By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
I am most grateful to Mr Stokes for his interesting recent posting in which he explains what he sees as the difference between official climatology’s implementation of feedback in deriving climate sensitivity and the approach taken by my co-authors and me.
The sheer quantity of the comments on these mathematical and physical discussions is an indication that getting down and dirty among the equations is of more than passing interest to the readership.
Let me begin this response to Mr Stokes by setting out, in round numbers and in the simplest possible terms, the difference between official climatology’s conclusion that feedback triples the direct or reference warming from greenhouse gases and our conclusion that, with remarkably little error, one can safely ignore feedback altogether in calculating equilibrium sensitivities.
In the CMIP5 models, the latest generation for which ensemble results have been published, the mean reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 – that is, the amount of warming that would occur in response to a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 if no temperature feedbacks were operating or if they were net-zero – is 1.05 Kelvin (based on Andrews 2012).
It is also currently thought (rightly or wrongly) that that value is very close to exact: the uncertainty is only 10% either way. Therefore, ad argumentum, we shall accept as canonical the fact that reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 before accounting for feedback is 1.05 K.
However, the same models give a mean Charney sensitivity – that is, the amount of warming that will occur after all sensitivity-altering temperature feedbacks have acted and the climate system has returned to equilibrium – of 3.35 K per CO2 doubling (based on Andrews, op. cit.).
From these two canonical values, we know that official climatology reckons that the feedback response to doubled CO2 is 3.35 – 1.05, or a whopping 2.3 K, in response to a mere 1.05 K reference sensitivity. Recall that feedback represents the entire difference between reference sensitivity (before feedback) and equilibrium sensitivity (after feedback).
If official climatology were right, then the system-gain factor, which is the ratio of equilibrium to reference sensitivity, would be 3.35 / 1.05, or 3.2. Official climatology actually imagines that feedbacks multiply any directly-forced warming 3.2 times over.
Where does official climatology get this massive multiple 3.2 from? Here’s how. The emission temperature of the Earth is usually taken as about 255 K, and the reference sensitivity to the naturally-occurring, noncondensing greenhouse gases present in 1850 is taken as about 10 K (see e.g. Lacis+ 2010) so that the reference temperature in 1850 – the temperature that would have prevailed in the absence of feedback – is 265 K.
However, the measured temperature in 1850 was 287.5 K (HadCRUT4), and that was an equilibrium temperature (there would be no trend during the following 80 years). The difference between the emission temperature of 255 K and the measured temperature of 287.5 K in 1850 is 32.5 K. Divide the equilibrium sensitivity of 32.5 K by the reference sensitivity of 10 K and you get 3.25 – more or less exactly the system-gain factor that official climatology takes as its midrange estimate.
Thus, to IPCC et hoc genus omne, feedback is the big enchilada. It is imagined to account for between two-thirds and (in the sillier extremist papers, up to nine-tenths) of total global warming.
In official climatology, feedback not only accounts for up to 90% of total warming but also for up to 90% of the uncertainty in how much warming there will be. How settled is “settled science”, when after 40 years and trillions spent, the modelers still cannot constrain that vast interval? IPCC’s lower bound is 1.5 K Charney sensitivity; the CMIP5 models’ upper bound is 4.7 K. The usual suspects have no idea how much warming there is going to be.
My co-authors and I beg to differ. Feedback is not the big enchilada. Official climatology has – as far as we can discover – entirely neglected a central truth. That truth is that whatever feedback processes are present in the climate at any given moment must necessarily respond not merely to changes in the pre-existing temperature: they must respond to the entire reference temperature obtaining at that moment, specifically including the emission temperature that would be present even in the absence of any non-condensing greenhouse gases or of any feedbacks.
To see why this must be so, consider the following simple block diagram:
In the block diagram, emission temperature comes in at top left. Then (following the arrows) the reference sensitivities that occur over time, first natural and then anthropogenic, are successively added to it. Then the reference temperature, the sum of all these, passes to the input/output node and thence infinitely round and round the feedback loop, where the separately-powered feedback block (powered by the retention in the atmosphere of radiation that would, without feedback, have passed harmlessly out to space) adds a smidgin to the signal on each pass. The output signal is equilibrium temperature after feedback has acted.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to try to find a respectable explanation for official climatology’s notion that the feedback loop, which receives as its input signal the entire reference temperature, can somehow magically decide that it will respond only to the perturbations of that reference temperature caused by the presence of natural and then also of anthropogenic noncondensing greenhouse gases, and yet that it will not also respond at all to the emission temperature, two orders of magnitude greater than the sensitivities.
No doubt one could devise an electronic circuit that would perform that feat. But the climate is not a circuit. The feedbacks that were present in 1850 must perforce have acted not only upon the greenhouse warming to that date but also upon the emission temperature that was there before any noncondensing greenhouse gases had made their presence felt.
