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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Lord Monckton,
I like your photos, and I agree with you that global warming policies are coming at an unacceptable cost in both dollars and human misery. However, the rest of this article is beyond silly. I know numerous authors who have struggled to have good papers on climate science published because their conclusions went against the grain. They might have had a basis for accusing journal editors of bias or even wilful obstruction, although no case for any successful legal action, I suspect. In the case of your paper, however, you have been told repeatedly that it is founded on flawed science, and you have been told this not just by AGW activists but also by numerous qualified sceptics, acting in good faith, including Dr Roy Spencer. Instead of calling your critics “wretches” and “concern trolls”, or accusing them of not understanding the plot, why don’t you ask Dr Judith Curry or Nic Lewis if they would offer any public support for your paper? And when they say “no”, as I am quite certain they will, can I suggest that you listen carefully to the reasons they offer rather than dismissing them as wretches and concern trolls.
In response to “Kribaez”, most of the “numerous qualified skeptics” to whom he refers have not actually read the paper they are commenting on. And they do not have the necessary expertise to evaluate our result. Kribaez mentions Roy Spencer, for instance: but Roy is the first to admit (see earlier in this thread, for instance) that he is not well versed in control theory. However, we have a tenured professor of control theory as a co-author, as well as two control engineers, and our paper is currently being read with approval by a control theorist from NASA, whose initial comment is that we are “more than right”.
Given that understanding our paper requires qualifications not only in climatology but also in number theory, control theory, statistics and macroeconomics, to name but a few, we have decided that the best step is to seek proper peer review from journals whose editors’ job is to find suitably-qualified reviewers. We don’t need public support for our result: we need proper peer review.
That said, we have of course obtained numerous pre-submission reviews. Not all of them support our conclusion, though most do, and some of them very strongly. But those who do not support us have not been able to advance arguments that my co-authors in the relevant fields of expertise find compelling.
Finally, Kribaez complains that I call concern trolls concern trolls and wretches wretches. Well, tough luck. I am always willing to respond courteously to points that appear to be genuine and are courteously put. If, however, the language of a commenter is intemperate, well, sometimes I give as good as I git. Get over it.
We are now, whether we like it or not, in a war. It is both one-sided and, as CM has indicated, a particularly murderous one. Our efforts as sceptics seem as if we are standing at the base of the beautiful waterfall pictured above attempting to push the water back uphill. We communicate with each other in the commentary of this and other noted blogs and sites, firing off the occasional letter or email to a local rag, council or MP. Mine are ignored, what about yours? We are in our own “sceptosphere” which is rarely noticed by anyone outside of it.
The opposition controls access to the media, funding and academia. If an opportunity should arise to challenge the status quo I believe it should be grasped wholeheartedly. Reference has been made above to potential crowd funding, I came too late to Peter Ridd’s case where this enabled process, but I would gladly contribute (as would many others, I’m sure) to this particular cause and the very important publicity afterwards should it conclude successfully.
https://notrickszone.com/2019/06/05/what-drives-the-solar-cycles-german-scientists-believe-theyve-found-the-answers/
Interesting…
The idea is more than ten years old and well elaborated by Theodor Landscheidt and his followers. Of course they are not mentioned / cited in that linked paper.
“The concern troll begins by saying that in the models climate sensitivity is not derived as we say it is.”
Actually it is derived via subjective parameterization. From Frederic Hourdin’s classic 2017 BAMS paper, “The Art and Science of Model Tuning:
“One can imagine changing a parameter which is known to affect the sensitivity, keeping both this parameter and the ECS in the anticipated acceptable range, and retuning the model otherwise with the same strategy toward the same targets.”
And who determines the “anticipated acceptable range”? The subjective GCM community, not the objective model.
You can’t make this stuff up!
Ho, ho, ho: Gavin Schmidt says ECS is an emergent phenomenon of the UN IPCC climate models. The climate modelers say they adjust parameters to achieve an ECS that “seems about right.”
Liars lie.
I’m most grateful to my friend Pat Michaels for his excellent quotation from Hourdin et al., which we use as the pay-off line in the conclusion of our paper. I’ll send him a copy of the full version for his interest.
Great work, Christopher. I’m not a scientist but have followed this for nearly eight years now. I have recently had correspondence with my MP about the state of the UK National Grid thanks to the appalling decisions made based on IPCC policy. Initially I got the usual fob off stating IPCC ‘science’ etc, but I’ve persisted and now my points are being passed onto Claire Perry, Minister of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
I won’t be holding my breath, but I got the impression my MP had little knowledge outside the party-line from the IPCC, and even eco-activists. I believe if we all took the time to present the facts on extreme weather, sea-level rise, and all the shenanigans of the alarmists, we might just start to educate, or at least get them to question the consensus.
Good luck, Christopher!
Old saying, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.”
Many thanks to Roy for his kind comments. He has had the same brush-off from Ministers that I have had. The only thing that will bring them to their senses is a formal, scientific proof that global warming has been wildly exaggerated. Our paper offers that proof, which is why we are being given the run-around by the journals.
The Lord Haw-Haw of climate change denial is going to inform us what a moral and honest debate is on climate change.
The world really has gone insane…
Well, Doug, please describe the climate change of which you are afraid.
Well Dave, seeing as how I’m in my mid 50s and have lived in BC most of my life the greatest impact from climate change has so far been seen in our extensive forests.
Huge swaths of this province are covered in dead and dying pine from the massive beetle populations that are no longer controlled by extended periods of extreme cold weather in winter. Extreme cold weather that no longer occur here due to climate change.
Second is the massive wildfires that can now cover most of the province in the summer either in firestorms or the smoke from them. Two record years in a row, I haven’t been evacuated or come close to losing my home yet but many here have. Last year we came close to losing family members who were the last out of the small interior city threatened by fire where they lived. A city that was under martial law and occupied by the military for almost a month.
Our coast lines are threatened by sea level rise, the glaciers are rapidly melting here and droughts in the summer becoming much more common making water security here much more tenuous.
Not to mention the overall viability of the biosphere itself if we push climate change too far too fast.
That would the climate change I am most concerned about both locally and globally.
And please don’t tell me it’s not happening, I like millions of other have had access to the facts for decades not industry generated spin from people who’s conflict of interest makes anything they say on this issue moot.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/11/cclimate-sceptic-researcher-willie-soon-investigated-funding-fossil-fuel-firms
“A Harvard-Smithsonian researcher known as a climate sceptic is under multiple ethics investigations arising from his hidden financial relationships with fossil fuel companies.
A handful of academic journals have asked Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, about his failure to disclose more than $1.2m in energy industry funding when submitting articles for publication, the Climate Investigations Center (CIC) said.
Soon is also under two parallel ethics investigations by the Smithsonian, a spokesperson for the institution said.”
“Soon refused to respond to requests for comment, and forwarded emails from the Guardian to Lord Christopher Monckton, a leading figure among British climate sceptics who is a supporter of Soon.”
This is a fraud and a deadly one. If the Holocaust that consumed 11 million lives was one of the most immoral actions in history then what is something that threatens the eventual existence of 7.7 billion and counting people.
It is the height of hypocrisy for Monckton to be preaching what is and isn’t moral when he is at the center of the most immoral campaign in human history. One that if it isn’t stopped will end human history.
In response to the repellent Coombes’ personal attack on Dr Soon, who is not here to answer for himself, I can say that at the time when the Guardian and other Communist newspapers were attempting to trash Dr Soon’s reputation I intervened with the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court in his capacity as chairman of the Smithsonian Institution to prevent that institution from attempting to victimize Dr Soon.
My co-authors and I inquired carefully into the false allegations levied against Dr Soon at that time, and we discovered that the Smithsonian had been told, in every single instance, of the funding that Dr Soon had negotiated. The Smithsonian had then taken over the negotiations in every single case, and had concluded the terms with the funders in a manner that was fully compliant with the Smithsonian’s own rules.
Dr Soon has received no specific funding for any of the papers that he and I have co-authored, and the journal in which the paper complained of was published accepted that the conflict-of-interest declaration we had made to it had been correct in every particular.
Perhaps the dreadful Coombes would check his facts in future before parroting hate-filled nonsense peddled by Communist newspapers whose editors have begun to realize that their global-warming scam is about to collapse with embarrassing completeness.
Hear, Hear!
What a bunch of bunk you are Doug Coombs. You state rising sea level is a problem in BC…a place where most coast line is somewhat vertical with mountains to the sky. With a sea level rise only about 2 mm per year. That is laughable…what is your concern again?
And then you cry about the Mountain Pine Beetle, which is a total natural evolution of a mature forest, especially a predominately old growth, even aged mono culture forest that is near the end of its life. It is the old decadent forest itself that actually creates the pine beetle because it is now the new food supply. Thinking we are supposed to get -35 for 3-4 weeks straight every winter forever to arrest the spread of the pine beetle is futile, since weather cycles oscillates between hotter and cold weather as we all know. Just think El Nino cycles that are natural weather. The cold weather of the LIA or even the cooler weather of the 1950’s thru 1970’s is not the long term average either.
