By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
My previous posting was published while I was traveling from Scotland, where I had been scrambling up mountains in the freezing sleet, to my fragrant Gloucestershire garden. Therefore, I have not been able to respond to individual commenters as usual. Here, then, is a collective response, beginning with the moral case against climate fraud.
The International Energy Agency defines “access to electricity” as the ability to switch on the equivalent of a single 60-Watt light-bulb for about four hours. Even on this hardly generous definition, the IEA finds that some 1.3 billion people worldwide – a sixth of the global population – have no access to electricity.
Without power, life is poor, nasty, brutish and, above all, short. Life expectancy in regions without electricity – sub-Saharan Africa, for instance – is little better than 60 years. In the European countries, it is more like 80 years.
Yet since 2010 the World Bank, one of the plethora of unelected supranational institutions to which democratic nations are unwisely transferring great power and wealth, has refused to lend to developing countries for coal-fired electricity generation – because global warming.
From this year onward, that hideous, stony-faced, flint-hearted entity will not lend to poorer countries for extraction of coal, oil or gas either – because global warming.
In Western countries, too, the crippling cost of global-warming policies is causing real harm. Britain’s last aluminum smelter was forced to close some years ago, killed by savage real increases in the cost of electrical power for the furnace. The British Steel Corporation, the country’s last major steelworks, has just gone into bankruptcy. Again, the major reason for the collapse is the cost of electrical power, absurdly inflated not by market forces but by governmental fiat – because global warming.
Jobs in the West and lives in the South – millions of them every year – are being destroyed because affordable electricity is unavailable. More than 4 million people a year die of particulate pollution from open cooking fires because they have no electricity. Half a million women die in childbirth chiefly because there is no electrical power. These are just some of the tens of millions who die annually because they cannot so much as switch on a light.
A growing fraction of these job losses and deaths arise not because the rate of global warming is dangerous – it isn’t – but because official policies intended (whether piously or not) to mitigate global warming are, in their effect, genocidal.
The global welfare loss arising from policies to mitigate global warming very greatly outweighs even the vastly-exaggerated benefit imagined by true-believers in the cult of Thermageddon. That is why it is essential to get global-warming science right. Not merely the jobs of vulnerable working people but the very lives of tens of millions in developing countries are at stake.
Yet when I set out, in my previous column, a highly-compressed but quite detailed account of a grave error of physics right at the heart of climatology, some of those who commented decided to cling, with increasing and visible desperation, to their aprioristic belief that global warming science is free of the error that had been spelt out for them.
I do not propose to name these wretches, but I do propose to deal with their arguments. Before I do, let us cheer ourselves up with another Scottish picture, this time of a cataract behind a fine, stone bridge across a tributary of the River Lyon along the ancient drove-road to the far West. I took it just before we headed back to the South.
An outline of climatology’s error: IPCC explicitly misdefines feedback as responding only to perturbations of an input signal, when in well-established control theory whatever feedback processes prevail at any given moment must perforce act upon the entire reference signal then obtaining.
The reference signal is the sum of the original input signal and all subsequent perturbations of it, before accounting for feedback. The equilibrium signal is the output signal after accounting for feedback. In climate, the input signal is the 255 K emission temperature that would obtain – before accounting for feedback – purely because the Sun is shining. The natural and anthropogenic perturbations of that signal are known as reference sensitivities. Therefore, the reference temperature – the temperature that would obtain at a given moment before accounting for feedback – is the sum of emission temperature and all subsequent reference sensitivities.
In the block diagram, emission temperature comes in at top left. Then the reference sensitivities are added to it. Then it passes to the input/output node and thence infinitely round and round the feedback loop, where the separately-powered feedback block adds a smidgin to the signal on each pass. The output signal is equilibrium temperature, the temperature that obtains after feedback has operated and the climate has settled to equilibrium.
Take a good look at the diagram. It should be self-evident that the feedback loop cannot act selectively upon the 1 K anthropogenic reference sensitivity. It must also act not only upon the 10 K sensitivity to the naturally-occurring, noncondensing greenhouse gases that were already present in the air before 1850 but also, and most importantly, upon the 255 K emission temperature. Therefore, if one knows the reference and equilibrium temperatures at a given moment one can calculate the feedback response at that moment: it is simply the difference between reference temperature before feedback has acted and equilibrium temperature after feedback has acted.
One can also calculate the feedback fraction at that moment: it is the fraction of equilibrium temperature represented by the feedback response: i.e., the ratio of the feedback response to the equilibrium temperature. Finally, the system-gain factor is the ratio of equilibrium to reference temperature.
In 1850, reference temperature was the sum of the 255 K emission temperature and about 10 K reference sensitivity to the preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases. The equilibrium temperature was about 287.55 K (HadCRUT4). So the feedback response in 1850 was 32.55 K, to the nearest twentieth of a Kelvin. The feedback fraction was 32.55 / 287.55, or 0.113. And the system-gain factor was 287.55 / 255, or 1.085.
Now, if we assume at this stage that the curve of equilibrium temperature as a function of reference temperature is linear, then Charney sensitivity – equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 – will be the product of the CMIP5 1.05 K reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 – and the system-gain factor 1.085: i.e., just 1.15 K, not the 3.35 K currently imagined by the CMIP5 models (based on Andrews et al. 2012). Since 1.15 K is about a third of official climatology’s current central estimate, that’s the end of the climate problem. Let’s celebrate that with a picture of some bluebells in Glen Lyon.
Of course, one could make the mistake of ignoring the fact that the Sun is shining and imagine instead that the system-gain factor was 32.55 / 10, or 3.255. Then one might multiply the 1.05 K reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 by 3.255 and conclude that equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 is about 3.4 K. And that, not entirely by coincidence, is what the CMIP5 models erroneously do.
But if one were doing it correctly, one would remember that the 255 K temperature caused by the fact that the Sun is shining itself generates a substantial feedback response. One must not – as the models in effect do at present – allocate to greenhouse gases the vast majority of the total feedback response that comes from the fact that the Sun is shining.
With that background on the moral importance of trying to get the science right and on how climatology has gotten the science wrong, I now turn to some of the criticisms leveled at our conclusions by commenters on my earlier posting here.
One commenter, who has some experience of control theory, tries to muddy the waters in a manner that does not seem to me to be morally justifiable. He says we are wrong because the input signal – emission temperature – is itself a perturbation when compared to absolute zero. So it is – and that is exactly why it should not be excluded when, at any given moment, one is calculating the magnitude of the effect of feedback on temperature. At any given moment, feedback processes respond to the entire temperature they find – the sum of all the perturbations compared with absolute zero.
That commenter, after confusing the input signal (before any natural or anthropogenic perturbations) with the reference signal (the sum of the original input signal, emission temperature, and the subsequent perturbations caused by the presence of noncondensing greenhouse gases), perpetrates what another commenter calls out as “lies” by taking a quotation from a reviewer of a previous version of our paper, falsely asserting that it was a quotation from a review of the present paper and then suggesting that the reviewer’s criticism was correct, when the commenter, as an expert in control theory, knew full well it was wrong.
That reviewer had said we had arbitrarily decided that feedback responded not only to perturbations of emission temperature but also to emission temperature itself. But feedback does respond to both, and the commenter knew that. Look at the block diagram.
The commenter went on to try to leave the impression that, since feedback is not explicitly implemented in models, it is not really important to the derivation of equilibrium sensitivities – i.e., to answering the “how-much-warming” question.
The first answer to any such suggestion is that IPCC (2013) mentions “feedback” more than 1000 times. Without the pretence that feedback multiplies reference sensitivity to anthropogenic forcings by 3, which is absolutely essential to official climatology’s case, there is no climate crisis. We know that the reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 (before feedback) is 1.05 K, and we know that the equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 (after feedback) is 3.35 K. The ratio of the two – about 3.2 – is the system-gain factor that official climatology is using, when it ought to be using something less than 1.1. It doesn’t matter by what method climatology reaches its wildly-exaggerated midrange estimate of Charney sensitivity: the estimate is exaggerated, and the exaggeration arises almost entirely from climatology’s misunderstanding of what a feedback is.
The second answer is that getting the definition of feedback right is crucial, for the following simple reason. The system-gain factor in official climatology is the ratio of very small sensitivities. Tiny uncertainties in small sensitivities entail a very large uncertainty in the system-gain factor and hence in equilibrium sensitivity. It is for this reason, above all, that there is still such a very large range of estimates of equilibrium sensitivity. After 40 years of “settled science”, it’s still 1.5 to 4.5 K, just as it was in the Charney report of 1979.
The corrected system-gain factor is the ratio of absolute temperatures that are greater by two orders of magnitude than the sensitivities used by official climatology. We know roughly what that system-gain factor is, because we know what it was in 1850. It was 287.55 / 265, or 1.085. It won’t have changed all that much since then, because the climate sensitivity parameter, which allows for forcing and feedback together, is described in Ramanathan (1985) and in IPCC (2001) as “a typically near-invariant parameter”.
The point is that even quite large uncertainties in the values of the entire reference and equilibrium temperatures that ought to be but are not used in deriving equilibrium sensitivity entail only a small uncertainty in the system-gain factor and hence in equilibrium sensitivity – a point well illustrated by our professor of statistics when he ran Monte Carlo simulations, each of 300,000 iterations, comparing official climatology’s vast equilibrium-sensitivity interval with our own much narrower interval. The diagram tells all. The bin widths (the number of iterations per histogram bar) is identical in both simulations.
Next, a notorious concern troll, who, unlike our professor of control theory, has no qualifications in control theory or in any scientific subject, weighs in with a characteristically confused series of pseudo-scientific objections to our case.