Here, then, is the corrected calculation. The reference temperature in 1850, before feedback, was 265 K. In that year the equilibrium temperature, after feedback, was 287.5 K. So the system-gain factor that applied in 1850 was 287.5 / 265, or 1.085, about a third of climatology’s 3.2.
Now, if we multiply the 1.05 K reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 by the corrected system-gain factor 1.085, we get a Charney sensitivity not of 3.35 K, as official climatology does, but of just 1.15 K.
Ah, you may say, but perhaps the curve of equilibrium temperature as a response to reference temperature is nonlinear. Maybe it is, but it cannot be very nonlinear. Why not? Because the reference temperature in 1850 was more than 92% of equilibrium temperature.
Now, Mr Stokes’ article is correct as far as it goes. His central point is that if you are starting from an equilibrium, such as that which obtained in 1850, you don’t need to know how that equilibrium occurred: you can work out the system-gain factor simply as the ratio of equilibrium sensitivity to reference sensitivity in any period later than that equilibrium, rather than as the ratio of equilibrium temperature to reference temperature at the time of equilibrium.
So let’s do it climatology’s way, using official climatology’s own data to 2011, the year to which the figures were brought up to date in time for IPCC’s 2013 Fifth Assessment Report.
The net anthropogenic forcing from 1850 to 2011 was about 2.5 Watts per square meter. However, the heat capacity of the ocean introduces a delay in the equilibrium response. This delay is reflected in a radiative imbalance, thought to have been about 0.6 Watts per square meter to 2010 (Smith+ 2015).
Taking Smith as correct ad argumentum, climatology’s period system-gain factor derivable from the data for 1850-2011 is simply the ratio of 2.5 to (2.5 – 0.6), i.e. 1.315 (see Lewis & Curry 2018 for the equations). Then Charney sensitivity would be 1.315 x 1.05, or just 1.4 K, not the 3.35 K that official climatology would currently have us imagine.
Notice how much closer to our estimate 1.15 K is that real-world 1.4 K Charney sensitivity, based on official climatology’s own estimates of actual anthropogenic forcing and radiative imbalance, than it is to climatology’s midrange estimate 3.35 K.
Why is our estimate of midrange Charney sensitivity so very much closer to what is inferred from official, published estimates of forcing and radiative imbalance than official climatology’s midrange estimate?
The reason is that, unlike official climatology, we use all the available information, and specifically the information about the respective magnitudes, in 1850, of the reference temperature (265 K) and of the feedback response (22.5 K). The sum of these two was the observed surface equilibrium temperature in 1850.
Official climatology, which simply does not realize that feedbacks necessarily respond to the entire reference temperature that obtains at a given moment, is left with no choice but to throw that vital information away. Here is Mr Stokes doing that quite specifically:
“It is wrong to include variables from the original state equation [i.e., in 1850]. One reason is that they have been accounted for already in the balance of the state before perturbation. They don’t need to be balanced again. The other is that they aren’t proportional to the perturbation, so the results would make no sense. In the limit of small perturbation, you still have a big reference temperature term that won’t go away. No balance could be achieved.”
Now, Mr Stokes is quite right to say that there was a temperature equilibrium in 1850 and that, therefore, at that time the surface temperature of 287.5 K already included the various variables, i.e. the 255 K emission temperature, the 10 K reference sensitivity to the naturally-occurring noncondensing greenhouse gases present in 1850 and the 22.5 K feedback response to the 265 K reference temperature.
He is also right to say these variables “do not need to be balanced again”. But, and this is crucial, they do need to be taken into account in deriving the corrected system-gain factor of 287.5 / 265 and, from that, the corrected Charney sensitivity.
Climatology overlooks these values because it is unaware that at any given moment (such as 1850) feedbacks respond to the entire reference temperature that prevails at that time. Like Luther, they can do no other.
Mr Stokes is also right to say that the variables – in which I think he includes the feedback response – are “not proportional to the perturbation”. Here, he makes precisely our point. The feedback response in 1850 was, of course, necessarily and ineluctably proportional to the entire 265 K reference temperature, which is the sum of the 255 K emission temperature and the 10 K reference sensitivity to the natural forcings present in that year.
But climatology, in effect, takes the entire feedback response in 1850 to have been proportional solely to the 10 K natural perturbation of reference temperature. And there is its mistake. That is why its estimate of Charney sensitivity – and of all equilibrium sensitivities – is three times too big. It has, in effect, allocated to greenhouse gases the large feedback response that arises simply because the Sun is shining.
Yes, one can derive the system-gain factor as the ratio of sensitivities, just as we can derive it as the ratio of absolute temperatures. But the former approach, that of official climatology, is subject to vast uncertainty, while our approach, using those vital data from 1850 that climatology has for so long ignored in its sensitivity calculations, provides an interval of Charney sensitivities that is both accurate and well constrained.