The cure for this mess is a forest fire, as the pine tree/forest is a firescape evolved species that requires fire for its renewal and nutrient/cone release. Much of the forest is now over mature with such high density that the crowns are all touching such that when a fire does get started, it then can burn with ease once the ignition takes place. Not to mention another 2000 stems per acre that have since died due to over competition and are now fuel on the forest floor or hanging up in the green trees. Which fire is mostly human caused, so what did that have to do with any CO2 rise in the atmosphere? The pine beetle infestations are completely a natural cycle caused by the pine forest itself.
We live in the same neck of woods here in BC, and I have lived in this forest here 3/4 of my life and been professionally involved in the forest industry for over 40 years growing millions of trees on thousands of acres and fire fighting in my younger days. I don’t want to get burnt out either, but I sure don’t blame any of this on your so called global heating or climate change. All it takes now for this to go from soaking wet to ready to burn, is less than a few days of hot windy weather and a source of ignition, which we both know is predominately accidental (or deliberate arson) person caused. So grow up Doug Coombs and quit spreading your lies around BC and beyond. It is your ilk that most of us despise with your hype and misinformation that you repeat ad nauseam!
Doug you need help. Are you a holocaust denier?
My point stands. The only way that the climate alarmist machine gets defeated is through the political process, not via litigation or criminal charges, which will fail, absolutely will fail.
Win the political battle. And the only way that political battle is won is when the actual costs of what the alarmists demand is made clear, in dollars and cents .. on your power bills, your fuel bills, your standard of life. Every single time when the costs are made clear, the alarmists lose.
Most people turn off and pay no attention to the media. or to politicians, or to special interest groups, or to educators. Most people pay attention to what is going on in our own lives, pocket book issues, quality of life issues. And that matter whether we’re talking about climate change, or pollution, or preserving great places on earth, or whatever.
Everything else in life is just noise that people turn off to survive.
Yah, you come on up here when climate change driven firestorms are driving thousands out of their homes as is happening in Alberta right now and probably in here in BC as this summer heats up.
After two record wildfire seasons here and many people being incinerated in California and other places by this growing catastrophe only the delusional think this is a political battle.
The science on this has been sound for over a century and we are now watching the catastrophic effects play out over and over in the real world.
It takes a genuine contempt for the facts and life itself to claim this isn’t happening.
And for what, so we can keep a very sick industry on life support for a few years more.
Oh, Doug: Please link any wildfires to CO2. Ups and downs; real data show no increase in wildfires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, etc. The magic molecule seems to have no impact.
Doug, man-up – Show us your data. The old saying goes: Opinions are like a…holes, everyone has one.
https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/x91-010#.XPhYU4hKjcc
“This study investigates the impact of postulated greenhouse warming on the severity of the forest fire season in Canada. Using CO2 levels that are double those of the present (2 × CO2), simulation results from three general circulation models (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Oregon State University) were used to calculate the seasonal severity ratings for six stations across Canada. Monthly anomalies from the 2 × CO2 simulation results were superimposed over historical sequences of daily weather. Then, seasonal severity ratings of the present were compared with those for 2 × CO2 using five variations involving temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity. The relationship between seasonal severity rating and annual provincial area burned by wildfire was explored. The results suggest a 46% increase in seasonal severity rating, with a possible similar increase in area burned, in a 2 × CO2 climate.”
https://www.pnas.org/content/106/8/2519.short
“It is widely accepted, based on data from the last few decades and on model simulations, that anthropogenic climate change will cause increased fire activity. However, less attention has been paid to the relationship between abrupt climate changes and heightened fire activity in the paleorecord. We use 35 charcoal and pollen records to assess how fire regimes in North America changed during the last glacial–interglacial transition (15 to 10 ka), a time of large and rapid climate changes. We also test the hypothesis that a comet impact initiated continental-scale wildfires at 12.9 ka; the data do not support this idea, nor are continent-wide fires indicated at any time during deglaciation. There are, however, clear links between large climate changes and fire activity. Biomass burning gradually increased from the glacial period to the beginning of the Younger Dryas. Although there are changes in biomass burning during the Younger Dryas, there is no systematic trend. There is a further increase in biomass burning after the Younger Dryas. Intervals of rapid climate change at 13.9, 13.2, and 11.7 ka are marked by large increases in fire activity. The timing of changes in fire is not coincident with changes in human population density or the timing of the extinction of the megafauna. Although these factors could have contributed to fire-regime changes at individual sites or at specific times, the charcoal data indicate an important role for climate, and particularly rapid climate change, in determining broad-scale levels of fire activity.”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-007-9363-z
“Wildfire risks for California under four climatic change scenarios were statistically modeled as functions of climate, hydrology, and topography. Wildfire risks for the GFDL and PCM global climate models and the A2 and B1 emissions scenarios were compared for 2005–2034, 2035–2064, and 2070–2099 against a modeled 1961–1990 reference period in California and neighboring states. Outcomes for the GFDL model runs, which exhibit higher temperatures than the PCM model runs, diverged sharply for different kinds of fire regimes, with increased temperatures promoting greater large fire frequency in wetter, forested areas, via the effects of warmer temperatures on fuel flammability. At the same time, reduced moisture availability due to lower precipitation and higher temperatures led to reduced fire risks in some locations where fuel flammability may be less important than the availability of fine fuels. Property damages due to wildfires were also modeled using the 2000 U.S. Census to describe the location and density of residential structures. In this analysis the largest changes in property damages under the climate change scenarios occurred in wildland/urban interfaces proximate to major metropolitan areas in coastal southern California, the Bay Area, and in the Sierra foothills northeast of Sacramento.”
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/we-have-to-learn-to-live-with-fire-how-wildfires-are-changing-canadian-summers-1.5135539
“A change in weather patterns, stoked by climate change, has a wildfire expert predicting “a hot, smoky future” for Canadian summers.
The spectre of wildfires looms in B.C., Alberta and Ontario — provinces that have been repeatedly scorched by catastrophic fires in recent years.
Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at the University of Alberta, is warning that a dramatic rise in temperature and a changing climate have pushed things over the edge and will continue to cause unprecedented wildfires.
“We can’t always rely on our experience and the history of what we’ve seen in fire; we’re moving into new territory,” he told CBC Radio’s special Smoked Out.”
Maned-up Dave and now like millions of others am forced to survive the brutal conditions that the opinions of histories true assholes have “gifted” us all with.
Come on up here when nature goes batshit crazy due to this insanity and you can tell massive firestorms that are in every region of this province covering it in a blanket of smoke that last for months that it really doesn’t exist.
Don’t complain to me at how hard it is to deny a reality that has become so obvious that only total buffoons try and deny it.
Doug, you present modelturbation B.S. Plus some random dude hyperventilating, without his presenting any data.
Wildfires are a fact; get over your hysteria.
“The moral case for honest and competent climate science”
This is hilarious, half my comments are censored.
Climate change denial as exercised by intellectual frauds such as Monckton is as dishonest and immoral as it gets.
This entire site is based on the worst aspects of our species ever. Because of exactly this kind of corruption there probably won’t even be a human species much longer.
I’d say be ashamed to the people behind this criminal negligence on a global scale, but you’d have to lack a conscience to engage in this kind of sociopathic behavior in the first place.
You can do this because you’re incapable of feeling remorse or empathy. Which means you are also incapable of ANY intentional moral behavior.
Doug I believe you feel no empathy. You don’t care about the poor, but you like virtue signaling. You are the true sociopath 🙁
The intemperance of Mr Coombes’ comments indicates that he is not likely to be amenable to reason. However, for the record, I should explain that there is no correlation between the warming trend measured by thermometers and either the incidence or the extent of forest fires: and absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.
Forest fires, such as the recent disastrous fire in Montana, are caused chiefly by sparking electricity lines, or by people setting fires, or by environmental extremists’ insistence on preventing the clearance of fallen timber. Then, when a fire starts, it spreads unpreventably and very fast.
In future, whenever he reads the words “it is generally accepted that …” in a supposedly scientific paper, he should be aware that a political rather than a scientific statement is about to be made.
Finally, I detect in his comments no hint of a recognizable scientific refutation of my assertion that any feedbacks that subsist in the climate at any given moment must perforce respond not only to any perturbations in emission temperature but also to emission temperature itself. Once that fact is admitted, the derivation of equilibrium sensitivities becomes simple and reliable, and it becomes clear that Charney sensitivity will be approximately one-third of the current midrange estimate, bringing the global warming problem to an end.
CliSci employment depends on there being a global warming problem, Christopher.
Doug, your rants indicate you are having emotional problems. The world is not ending anytime soon; get over it.
“It takes a genuine contempt for the facts . . .” . . . to blame naturally recurring events on climate “change”.
I share the actor, Mr. T’s, sentiment.
Hi Duane,
this is about my third comment in over ten years but your comment has a ‘trigger’ in it. As we have recently seen in Australia (re: Peter Ridd) the fight may seem political but at some point the people who think they are in charge get ahead of themselves. The university in question thought they could act with impunity, spouting the same and constant stream of drivel until they fell foul of the LAW. In this instance the publicity involved may have enlightened others enough to find out why. Alas, one step at a time. If I understand it correctly LCMoB is only using the science as a vehicle to show that (alleged) fraud is fraud in any arena.