The concern troll begins by saying that in the models climate sensitivity is not derived as we say it is. But our argument does not depend on how the models derive equilibrium sensitivities: it depends on the observation that, if one were to correct official climatology’s published misdefinitions of temperature feedback, one would be able to constrain equilibrium sensitivity very simply and yet very robustly, and one would find that equilibrium sensitivity cannot possibly be anything like as elevated as the modelers profit by asking us to believe.
Next, the troll says some quantities we had relied upon are incorrect, but does not say which or by how much or on what grounds. This kind of yah-boo is all too common among trolls.
Next, the troll says we have gotten our arithmetic wrong, but carefully fails to show where, in the head posting, any such error is evident – in short, a mere smear. The math was verified by our professor of statistics so that he could calculate the probability distributions. It is not, therefore, particularly likely that there is any significant arithmetic error.
The troll himself, however, makes the elementary error of assuming that reference temperature upon a doubling of CO2 compared with 2011 is the sum of emission temperature and reference sensitivity to anthropogenic but not to natural greenhouse gases. Oops!
Finally, the troll says that maybe the curve of equilibrium temperatures as a function of reference temperatures is nonlinear. Maybe it is: our paper considers curves of all shapes. However, if “settled science” is right that the climate-sensitivity parameter is a “typically near-invariant parameter”, the curve is necessarily linear or very close to it. For once, settled science is very probably correct, for the reference temperature in 1850 was more than 92% of the equilibrium temperature that year, leaving little room to imagine that today’s feedback processes are at all likely to have an extravagantly nonlinear influence on global temperature.
We did some tests to see what would happen if one assumed that existing equilibrium-sensitivity estimates were correct. In every case, making that assumption led to an impossible contradiction. A brief account of some of these tests is given in the short scientific section in the previous posting: but the troll – one can tell it is a troll by its nasty, arrogant writing style – had not read it.
For instance, quite a simple calculation shows that official climatology’s midrange estimate of 3.35 K Charney sensitivity implies that the feedback fraction in response to greenhouse-gas warming is more than 80 times the feedback fraction in response to emission temperature.
That is, of course, quite impossible, since precisely the same sensitivity-altering feedbacks were responding to emission temperature in the absence of noncondensing greenhouse gases as are responding to reference temperature (the sum of emission temperature and all subsequent natural and anthropogenic perturbations) today.
To make sure, we carried out a careful Gedankenexperiment in which we calculated the surface temperatures at all points on Earth in the absence of the noncondensers. We then verified our latitudinal temperature profile method by applying it to the Moon, and were able to reproduce exactly the curve produced at a cost of billions by the measurements of the Lunar Diviner experiment.
One commenter, who had read the scientific section with great care, noticed a misprint: at one point the feedback fraction had been incorrectly stated as the ratio of equilibrium temperature to the feedback response, rather than vice versa. Our proof-reader had spotted that one, but had not responded before I submitted the paper to our kind host for posting.
Another, less constructive commenter gave me a rather flatulent lecture on the need to define our variables. because, he said, we had not defined our variable R. However, we had defined R as reference temperature both in the paragraph cunningly disguised as the definition of feedback and related quantities, specifically including R, and (twice) in the block diagram. For good measure, both in the abstract and in the main text we had explained exactly what reference temperature is.
Fraus est celare fraudem: The main point of the previous posting had been to invite comment on our proposal to involve the police in those aspects of the climate debate that are demonstrably fraudulent. Several commenters said there was no point in trying to approach the police, but I have long learned not to heed suchlike counsels of despair. There are some people who do, and others (a majority, alas) who sit on the sidelines, swaying slowly from side to side, wringing their hands, pouting petulantly, blinking goofily and explaining in reedy voices why nothing can be done.
Other commenters said that the courts were not a good place to settle scientific questions. Yet we did not heed their reedy voices before, when we successfully defeated Al Gore’s sci-fi comedy-horror movie in the High Court in London on the basis of 80 pages of scientific testimony drafted by me. It was the testimony wot did it: the moment the Government (which had been proposing to send a free copy of Gore’s silly movie to every school in England) saw our testimony, it conceded the case.
Besides, as several commenters were quick and right to point out, if we do have to report various journals for fraud we shall not be inviting the police or the courts to pronounce on scientific questions such as whether our paper is meritorious. And it would not be just one journal we were reporting: we only propose to ask for an investigation if the pattern of egregious professional misconduct evident at the present journal were replicated by the editors of two further journals. Then it would be limpidly clear that a pattern of dishonest conduct worthy of investigation was present.
We should be drawing attention to a pattern of deception by journals that hold themselves out as publishing sound science after a process of peer review that they describe on their own websites in some detail, presenting it as thorough and scientific. On any view, our treatment to date by the current journal – which we have given one final opportunity to redeem itself – has not been honest. If the journal reverts to us with genuine scientific objections to our paper, then it is doing what it ought to do and, if it is correct, we shall not complain. But if there is any more messing about we shall take the first step towards stopping the climate nonsense by putting the police on notice that fraudulent behavior is evident.
Purchasers of such journals, and authors who submit their papers thereto, have a legitimate expectation in law that the journals will conduct the process of peer review process honestly, competently and in the manner in which the journals themselves has represented that they will conduct it.
From the brief account I gave in my earlier posting of the manner in which the current journal has handled our submission to date, it was clear to most commenters that, on the face of things, a jury of reasonable men on the Clapham omnibus (and that is the legal yardstick) would conclude that our paper had been dishonestly handled thus far.
Fraud at the IPCC: Then there’s the dismal, corrupt IPCC. We twice asked it to activate the error-reporting protocol that the Inter-Academy Council had obliged it to put into place precisely to deal with errors that it had in the past swept under the carpet. But it has not activated the protocol. It has not even replied to us.
One of the nastier trolls said that was because our paper was nonsense. Well, it isn’t, for we’ve had enough pre-submission reviews from scientists considerably more eminent and less prejudiced than the troll to know we’re barking up the right tree.
Under the error protocol the IPCC is obliged to respond willy-nilly, and not simply to ignore an inconvenient truth. It has not responded. Again, a reasonable jury would be likely to conclude that its failure to respond was motivated by a desire not to bring the gravy-train that runs solely on the basis of climatology’s error of physics to a decisive and permanent halt.
As I made plain in the earlier posting, we are not proposing at this stage to invite the police to act: merely to put them on notice that something irregular – with very costly consequences not only in treasure but in human lives – is going on in climate science, and in the journals that are, for good or ill, the gatekeepers of modern science.
As one commenter who formerly served in the police nicely put it, a fraud is a fraud, and it does not cease to be a fraud merely because it is a fraud by boffins in white coats with leaky biros sticking out of the top pocket.
Finally, several commenters suggested that we should establish a crowd-funding campaign, to which they said they would be happy to contribute. That is a most generous suggestion, and we shall consider it carefully. Watch this space.
The bottom line: most readers of this column know full well that several aspects of the prevailing climate-extremist story-line are fraudulent. These frauds are costing tens of millions a year their very lives. Morally speaking, that genocide is intolerable. In my submission, it is now time for us to alert the public authorities to those aspects of present-day climate science that the reasonable juror on the Clapham omnibus would at once recognize as frauds and then, in due course, to demand that they should forthwith bring to an end what Professor Mörner has rightly called the greatest fraud in human history.
More global warming, please, squire! Deer at Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire, 2019
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Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
“From this year onward, that hideous, stony-faced, flint-hearted entity will not led (lend) to poorer countries for extraction of coal, oil or gas either – because global warming.”
Great post..
fixed
Congratulations, Christopher! This is great work, and argumention as always.
We will support you all the way, by crowd-funding if necessary.
Tomorrow is D-Day! Let’s throw back the IPCC – once and for all….
Even the terminally stupid facing starvation will not be dissuaded from the lie that they all embrace.
Fifth paragraph typo: “flint-hearted entity will not led to poorer countries” should read “… lend …”.
Math tends to intimidate me, but it is rather a matter of settled science that the factors that produced the estimated temperature in 1850 are still operating today, and in the same manner.
So it is obvious that if ~300 ppm of CO2 was prevalent in 1850, it was interacting with the other factors (variations in insolation and oceanic circulation, among others) to result in that temperature. Only counting the changes since 1850 as being acted on by the effects of CO2 seems to be an unreasonable presumption.
CM’s brilliant stroke was to accept the assumptions and methods posited by the CAGW scientists and then show that they had applied them incorrectly.
I have re-visited a WUWT story, Venus Envy and noted the following:
There’s very good reason to doubt the validity of climate sensitivity, ie. degrees per doubling. Certainly it falls down for very high CO2 levels as well as for very low levels.
Suppose there were zero molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere and you added a single molecule. If you naively apply climate sensitivity, that would be an infinite increase in the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere and therefore give rise to an infinite temperature increase. Similarly, climate sensitivity is invalid for the very high concentrations found on Venus.
In engineering, we simplify problems if we can linearise them. That means the system is operating in a reasonably linear region of its characteristic curve and, within that region, we can treat it as linear. Of course that requires that we fully understand the characteristic curve. That is not the case for the climate and that means there is no good reason to believe that climate sensitivity is a valid approximation of reality.
Time after time in climate science, we find people making assumptions they have no clue that they are making. Of course, when you point that out, they ignore you. That’s why CM’s approach is not only better, but necessary.
Most grateful to CommieBob for his interesting comment. We have indeed accepted ad argumentum all of official climatology except what we can formally demonstrate to be false. And official climatology’s definition of feedback is incomplete. If the proper definition is adopted, it can at once be seen that most of the feedback response that climatology attributes to greenhouse gases is in fact attributable to the Sun.
See also Nicholov and Zeller. Atmospheric composition is irrelevant. That’s the warmists cooked.
commiebob It is also exactly what we do in quantitative pharmacology; parameters are derived from the linear parts of the curve. Deviations from waht the theoretical shape of the expected curve tell you something else is going on, and you can ‘dig’ for it.