To derive equilibrium temperature, one needs to know the reference temperature and either the feedback response or the system-gain factor. But we don’t know and cannot by any rational means determine how big the feedback response is by counting up the individual feedbacks, as climatology currently tries to do, because it is feedbacks that are the near-exclusive cause of the uncertainty in official climatology’s global-warming predictions.
No feedback can be quantified by direct measurement. Nor can any form of observation, however well-resolved, meticulous and honest, allow us to distinguish reliably, and quantitatively, between different individual feedbacks, or even between feedbacks and the forcings that engendered them.
Climatology cannot calculate Charney sensitivity reliably, because, though it knows that the reference sensitivity to doubled CO2 is 1.05 K, it cannot know the value of the feedbacks and it does not know the system-gain factor. It does not know this vital quantity because it has thrown away the information available at the one point – before any significant anthropogenic intervention – for which the data are quite well constrained, and from which it can be directly derived: i.e., 1850.
The data for 1850 are quite well constrained precisely because the entire equilibrium and reference temperatures in that year exceed by two orders of magnitude the tiny equilibrium and reference sensitivities that are the basis of climatology’s so-far-failed attempts to constrain the system-gain factor and hence the likely magnitude of future global warming.
We know quite reliably what the system-gain factor was in 1850. We also know that it is not going to be a whole lot different in 2100 from its value of 287.5 / 265, or 1.085, in 1850.
Why do we know this? Because the industrial-era anthropogenic reference sensitivity of just 0.75 K from 1850 to 2011 was so very small compared with the 265 K reference temperature already present in 1850. The climate has simply not changed enough to engender a major shift in the feedback regime that obtained in that year.
Even if such a major shift were to have occurred, the additional feedbacks would have responded not merely to our perturbation of emission temperature but to the entire reference temperature, including emission temperature. For one thing, the Great Pause of almost 19 years in global temperature up to 2015 could not possibly have occurred.
Therefore, we can be reasonably confident that Charney sensitivity – i.e. equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 compared with 2011 – is not going to be very much different from 1.15 K. In fact, our professor of statistics, having gone through all the numbers in the most meticulous detail, has calculated that the corrected 95% confidence interval of Charney sensitivity is 1.09 to 1.23 K, an interval of just one-seventh of a Kelvin. Compare that with the 3.2 K interval of official Charney sensitivities, which range from 1.5 to 4.7 K.
Notice that we are only able to calculate the Charney sensitivity correctly because we already knew the system-gain factor. We knew it because we were able to derive it from the data that official climatology throws away because it does not know feedbacks respond to the entire reference temperature and not only to arbitrarily-chosen reference sensitivities.
Mr Stokes talks of the 255 K reference temperature in 1850 “not going away”. Precisely: it was then present, as was the additional 10 K in warming forced by the presence of the naturally-occurring noncondensing greenhouse gases in that year. Because it was present, it should have been taken into account. But it was not taken into account.
Since we know from theory, and from the block diagram, and from the test rig built by one of our co-authors, and from the more sophisticated rig built and operated for us by a government laboratory, that the feedbacks that were present in 1850 perforce acted upon the entire reference temperature that was present in that year, we can instantly and quite safely derive from that year’s data the system-gain factor and hence Charney sensitivity.
No need for vast, costly general-circulation models, if all you want to know is how much warming we may cause.
No need to know the value of any individual feedback.
Remarkably, no need even to take feedback into account in the calculation: the undershoot in Charney sensitivity that arises by ignoring feedback altogether is little more than a tenth of a Kelvin.
In our submission, this really is Game Over.
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Nick Stokes gets educated about climate – let’s resolve to not publish any more articles by Stokes
on this subject.
Nick made some valid points – and preventing people from getting published and so denying public discussion is how the climate cult came to power
Eaxctly. Everybody gets a say, even Griff.
Jeez, do we have to? 😇
Only if we want to maintain credibility.
After what Griff did to Dr Crockford (accusation: not qualified to speak on polar bears) & Dr Curry (sold out to “warmists”), Griff qualifies as an anonymous, savage little cartoon character whose primary sources are London newspapers.
I don’t support banning him, but it’s pretty obvious the WUWT audience understands what it’s dealing with.
Au contraire, mon ami. We do not want to create an echo chamber. Folks like Nick force us to keep on our game.
Agreed.
I second that. No need to censor. Keeps us sharp, keeps us from becoming tyrannical
it looks like half a dozen of my recent comments have been censored.
it’s their right. and they exercise it.
not as if it really matters except to the censors.
can’t stop the signal.
Where? On WUWT?
The volunteer moderators here do a wonderful job, but sometimes moderation takes a while. You just need to be patient.