The trigger part was your second paragraph. I live in South Australia and after 16 years of socialist/green mismanagement we are the proud owners of the highest electricity prices in the southern hemisphere. The pseudo-socialists whom have replaced them are going along with business as usual. Higher electricity costs don’t just trickle through the economy they flow through and as your correctly point out, at some point affect the quality of life. LCMoB correctly points out that this is untenable, not only for comfortable western societies but for those who are unable to support themselves. Who in (insert deity here)’s name thinks that 4 hours of electricity a day is a humane standard?
Coincidentally it is the 75th anniversary of an event where those in comfortable well run societies with a stable political environment came to the assistance of those who being subject to a socialist tyranny. Chris is right. I supported Peter Ridd where I could and I will support LCMoB as well as I can.
How say you?
Andy
Most grateful to Andy for his helpful comment. It is time to undo the enormous damage in lives and jobs that anti-scientific environmentalism is causing.
“The only way that the climate alarmist machine gets defeated is through the political process, not via litigation or criminal charges”
The hard green totalitarians are often denied at the polls but remember, they are unrelenting and they never give up. Why just today it has been widely reported that Prince Charles the future king of GB and the commonwealth nations including Canada, spent 90 minutes explaining the seriousness of climate change to president Trump.
Charles will never have to face the electorate but he is just one of many in high authority who will never see any of the information that’s presented on sites like this.
Explaining the other side of CAGW to Charles and people like him would be an exercise in futility.
I once tried to explain to Prince Charles that the science behind climate change was not as solid as it is said to be. He was not pleased.
“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.” But Lord Monckton I thing you understand as well as I do to greenies death of their fellow humans is a good feature, not a problem. After the honest greenies openly state humans are a pestilence to earth and need to be eliminated, or at least human number should only be a few hundred million at most. Why a sane person listen to any greenie is beyond me. I once though of myself as and environmentalist, but no more, I a conservation some who think we need to be careful with what we have been given, think about what we are doing and be careful with out actions. Not that we are a problem than need to be eliminated or reduced or if we build a fence around wild areas everything will be OK.
There is a moral case for fossil fuels and it has been expressed brilliantly in the book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” by Alex Epstein. I urge everyone to read it.
Epstein’s book is truly compelling.
How do you disriminate between perturbations and feedback? Why is the non-condensing greenhouse gases perturbations and not feedbacks?
Another comment: you have made a mistake (I think). You write: “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”
Feedback response should be 287.55-(255+10)=22.55 K, which gives feedback fraction 22.55/287.55=0.078.
Third comment: this issue seems to be one of the mistakes that David Evans has pointed out (see sciencespeak.com)
Great work anyway!
In response to Fredrik’s three questions:
1. The distinction between condensing and noncondensing greenhouse gases is long established in the journals on climate sensitivity (see e.g. Lacis+ 2010). If we emit noncondensing greenhouse gases such as CO2, we directly force the climate with additional radiation, and radiative balance is restored by warming. However, the warming then permits the space occupied by the atmosphere to hold near-exponentially more water vapor with temperature (though in practice this increase occurs only near the surface and, crucially, not higher up where it might actually make a difference). The increase in specific humidity that arises from the direct warming is a classical feedback. But it is nothing like as large as the models imagine, because, as with CO2, so with water vapor, the response of temperature to the forcing is logarithmic.
2. You are correct that I incorrectly wrote “255 K” when I meant “265 K”. Mea maxima colpa. The matter is correctly stated in the paper.
3. No, this was not David Evans’ point. His point was that I was wrong to state that it is not proper to derive a system-gain factor from sensitivities. It is in fact perfectly proper to do so: on this I was originally incorrect. However, it is not useful to do so, because the sensitivities are so small that even the tiniest uncertainty as to their value leads to large uncertainty in the value of their ratio, the system-gain factor. On the other hand, though climatology does not realize this, it is also perfectly proper (and we have been right all along about this) to derive the system-gain factor as the ratio of the absolute equilibrium to reference sensitivities obtaining at a given moment. That allows proper constraint of equilibrium sensitivity, which turns out to be about a third of what official climatology had imagined.
We now have the benefit of the experience of a co-author who is a tenured professor of control theory. So our representation of how that theory operates is correct.
Thanks for your kind reply!
To me, what has been most significant about this body of work is that based on measurements, if one assumes that all the warming since 1850 has been caused by an increase of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, the climate sensitivity of CO2 cannot be more than roughly 1.2 degrees K including feedbacks.
All the diagram shows is that:
Let R = the total input temperature
Let E = the total output temperature
Let F = the feedback fraction
Let A = the system gain such that, E =A x R
Then the gain, A = 1/(1-F)
But R and E are really functions of time and there should be some time delay in the system diagram but such is missing. I cannot believe that the feedback process takes place instantaneously. What is the step response? In other words for a step increase in the input, R, what is the output, E, as a function of time.?
According to AGW theory, an increase in temperature caused by an increase in CO2 will cause more H2O to enter the atmosphere which will cause even more warming because H2O is the primary greenhouse gas which will cause even more H2O to enter the atmosphere which will cause even more warming … But what the AGW conjecture ignores is that H2O is also a major coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the Earth’s surface, which is mostly some form of CO2, to where clouds form. The overall cooling effect of H2O is evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less than the dry lapse rate and hence the feedback effect due to H2O is really negative and hence retards any warming that an increase in CO2 might cause.
Mr Haas raises some interesting points. First, he refers to time delay. The timescale on which the principal sensitivity-relevant temperature feedbacks operate is usually hours to days, and sometimes years to decades. There is of course a more important time-delay caused by the large heat capacity of the oceans. But in talking of equilibrium temperatures we are talking of the temperatures that would obtain after the time-delay has resolved itself and the climate has resettled to equilibrium. The transient warming will of course be less than the equilibrium warming.
As to the cooling effect of water vapor, our paper considers the water-vapor feedback in some depth and concludes that it is at worst mildly nonlinear, not least because a) the predicted tropical mid-troposphere hot spot is not observed and b) the near-exponential growth of specific humidity with temperature is offset more or less exactly by the approximately logarithmic response of temperature to the forcing from additional water vapor.
“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.”
Feedback controls the level of *amplified* output by means of a negative or inverted feedback from the output back to the input to control the input signal level. Follow that analogue and you are much closer to the real climate system. Except in the real world the negative feedbacks are effectively amplified as they have a large overshoot. Such that weaker solar states drive warmer ocean phases, which reduce low cloud cover globally, and increase lower troposphere water vapour. If it wasn’t for that the planet would have cooled since 1995.
Dear Lord….
Below is a link to an article reported here previously about the consolidation of the hugely profitable scientific publishing industry. It must first be considered that the prime motivations of these publishers is profit.
Is it their responsibility to publish your findings? No it is not. They are no longer operating on the same basis that they were founded – good open and honest intentions, where debate and counter papers were for the benefit of science and the community. They are now just magazines with some scientific content. No different in character to CNN and other “reputable” media organizations. Sorry dear Lord you are referring to a bygone era.
The second link below is a report by an eminent scientist reporting on the gassing in Syria. No recognized media outlet is going to cover it, so what should he do, take them to court claiming fraud, cover up or otherwise. No, he sent it to an alternative widely read media outlet. The main stream media outlets in the USA do not report on the side effects of drugs because the pharmaceutical industry is the primary advertiser.
WUWT is a widely read credible media outlet that has possibly greater reach than all of the printed options you have approached. I would suggest that most of the doomsters frequent it regularly. And if your paper it is was accepted and published by your selected scientific journals, what difference would it make. It would be ignored like all the others.
I have come to the conclusion that 99.9999999% of all folk would not take notice even if someone in plain black and white and a few easy to adsorb charts explained exactly what was controlling, regulating and influencing global climate over the short, medium and long term. The subject has become intentionally confused. No one knows what they are actually looking for, therefore would not recognize it if they tripped over it. Because to prove it a large number of previous papers would be proven incorrect.
And there is always the next post to look forward to on a number of blogs. The subject is too fast moving for anything to stick.
You and your colleagues may well be right, and I wish you all the best. Never give up, every candle burns down eventually.
With best regards
Martin
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science
https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/73047/eminent-american-scientist-syrian-chemical-weapons-attack-was.html
Mr Cropp makes the sound point that scientific publishing is no longer scientific. However, it holds itself out as scientific. Therefore, the police and the courts will in due course judge it on whether its representations about itself were false and deliberately intended both to deceive and to cause loss and even death by that deception.
M of B:
“In fact, any feedback processes that subsist in the climate at a given moment must perforce respond to the entire temperature then present.”
Given the conceptual framework of the atmospheric greenhouse effect warming the planet by ~33K, that would be an amplification rather than a feedback. The simple thermodynamic argument is that additional amplification of increased CO2 forcing will drive a positive feedback of additional water vapour amplification. But that simple argument ignores real world climate dynamics where ocean phases change inversely to net changes in climate forcing and control the water vapour and cloud cover responses.