The climate system is more likely to be linear for deviations of a few degrees from average than it is for the full range of temperatures from 0K to ~288 K. See my other comment using cloud formation of an example of that, and why feedbacks *in the climate system* (even if we must invent a new term other than “feedback”) should indeed be relative to the long-term average state.
I’m no expert in control systems, but my understanding is that they constrain equipment to operate withing certain bounds, that is, keep them close to an average operating state. That’s the traditional use of “feedback” in climate science (even if it isn’t exactly in line with Bode theory or whatever. Hell, give it a new name so purists stop complaining.)
In the big picture, none of this matters to the design of climate models. They do not depend upon such arguments. Feedback (and thus climate sensitivity) is an output of the model physical processes, not an input. I’m not saying models have feedbacks correct, only that I don’t believe redefining feedback in this way will not help determine climate sensitivity.
In response to Dr Spencer, the reason why correcting climatology’s erroneous definition of feedback matters is that climatology’s partial and defective system-gain factor is the ratio of equilibrium to reference sensitivities, which are very small quantities. Thus, small uncertainties in these quantities entail a large uncertainty in the system-gain factor and hence in equilibrium sensitivity, which is why it has proven impossible to constrain equilibrium sensitivities for 40 years: it is still [1.5, 4.5] K, as it was in 1979.
However, expressing the system-gain factor correctly, as the ratio not only of sensitivities but also of absolute equilibrium to reference temperatures allows constraint of equilibrium sensitivity by greatly reducing the uncertainty in the value of the system-gain factor, because the temperatures whose ratio it is are greater than the sensitivities upon which official climatology relies by two orders of magnitude.
Precisely how the models account for temperature feedback is not the issue here. The issue is that once one defines feedback correctly one can derive a reliable equilibrium-sensitivity interval without using general-circulation models at all. The calculation becomes remarkably simple.
The last paragraph above is key. The oft-repeated statement from Nick Stokes that the models don’t have a climate sensitivity to CO2 as an input is moot. It doesn’t matter how the models work or don’t work on the inside. If the output claims that the sensitivity is 3 times what it actually is, then the model is defective. As Willis would say, bad scientist, no cookie.
One might propose that the model would give better results if it did use a sensitivity value as an input because in that manner it would be constrained by what is known about the natural world from observation and deduction.
Clearly there are systematic errors in the models if their outputs contradict observations both in the present and past. Not using a sensitivity value as an input doesn’t make the outputs valid – outputs can be checked against reality and by deductive analysis. The outputs show a sensitivity too high and too uncertain.
Personally I do not know which miscalculations in the models produce the impossible outputs. I won’t investigate further the details because it would waste my time. Rather, those who are making errors while being paid, should do so, or give back the money.
The core argument is not with models. It is over the IPCC’s misdefinitions and the consequences thereof. The fact the modellers’ work aligns with the misdefinitions is significant but ultimately immaterial to Monckton’s argument.
Correct the definitions and have the modellers realign their work and all may be well. Then cancel all contracts with people who can’t do their job properly. I’ve got a little list, and there’s none of them’d be missed. We have no obligation to fund incompetence nor incompetents.
There is a very important point that everyone is missing here. The modellers always try to say exactly what Roy Spencer has said ie: that the computer code simply calculates the physics for any increase of CO2 and then spews out the new temperature. This is wrong for the main reason that all along, for the best 30 years ever since the 1st generation (we are now up to the 6th generation) Al Gore’s Church of Climatology has supplied special code to the modellers for each new successive generation.
The 6th generation was supposed to have many solar forcing variables in it but when the simulations showed that these new solar variables were causing all of the warming for past years, there was no warming left to do for the 413ppm CO2. So the 6th generation code was held up and delayed until they could work out some way to include some of the solar variables (there are many) and still have Mr. CO2 do his thing of warming. The 6th generation code was then released again and now it shows even more warming than the 5th generation. I suspect that the reason is, that some of the solar variables were incorporated and that Mr.CO2 was allowed to increase the temperature in the same manner as the 5th generation.
Some of the climate modellers themselves have expressed surprise to certain reporters that the 6th generation models are running so hot. If the climate modellers were in complete control of every last line of their code, then there wouldn’t be this surprise from more than 1 modeller in more than 1 supercomputer GCM , that the 6th generation is running so hot. Indeed there wouldn’t even be a need to have generations of models at all. The generation numbers haven’t changed from 1 to 6 because of computer hardware. It is the software changes that define the generations. So in the end there is some computer code that is common to all the models. It is this code that must contain the sensitivity feedback that Monckton is talking about. So Roy I think you are wrong.
“There’s very good reason to doubt the validity of climate sensitivity, ie. degrees per doubling. Certainly it falls down for very high CO2 levels as well as for very low levels.
“Suppose there were zero molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere and you added a single molecule. If you naively apply climate sensitivity, that would be an infinite increase in the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere and therefore give rise to an infinite temperature increase. Similarly, climate sensitivity is invalid for the very high concentrations found on Venus.”
Either those are not reasons to doubt it, or you’re doubting that the relationship is logarithmic. The doubling rule is just another way of saying that it’s logarithmic.
At the end of the day, there really is no point in trying to police or litigate science, or to police or litigate fake science. At the end of the day, it is a political issue that can only be resolved by political processes.
The political process are actually working quite well. Voters, and in some cases protesters, are making their voices heard in nations all over the world that have attempted to enforce climate alarmist doctrine through government action. People who consume electricity or petroleum products are in fact making our voices heard. Whether it be in France, where draconian climate enforcement laws were pared back as a result of the yellow vest movement .. or in nations like Australia, where voters made their voices known… and here in the USA where, despite all the who-haw of climate alarmism, the votes in Congress have never been there to enforce the climate alarmism doctrine.
Even Germany, which undertook possibly the most radical climate alarmism program, is seeing push back and voters are not swarming to the support of the current powers that be.
Given another decade or so, perhaps two decades, and the entire climate alarmist tide will have obviously been pushed back.
At the end of the day, everyone wants affordable energy.
Reality will ultimately win out.
Mr. Monkton is a warrior, and it is good to have warriors on the side of truth … but wars are not productive.
Duane says wars are not productive. They are not, but they are sometimes necessary. How many more millions must die before policymakers wake up to the fact that the climate Communists have deceived them?
But the social-communist-democrat policymakers WANT TO BE DECEIVED!
Their eco-enviro “religion” REQUIRES (as a fundamental part of their upbringing as liberal-social-democrat creatures) that they be “deceived”.
Can you imagine the cries for action if the millions of people who die every year from the efforts to fight global warming were instead dying from the effects of global warming?
A brilliant point from Steve O.
Absolutely. There really is a climate crisis. But it’s not caused by climate change – far from it. It’s caused by incompetent and damaging policies implemented by governments trying to solve a non-existent problem.
It is conceivable that millions have indeed died due to mad climate change policies. But these deaths will be due to many causes and, so far at least, are not obviously caused by policy. It would probably require very good statistical research to clearly prove the cause of the deaths.
Another “problem” is that, despite the doom mongering, mankind is prospering as never before. For example, the UN data shows that deaths from extreme events has been falling for decades and is at record historical lows. Today humanity is better fed, more healthy and longer living and more prosperous than ever before. And history shows a perfect correlation between a warmer climate and increased human well-being.
Chris
Not so. Deliberate fraud for profit must be met with criminal penalties.
Consider this parallel. A huge international pharmaceutical company develops a chemical compound that they subsequently tout as a universal cancer cure – using fraudulent clinical trials, paying off corrupt government officials, and influencing medical journals and cancer researchers to suppress any findings that the “cure” is not only useless, but actually kills when other means of attacking the cancer are foregone.
Should the CEO and other officers of the company get off without facing a jury in criminal court for this enormous and murderous fraud? Should the company “scientists” that developed the so-called “cure”? Should the corrupt officials? The journal editors and other researchers? (Although the latter could possibly make a defense based on undue coercion.)
I don’t think so! Actually, being stripped of their criminal profits and thrown into jail would probably be a fortunate outcome for the perpetrators of such a scheme – the lynch mob would be their more likely fate.
Your mention of fraud with respect to curing diseases reminded me of this:
I make, and made, no such claims. There are indications that a class of medications already in the U.S., U.K. and E.U. pharmacopoeias is capable of treating various infectious diseases. Research continues.
The video speaks for itself.
@C. Paul Pierett
Did you not hear Monckton say “…appears to have…” and “…shows much promise…”?
The video does indeed speak for itself.
The listener, however, hears what they want to hear.
Most grateful to MangoChutney. The background to that particular video is interesting. The creep who made it had told me he was doing a TV film about skeptics. In fact, it turned out to be a 90-minute personal attack on me. In this particular clip, he had asked me to talk about our research into infectious diseases. I had begun, very carefully, by saying that we made no claims at all, that we were merely conducting research, and that we had had some promising indications which had led us to believe that further research would be worthwhile. He said he wanted me to put the point more forcefully. So I did, but retained some cautious phraseology. Sure enough, he was trying to make me look as though I was making claims that I was not in fact making, so that the likes of Borgelt could exploit the video later. Borgelt and his ilk do not appreciate that science does not advance by the personal reputational attacks that he and other climate Communists use as their stock-in-trade, but by the long and diligent research that my colleagues and I have carried out.
In due course I sued the BBC and, in the words of the judge in the case, “substantially won the action”. The BBC was compelled to cut the length of the program from 90 minutes to 45 minutes, and, since the BBC pays by the minute, I imagine that the creep who made the program went bust.
Mike Big -Rat Borgelt back again .You are nothing but a troll .
You cannot understand Moncktons paper so you try and smear him.
You cannot mount an argument to oppose what Monkton has put forward so you dredge the gutters ,you are a gutter snipe .