In my case, my comments are routinely moderated, because from August 2018 to January 21019 an Impostor was posting comments in my name, at least 59 times. His comments were often rude and obnoxious, and expressed views contrary to mine. He insulted and annoyed many people, some of whom I very much admire, while using my name.
That would not reflect the spirit of this website. What makes this site different is that we have an actual debate, and Mr. Stokes is part of it. At least we have proper argument and counter argument here, and it shows that the science is far from settled.
While I very much appreciate Col Mosby’s support, I also welcome Mr Stokes’ willingness to engage in scientific debate. It is only the totalitarians who wish to shut all debate down and are therefore angry when there is any questioning of the Holy Books of IPeCaC.
When I have had discussions with Mr. Stokes via this blog he has always been honest and fair in his responses to me and I generally learn things from his comments, so I agree with Monckton of Brenchley, I welcome and appreciate Mr Stokes’ willingness to engage in scientific debate.
I actually agree with this assessment. He is knowledgeable, and brings forth many worthwhile points of view – and is largely polite, despite the sometimes impolite jabs directed at him. He’s the kind of person with whom debate is worthwhile.
Nick is a thoughtful and respectful member of the wuwt community and puts forward well thought out arguments. We may not agree with him but if we ignore his postings we become an echo chamber.
Surely better to defeat his arguments with better arguments than to ban him?
Tonyb
Absolutely and strongly disagree.
We need more posts from “the dark side”, as some might view them.
Don’t we want open and honest debate?
The Manns and Gores and Gavins of the world would never dare to do what Nick did.
To clarify, disagree with ColMosby’s “let’s resolve to not publish any more articles by Stokes
on this subject.”.
I think Mosby’s comment was a little tongue-in-cheek. The Dark Side’s modus operandii is to ban sceptics and prevent any opinion / paper in opposition to its dogma from being heard.
Agree — Anthony has never & won’t ever ban a “Stokes-like” commentator. Hasn’t banned anybody unless they became intolerably/personally abusive. This site’s owner has always been extremely tolerant compared to other sites.
This is an absolutely awful idea.
No one has any idea what ‘the Global Average Temperature’ was in 1850.
The very concept of ‘Global Average Temperature’ measured to 0.1 degrees Celsius is dubious. Any claim based on the concept is equally dubious.
We’ve had an article, recently, showing that the Global Average Temperature of recent years is merely an average of mid-ranges of daily highs and lows. This mid-range average would have a much higher error range than would an average of hourly readings. An world-wide average of hourly readings does not exist. Yet we find average temperature anomalies given to two decimal points.
As for 1850, the idea of a Global Average Temperature for that time measured to 0.1 degrees Celsius is a fantasy. The Global Average Temperature of 1850 would be an entirely different beast to that of the modern variant and any attempt to harmonize them would be pure guesswork.
We should have more articles emphasizing the dubiousness of the concept of Global Average Temperature. It is the starting point for any discussion of ‘climate change’, whatever that is.
I seem to remember that James Hansen himself has agreed that “global average temperature is not a useful metric”.
I am neither a physicist nor a mathematician. My skill is with the use of words and my distrust of climatology stems from the climate science community’s dishonest use of language, either by stating things that are demonstrably not so, by “havering” (a good Scots word that implies a lot of “ums” and “ers” when challenged on any particular) and a retreat into obfuscation and “weasel words” patently designed to deflect attention from dubious conclusions.
Nick Stokes does none of these things, no more does Monkton. Which doesn’t make either of them right but it does, in my book, make them honest which ought to mean in the fullness of time their deliberations and disagreements will drive this debate forward. We can ask for nothing more.
Amen to that!
If, as I had, you’d already made a study of control systems and feedback while Lord Monckton was still a schoolboy, you’d have recognized that, on the contrary, “stating things that are demonstrably not so” is actually Lord Monckton’s stock in trade.
At https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/08/feedback-is-not-the-big-enchilada/#comment-2720123 I give a few examples verifiable by anyone capable of entering formulas into a spreadsheet.
He has little regard for the truth.
Mr Born continues to be spiteful. He is also wrong. Not a happy position, which is why his comments are so bad-tempered.
“havering” (a good Scots word that implies a lot of “ums” and “ers” when challenged on any particular
Or “hemming and hawing”.
Vastly improved explanation of the situation. WELL DONE!
Is the simple way to put this that the standard approach is to say that because CO2 causes the temperature to be 10C warmer than it would be without CO2, and that because the world is 32C warmer than it would be if it were a perfectly conducting black body, that they say that because CO2 must be causing all the warming, that the 10C must be causing the total 32C and therefore the gain in the system must be ~3.2.
If so, they are completely nuts and I’m surprised any serious scientist would listen to them.