In response to Mr Lyons, only 10 K of the 33 K natural greenhouse effect is directly-forced warming. The remaining 23 K is feedback.
And our method does not require us to know the mechanism of any individual feedback. All we need to know is that official climatology says the directly-forced warming from doubled CO2 is 1.05 K (Andrews+ 2012), that the equilibrium warming from doubled CO2, the Charney sensitivity, is 3.35 K (ibid.), and that official climatology’s imagined feedback response constitutes the difference between the two, and that its imagined system-gain factor is the ratio of the two – i.e., about 3.2.
The correct method is to accept that any feedback processes that subsist in the climate at a given moment must perforce respond to the entire temperature then present. That knowledge allows us to derive an approximate value for the system-gain factor from the position in 1850, when reference temperature was 265 K and equilibrium temperature was 287.55 K. Then the true system-gain factor is 287.55 / 265, or 1.085, whereupon Charney sensitivity will be 1.085 times 1.05, or about 1.15 K.
It is not quite as simple of that, of course: it is possible that the equilibrium-temperature response function E(R) is nonlinear. However, that possibility is discussed in some detail in our paper, where it is demonstrated that if one assumes the large Charney sensitivities imagined by official climatology a contradiction will always arise. We conclude that Charney sensitivity falls on 1.17 [ 1.09, 1.23] K, to 95% confidence.
So the solar input power is amplified by water vapour which you call the feedback. And the non condensing greenhouse gases are an extra 10k of amplification which you are calling extra input power which is then amplified by water vapour acting as extra feedback. I’d hate to build that as an op amp circuit.
In response to Mr Lyons, the block diagram for a suitable circuit is in the head posting. And, as an annex to the submitted paper, there is a national laboratory’s circuit diagram showing the necessary circuit, based on one designed by one of my co-authors.
The concept is not particularly difficult. Input signal (emission temperature) 255 K. Perturbation of input signal from naturally-occurring non-condensing greenhouse gases +10 K. Perturbation of input signal from anthropogenic greenhouse gases to 2011 +0.75 K. Perturbation of input signal from doubled CO2 compared with 2011 +1.05 K. Reference signal 255+10+0.75+1.05 = 266.8 K.
Reference signal in 1850 255+10=265 K. Measured equilibrium signal in 1850 287.55 K. System-gain factor 287.55 / 265 = 1.085.
Building any suitable test rig – effectively an analog computer – demonstrates with entire clarity that the feedback block necessarily modifies not merely any perturbation in the input signal but the entire reference signal. Once that point is accepted, and you will find that it is so when you build your circuit, the rest of our argument follows.
You are not following me. The input is power, but then you are describing the non-condensing greenhouse gases as additional power input rather than as a positive greenhouse ‘feedback’ as with the water vapour. That is physically irrational.
In response to Mr Lyons, it is not I but official climatology that treats perturbations in the concentration of the noncondensing greenhouse gases primarily as direct forcings rather than as feedbacks. If Mr Lyons disagrees with official climatology on this, he can write to the IPCC and ask it to activate its error-reporting protocol.
However, the approach that we have taken is to accept all of official climatology except what we can formally demonstrate to be in error. That minimizes the scope for disagreement. So we have accepted climatology’s distinction between direct forcing and feedback forcing.
They do refer to rising greenhouse gas forcing as external, and fair enough, by treating it as additional input power it will be then amplified by the water vapour ‘feedback’. The whole exercise is though just reinforcing the mantra that the water vapour feedback is fixed positive. Which is the matter that I would question with the IPCC.
“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.”
never seen a death certificate with lack of electricity as a cause.
where have I heard this FORM of argument before?
Mosh, of course you’ve not seen electricity as a cause of death because you can’t connect two dots.
Mosh.
Driving past with your scatter gun .
Use your brain or what ever you have .
Of course death certificates don’t site lack of electricity as the cause of death in third world countries.
BUT the lack of electricity will cause many problems and lead to many deaths in poor countries .
Food poisoning because of lack of refrigeration .
Smoke inhalation because the food is cooked over open fires fueled with cow dung .
Lack of fresh water because of intermittent electricity for the pumps
.Hospital services that we in modern countries take for granted are scarce or just not available .
Mosh you are all the other [pruned] heads who have never lived without electricity .
You wouldn’t have a clue what is would be like.
Stop and think before you shoot your mouth off .
Stop and think before you shoot your mouth off .
drive-by posters never do, so I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for the king of drive-by postings to engage his brain before hitting “Post comment”
where have I heard this FORM of argument before?
Textbook example:
“never seen a death certificate with lack of electricity as a cause.”
“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.”
the good Lord forget this.
He is not the final judge on whether or not he has found a grave error.
he has not.
Lord here is how the game is played.
You have to convince us, not claim victory of your own fight and go whining to the courts
when your work is rejected.
You dont get to judge your own science. sorry.
It also helps to be an actual scientist there S&M.
” … Steven Mosher is co-author of “Climategate: The Crutape Letters” and works as an independent consultant in the San Francisco area. He attended Northwestern University where he graduated with honors and BA’s in both English Literature and Philosophy. … ”
http://berkeleyearth.org/team/steven-mosher/
Should a non-scientist rate much weight with a faux-scientific judgement?
So how do Lord Monckton’s scientific qualifications weigh against Steven’s?
How do your’s Nick?
The climate mafia is not interested in descent and will not publish any paper that disagrees with the “settled science.”
Mr Stokes, as so often, descends to mere pettiness when, as so often, he loses a scientific argument. He knows full well that my co-authors include a tenured professor of control theory and two control engineers, as well as a tenured professor of climatology, an award-winning solar astrophysicist from the Harvard-Smithsonian and an emeritus professor of statistics. If expertise is what floats his boat, we have plenty of it. Perhaps he should wait until the underlying paper comes out before attempting to dig himself into an even deeper hole by commenting on it.
“my co-authors include a tenured professor of control theory and two control engineers”
So why do we never hear from them?
Mr Stokes refuses to admit what he knows perfectly well to be true: namely, that any feedback processes subsisting at a particular moment will necessarily act upon not merely any change in the input signal but upon the entire input signal, including any change that has occurred upt to that moment. Why should my co-authors waste their time wrestling with someone who claims expertise in control theory but thus flagrantly and persistently misrepresents it for the sake of keeping the global warming scam going just a little bit longer?
Mr Mosher is, as ever, pettily unconstructive; and, as ever, he has not read the head posting with due care and attention before rushing to comment on it. It is made explicit there that we are perfectly content to be given good scientific reasons for rejection by the reviewers: but rejecting our paper on the ground that the conclusion is uncongenial, or rejecting a paper other than that which we had submitted, or rejecting the paper but without giving us any opportunity to comment on the reasons for the rejection, strongly suggests that, on the face of things, a fraud may be present.
If two further journals behave similarly, a pattern will have been established for all to see. We shall not be asking the police to decide who is right, scientifically speaking: we shall be drawing their attention to the fact that the leading journals of climatology assert on their websites that they publish sound science after competent peer review, and that in the present matter they are departing so strikingly from what they say they will do that their saying it constitutes a false representation – and one that is indirectly leading to the loss of millions of lives.
I won’t bother addressing Lord Monckton’s misrepresentations of my position. If you want to know what it really is, you may consult my comments at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/03/reporting-the-fraudulent-practices-behind-global-warming-science/#comment-2715071 and https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/03/reporting-the-fraudulent-practices-behind-global-warming-science/#comment-2715765.
But I’ll make the following suggestion to anyone left here who’s capable of thinking for himself.
Determining whether Lord Monckton is right is a simple matter of plotting three points on a graph. Just get those three points from his “end of the global warming scam in a single slide” at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/15/climatologys-startling-error-of-physics-answers-to-comments/. You’ll see that the first two points
and 
don’t extrapolate to the point 
that Lord Monckton says they imply.
If you do the extrapolation yourself, you’ll get an E value higher than he did—because you’ll, correctly, base it on the local slope (“perturbations”) rather than, as he did, on the average slope (which he calls the “system-gain factor”). And the reason you use “perturbations” isn’t that you think feedback doesn’t act on the “emission temperature.” It’s that any effect of feedback on “emission temperature” is already incorporated in
and 
, so the additional increment is all you have to calculate.
Now, I actually think it’s quite possible that feedback is low enough that the result Lord Monckton gets by assuming the E-to-R relationship is linear will be close to correct; I don’t think climate sensitivity is anywhere as high as alarmists contend. And, sure, if the E-to-R relationship is close to linear and we accept Lord Monckton’s contention that E = 287.55 K for R = 265 K, then E does indeed, as he says, increase by only around 1.15 K for an R increase of 1.05 K, which he tells us doubling CO2 would cause. But nothing in Lord Monckton’s fevered ramblings establishes that near linearity; his math and reasoning are too incoherent.
Oh, he’s tried to establish it. He’s observed that E’s average slope (“system-gain factor”) changes very little in a small interval such as that between, say, R = 265 K and R = 265.6 K. But that tells us nothing about how linear E is as a function of R.