Monkton has written this and it should be visible to most sane and reasonable people that as the climate models run hot and hotter that the wrong parameters have been used from the outset.
Billions of the worlds wealth have been wasted because of this fraud .
Millions of the worlds population have died and will continue to die because of this fraud.
You might even learn something by reading these blogs
.
Good luck with your hypotheticals. Proving that disingenuously promoting climate change alarmism is a crime in any jurisdiction where the rule of law prevails is a fools errand. You could get away with that in Russia, sure … or China. Russia indeed has been a huge promoter of falsehoods about fracking, being the primary financial supporter of those lies for decades .. they clearly do not want the US being able to produce the volume of oil and gas, which keeps world prices low, which of course reduces Russian income. But don’t go looking for Trump to go after his patron on that.
..”his patron..? Get a life fgs.
Sprechen Sie Deutsch ??
wars are not always about productive outcomes but often are about protections of existing lives and/or MANNER of lives. so often the protection does produce a productive outcome.
Wonderful post!
I suppose that fundamental mechanisms of response need not be known for feedback theory to apply. However, in the context of the Gaia hypothesis, which presupposes that life provides regulation to the atmosphere/climate, other than man, what are the major life drivers of this regulation? Comments?
Is this Russ, the old ULA , Titan / Atlas launch systems Eng.?
When we teach operational amplifiers, we explicitly show the reference signal. That is because the operational amplifier has two inputs, inverting and non-inverting, and they operate in a differential manner, ie. the output is a function of the difference between the inputs.
The feedback model used by James Hansen was developed for vacuum tubes. The reference is not stated explicitly but is implicit as circuit ground. As far as I can tell, Hansen didn’t realize that was an issue. link
Operational amplifiers, like all amplifiers, amplify perturbations. They do not amplify any “reference signal”.
The feedback model used by Hansen was simple linear algebra. It had nothing to do with vaccuum tubes.
It is quite trivial to use a opamp, a voltage reference, and a couple of resistors to amplify the voltage reference. IOW they can amplify a DC signal.
Operational amplifiers, like all amplifiers, amplify signals. No signal, nothing to amplify, so no amplification. In climate, the reference signal is the sum of the input signal (emission temperature) and all subsequent perturbations thereof (the natural and anthropogenic perturbations).
If the “signal” is static as in DC it will amplify it.
What is presented to the input is the signal. In reality a condition with no “signal” is not possible.
Actually, if you follow Hansen’s reference to Bode’s paper …
He says that he uses the methods and terminology of Bode’s paper. That is a way of making ordinary linear algebra familiar. Nobody, not even EE’s, think those methods and terminology are peculiar to vacuum tubes.
You missed my point as did, apparently, James Hansen. The reference level is treated more implicitly than explicitly in Bode’s paper.
When scientists use material from other disciplines it is fairly common for them to make elementary errors because they don’t know the basics.
That just isn’t true! 1) Op amps have internal bias components that set an operating points of the internal amplifiers. 2) It is trivial to make an op amp that amplifies a constant voltage (I.e. a DC voltage). 3) An amplifier has no preference about whether a tube, transistor, or IC is used.
It is up to the designer to determine the characteristics needed and design accordingly. I use a tube amplifier being fed by a transistor transmitter in my amateur radio system. Others use tube transmitters to feed amplifiers with FET’s. The math is all the same and is well known to electrical engineers and others. The math is well defined and understood and that is why it is called a “science”. If I know the input of an amp and it’s transfer function, I can compute the output, always.
So-called climate science is not very well understood nor does it have well defined math underlying it. We are spending billions attempting to “calculate” a so-called global temperature which defines nothing. There isn’t even any empirical evidence that a given global temperature can translate to a radiation temperature of Earth, otherwise we could easily identify the correct model.
Designed amplifiers much?
Yes sir I have. Audio amps, small signal rf amps and preamps, if amps, and power amps.
If you are questioning what I said, consider this. If I put a +/- 1 V AC signal at the base of a transistor, when the signal is at +1 V, the output will move up the load line and the output will change to whatever the transfer function is designed to be. If I put a step +1 V DC voltage at the base of that transistor the output will change to whatever it was when the AC signal peaked at +1 V. The amp has no way to know if the signal is AC or DC, it is as simple as that. The same applies to a tube amp and the control grid.
This is getting way off topic. Suffice it to say that CM has made a very reasonable hypothesis. To outright disprove it is going to take some math and experimentation. Simply declaring his assessment wrong isn’t going to cut it.
I should have been more specific.
That is simply not true. When I’m designing an amplifier, the choice of device is usually obvious.
Aw, man; why are we dick-dancing around design of an electronic amplifier? The fact that eco-nuts assume that CO2-driven temperature increases somehow result in H2O amplification does not mean we have to play along.
Commie —> Please don’t try to make points about things I didn’t say. This isn’t the place to discuss the niceties of electronics. Suffice it to say, any of these devices can be an amplifier.
My point is that the design is based on fundamental mathematics that is well known and defined. It is Science.
“It is trivial to make an op amp that amplifies a constant voltage (I.e. a DC voltage)”
It isn’t amplifying a constant voltage. The term is meaningless. When you set up the bias arrangements, you set the operating points, by design. You set a bias voltage or current at the input, and choose load resistors or whatever to determine the DC at the output. The amplifier didn’t do that.
You can see how meaningless it is by just trying to pin it down. An amplifier multiplies perturbations by a gain factor. Suppose you have bias +0.6 V at the input. Is that then multiplied by a gain factor? To yield what? And what is +0.6V anyway. It is the difference between input and an arbitrary reference point, the lower power rail. You could equally refer it to the upper rail, so it is, say, -14.4V. Is that then multiplied by the gain factor?
Mr Stokes, sir, but was CO2 feedback operating in 1850?
Yes it is.
input x gain = output
Yes.
input x gain = output
Could be or the reference point could be half the supply voltage.
“input x gain = output”
OK, let’s have some numbers. Suppose the amplifier has a gain factor of 100. Where do I expect to see the 60 V? What if the supply voltage is 15V? And again, suppose (as an SH resident I might) I take the upper supply rail as the reference, so the bias is -14.4V. Do I expect to see a -1440V as well?
Fer Christ’s sake! UN IPCC climate models are tuned to get an “ECS that seems about right.” Assumed feedbacks are derived from tuned models. There is no straightforward mathematical computation of UN IPCC feedbacks. Get over it!
The lack of a tropical tropospheric hot spot is prima facie invalidation of CO2-driven climate change. Mother Nature shits on your UN feedbacks.
Then you obviously have exceeded the operating range of the amplifier. Please cure your ignorance.
“Then you obviously have exceeded the operating range of the amplifier.”
Indeed so. So what is the answer? I’m asking you to give an actual calculation of a DC amplification. This one obviously leads to nonsense. Numbers please.
Split supplies with common halfway between V+ and V-. Non-inverting configuration. Two resistors of equal value. One resistor connects from the output to the – input, the other resistor connects from the – input to common setting the gain to 2. Signal is connected to + input.
0 volts on + input results in 0 volts at the output (2 x 0 = 0)
+1 volt DC on + input results in +2 volts DC at output.
-1 volt DC on + input results in -2 volts DC at output.
1 volt AC on + input results in +2 volts AC at output.
It doesn’t matter if the signal is DC or AC. At any given point in time the output voltage will be (for this example) 2 times the whatever the input voltage is at that given point in time. Go to the tutorial I linked to.
These are amplifying differences. But Lord M insists you can amplify absolute values.
Mr Stokes says I insist “you can amplify absolute values”. Of course I do. Mr Stokes knows perfectly well that that is true. The distinction between an input signal and a perturbation thereof is more than somewhat artificial, for the input signal is itself a perturbation with respect to the zero state. Therefore, such feedbacks as subsist in a dynamical system at a given moment must perforce respond, without distinction, to the entire reference signal, which is the sum of the input signal and all subsequent perturbations thereof up to that moment.
To make assurance doubly sure, we constructed a test rig and confirmed that this rather obvious point is indeed the case. However, it comes as a nasty surprise to climatologists, who have not hitherto realized that feedbacks respond not only to the most recent perturbation but to the entire reference temperature. Once that fact – well attested to in the textbooks of control theory – is accepted, as it must be, then it becomes possible to constrain equilibrium sensitivities very simply indeed, and without the need to use general-circulation models at all.
ECS “that seems about right” is obtained through climate models by fiddling with the assumptions inherent to the models. CliSci ECS is not calculated from first principles; its models all the way down.
It irritates me when one asserts facts based on model output. Models only tell you what you put into the models. The lack of a tropical tropospheric hot spot is sufficient to prove CliSci assumptions, as reflected by their models, are fundamentally in error.
Nick Stokes June 5, 2019 at 6:42 pm
“input x gain = output”
OK, let’s have some numbers. Suppose the amplifier has a gain factor of 100. Where do I expect to see the 60 V? What if the supply voltage is 15V? And again, suppose (as an SH resident I might) I take the upper supply rail as the reference, so the bias is -14.4V. Do I expect to see a -1440V as well?
No you don’t because the output is limited to the supply voltage. So given the situation you described you’d get an output of 15V.
Even using an opamp with a gain of millions the output is limited to the power supply voltage. I used to have my students set up such opamps with open loop gains and whatever input voltage was supplied the output always equalled the power supply voltage (usually about 12V). Set up a negative feedback loop and the output equalled the input voltage.
Nick, you once again show you know nothing about electronics, control theory, or much of anything technical as far as I can tell. If I put a DC bias into an amplifier, it will respond to the initial “perturbation” of going from zero input to the full DC level. Any “perturbations” on top of that will also be amplified – on top of the amplified DC bias. But if you only look at the P-P value of the amplified signals, you won’t really understand what’s going on, especially of the amplifier isn’t completely linear.
The reference temperature in this case, is the same as a DC bias, and it can’t be ignored as you are so desperate to do.