If CO2 went down to zero – there would still be water vapour in the air and there would still be clouds in the sky. These cause the temperature to be different irrespective of CO2. Indeed, because the effect of cloud’s is to reduce sunshine – it usually operates to reduce warming and causes the feedback to be much lower than it would be otherwise. So, we are almost certainly in a regime where if we increase CO2, the effect of doubling will not be 1.05C but less.
My good friend Mike Haseler has it exactly. Even if there were no noncondensing greenhouse gases, the Sun would still be shining, one-third of the dayside ocean would be open water, and the water vapor, cloud and ice-albedo feedbacks – the principal sensitivity-altering feedbacks – would all be operating at full chat.
Therefore, either Mike is right and official climatology is, in effect, imagining that one multiplies the 10 K reference sensitivity to the naturally-occurring greenhouse gases by about 3.2 to get official climatology’s equilibrium sensitivity, or official climatology – despite its explicit statements that the climate sensitivity parameter that embodies the action of feedback is typically near-linear – is imagining a very nonlinear equilibrium response to temperature that has no physical warrant in the real climate.
Interesting! By implication, 10 K of warming is caused by 0.026 % CO2 in the atmospere. This leads to some intersting problems when considering Mars and Venus. For example the same cubic mtere of atmospere on venus contains ~350,000 times more CO2 than on earth (96.5% CO2 by volume and 93 bar). One wonders why Venus is only 462 C warmer? Mars by comaprison has a pressure of ~0.6 bar and 95.3% CO2 by volume, or to put it another way ~2,000 times the amount of CO2 per unit volume as compared to earth, yet has a temperature 0f ~ -60 Celcius. Both seem far to cold to support this value of 10K per 0.026% CO2.
Happy for anyone to point out errors or expalin 🙂
On Mars CO2 is not a ‘non-condensing gas’.
On Mars CO2 is a condensing gas. It forms a dry ice cap on both poles that wax and wane with the seasons.
There’s water vapor.
“If so, they are completely nuts and I’m surprised any serious scientist would listen to them.”
Well the climate changers do reckon the doomsday scenario all started with the Neolithic cooking fires and then the you know… like the Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages, etc, etc…
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/storm-hannah-unearths-sunken-forest-from-more-than-4500-years-ago/ar-AABVEuD
Welcome to their salad days and no BBQs I suppose but then what’s the point of all their windmills solar panels and EVs you may well ask?
What baffles me is all this discussion over 10–15% of the energy budget and nothing about the huge heat engine of the water cycle that carries the other 85–90% of the solar input energy that arrives at Earth’s surface away from the surface by the convection of warm moist air and sends back down cool precipitation.
This heat engine ramps up with warming and slows down with cooling and is a HUGE negative feedback that I see no one properly addressing. This is Trenberth’s missing energy that he would like to pretend is hiding in the ocean depths.
Adding to this the fact that CO2 and water vapor are radiative gases that cool the planet after sundown and we have two mechanisms that more than compensate for any spurious, supposed greenhouse effect.
Ah, Mr Higley, haven’t you learned your lesson? (Total sarc)
“Apparently you don’t realize that all this dynamic behaviour has been smoothed by averaging the temperature over as well the total surface of the earth as over a period of one year, resulting in one ( I repeat one!) variable, called global temperature.
That gives the scientific right to consider the heat capacity of the atmosphere as one static parameter.”
… ‘the license to indulge in magical thinking’ might be a more accurate description of the ‘smoothed by averaging’ process.
Better yet – the latent heat emitted by the water condensing / freezing is ‘corrected’ for temperature/altitude although I have yet to see any justification for varying latent heat of state change due to ambient temperatures. It seems like there is a misapplication of Stefan Boltzmann to emission of latent heat.
However, there is very little explanation of how the latent heat leaves water molecules on condensation or freezing that does not involve hand-waving and claims of sensible heat that do not appear logical considering the amount of energy released.
So true. And painfully obvious.
Systems with high sensitivity are unstable over long periods of time, and we know that the temperature of the Earth has remained within a fairly narrow range for millennia. Therefore, climate sensitivity must be very low.
We’ve also run an experiment. Carbon dioxide concentrations have increased since 1950 from 311 ppm to 410 ppm, or 99 ppm, which is 32% of the first doubling. Ergo, assuming everything is proportional, the temperature increase to date should be 0.48 C with no climate sensitivity. With climate sensitivity in the range of the IPCC is should be 0.83 to 2.52 degrees. Okay, so how much actual warming have we observed since 1950? Around 0.60 degrees. Back calculating, that give a climate sensitivity number of 1.25.
This suggests that climate sensitivity is low, likely close to zero.
“the corrected 95% confidence interval of Charney sensitivity is 1.09 to 1.23 K.”
Hey, wadda you know? Right on the button, imagine that.