Let’s say, for example, that the feedback factor
in the relationship 
between E and R is the highly nonlinear function 
, where 
and 
. Despite that nonlinearity, the average slope (“system-gain factor”) would change only from 1.085 to 1.090 between R = 265 K and R = 265.6 K. Yet the change in E for the 1.05 K change in R between 265 K and 266.05 K is 290.90 K – 287.55 K = 3.35 K: a small-signal gain of 3.19.
Given that the CMIP5 models place ECS at that 3.35 K value, moreover, “settled science” (his term) clearly does not accept that the function is linear. So, whatever “settled science” meant where he read that “the climate-sensitivity parameter is a ‘typically near-invariant parameter,’” it couldn’t have been that the E-R curve “is necessarily linear or very close to it,” as Lord Monckton seems to think.
Nor do we have anything but his say so for the proposition that “settled science” misapplied feedback theory. As the three-point graph shows, it is closer to the truth that it is Lord Monckton who has.
In short, I wouldn’t have recommended publishing his paper, either.
“Now, I actually think it’s quite possible that feedback is low enough that the result Lord Monckton gets by assuming the E-to-R relationship is linear will be close to correct; I don’t think climate sensitivity is anywhere as high as alarmists contend. ”
If you think this than why are alarmist papers published? The IPCC is built on climate sensitivity.
Mr Born, who has no qualifications in control theory and has not read our paper, nevertheless presumes to substitute his prejudice for the knowledge, experience and qualifications of the professor of control theory who is one of our co-authors, to say nothing of the hands-on experience of the two control engineers who are co-authors.
Iin 1850, reference temperature R1 is 265 K and equilibrium temperature E1 is 287.55 K. The ratio A1 = E1 / R1 is equal to 1.085, and that ratio A1 is the absolute system-gain factor. If the curve of the equilibrium-sensitivity response function E(R), i.e. E as a function of R, then, for all values of R, E will simply be the product of R and A. Thus, in 2011, R2 is 265.75 K, whereupon E2 is about 288.3 K. Then, at doubling CO2 compared with 2011, R3 is 266.8 K, whereupon E3 is about 289.5 K – an equilibrium sensitivity of about 1.2 K (i.e. 289.5 – 288.3).
If the curve of E(R) is nonlinear, suppose that it is exponential, as Mr Born has imagined. Then, contrary to his example, in which the y-intersect exceeds 38, implying 38 K feedback response to a zero signal when the response is necessarily zero, there are two known points on the curve: (0, 0), which is always on a feedback response curve because if there is no signal there is no feedback, and the quite well constrained quantities (265, 287.55) in 1850. From these values, the exponent x is directly derivable thus: x = ln(287.55) / ln(265) = 1.0146 or thereby. Because this exponent is very close to unity, there is little difference between the equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 (Charney sensitivity) derivable from the linear curve and from the exponential curve: it is 1.2 K in both instances. And why is x so close to unity? The reason, of course, is that in 1850 R1 is more than 92% of E1.
One could imagine all manner of weird and wonderful nonlinear curves of E(R). But whatever curve one takes leads to a contradiction. For instance, if one were to assume that the two known points are (0, 0) and (266.8, midrange CMIP5 Charney sensitivity), then the feedback fraction f in response to greenhouse gases would be greater than the feedback fraction in response to emission temperature by a factor exceeding 80, which is impossible.
Mr Born also proclaims, on no evidence, that IPCC does not accept that E(R) is near-linear. He should read Chapter 6.1 of IPCC (2007), where the matter is made explicit. Or Ramanathan 1985.
He should also consider the individual sensitivity-relevant feedbacks listed by IPCC. With the exception of water vapor, they self-cancel. As for the water-vapor feedback, the atmosphere can carry near-exponentially more water vapor as the space it occupies warms, but it does so only close to the surface. At the crucial tropical mid-troposphere, where all models predict the existence of a hot spot with warming at twice or thrice the surface rate, no such hot spot is observed. Besides, just as with CO2 so with water vapor, the temperature response to the forcing is logarithmic, approximately canceling the exponentiality of the increase in specific humidity with warming.
There is no good reason, therefore, to suppose that the net effect of the sensitivity-altering feedbacks is extravagantly nonlinear as opposed to near-linear.
Finally, Mr Born should watch his manners. He describes my math and reasoning as “incoherent”: but he has not actually read the underlying paper, wherefore he has no basis for his claim. One realizes that he has borne a grudge ever since he was caught out in an elaborate lie and called out on it: but he does himself no favors by the arrogant intemperance of his language.
And he may to recall that my co-authors have considerably more knowledge and experience than he does in this field. His constant attempts to personalize our result just to me are an attempt to divert attention away from the fact that he is presuming inexpertly, and without having even read the underlying paper, to substitute his ignorance and prejudice for their dispassionate knowledge and experience.
Of course, the fact that my co-authors are expert in all the relevant fields does not make our paper correct: but Mr Born would be better waiting until our paper comes out and then attempting to write a paper in refutation of it. But, if he is to pass peer review, he will need to display considerably less prejudice and considerably more expertise than he displays here.
Instead of concerning himself my credentials, Lord Monckton would be better advised to learn some math. He makes errors at too high a rate for me to keep up. So I’ll just mention a few.
The example I gave was a power-law function, not an exponential. And its y intercept was 0, not 38, so Lord Monckton’s comments based on that conclusion are wrong.
Actually, the feedback-fraction ratio in the example is more like 11, not 80. Now, I don’t think feedback grows that fast, either; as I’ve said from the beginning, I don’t personally think climate sensitivity is as high as my example was designed to illustrate. But alarmists do, and Lord Monckton’s bald assertion that such an increase is impossible doesn’t make it so.
True, he does attempt to justify that assertion: he contends that “the temperature response to the forcing [sic, forcing response to the CO2 concentration] is logarithmic, approximately canceling the exponentiality of the increase in specific humidity with warming.” Indeed, that’s the contention, if any, on which he should have been basing his argument with “settled science,” not on that howler about failure to recognize feedback to emission temperature and misapplication of the “Bode” equation. But, given that clouds’ effects are in the mix, that contention falls far short of being self-evident.
he was caught out in an elaborate lie and called out on it
Lord Monckton repeats this slander at every opportunity. But the truth is I correctly stated the indisputable fact that he couldn’t explain how he derived, as he contended he did, a previous paper’s table entries from a paper by Gerard Roe; to this day he remains unable to explain his table’s implication that, everything else being equal, higher positive feedback will initially result in less output than more-modest feedback will.
And he may to [sic] recall that my co-authors have considerably more knowledge and experience than he does in this field
So he says. But those co-authors seem mysteriously reluctant to take me on directly in a discussion of the feedback theories about which he persists in pontificating so risibly.
No, I don’t claim any credentials in the field; I made my living as merely a workaday lawyer. And I never met Hendrik Bode.
But less than two years after Dr. Bode retired from Bell Labs I discussed the finer points of feedback circuitry with its engineers. (Incidentally, although I was familiar with Bode plots I don’t recall hearing those BTL engineers use the phrase Bode equation—for an equation with which I more closely associate Harold Black.) And I made a study of the subject; in later years, for example, I saved an MIT professor from a bad investment by pointing out a control-systems-theory error he had made.
True, I may not be credentialed. But this isn’t my first rodeo, either.
The Born Liar, whose arrogance is exceeded only by his ignorance of elementary control theory, continues to make errors at a bewildering rate. His central error is in his characteristically petty and entirely false allegation that the fact that feedback processes necessarily respond to emission temperature as well as to subsequent perturbations thereof is a “howler”. Let us hope he knows more of law than he does of control theory.
My co-authors, whom he pettily excoriates for having failed to answer his drivel, would rather concentrate on getting the paper through peer-review than wasting time with a proven liar who lacks either the relevant knowledge or the usual courtesy.
On no evidence, the Born Liar maintains that the feedback-fraction ratio for Charney sensitivity of 3.35 K is 11 and not 80. It is in fact the latter. More to the point, even a feedback fraction ratio of 11 plainly runs counter to the assertion in IPCC (2001) that the climate-sensitivity parameter embodying the influence of feedback is “typically near-invariant”. He also falsely asserts that official climatology claims that the feedback-fraction ratio is as high as 11. Let him produce any reference for that as-yet-unsupported assertion. And let him provide some sort of scientific justification for so very large a feedback-fraction ratio as 11, given that all feedback processes approximately self-cancel except that of water vapor, which is at worst near-linear.
He is manifestly out of his depth here.
Lord Monckton needs to work on his reading comprehension. For example:
The howler I referred to isn’t the proposition that there’s no feedback to the emission temperature but rather that “settled science” based its ECS estimate on such a proposition. Lord Monckton keeps saying it did, but his support for that extraordinary statement is exceedingly thin.
Or:
He somehow took that from the fact that I gave as a hypothetical example one of the many possible functions that would exhibit the 3.35 K ECS value Lord Monckton says the models do. I expressed that example in feedback form, i.e., as
, where 
, 
, and 
. Isolating E yields 
, where 
and 
.