“If I put a DC bias into an amplifier, it will respond to the initial “perturbation” of going from zero input”
Well, you are now trying to dress up a constant as as a perturbation. But it is not one that is within the operating region of the amplifier.
NS —> You are out of your league discussing this. You are making the point that too much of climate science is being done by mathematicians and statisticians that have no experience with or education in the physical sciences.
Some of us are old enough to have experience using analog computers. You are trying to convince us that you can not design a device that multiplies a DC voltage by a constant value. I guess I don’t know how we did it, but we did!
I can feel the breeze from your hand-waving all the way over here.
And yet in the 65 or so years after WW2, pre 2010, fossil fuel and coal powered electricity still hadn’t reached an even larger portion of the world population… but now, with renewable energy, it is reaching those communities.
Wrong. The percent of the population with electricity has been steadily increasing, since at least 1990.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS
Griff is differently honest, being as polite as possible.
Griff the trouble with renewables is they are not, most never recapture the energy it took to make them, to put in a term you might understand for every buck of conventual energy it takes to make a workable solar panel system, in that system life time you only get 75 cents back of renewable energy you net loss is 25%. 25% energy you waster trying to save energy, you better off doing nothing, than putting up solar panels. Of course if you like stealing money from you fellow citizens put up said solar panels but don’t even try to tell me you are virtuous for doing something, it you do I will simple point out you are a thief.
News from Ontario, Canada. Wind and solar are not effective for reducing C02 emissions.
Reference: “Ontario’s Electricity Dilemma – Achieving Low Emissions at Reasonable Electricity Rates”. Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE). April 2015.
https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/presentations/ontarios-electricity-dilemma.pdf
Page 15 of 23. “Why Will Emissions Double as We Add Wind and Solar Plants ?”
– Wind and Solar require flexible backup generation.
– Nuclear is too inflexible to backup renewables without expensive engineering changes to the reactors.
– Flexible electric storage is too expensive at the moment.
– Consequently natural gas provides the backup for wind and solar in North America.
– When you add wind and solar you are actually forced to reduce nuclear generation to make room for more natural gas generation to provide flexible backup.
– Ontario currently produces electricity at less than 40 grams of CO2 emissions/kWh.
– Wind and solar with natural gas backup produces electricity at about 200 grams of CO2 emissions/kWh. Therefore adding wind and solar to Ontario’s grid drives CO2 emissions higher. From 2016 to 2032 as Ontario phases out nuclear capacity to make room for wind and solar, CO2 emissions will double (2013 LTEP data).
– In Ontario, with limited economic hydro and expensive storage, it is mathematically impossible to achieve low CO2 emissions at reasonable electricity prices without nuclear generation.
Electricity Generated in Ontario
http://webroots.ca/static/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectricity.html
Blackouts are being blamed for the current South African slump.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/06/04/blackouts-blamed-south-africas-worst-economic-slump-decade/
Will the UK head the same way?
Thank you Christopher Moncton for your unceasing and energetic defense of the truth and your courageous assault on academic fraud which seems to have become the main product of academic activity. The ideas that education’s main goal is the teaching of critical thinking and that academics is the pursuit of impartial discovery of objective fact so that we might best understand the workings of the natural world seem to be entirely unfashionable in the minds of progressives and liberals.
Many thanks to Andy Pattullo for his kind comment. The suppression of the teaching of logic as a prerequisite for attendance at universities has done a lot of damage to the ability of students to think critically. That lack of ability to think straight is being ruthlessly exploited by the far Left, in climate as in many other subjects.
Nice pic. Looks like sycamore maples in the foreground. Believe it or not, some of those have escaped into the woods on my brother’s lot in Pennsylvania, along w/Norway maples.
I might be called scientifically illiterate, but I am a politically savvy observer. The words that ring true to me here are-
“Genocidal” and “the greatest fraud in human history”. (Not only mutually compatible but also mutually dependent).
This bit: “The International Energy Agency defines “access to electricity” as the ability to switch on the equivalent of a single 60-Watt light-bulb for about four hours. ” represents a fraud on the part of the IEA. They must know that this represents electrical service, 1/6th of the time, of 1/2 an ampere (120 VAC). The US standard for a new home service drop was 100 amps, but most new, larger homes get built with a 200 amp service drop (main electrical line into the home to the breaker box).
“The equivalent of a single 60-Watt light-bulb” service, part-time, does not allow for any kind of business operation nor does it provide power for even a small refrigerator — they two most important uses of electrical service for the poor and under-served. It does not meet any practical minimum useful requirement.
Most of the Dominican Republic tries to get by on that standard, and from personal experience I can tell you that it is almost worse than nothing at all. It is just enough to charge one’s cell phone and watch a couple of hours of TV. One can tell that the power is ON in a village because everyone runs inside to watch TV or rushes to their little curbside business to run their sewing machine or other electrical device for their little business.
Real access to electrical power is at least 60 amps, at least 20 hours a day — refrigerators can retain cold for four hours if not opened. The four hour rolling blackout is something people can live with.
Kip Hansen is right. It is high time that we skeptics reclaimed the moral high ground by pointing out the catastrophic effects on the very poorest nations not of global warming, which has a generally beneficial effect, but of policies intended to mitigate it, which are doing untold harm.
Kip,
Absolutely correct. You can run a 60watt light bulb for 4 hours a day on a modest sized solar panel. Not really that practical, but it does allow someone like griff to claim that wind and solar are “providing power” to 3rd world locations. To me, this is inherently dishonest as it allows the greenies to claim their solutions “work”, when in reality they are the equivalent of giving a stale piece of bread to a starving man.
Kip, I like your definition better, for it defines a level of electricity access that can actually improve lives, and entire societies. But don’t expect this definition to be adopted anytime soon, because solar and wind by themselves can’t provide even that level of electricity.
refrigerators can retain cold for four hours if not opened.
If you pack any empty space w/water bottles, it’ll last alot longer than that if you minimize opening it. Same strategy w/the freezer.
In Indonesia, where power supply is still not the most stable even in quite developed areas, some manufacturers market refrigerators with integrated heat sinks in order to get through blackouts.
I was going to comment on that absurd standard the IEA is using to establish access to electricity as well. ‘Let Them Eat Cake’ may not have been said by Marie-Antoinette in the manner popular retelling has it, but it sure captures the attitude of the IEA quite well!
You need to define the voltage, in addition to current.
From what I understand the main feedback is driven by water vapor through increased evaporation. Doesn’t this mean the feedback at temperatures below freezing (273 K) will be different than when the temperature is above freezing. This would seem to me to produce a non-linearity into the calculation.
It doesn’t really matter if the sun is shining or not when the feedback mechanism is not active.
My own take is that the water vapor feedback has been computed wrong because it doesn’t correctly take enhanced convection into account. It assumes a linear increase in water vapor with elevation. In fact, this is not what has happened as pointed out by several scientists. Where higher water vapor content is most important to the overall greenhouse effect there has been a DECREASE in water vapor.
I believe this is not factored into the models which is the reason models produce the non-existent hot spot and far too much warming.
Agree here Richard.
The NET feedback of water is negative NOT positive as postulated by the IPCC . At phase change the absorbed energy is translated into Latent Heat at CONSTANT temperature, thus no additional radiation is produced as GHE. Further the marked increase in volume and low molecular weight results into strong upward movement of the energy for dissipation into the atmosphere and space. All of which counters the GHE. However without phase change the GHE operates hence the need to consider the net result of feedback.
IMO this provides a basic practical reason for the disparity between the Models and observations in addition to the flaws pointed out in Monckton’s paper.
Monckton’s presentation is brilliant and deserves general recognition in the scientific community; but hardly likely in the current political scene.
Richard and Alasdair both make excellent points. Our paper considers explicitly the models’ prediction of the actually non-existent tropical mid-troposphere “hot spot”, and draws the conclusion that the water vapor feedback is close to linear. Variability in ice cover, raised by Richard, is also considered, and it is demonstrated that because the ice is at high latitudes and mostly at high altitudes the ice-albedo feedback is very small. In IPCC’s understanding, all feedbacks other than that of water vapor self-cancel, and that single erroneously-represented feedback, therefore, is the sole pretext for IPCC’s tripling of the directly-forced warming from doubled CO2.
“And the system-gain factor was 287.55 / 255, or 1.085” seems to contain a typo. 255 should be (255 + 10)
Ron Peereboom is correct. Sorry for the error.
I might not understand much of the detail but I would like to suggest that the Climate Warmists might be known as belonging to The Church of Climate Scientology……….
It is always a pleasure to read what sir Christopher writes.
I really can’t have a strong opinion on the issues the article raises. Feedbacks can be deduced but not measured as by their own nature they alter what it is being measured and often more than one feedback factor is at play making it impossible to disentangle them from evidence.
I am very surprised that journals are nowadays rejecting to publish articles when the editors don’t agree with their content. In science even the most outlandish theories get published all the time, because some of them turn out to be right after all. The role of the journals is precisely to publish science that has not been found to be faulty, not to decide what is correct and mistaken.
The modus operandi with articles that go against the consensus of the time is to publish them and then ignore them. Time and scientific advance are the final arbiters of who was wrong and who was right. This idea that journals should shun articles that question the dogma of the day is absolutely anti-science.
A problem with the legal case is that journals are under no obligation to publish anything. One of the most usual rejections we get for our articles is that the editor doesn’t find the article is sufficiently interesting for the readers of the journal. There is no way to argue with that since it is arbitrary and at their discretion.
Don’t forget, the modus operandi of the CAGW crowd is to never admit that any part of the accepted theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming can be or has ever been questioned by any competent scientist, and therefore one should never debate the subject or permit the dissemination of any opposing theories, viewpoints or even minor details that might cause any member of the public to question it. (In other words, the gravy train must be protected at all costs.)
