiative flux). IMO that is more scientific. Lewis, you studied physics at Cambridge, don’t you agree you should be looking at radiation physics not just poor correlations?
So the emission spectrum graphs which clearly show a CO2 funnel centred at around 667 cm-1 don’t suggest some effect?
Actually Nic Lewis’s presentation is more about showing that the models are running too hot. To do this he needs to use the same assumptions that the models use.
Right Spencer is wrong … Lindzen is wrong …. Lewis is wrong . To that list you’ll need to add several more noted sceptical scientists including Jack Barrett who has spent a lifetime studying the chemistry and spectroscopy of small molecules, Does it ever occur to you that you might be one that’s wrong.
If the solar wind had not weakened from the mid 1990’s, the AMO and Arctic would not have warmed, low cloud cover would not have declined, surface wind speeds over the oceans would not have increased, and lower troposphere water would not have increased so. Though if you substitute oceanic negative feedbacks with CO2 forcing, you could go to week long conferences at splendid locations!