It was for that hypothetical function that I gave the feedback-fraction ratio. For the R = 255 K value Lord Monckton calls the emission temperature, this gives an E value of 256.9 K, implying f = 0.0074, whereas f = 0.085 for E = 290.9 K. So, not that it matters much, but the resultant f ratio for my function is 11.5, not the 80 that Lord Monckton claims. No doubt one could conjure up functions whose ratio is 80, but the example I used isn’t among them.
I won’t bother to look up the literature references his reading-comprehension limitations have no doubt led him to misapprehend.
The trouble with the Born Liar is that he has not the slightest intention of understanding control theory, climate change or anything else. He won’t even follow up references offered to him.
He now yet again lies about what we are saying. We are not saying that climatology derives its estimates of equilibrium sensitivity by any particular method, for it uses several. What we are saying is that, whether he likes it or not, climatology has formally and repeatedly defined feedback as responding solely to perturbations in global temperature. The references are listed in my previous posting, but of course he is not interested in the mere facts, so he will not bother to follow them up.
Because climatology is, as far as we can discover, wholly unaware that feedback responds to the entire reference signal (specifically including emission temperature), it is not aware that once the entire signal is taken properly into account it is quite easy to demonstrate that equilibrium sensitivity is low. Even if some climatologists are aware, they are not aware of the implication, which is that equilibrium sensitivity is low.
The Born Liar refuses, of course, to accept that climatology regards the climate-sensitivity parameter as typically near-linear, because he will not follow up the references I gave him.
Since it has long been entirely clear that the Born Liar is motivated not by a desire to seek the truth but by mere spite, he is simply not interested in finding out what climatology actually says. So much easier simply to make it up.
TonyN
– Congratulations for following in the footsteps of Bacon, the inventor of the scientific method as an antidote to religiose orthodoxy.
– You are right to challenge these magazine editors, as they are the effective arbiters of ‘scientific’ orthodoxy.
As for Mosher’s “You don’t get to judge your own science. sorry.” … who does, Steve?
I live in a modern house in the UK. I could manage without electricity for ,say, 4 hours each day provided it was always between 1 am and 5 am. If it was random a very much shorter outage would cause me great trouble. For example 1 one hour at noon on Sunday when my wife is in the middle of cooking Sunday lunch. Perhaps a few minutes at a critical stage of a football game would cause even greater distress. You are free to think up many other scenarios. The conclusion has to be that a civilised society needs reliable energy, most likely electricity. I lived through the 1947 random power cuts but things were very different then, our house only used electricity for lighting and my mother was full time house wife. By the way I would be happy to crowd fund but need a UK bank account to which I can make sterling payment
I worked in pharmaceutical manufacturing when the three day week was imposed by the UK government in response to the miners’ strike in 1972. We had a brilliant small team of engineers who concocted many ingenious and occasionally dodgy methods of keeping some production going and our workforce gainfully employed. I doubt any of those would get past health and safety now, and I’ve yet to come across a 3D printer or CNC machine which can be hand cranked.
When the rolling blackouts come (they will come) the economic suicide of this country will be complete. There will also be unnecessary winter deaths. Shame on those who will be responsible, just for their own personal gain.
“Without power, life is poor, nasty, brutish and, above all, short.” Is this part of the population control plan? What next, forced birth control?
I see no argument against Monckton’s central point. At every point on earth’s surface, each day the energy input from the sun goes from zero (nighttime) to maximum mid day and back to zero. So daily the full current input is applied and whatever feedbacks there are respond accordingly to that input.
And they did so from the early origins of our solar system, since when the sun has increased in luminosity taking the planetary temperature to that observed in 1850.
That temperature (ie., the 1850 temperature) must in part be composed of all then current feedbacks. It seems absurd to suggest, for example, that the water feedback only sprung into existence/life post 1850, and was not an already factor in the creation of the 1850 temperature.
Messrs. Clutz and Verney are of course correct: it is very basic control theory that the feedback loop responds to the entire reference signal that arrives at the summative input/output node of the loop. In the climate, it cannot do otherwise. And the knowledge that this is the case allows a simple, robust, well-constrained derivation of equilibrium sensitivity. The bottom line is that, with very little error, one can ignore the presence of temperature feedback altogether.
It has always seemed strange to me that of all the massive energy flows in the dynamical and chaotic climate, how a flux change of 3.7 W/m^2 could cause feedbacks forcing a significant change in temperature; there is too much going on in the large system for such a small quantity to materially perturb such a system.
I only did systems analysis for years, so what could an electrical engineer such as myself know about complex systems?
Hey Nick,
“my co-authors include a tenured professor of control theory and two control engineers”
So why do we never hear from them?
You don’t expect that first thing every sceptical mind will be doing is arguing in the blogosphere, do you? Our little talks here are often useful, entertaining and educational, but the fact that His Lordness co-authors keep themselves bit discrete is a very good sign. I would be much more concerned if they start to shout loudly.
My co-authors, some of whom occasionally look at these threads, are generally appalled at the unprincipled conduct of the various trolls who try to disrupt these threads with manifest nonsense sneeringly delivered, and with thinly-veiled personal attacks – the Left’s weapon of choice when it is out-argued. They do not propose to waste their time on such trolls.
However, I know that the vast majority of this column’s readers are genuinely interested in our research, which is why I give accounts of it here from time to time.
The trolls do have their uses, though. Their shocking refusal to accept the obvious truths 1) that feedback responds to the entire reference temperature and not merely to perturbations, and 2) that if climatology were to take that fact into account it would be able to constrain equilibrium sensitivity quite easily, and 3) that that sensitivity is about a third of the current midrange estimate has shown many readers here that what we are up against is a sullen, purely political movement masquerading as science.
You and your co-authors should actually take the time to review some of the comments here. You can
label any commenter as a “troll,” but in fact a person that finds fault in your work is not a “troll.”
What you and your co-authors need to do is to correct the serious errors in this work. Or better
yet abandon it, and do some real and relavent work in the field of climatology
Listen to the comments here, because if you don’t no reputable journal will accept your paper.
Seriously your highness (your magisty, or whatever stupid acknowlegement of your worthless title gets)
the lowly non-titled proletariat inhabiting this blog finds your and your co-author’s work not only
irrelavent, they find it pointless also.
In response to Coeur de Lion, I read all comments carefully, and I look to see whether serious objections to our argument are being raised. If someone who has good reason to know the relevant theory wilfully and persistently misstates it for the sake of maintaining the current errors in climatology, that person is a troll.
If someone who knows no control theory presumes to lecture our professor of control theory, and refuses to be corrected when he perpetrates a series of errors, that person is a troll.
if someone with no knowledge of the relevant science and a prejudiced view of the climate question demands that we should pay attention to trolls such as those described in the two earlier paragraphs, that person is a troll.
I am very willing to discuss genuine points of science, and to be corrected if I have erred. But so far no one in these threads has landed a blow on the central point of our argument, which we verified not only by theoretical methods but also by inviting a national laboratory to build us a test rig. Such feedbacks as may subsist in a dynamical object at any given moment must perforce respond to the entire reference signal then obtaining, and not only to some arbitrarily-chosen fraction thereof. Once that fact is accepted, as it must be by all who are interested in the truth rather than in some climate-Communist Party Line or another, it becomes possible to constrain equilibrium sensitivity with remarkable simplicity.
Milord,
My co-authors, some of whom occasionally look at these threads, are generally appalled at the unprincipled conduct of the various trolls who try to disrupt these threads with manifest nonsense sneeringly delivered, and with thinly-veiled personal attacks – the Left’s weapon of choice when it is out-argued. They do not propose to waste their time on such trolls.
I reckon this is very wise. It’s highly appreciated indeed that you occasionally update us with your research and hopefully get some questions and comments back to your most venerable co-authors. But the idea that such specialists are fighting in the blogosphere with an army of trolls insulting them with rude comments (‘ignoramus’, ‘science denier’) is highly demoralizing. In such circumstances at some point every civilized person steps back and come back to her/his work. It’s 100 times better to invest time instead in high quality article or research.
I agree with Paramenter that the sneering tone adopted by the true-believers and by the concern-trolls is not conducive to rational argument. But, inch by inch, they are being compelled to face reality. Of course they don’t like it: but, in the end, the sneering won’t work. The only thing that will work is a proper scientific refutation of our argument. And that has been wholly lacking so far.
For those like Nick Stokes and Joe Born who can’t understand this, here is another way of deriving the error Monckton and his team are claiming:
This is credited to our fellow WUWT poster George White (aka ‘co2isnotevil’), though it’s to some degree my own interpretation of his way of deriving what — as best I can tell at least —
is physically the same exact error Monckton and his team are claiming.
The starting point here is about 3 decades of worth of globally averaged satellite data from ISCCP, which has a global average gain of about 1.6 with a variance of only about +/- 1% (or
less) from year to year, i.e. it’s a very tight 3 decade average convergence point. The gain is simply the ratio of emitted surface power (from S-B) divided by planet emitted power, i.e.
at about 287K the surface emits about 385 W/m^2 and the planet emits (into space) about 240 W/m^2, and 385/240 = 1.6.
I’ve found the best way to do this is with a series of separate yes or no questions:
Do you agree that at the Earth’s current global average temperature of about 287K, the Earth emits about 385 W/m^2 from its surface (assuming an emissivity of 1 or very close to 1)?