In response to Javier, the issue is not whether a journal is obliged to publish any particular paper, but whether it is operating a fair, competent system of peer review to the high scientific standard it claims to meet. If it behaves as it has thus far behaved, and if as a result a paper that demonstrates the entire global-warming scare to be based on a large error of physics is improperly refused publication, then the readers of the journal are being defrauded because the journal’s self-advertisement has led them to believe that it operates a proper peer review system, and the millions who are dying because the World Bank will not lend for coal, oil or gas developments will continue to die. This is exactly the territory within which a fraud case would lie.
This rant I posted in your other thread came late, thus missed by most here.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/03/reporting-the-fraudulent-practices-behind-global-warming-science/#comment-2715900
It appears that a double standard is being promoted here since the NAME is the actual trigger for over the top reactions from reviewers and some of YOU here, who are clearly employing the run around as pointed out in the article. Then Nick Stokes lift from a DIFFERENT set of reviewers quotes for ANOTHER thread from LAST YEAR, to make a case that they don’t like his paper, ok fine, however they also made this hypocritical statement that is an actual lie since many of the same major science journals DELIBERATELY publish pseudoscience garbage, because it is to push a narrative that global warming in some way is a danger to life on the planet.
Here is what one reviewer stated from the link Nick had dishonestly lifted from:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/30/climatologys-startling-error-an-update/
“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.”
bolding mine
“reputable journal”
Has many here forgotten the flood of absurd climate papers published that accuses of CO2 of nearly everything in the universe? Any day now CO2 will be blamed for slowing the speed of light down……
The hypocrisy is sickening here, with over the top objections to a particular paper, but little interest in the many garbage papers we see every week. I see the bile posted in a couple of forums that I visit daily and post in. Warmists promote obviously garbage published papers and essays from, here is an example of a thread I started:
Sea levels may rise much faster than previously predicted, swamping coastal cities such as Shanghai, study finds
http://www.usmessageboard.com/threads/sea-levels-may-rise-much-faster-than-previously-predicted-swamping-coastal-cities-such-as-shanghai.757896/
The study is from PNAS, snicker….
“reputable journal”
Or this:
Climate Change Causing Extreme Weather
https://www.debatepolitics.com/environment-and-climate-issues/339985-climate-change-causing-extreme-weather.html
Based on the annual report from AMS, which is filled with misleading claims, but it is from a …. snicker, “reputable journal”
the comments from warmists in this thread are often absurd in part because they uncritically swallow the misleading claims from the AMS.
That is from two different forums I regularly post in.
Monckton’s paper may indeed have a problem in 1% of the paper, but probably far better than the weekly bilge we get from numerous “reputable journal”
How did the “Hockey Stick” paper sail through in a short time, what about that silly Briffa Tree Ring paper or the paper where DR. Mann presented a paper that sailed though reviewers who failed to notice Mann had a critical chart upside down?
From Climate Audit
Yet another Upside Down Mann out
https://climateaudit.org/2009/11/27/yet-another-upside-down-mann-out/
The stupid paper was published in … he he…. ha ha, SCIENCE journal, you know where they have awesome reviewers in them!
Climate Audit is a good place to see the many examples of bad climate science papers that manage to pass though awesome reviewers, after they are he he, from “reputable journals.
Here is the first comment in the Climate Audit thread:
“Posted Nov 27, 2009
But hang on, surely peer review will pick this error up?
Its funny you know, the BBC has been pushing this as another example of how global warming ™ cant be wrong.”
Yup awesome peer review………
Monckton is suffering from a double standard.
The hypocrisy is sickening and some of you don’t seem to care about it.
I’ll give you the morale case for climate science when you recognise the existence of surface tension and its ability to block physical heat from entering water through its surface
Using electrical circuit analogs for the climate system are only meant as an approximation, for the purpose of simplifying a very complex subject. If climate science “misuses” the concepts in some way, that doesn’t mean climate science is wrong. I dare say that the climate system is much more complex than electrical circuits.
“Feedbacks” being referenced to departures from an average state (the usual meaning of the term in climate science) is legitimate because one cannot expect some sort of re-defined feedback based upon some zero climate state to apply to climate *change*. The most obvious example is clouds. As a response to solar heating, clouds in the climate system form which greatly reduce the amount of sunlight the Earth absorbs, leading to a cooling effect and (one might surmise) a negative feedback. But that average picture of clouds doesn’t necessarily mean that further warming will cause greater coverage by clouds, because all ascending air mass in clouds must be exactly matched by an equal amount of descending air mass, which is almost always cloud-free. That makes cloud extent (and thus global albedo) largely self-limiting.
I’m not arguing for high climate sensitivity… only that I don’t believe feedbacks (and thus climate sensitivity) re-defined in the manner proposed here will apply to climate *change* from an average state. I wish it was that simple, but it’s not.
Per Gavin Schmidt, climate sensitivity is an emergent quantity from climate models, not a directly calculated quantity. UN IPCC climate modelers state that they adjust model parameters to obtain an ECS that seems about right to them.
I don’t trust anybody, especially UN politicians. Since no climatic metric has worsened in over 100 years, I say screw the modelturbators.
In reply to Dr Spencer, we make no objection to “feedbacks being referenced to departures from an average state”. However, one cannot constrain equilibrium sensitivity – or derive it correctly – if one thus confines the definition of feedback. In fact, any feedback processes that subsist in the climate at a given moment must perforce respond to the entire temperature then present. That temperature, known as the reference temperature, is the sum of emission temperature and all natural and anthropogenic perturbations. The moment that fact is realized, it becomes quite easy to constrain equilibrium sensitivity, for it becomes at once apparent that – absent any strong nonlinearity in the system response – one can ignore feedback response altogether in deriving equilibrium sensitivity, without much error.
It was when a professor of control theory was watching one of my talks on this subject that he first realized that climatology does not define feedback correctly. He got in touch with me to say that I had not defined it correctly either, though my error was a lot smaller than that of official climatology. At my invitation, he thereupon agreed to become a co-author, and he has kept us on the straight and narrow as far as control theory is concerned ever since.
We also have several heavy-hitting climatologists on our team, and still more who have kindly acted as pre-submission reviewers. If Dr Spencer would like to read the full, 11,000-word paper in which the entire argument is set out, with demonstrations at each stage, I shall be delighted to send it to him.
“[A]ny feedback processes that subsist in the climate at a given moment must perforce respond to the entire temperature then present. That temperature, known as the reference temperature, is the sum of emission temperature and all natural and anthropogenic perturbations.”
It’s statements like this that make me believe you’re going off the rails with this theory. With a feedback system, a “reference” is a state variable (like voltage) that you use as a baseline to then measure or define the modulation or change in amplitude of your signal. In an electrical amplifier, you set your bias (or reference) voltage to a value that lets your signal (a change around that reference voltage) be amplified without clipping. Say, for example, that you’ve got an amplifier powered by +/- 5V rails (meaning that the max voltage can’t be higher than 5V or less than -5V) designed to handle a digital input signal that goes from -5.5 to +0.5 millivolts, with an amplification factor of 1000. If I set the bias (or reference) voltage of the amplifier at +1V, I know that the amplifier will operate without clipping either rail because the amplified signal has room to swing between -4.5V and 1.5V.
But you seem to be conflating the reference with the signal. Feedback only applies to a signal, which definitionally requires a modulation, or change, relative to some baseline or reference. Think about it – if I have any parameter (temperature, voltage, mass, flow, whatever) that never changes at all, then how can that parameter convey any information that could be deemed a “signal” and hence have feedback applied to it. Feedback has no application at all to the reference that you use to provide or measure a signal.
So when you say “the reference temperature is the sum of emission temperature and all natural and anthropogenic perturbations,” that makes no sense. A reference temperature is just a number from which to measure future changes. Even if one were to assume that the pre-industrial temperature, used as a reference for climate feedback analysis, was at some point in the distant past elevated from some earlier or hypothesized temperature without greenhouse gasses, there is nothing innately wrong about using the pre-industrial temperature as a fixed reference to analyze feedback on future temperature swings relative to that reference, or in limiting the definition of “feedback” to perturbations relative to that reference.
Kurt….you are funny
Kurt should appreciate that the mathematics of feedback is of universal application to feedback-moderated dynamical systems.
As our professor of control theory points out in a distinguished contribution to the paper, in theory any signal is a perturbation when compared with the zero state, wherefore one should not look to distinguish between the input signal and any subsequent perturbations thereto: the sum of the input signal and all perturbations thereof is the signal that is fed into the feedback loop; and, though feedback terminology seems not to have been standardized, that signal before the action of feedback is generally referred to as the “reference signal”. If the signal is temperature, then it is the “reference temperature”.
As Gauss used to say, Non notatio, sed notio.
We built a test rig at a national laboratory of physics to confirm that the feedback loop responds not merely to perturbations of the input signal but to the total reference signal – which is the sum of the input signal and the perturbations.
If Kurt is not aware of this, he may care to read any elementary textbook of control theory, such as Bode 1945, ch. 3, or any paper on the subject, such as Black 1934.
Kurt —> Many folks here seem to be tied to AC coupled input and output amplifiers. That is, the input goes through a capacitor that blocks DC (the reference) so that the amplifier only sees a time variable (AC) signal and the same with the output, it is coupled through a capacitor so only a time variable signal is seen. This is probably the most common arrangement but certainly not the only one. There are also DC coupled amplifiers where the input/output includes what you are calling the reference signal.
This means you can have a “modulation” on top of a DC signal. My first job as a senior in college was to place a periodic triangle wave on top of a 1 volt DC constant voltage. And remember, we only had transistors back then!