So we have three unrelated measurements of climate sensitivity. Chaotic system stability suggests that sensitivity of the climate to most inputs should be low, we have actual measurements of the response to date which suggests it is low, and we have the work presented here.
When independent lines of evidence and deduction keep deriving the same answer, AND that answer correlates closely with reality, it suggests that the theory is correct.
Thank you for your efforts Monckton of Brenchley. It is tough to go against the flow, but the truth is all that matters.
I am most grateful to Geoman for his kind comments. He makes an important point about the mutually-reinforcing coherence of both theoretical and empirical findings. Our theoretically-derived Charney-sensitivity interval is broadly consistent with observed warming to date, whether before or after the (probably exaggerated) radiative imbalance is taken into account.
In the end, the point we are making is an extremely simple one. But simple does not mean wrong. We think we are right, and we think that, in the disciplined environment of peer review, eventually a journal is going to crack and do the decent thing and publish our result. Then there will be a flood of papers trying to tell us we are wrong: but climatology starts off on the back foot because the error of physics it has made is not an error of climatology but of control theory. The relevant science does not belong in the incestuous, very-tightly-controlled, Lysenkoist world of official climatology but in a different discipline altogether, and – though the Communist party line is ruthlessly enforced throughout the Western universities, official climatology’s current position is so obviously intellectually and scientifically untenable that in the end the orders will come down to shift to another method of shutting Capitalism and freedom down.
Another Six out of the ground ( that’s a home run to our American friends), for his Lordship, Bravo!
Agreed. Some factors were producing climate in 1850, and unless there is some miraculous events taking place, the same factors are producing climate currently.
It starts to look like homeopathy, where the drug has an effect even though it is no longer there, as the “water has a memory”. The IPCC models presume that anthropogenic GHGs “know” that they are anthropogenic, and behave in a different manner than “natural” GHGs.
I stopped being that religious in Fourth grade.
That is one of the problems that gives the itch to many who have studied any geological history. The the best model of geological CO2 places it at over 20 times present levels roughly 550 MYA. It drop s more or less steadily (with various ups and downs until the Permian where it remains stable at present levels until the Permian Extinction and the Triassic. After that it climbs to the mid-Mesozoic reach about 10 times current levels before resuming a downward trend that has persisted to the Plestocene. So literally any effect prognosticated by a current climate model must have already happened more than once. Chemistry and physics do not alter locally over time, yet there is no geological evidence supporting any such patterrn.
It is obvious that the feedback can not act selectively on the causes of the temperature rise.
I was going to make a comment on Nick Stoke’s article, but Christopher Monckton has made it for me. It may help to look at it from signal to noise ratio standpoint.
Everyone knows that the climate is a noisy system; after all, it is the system from which the science of chaos was first discovered, by Edward Lorenz. When dealing with noisy systems, it is difficult to determine characteristic things about it. My first introduction to the problem was trying to get high quality reel-to-reel tape recordings from early tube amplifier recorders.
If you are trying to characterize a noisy system, the most effective way to do it is to raise the signal to noise ratio. With large signal, the true system characteristics can be determined.
Using the input from the sun, and also the energy sink from outer space, allows one to apply a large signal into the system, so that the system noise is minor.
-BillR
I am delighted at Mr Rostron’s distinguished contribution here. If he will be kind enough to email me his current email address, I shall be in touch with him directly.
Exactly. The “Noise,” also known as Natural Variation, as in Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, Roman Warm Period, Holocene Optimum, is as large if not larger than the Signal, our dodgy temperature records. If the “Climate Scientists” say they are sure about this 1.05 K they are simply lying, as there is no basis to their assumption that ALL the warming since 1850, when we had temperature records from at least three places, is CAGW.
Pseudo-science…
Michael Moon Re: “they are simply lying”
Please do NOT pronounce actions to be immoral without strong evidence.
“Do unto others what you would have them do to you.” Jesus
Actions are often acting on what you have been trained in, based on the dominant culture, received wisdom, and understanding. e.g., the Aristotelians in Galileo’s time. Most may not have even examined the issue. See:
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. http://scihi.org/thomas-kuhn-scientific-revolutions/
One can lie intentionally with deceit or unknowingly. In the latter case, this might not be immoral.
The word lying means you know you are being untruthful. By definition you cannot lie unknowingly.
One can only mislead unknowingly. Lying is always knowingly, by definition.
The lack of observation of the predicted mid-tropospheric tropical hotspot should be Game Over as well for the Climate Hustle, a hustle based on nothing but Cargo Cult-style modeling.
Mr O’Bryan is right: the absence of the tropical mid-troposphere “hot spot” (I had the honor to name it) does cast very grave doubt upon the models’ exaggerated estimates of equilibrium sensitivity, which depend in very large part on the tripling of directly-forced warming thanks to the water-vapor feedback, which, however, must be negligible in the absence of the hot spot.