Do you agree that the globally averaged solar constant is about 342 W/m^2 and the average albedo is about 0.3, resulting in a net incident solar power of about 240 W/m^2?
Do you agree that the 240 W/m^2 of incident post albedo solar power is forcing the climate system?
Do you agree that the 240 W/m^2 forcing the system from the Sun results in an ‘amplification’ at the surface of a net of about 385 W/m^2 gained at the surface/atmosphere boundary?
Do you agree that this accounts for all the physical processes and feedbacks in the system that operate on timescales of 3 decades or less? If not, why haven’t all such physical processes
and feedbacks fully manifested themselves after 3 decades of forcing from the Sun? Especially those of water vapor and clouds, which operate on timescales of days to weeks?
Do you agree that in order to ‘amplify’ +3.7 W/m^2 of ‘forcing’ from 2xCO2 into +3.3C at the surface it requires +18 W/m^2 of net gain at the surface/atmosphere boundary (287K = 385 W/m^2;
290.3K or +3.3C = 403 W/m^2 and 403 – 385 = 18)?
Do you agree that watts of GHG ‘forcing’ and watts of solar forcing can only do the same amount of work? That is a watt is a watt, independent of where it last originates from?
Do you agree that 385/240 = 1.6?
Do you agree that 18/3.7 = 4.8?
Do you agree that 4.8 is 3 times greater than 1.6?
If watts are watts, how can watts of GHG ‘forcing’ have a 3x greater ability to warm the surface than watts forcing the system from the Sun?
As mentioned, the most common objection to this is people say, ‘but the system is non-linear’, and indeed it is (highly in fact). The problem is the non-linearity is in the opposite
direction needed for the incremental gain to be greater than the prior absolute or average gain of 1.6. That is, as the incident post albedo solar power increases, the ratio of the net
power gained at the surface to power entering from the Sun decreases. See these plots here that show the non-linearity of the system:
http://www.palisad.com/co2/why/pi_gs.png
http://www.palisad.com/co2/gf/st_ga.png
I should add again that the referenced 1.1K of so-called ‘no-feedback’ is based on the 1.6 to 1 power densities ratio between the surface at the TOA, where 3.7*(385/240)= 6.0 and +6.0 W/m^2
from a baseline of 287K equals about +1.1K.
The bottom line is on global (decadal long) average it only takes about 1.6 W/m^2 of net gain at the surface to allow 1 W/m^2 to leave the system at the TOA; with each incremental post
albedo watt from the Sun resulting in less and less gain above the global average (or a gain incrementally lower and lower than the absolute gain 1.6).
Actually, George White’s theory has little to do with Lord Monckton’s. Since you went to so much trouble, though, I’ll address your discussion briefly (but not completely).
Without going through the numbers, I’ll accept, at least provisionally, everything you say up to “If watts are watts, how can watts of GHG ‘forcing’ have a 3x greater ability to warm the surface than watts forcing the system from the Sun?” And, although there are some subtleties I’m ignoring, I’ll agree for the sake of discussion that watts of GHG forcing can’t have a 3x greater ability to warm the surface than watts of forcing from the Sun.
But the argument for high sensitivity isn’t that watts of GHG forcing are more effective than watts of other forcing. It’s that three (or however many) times as many GHG watts result from the water-vapor-caused opacity increase as resulted from the CO2-caused opacity increase whose resultant temperature increase caused the water-vapor increase. (I’m not saying that the additional water vapor actually does increase opacity to that extent; I’m just saying that if it did the alarmist result wouldn’t violate energy conservation.)
I know this sounds counterintuitive; Mr. White has never been able to grasp it. And, frankly, for me the subject has exhausted its amusement value, so I hope you’ll understand if I don’t pursue it with you further. But if your mind is open to a different viewpoint, you may want to read my comment at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/24/it-shouldnt-take-hundreds-of-years-to-estimate-climate-sensitivity/#comment-2415305. I believe it includes a link to a diagram that helps the reader work through the numbers.
Joe Born,
“But the argument for high sensitivity isn’t that watts of GHG forcing are more effective than watts of other forcing.”
Yes, of course. I’m well aware of this. You totally missed its point, which I will explain in more detail below.
“It’s that three (or however many) times as many GHG watts result from the water-vapor-caused opacity increase as resulted from the CO2-caused opacity increase whose resultant temperature increase caused the water-vapor increase. (I’m not saying that the additional water vapor actually does increase opacity to that extent; I’m just saying that if it did the alarmist result wouldn’t violate energy conservation.)”
What you and all others who can’t see this are missing is there is no equilibrium (or even a steady-state) in the system. It’s perpetually oscillating, largely chaotically and immensely dynamically. There is only a perpetually dynamically manifested longer-term average point the system converges to. There is no equilibrium; there is only perpetual un-equilibrium. What this means is there is no new starting point for the physical processes and feedbacks of water vapor and clouds, in response to an imbalance.
Why? Because, as stated, the 1.6 to 1 surface/TOA ratio is not a static equilibrium point, but an immensely dynamically maintained and converged to point. Thus these feedback processes from water vapor and clouds have no way to distinguish an imbalance caused by added GHGs from any other imbalance imposed on the system as a result of the regularly occurring dynamic chaos in the system, and will respond or ‘pull’ to within the same bounds. Thus, the 1.6 ratio is not a valid ‘zero-feedback’ starting point incrementally since those bounds, for water vapor and clouds, have already been physically manifested.
Remember, the way the field, i.e. climate science, has framed up the feedback question/problem is one where the 1.6 surface/TOA ratio is the ‘zero-feedback’ starting point, or more specifically a completely new starting point for the physical processes (mainly water vapor and clouds) incrementally without any known or manifested bounds whatsoever. This is not valid because doing so arbitrarily separates the physical processes and feedbacks (from water vapor and clouds) that are already in perpetual dynamic operation acting to maintain the prior energy balance from the forcing of the Sun from those physical processes and feedbacks that will act on additional imbalances, for which there is no physical or logical basis. The physical processes and feedbacks already in perpetual dynamic operation (from the forcing of the Sun) can’t distinguish such an imbalance from any other imbalance imposed as a result of the regularly occurring dynamic chaos in the system, and will respond or ‘pull’ to within the same bounds, i.e. they will ‘pull’ to the 1.6 to 1 surface/TOA energy balance point or ‘pull’ to where it only takes about 1.6 W/m^2 at the surface to allow 1 W/m^2 to escape through the TOA the same as before the imbalance was imposed (since they have no way to distinguish the new imbalance from the prior perpetual imbalance).
This also gets to the point that the field considers RF by GHGs to be zero prior to adding GHGs, but this is also not correct either since the manifested balance, including the influence from GHGs via the GHE, is the result of the perpetual dynamic response of the system to the forcing of the Sun.
In physics, as Dick Lindzen has been pointing out, all of this more generally falls under the category of ‘degrees of freedom’ (of the system). That is, in the system, fast acting processes like water vapor and clouds, have sufficient ‘degrees of freedom’ from their perpetual oscillation (from the forcing of the Sun) such that a newly imposed imbalance over the average, like from added GHGs, especially a relatively small one like 2xCO2, can’t be distinguished from the already physically manifested bounds of those dynamic processes (and are therefore constrained within those already physically manifested bounds).
Also,
Adding to Dick Lindzen’s point is the perpetual dynamic oscillation of the system often induces imbalances much larger than that which would come from a doubling of CO2. For example, a small change in cloud cover can induce a much larger imbalance on the system than that which would come from 2xCO2, and changes of this magnitude are commonly occurring (as Lindzen points out). This is all the more reason that the fast acting physical processes and feedbacks of water vapor and clouds easily have sufficient ‘degrees of freedom’ such that a small newly imposed imbalance over the average can’t be distinguished or responded to differently by water vapor and clouds than their response to the prior total average itself.
While correct, the problem with Lindzen’s ‘degrees of freedom’ explanation or derivation is it that it’s too loose and informal. Monckton’s team is attempting to formalize it as an actual system based theoretical error.
I note also there seems be a ton of confusion as to the type of error being claimed here. The type of error is a system based theoretical error relating to applied feedback; it’s not an error at the raw physical principle level.
What is being argued here (and Christopher Monckton, please correct me if I’m wrong), is if there is not a valid theoretical basis to support the amplified effect (from water vapor and clouds, primarily), then it should be presumed not possible; and should be dismissed (even though it doesn’t constitute absolute falsification at the raw physical principle level; or constitute absolute proof of a probability of zero). Another way of stating this is that you have to have a valid system based theoretical basis first before any hypothetical effect (in a system) can even be presumed to be possible. Without a sound/valid system based theoretical basis, it should be presumed not possible (or at least be presumed to have a probability so low it’s not worthy of consideration). In this case, the hypothetical effect is net positive feedback from clouds and water vapor.
Jon Born,
“I know this sounds counterintuitive; Mr. White has never been able to grasp it. And, frankly, for me the subject has exhausted its amusement value, so I hope you’ll understand if I don’t pursue it with you further. But if your mind is open to a different viewpoint, you may want to read my comment at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/24/it-shouldnt-take-hundreds-of-years-to-estimate-climate-sensitivity/#comment-2415305. I believe it includes a link to a diagram that helps the reader work through the numbers.”