“in theory any signal is a perturbation when compared with the zero state, wherefore one should not look to distinguish between the input signal and any subsequent perturbations thereto: the sum of the input signal and all perturbations thereof is the signal that is fed into the feedback loop; and, though feedback terminology seems not to have been standardized, that signal before the action of feedback is generally referred to as the ‘reference signal'”
But my point is that the selection of the reference (or the “zero-state”) is arbitrary, and the feedback applies to modulations or change relative to the reference. Let’s say I apply a unit step function u(t) to a single-pole negative feedback amplifier using V=0 as a reference. The output for time t>0, based on the input step of 1V at t=0 will quickly rise to something less than 1V due to the negative feedback. But after a long period of time, the output will stabilize at that value. Let’s for convenience say that it’s 0.9V.
After that point, analytically, there is nothing wrong at all with simply readjusting my reference to the new 0.9V to analyze the effect of feedback on say a sinusoidal signal applied at a new time, or even a new unit step function. Whatever happened before to get to the 0.9V reference is irrelevant to the analysis of the effect of the feedback on the new signal or perturbation. It’s history at that point, and the feedback circuit only has knowledge of the current state of change at the input; past or future changes at the input are irrelevant to the feedback response to a current perturbation. With feedback, only the perturbations matter, where the feedback either amplifies, or dampens, or causes ringing, rise times etc. to the perturbations.
Most ordinary people would consider only the perturbation of a variable as containing a “signal” since as I said earlier, no information can be gleaned from something unless it is allowed to change. But you seem to be insistent on incorporating a reference state into your definition of the signal, merely because that “reference state” can itself be thought of in reference to something you can consider to be a “zero state.” Even assuming that feedback analysis can be correctly applied using your method, that does not logically mean that the simpler way of doing it – by simply analyzing feedback on perturbations relative to a constant baseline, is incorrect.
But your whole paper is premised on that illogical argument; that limiting the application of feedback to “perturbations” or changes relative to a constant baseline state is a “fundamental error” of climate science. It’s not an error.
Kurt is laboring under a number of misconceptions, not the least of which is that we say deriving the system-gain factor from sensitivities rather than from absolute reference temperature is incorrect. We say no such thing. However, attempting to derive the system-gain factor from sensitivities is impracticable in the climate, because the sensitivities are so very small. Tiny uncertainties in the sensitivities lead to large uncertainties in the system-gain factor and hence in equilibrium sensitivity, which is why after 40 years the interval of Charney sensitivities remains as absurdly broad as it is.
In fact – we built a test rig to verify this – any feedback processes that subsist in the climate at any given moment must perforce respond to the entire reference signal then obtaining. The fact that there may have been previous equilibria does not alter the fact that feedbacks respond to the entire reference temperature. And once one realizes, as climatology does not, that feedbacks respond to the entire reference temperature, it is not at all difficult to derive the true Charney sensitivity, which is about a third of the current midrange estimate.
What’s “physical heat”? I’ve never seen that term in any textbook I’ve read on physics or engineering. Do you even know what “heat” is? Can you explain it in basic terms? Then can you explain what surface tension of water has to do with it?
In response to RMB, shortwave radiation will penetrate the surface tension, though longwave radiation will not penetrate more than a micron or two.
I might be wrong but I assumed the Bode feedback equation (on which all the AGW nonsense is predicated) has an upper bound of 1.0 for closed loop positive amplification.
No such bound exists for open loop – example amplifying a radio signal – as the amplification does not change the signal in the aether.
But for a microphone to speaker – the moment the amplified sound returns to the microphone greater than the original input – hey presto feedback howl.
The mechanism for feedback in the atmosphere is a closed loop and therefore cannot be the ±3 multiplication suggested by the Charney sensitivity parameter.
In response to Mr Irwin, if the feedback fraction exceeds unity the feedback response becomes negative. However, if we are right the feedback fraction f is so small that it comes nowhere near the discontinuity in the curve at f = 1. For this reason, the very high sensitivities that arise because climatologists imagine that f can come close to 1 are impossible.
I only mentioned it because I once restored an old valve amplifier and accidentally connected the negative feedback line to the wrong “half” of the push pull amplifier. In spite of the feedback being a minor driver to suppress harmonics and hum it simply went into avalanche and do nothing but howl. That’s positive feedback – its unstable in a closed loop system.
IIRC the IPCC value for Charney was 0.61 ±0.44 for 99% confidence – which can therefore achieve unity and impossible levels of amplification (thou shalt not divide by zero).
Modelling with random values about the “mean” will produce a strongly hyperbolic range of results none of which will be dismissed on the grounds of their being impossible by the alarmists.
As Dr. Matt Ridley has pointed out we can reach a point where a further one ton of carbon could cause the earth to become hotter than the suns’ core.
Thanks for the great article & reply.
Groucho Marx summed it all up a long time ago. “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”
Thanks for the new post, Christopher. The last one brought out lots of geniuses and fools, this one should as well.
Regarding taking legal action, I fear that I am from another time and place. I grew up on a cattle ranch in the old West. Here’s what it looked like …
There were only a few rules governing behavior, a frontier code for the ranch owner and the cowboy alike.
First, you could call a man a fool, but you damn well better not call him a liar without having the facts to hand to prove it beyond doubt.
Next, you could cheat on your wife or your husband, people disapproved but excused the weakness. But a man caught cheating at cards was despised and shunned.
Next, you could steal say a loaf of bread, and folks would still talk to you. But if you stole livestock, you were a no-count rustler or a gah-dam chicken thief and people would walk right past you on the street. And stealing a man’s tools was in that same category.
And finally, you could call on your friends to help settle a dispute … but the man who called the cops was looked on as a coward and a backstabber.
Given that code of conduct, curiously not far different from the social rules in Elizabethan England, I fear that the idea of calling the cops on someone who has done something totally legal (declined to publish your paper) is most unwelcome, and does not reflect well at all upon your Lordship.
But hey, that’s just me.
Finally, my hope is that you actually wade into the upcoming discussion, and that you debate with your usual wit and knowledge to defend your ideas. You are their strongest proponent and the person who knows them the best.
My regards to you and yours, keep up the good work,
w.
In case wordpress does something funny, this reply is addressed to
On the other hand, you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.
What works in a small tight knit community is totally ineffective against postmodern Marxist SJWs. They have no honor.
Thanks, Bob. I’m always reluctant to say “My opponents have no honor, so I’m not bound to act honorably” … I’m sure you can see the infinite problems with heading down that road.
w.
In response to Mr Eschenbach, it may be that he has not appreciated the subtlety of the advice the eminent lawyer gave. As a result of our discussion, the lawyer formed the provisional view that the climate-change industry is founded substantially not upon science but upon a series of interconnected frauds, which have become more and more brazen as the perpetrators have realized that they are – for now at any rate – untouchable. They can make up any old scientific rubbish, get it published via the pal-review network that they control, and – indirectly – kill millions every year in the process.
The fact that one journal has behaved corruptly is not in itself sufficient evidence of the interconnected frauds that exist in the climate-change industry. If, however, two or three journals were to mess us about with the brazen impunity of the first, then the police would indeed take an interest, and they would be right to do so. That is where other evidences of the frauds – such as the notorious 97% fraud, which Queensland Police have already determined to be a deception – comes in.
There is a pattern to this, and it will be the task of the police to find out who are the controlling interests and who the drones. But first, the interest of the police must be piqued. If three journals treat us quite as badly as the present one has until now treated us, the police will be interested – of that our eminent lawyer was in no doubt. “Why?” I asked. “Because I’ve become interested myself,” he said.
There are plenty of vanity journals that will publish your work Christopher, all you have to do is pay the fee.
The point is not to get published at all costs. In fact, the point may be to not get published. 🙂
If a pattern develops where CM’s paper is refused publication in several journals for non-scientific reasons, that raises the question of whether something illegal is going on.
In response to Mr Borgelt, of course we could get our paper published in the red-light district of scientific publishing. But the paper would then carry absolutely no weight. Our approach is to send the paper to each of the learned journals of climate, one by one, so that the very true-believers who have driven the scare till now are invited to consider our arguments carefully, moderated by an editor of sufficient competence.
Then, the mere fact of publication in such a journal after proper peer review will carry more than a little weight. For it will constitute an admission by a journal that has previously only given the other side of the argument that that argument may have been fundamentally incorrect from the start.
On the other hand, we may be wrong. So far, those here who have attempted to say we are wrong have themselves made a series of elementary mistakes, or are deliberately pushing the climate-Communist agenda regardless of the objective truth. That is why we are seeking proper peer-review. If we are indeed wrong, then proper peer review will expose our error, and that will be an end of the matter – but at least we tried to get it right.
Monckton needs to make up his mind.
..
First off, he wants acceptance from respectable journals: “the mere fact of publication in such a journal after proper peer review will carry more than a little weight.”
…
Yet Monckton denigrates them at the same time: “They can make up any old scientific rubbish, get it published via the pal-review network”
….
So is it “proper peer review” or is it “pal-review?’
So is it “proper peer review” or is it “pal-review?’
No need to waste that match Borgelt, I’ve one right here.
Depending upon the neutrality of the gatekeeper(s) both could be true at the same time.
Syscomputing, you ought to advise Monckton not to accuse the people he seeks approval from of fraud.
. . . you ought to advise Monckton . . .
First let’s get you some assistance with your reasoning skills, then you can help me with Monckton.
One does not need reasoning skills to understand the rule: “thou shall not bite the hand that feeds you.” Monckton accuses fraud of the same people that he desperately wishes to positively “peer review” his work.
One does not need reasoning skills . . .
But one does need reasoning skills in order to forego repeating one’s argument after said argument has been summarily dispatched, ergo my concern for your welfare remains valid.
Your concern for my welfare is commendable Mr. syscomputing, however I am very much concerned that your
delusion regarding a “summarily dispatched” argument is in need of serious inspection.
. . . I am very much concerned that your delusion . . .
Many thanks for making my point for me with an ad hominem attack, followed most notably by the absence of said inspection for which you yourself called.