Our theoretical work demonstrates that the absence of the hot spot is a physical manifestation of the error of physics perpetrated by climatology in failing to take advantage of the fact that, in 1850, the feedbacks then present acted upon the entire reference temperature of 265 K, and not solely upon the reference sensitivity of just 10 K to the naturally-occurring, preindustrial, noncondensing greenhouse gases.
I note that the term ‘non-condensing greenhouse gasses’ is very common. That neatly excludes water vapor from the discussion and water vapor is by far the most important greenhouse gas.
The only way the increased level of CO2 becomes a problem is if it has an outsized effect on water vapor. It strikes me as passing strange to ignore water vapor.
The other thing that strikes me as strange is to ignore stability. Stability analysis is part of any control system design. Certainly, in a system with significant positive feedback, a stability analysis should be mandatory. What does a quick google produce? … not much.
An oft repeated criticism of positive feedback for the climate is that positive feedback systems are inherently unstable. Official climate science’s answer? … crickets.
The claim that there is positive feedback should require exhaustive proof and an explanation of why we haven’t previously witnessed the kind of instability it would produce. … again, silence.
Have there been any mathematically rigorous responses to CM’s observations on the misapplication of feedback theory? I’m not aware of any.
I presented a simple explanation of why the reference level is crucial to the analysis of a feedback system. link As far as I can tell, Nick studiously ignored that part of my comment.
Were it simply a scientific issue, CAGW should have been dead and buried a long time ago.
In response to CommieBob, the reason why official climatology draws a distinction between water vapor and the noncondensing greenhouse gases is that changes in the atmospheric burden of the former are treated as forcings and the consequent change in specific humidity, the atmospheric burden of water vapor, is treated as a feedback.
This is a sensible enough distinction in the circumstances. But the problem is that official climatology accords too much influence to water vapor, rather than too little. It imagines that because the Clausius-Clapeyron relation allows the space occupied by the atmosphere to carry near-exponentially more water vapor as the temperature of that space rises, the atmosphere will actually carry that much more water vapor.
Sure enough, near the surface it does so: the specific humidity is rising at the expected Clausius-Clapeyron rate of about 7% per Kelvin of atmospheric warming. However, additional water vapor near the surface doesn’t cause much warming, because the influence of water vapor is substantially overlain by that of clouds.
It is in the tropical mid-troposphere that models calculate that water vapor feedback will be most influential, raising the temperature at that altitude by thrice the surface change. In reality, however, at that pressure altitude specific humidity has actually been declining with warming, inferentially due to subsidence drying (see e.g. Paltridge+ 2009). Therefore, the tropical mid-troposphere hot spot that all models confidently predict is not present in reality. And it is only if it were present that one could assume a strongly positive water vapor feedback.
The absence of the hot spot, therefore, provides the physical observation that confirms our theoretical finding that the warming to be expected from our enrichment of the atmosphere with CO2 and other greenhouse gases will be small, slow, harmless and net-beneficial.
Indeed.
As far as I can tell, it doesn’t account for the energy required to evaporate that much water.
A serious problem with a simple linear model, such as that described by Hansen et al is that it ignores the power supply problem. ie. there is only finite energy in the climate system.
To Monckton of Brenchley, Christie et al refer to the scaling ratio (“What Do Observational Datasets Say about Modeled Tropospheric Temperature Trends since 1979?”, Remote Sensing, 2010). The article says: “We conclude that the lower tropospheric temperature (TLT) trend over these 31 years is +0.09 ± 0.03 °C decade−1. Given that the surface temperature (Tsfc) trends from three different groups agree extremely closely among themselves (~ +0.12 °C decade−1) this indicates that the ―scaling ratio‖ (SR, or ratio of atmospheric trend to surface trend: TLT/Tsfc) of the observations is ~0.8 ± 0.3. This is significantly different from the average SR calculated from the IPCC AR4 model simulations which is ~1.4. This result indicates the majority of AR4 simulations tend to portray significantly greater warming in the troposphere relative to the surface than is found in observations.”
Temperature aloft was expected to be around 1.4-times surface, not thrice.
To commieBob: positive feedback can be stable if the open-loop gain is less than 1.0 (the combined gain of the forward and feedback elements, if the link back to the summation point is broken). However, even if it is stable in the sense of bounded input results in bounded output, positive feedback tends to produce a fluctuating and horrendously “noisy” response to input.
But see IPCC’s hot-spot diagram, color-coded, which shows tropical mid-troposphere temperatures as about thrice the tropical surface temperatures. The quotation from Christie et al. refers to the whole atmosphere, not just the tropical atmosphere. But it is the tropical atmosphere that matters from the point of view of water-vapor feedback.