OK, I checked this out. Admittedly, I don’t have any sound understanding of Bode or EE, nor am I entirely sure I understand either of your arguments on this, frankly. (Yes, I did try).
What you’re saying here seems to be the crux of the confusion and/or disagreement between yourself and George White:
“Specifically, it shows that the same energy can be passed back and forth several times between the atmosphere and the surface before it escapes to outer space. So, even though the illustrated system has no internal power source, its surface emits 2.2 W/m^2 for every 1.0 W/m^2 it absorbs from the sun: the power gain is 2.2. The gain exceeds unity because energy that’s counted only once when it’s received from the sun is counted 1.2 more times at the surface before it escapes. (In the real earth system, that gain is more like 1.6, but the point here is that higher gains would not violate energy conservation.)”
You seem to think George is claiming that COE limits the surface (net) power gain to not be more 2x the power flux that enters the system from the Sun, but — as I’m reading it — he’s not saying this at all. What he’s saying is COE limits an internal ‘forcing’s’ (feedback) response to not be more than 2x that internal ‘forcing’, provided there are no changes in the incoming solar flux. An internal ‘forcing’ is specifically not watts of (post albedo) solar forcing, or more generally not the system’s power input. The idea here is you can’t have more than 100% of an internal ‘forcing’ fed back to the output of the gain block (of the feedback node), because this would violate COE (in the steady-state).
The so-called ‘internal’ forcing here for the climate system is watts of upward emitted IR from the surface absorbed by GHGs in the atmosphere, which COE (unrelatedly) sets the limit that it cannot be more than the total flux radiated from the surface (and which are not new joules added to the system). In reality, it’s a fraction of the surface emitted IR flux that’s absorbed — he claims is about 75% (or 290 W/m^2) — which means he’s saying that COE, under these (steady-state) conditions, limits the surface (net) power gain to not be more than 290 W/m^2 + the input, which for the climate is about 240 of Pi (post albedo solar power in); or not more than 290 W/m^2 + 240 W/m^2 (whatever temperature that would be). Of course, the actual surface temperature is quite a bit lower than this.
The 2xCO2 case, is an increase in upward IR absorption from the surface of about 3.7 W/m^2, or with these numbers an increase from 290 Wm^2 to 293.7 W/m^2. With no changes in Pi, he’s saying COE limits the response (at the surface) to not be more than 3.7 W/m^2 x 2 or +7.4 W/m^2 of net surface gain, which from a baseline of 287K is about 1.3-1.4K; or not more than about +1.4K at the surface.
Or so this seems to be his argument. Where all of this gets fuzzy is it is at least hypothetically possible for internal changes in response to an internal ‘forcing’ to cause changes in Pi as well as further changes in upward IR absorption from the surface. This is where the already physically manifested — and thus fixed/constrained — bounds, from the decades of forcing from the Sun, would come into play in all of this. I think George is essentially saying that within those bounds, there are COE limits not being considered, but many are not agreeing or understanding why those bounds exist in the first place. Hence, why there is so much confusion.
However, none of my arguments in my posts above (or Monckton’s) depend on any of this particular aspect from George being correct. Note, I made no mention of COE violations in my posts above.
The way the field has framed up the feedback/sensitivity problem is as if the system has dynamically reached a static equilibrium, from which its response to a newly imposed imbalance to reach a new static equilibrium is totally unknown with no bounds or limits. This is pure nonsense.
For those like Nick Stokes and Joe Born who can’t understand this, here is another way of deriving the error Monckton and his team are claiming:
This is credited to our fellow WUWT poster George White (aka ‘co2isnotevil’), though it’s to some degree my own interpretation of his way of deriving what — as best I can tell at least — is physically the same exact error Monckton and his team are claiming.
The starting point here is about 3 decades of worth of globally averaged satellite data from ISCCP, which has a global average gain of about 1.6 with a variance of only about +/- 1% (or less) from year to year, i.e. it’s a very tight 3 decade average convergence point. The gain is simply the ratio of emitted surface power (from S-B) divided by planet emitted power, i.e. at about 287K the surface emits about 385 W/m^2 and the planet emits (into space) about 240 W/m^2, and 385/240 = 1.6.
I’ve found the best way to do this is with a series of separate yes or no questions:
Do you agree that at the Earth’s current global average temperature of about 287K, the Earth emits about 385 W/m^2 from its surface (assuming an emissivity of 1 or very close to 1)?
Do you agree that the globally averaged solar constant is about 342 W/m^2 and the average albedo is about 0.3, resulting in a net incident solar power of about 240 W/m^2?
Do you agree that the 240 W/m^2 of incident post albedo solar power is forcing the climate system?
Do you agree that the 240 W/m^2 forcing the system from the Sun results in an ‘amplification’ at the surface of a net of about 385 W/m^2 gained at the surface/atmosphere boundary?
Do you agree that this accounts for all the physical processes and feedbacks in the system that operate on timescales of 3 decades or less? If not, why haven’t all such physical processes and feedbacks fully manifested themselves after 3 decades of forcing from the Sun? Especially those of water vapor and clouds, which operate on timescales of days to weeks?
Do you agree that in order to ‘amplify’ +3.7 W/m^2 of ‘forcing’ from 2xCO2 into +3.3C at the surface it requires +18 W/m^2 of net gain at the surface/atmosphere boundary (287K = 385 W/m^2; 290.3K or +3.3C = 403 W/m^2 and 403 – 385 = 18)?
Do you agree that watts of GHG ‘forcing’ and watts of solar forcing can only do the same amount of work? That is a watt is a watt, independent of where it last originates from?
Do you agree that 385/240 = 1.6?
Do you agree that 18/3.7 = 4.8?
Do you agree that 4.8 is 3 times greater than 1.6?
If watts are watts, how can watts of GHG ‘forcing’ have a 3x greater ability to warm the surface than watts forcing the system from the Sun?
As mentioned, the most common objection to this is people say, ‘but the system is non-linear’, and indeed it is (highly in fact). The problem is the non-linearity is in the opposite direction needed for the incremental gain to be greater than the prior absolute or average gain of 1.6. That is, as the incident post albedo solar power increases, the ratio of the net power gained at the surface to power entering from the Sun decreases. See these plots here that show the non-linearity of the system:
http://www.palisad.com/co2/why/pi_gs.png
http://www.palisad.com/co2/gf/st_ga.png
I should add again that the referenced 1.1K of so-called ‘no-feedback’ is based on the 1.6 to 1 power densities ratio between the surface at the TOA, where 3.7*(385/240)= 6.0 and +6.0 W/m^2 from a baseline of 287K equals about +1.1K.
The bottom line is on global (decadal long) average it only takes about 1.6 W/m^2 of net gain at the surface to allow 1 W/m^2 to leave the system at the TOA; with each incremental post albedo watt from the Sun resulting in less and less gain above the global average (or a gain incrementally lower and lower than the absolute gain 1.6).
Hey Nick,
These are amplifying differences. But Lord M insists you can amplify absolute values.
For me it more like discussion about meaning of words rather than about merit. What about: feedback control loop manipulates differences by amplifying absolute values? If I interpret correctly for example this textbook diagram it suggests our Lord is right – what is fed back as the ‘reference’ input is the entire output signal after disturbances, here denoted as Ym – measured value of the output.
Paramenter is of course correct: the feedback block must perforce act upon the entire reference temperature, which is the sum of the input temperature (emission temperature) and all subsequent natural and anthropogenic perturbations thereof. We verified this fact by test rigs designed first by a co-author with long experience of building and using such circuits and secondly by a national science laboratory. That fact is simply not in doubt, and anyone who claims knowledge of control theory and yet denies that this is the case is – not to put too fine a point on it – lying. The fact that such lies are being told in this thread indicates the totalitarians’ mounting concern that their number 1 policy is about to collapse because they got the science catastrophically wrong. They are hoping that by continuing to make stuff up they can keep this profitable fraud going for just a little longer. Well, time is running out on them.
Milord,
Paramenter is of course correct: the feedback block must perforce act upon the entire reference temperature, which is the sum of the input temperature (emission temperature) and all subsequent natural and anthropogenic perturbations thereof. We verified this fact by test rigs designed first by a co-author with long experience of building and using such circuits and secondly by a national science laboratory.
Critics may argue that this circuit only shows what is designed to show what in turn has nothing to do with the ‘proper’ feedback. There is also another way of confirming your thesis by doing a virtual experiment by using simulation software for control systems. Here, all conceptual elements of the feedback loop can assembled virtually and – voilà!
That fact is simply not in doubt, and anyone who claims knowledge of control theory and yet denies that this is the case is – not to put too fine a point on it – lying.
I reckon the ‘official’ narrative may be changing – Nick just posted here at WUWT an article which says, as far as I can read it clearly – that ‘official’ climatology omits in fact nothing. And in the calculation still refers to the reference temperature, not just to the perturbations.
If that confirmed that would be a sign that you and your venerable colleagues are forcing the ‘official’ climatology to adjust their calculations.