Take care!
Mr. syscomputing, please let me educate you on the difference between the two words: “you” and “your.”
…
You see, what I posted is not an ad hominem attack, due to the distinction between the above mentioned two words. If I had posted “you are delusional” that would be ad hominem. Since I”m labeling your actions as delusional, I’m not attacking you.
Since an insane man can sometimes act sanely, and a sane man can sometimes act insanely, your individual delusional action doesn’t suffice to declare you delusional, so where is the “ad-hominem?”
Thank you Lord Monckton for your continuing and vital contributions to the science of our changing climate.
Genocide is a powerful word. Its use here is entirely correct. The preventable deaths of millions every year by restricting their access to electricity is a criminal act. Genocide should be included on your list for police to investigate, alongside fraud.
Are you the Moon hoax Marcus Allen?
Well spotted. Yes, I am that Marcus Allen. Why do you ask?
Yes. Why do you need to know?
I was just curious because I’m a fan. Nice to see you here.
Thank you, RW. I appreciate your interest and support.
I have been fascinated by how WUWT has reported the increasingly successful challenges to the CAGW climate alarmism, ever since the release of the climategate emails.
I have found that the science and persuasive arguments, including the occasional dissenting views, presented here, have been of considerable assistence me in my research into the Apollo Deception. The two subjects seem to me to have common threads. Not least the insistence that the consensus must be right – 97% anyone?
Well, for me, I came to the conclusion that CAGW was a hoax/scam came years before I ever looked into the credibility of Apollo. I was not alive when Apollo allegedly took place.
It never occurred to me to the two were connected in any way, but maybe — as you say — there are some commonalities.
A simple question for Marcus Allen, what is your knowledge of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter?
I’m not understanding the logic, which ought to be quite simple to explain.
We have a temperature. Some stimulus causes this temperature to rise. This rise in temperature causes other stimuli which in turn cause the temperature to rise further.
In practice: we have a rise in temperature of the planet, this causes a rise in water vapour content of the atmosphere, this increase in water vapour content in turn applies a further warming stimulus.
In some way which I haven’t understood, CM is saying that the IPCC model of this process says one thing, which is contradicted by observations, and he is saying another.
I don’t understand what these two different things are.
At the end of the argument, CM is saying that the IPCC account of this process, when the warming stimulus in itself will lead to a rise of about 1C, forecasts that the actual rise after consequential effects will be around 3C.
His own account is that it will be around 1C.
I admit to never having understood the feedback argument. If there was an MWP, why did not that initial rise in temperatures lead to further rises? If I understand the argument properly, any rise in temperature however caused is supposed to lead to consequences which produce increased warming. Any rise in temperature, however caused, will increase water vapor, which will in turn produce a further rise.
Is the argument that these rises are of decreasing size as the process continues, so they eventually stop? And if so, what is it that causes them to reverse? And is there a feedback during the cooling? That is, temp falls, water vapor falls, that leads to more cooling?
Nick Stokes, help! Presumably you understand this stuff? Why is the climate not much more volatile historically than it has been, if the theory is correct?
Or is there some damping mechanism?
I’m not understanding the logic, which ought to be quite simple to explain.
That’s because in old good days each Lord has a herald who would translate higher thoughts and ideas into something more accessible for mortal minds. Our Lord fights alone.
But being more serious: His Lordness in the bullet points:
1. Climate is a feedback-driven complex system; reached equilibria are surprisingly resilient and stable.
2. ‘Official’ climate science in the modelling of climate changes uses concepts borrowed from the control theory.
3. Alas, there is a fundamental misunderstanding how such theory operates.
4. The theory states that feedback operates against the whole ‘reference’ signal (sum of all inputs and perturbations. ‘Reference’ vs input signals is confusing to me too and deserves bit of clarification, I reckon.)
5. Instead, ‘official’ climate science claims that the feedback loop responds only to the perturbations.
6. That in turn leads to exaggeration of the feedback responses and therefore overestimation of the climate sensitivity.
7. When we correct points 5 and 6 and properly employ the feedback theory, climate sensitivity drops substantially, is much less scary, better aligned with measurements we’ve got, and can better predict further changes.
Forgive me, my Lord, if my frail mind did not grasp it fully, but that is my understanding of the issue.
Nice pictures, by the way. Scotland, Ireland and some northern parts of England have different colour saturation indeed. Who saw knows what I mean.
In response to Paramenter, who has helpfully spelled out some of the main points of our argument, I am happy to supply the requested clarification of some terms in control theory.
In climate, the input signal is the 255 K emission temperature caused by the fact that the Sun is shining. The 10 K warming caused by the presence of the naturally-occurring greenhouse gases up to 1980 is a “reference sensitivity” – i.e., a perturbation of the input signal. The 0.75 K warming caused by the presence of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases from 1850-2011 is a further reference sensitivity. At any given moment, the sum of the input signal and all perturbations thereof – in climate the sum of emission temperature and all reference sensitivities – is the reference temperature – i.e., the temperature that would prevail at that moment if there were no feedbacks operating at all. The equilibrium temperature is the temperature that would prevail at that moment once the feedbacks had operated and the climate had resettled to equilibrium. Hope this helps.
It does help indeed, thank you.
michel,
Temperature change cannot beget further temperature change in any direct way. Temperature change begets a change in state variables which then change net flux via feedback to net flux. It is net flux which is changed by these “temperature-dependent feedbacks”. Temperature is then changed as a CONSEQUENCE of the change in net flux. The distinction is important.
If you consider an El Nino event, there is an increase in surface and atmospheric temperature as a result of the release of heat from the depths of the western Pacific. It is not caused by radiative forcing – which would be evident in the radiative flux balance. Average surface temperature can increase over a matter of months by up to 3 deg C or thereabouts. This does NOT then result in a further sustained increase in temperature due to “feedbacks”. The biggest feedback of all is a negative feedback to net flux – the Planck response. As the surface temperature rises, there is a (temperature-dependent) increase in outgoing longwave emission (Planck feedback), which is partially offset by some (temperature-dependent) increase in received shortwave (positive feedback from clouds and WV mostly). The overall effect is negative which then serves to cool the surface temperature back towards where it was before the El Nino event, bringing the system back into TOA net flux balance.
The total temperature-dependent feedback is ALWAYS negative. This is accepted even by the more extreme climate scientists. It is just that , often, climate scientists will sloppily talk about “feedback being positive” when they actually mean “total feedback excluding the Planck feedback”.
michel,
Temperature change cannot beget further temperature change in any direct way. Temperature change begets a change in state variables which then change net flux via feedback to net flux. It is net flux which is changed by these “temperature-dependent feedbacks”. Temperature is then changed as a CONSEQUENCE of the change in net flux. The distinction is important.
If you consider an El Nino event, there is an increase in surface and atmospheric temperature as a result of the release of heat from the depths of the western Pacific. It is not caused by radiative forcing – which would be evident in the radiative flux balance. Average surface temperature can increase over a matter of months by up to 3 deg C or thereabouts. This does NOT then result in a further sustained increase in temperature due to “feedbacks”. The biggest feedback of all is a negative feedback to net flux – the Planck response. As the surface temperature rises, there is a (temperature-dependent) increase in outgoing longwave emission (Planck feedback), which is partially offset by some (temperature-dependent) increase in received shortwave (positive feedback from clouds mostly). The overall effect is negative, which then serves to cool the surface temperature back towards where it was before the El Nino event, bringing the system back into TOA net flux balance.
The total temperature-dependent feedback to net flux is ALWAYS negative. It is just that, often, climate scientists will sloppily talk about “feedback being positive” when they actually mean “total feedback excluding the Planck feedback”.
I weep. Natural temperature cycling does not lead to unconstrained heating. But minor increases in CO2 levels will?
I think you have misunderstood. Total temperature-dependent feedback to net flux is ALWAYS negative. It is a requirement for system stability. If it were not true, then we would already have seen unconstrained heating in history. The total change in temperature due to a step-change in CO2 is therefore always constrained.
I don’t misunderstand anything, kribaez. Read again what I wrote.
kribaez,
Thanks for this. Could you go on to explain simply what it is that the IPCC is claiming about feedback, and what CM is claiming.
I understand that a rise in temperature does not cause another rise directly. It causes other events which in turn cause rises. That is what you mean by ‘flux’? The rise in temp causes a rise in water vapor, and a rise in water vapor then causes further warming, which may or may not cause other events which have effects on temperature.
Have I go this right? CM is saying the IPCC claims that this process does not apply to all fluctuations in global temperatures. It only applies to some (I am not sure which, or why…)
CM then saying, do I understand this? That any rise in temperature should produce the same events, and that we can see that the IPCC has over-estimated the size of these effects by looking at previous warming episodes. And they turn out to be far lower than the IPCC account of the effects of CO2 forcing?
I don’t really understand feedback theory and op-amps and all that stuff, but in the end this must boil down to two different views of how the climate works, how warming effects from CO2 or water vapour or whatever work, how big they are, how they interact.
Surely it is possible to explain what the argument is about in those terms so we can at least get a clear idea what the disagreement is about, in terms of the climate and its components?
I would like to see the two theories laid out in such a way that one can see that they make different predictions, and then some observational analysis showing one or the other conforms to observation.
Perhaps naive?
Maybe a class action would be appropriate. Certainly Salby , Harde , Berry, and Frank were treated to the same dismissive response by journals.
Your Deer at Dyrham Park are signaling toxic masculinity. Not PC, at all. You should have edited out their antlers in order to provide us with a safe place; we can’t have dissonance with our pre-conceived notions of correct-think. Men who cut off their balls are now women.
Absolutely brilliant post!
I think we should start referring to you as “CMB”
What do you think?
… as in “Cosmic Microwave Background” – eternal, all-pervasive and irrefutable?