Christy et al examined trends in the tropical lower troposphere (TLT, 20°S–20°N). It’s not an examination of the whole of the atmosphere.
You are correct that it is not the whole of the atmosphere that matters, and Christy is well aware of that. It would have been an error to examine the whole of the atmosphere when there is general agreement that the tropical region is the area of interest.
Please just be cautioned that your claim of three times will be challenged.
Jordan is correct that Christy et al. were considering the tropical troposphere only (though their TLT refers to “Temperature lower troposphere”, not “Tropical lower troposphere”). However, IPCC and several others have published diagrams showing a tripling of the surface warming rate at altitude in the tropics.
“It imagines that because the Clausius-Clapeyron relation allows the space occupied by the atmosphere to carry near-exponentially more water vapor as the temperature of that space rises, the atmosphere will actually carry that much more water vapor.“. I think you will find that “It” imagines correctly. The reason that water vapour does not provide as much positive feedback as the IPCC and others claim is that there is also proportionately more precipitation. Precipitation reduces the positive feedback, because it releases latent heat of evaporation at around cloud-top level, from whence much of it is lost to space.
There are several papers that explore this. One, from memory, is by Susan Wuyffels et al.
Mike
In the tropics a significant volume of that convection returns to ocean and land as warm rain water. What percentage of the original energy convection returns to the ocean.
Regards
In response to Mr Jonas, the models all – and I mean all – get the predicted Clausius-Clapeyron increase in specific humidity in the crucial tropical mid-troposphere wrong. They all predict an increase, when in fact for 30 years and more there has actually been a decline, owing to subsidence drying (Paltridge+ 2009). Climatology, therefore, does not imagine correctly, except near the surface, where specific humidity is rising at the predicted 7% per Kelvin of warming, but where the spectral lines of water vapor overlie those of CO2.
Also note that once water vapor has condensed (or frozen) it is no longer a GHG but instead a blackbody radiator.
“It strikes me as passing strange to ignore water vapor.”
It seems to me passing strange that this can be said under a post complaining that climate scientists treat it as the big enchilada. The point of “condensing” just refers to how it exercises its effect. CO2 is non-condensing, so if you put some in the air, it stays there for a long time. It is a forcing.
But if you let off steam, it stays in the air for on average about 10 days. Then it returns to the sea, You can’t force anything that way. So how does it become the big enchilada? Evaporation from the sea, amounting to about a metre a year, balanced by an equal amount of rain. That is about 500,000 Gigatons per year. It completely dwarfs the flux changes of carbon. Because the rates are so high relative to the amount of water in the air, the latter is determined by those rates, which in turn are mainly determined by temperature. That is why it is a feedback and not a forcing.
Nick, it does not matter how long a gas stays in the atmosphere, only the average amount there over time. One molecule is the same as any other, and if the water vapor is continually replaced as fast as it is removed, the amount in the air is the issue , not the turnaround rate.
” if the water vapor is continually replaced as fast as it is removed, the amount in the air is the issue , not the turnaround rate.”
Yes. But in the case of water, it is the ratio of rates. Water in the air is in dynamic equilibrium. Law of mass action. You can say that because the rates are so fast compared with the amount present.
In the case of CO2, you can’t. CO2 is not in dynamic equilibrium. The rate at which we are adding it exceeds the rates at which it can equilibrate with the sea. So the air concentration depends on the cumulative amount added, not a temperature-dependent exchange rate.
Interesting, this is what confuses me about all this talk about co2, excerpts of emphasis quoted below:
3 paragraphs and then my novice interpretation..
http://geocosmicrex.com/global-change/carboncycle/
“You will note that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is given as 750 gigatons. You will also note that 560 gigatons are consumed in the process of photosynthesis by land plants. Take special note of the amount in the ocean: 38,000 gigatons, or 50 times the amount in the atmosphere. The soil at any time stores about 1500 gigatons. In the ocean the CO2 is taken up by a variety of marine organisms that have the ability to precipitate calcium carbonate (CaCO3) from seawater. This calcium carbonate forms the shells, or exoskeletons, of creatures such as scallops, bryozoans, foraminifera and coccolithophores. When these creatures expire, their shells drift down and consolidate on the ocean floor where they are eventually lithified under pressure into limestone, chalk and marble, to become part of the lithosphere or rocky crust of the Earth.”
“The next graphic also depicts the generalized global carbon cycle. It is reproduced from Botkin & Keller (2003) Environmental Science – Earth as a Living Planet; John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 63. It contains additional interesting details. Here fossil fuel burning accounts for 5.5 gigatons introduced into the atmosphere. This is one-half gigaton less than the preceding chart, presumably the one-half gigaton difference being the result of natural combustion and volcanism which is not included in this number. Storage in shallow ocean water is almost the same in both charts; fossil fuel deposits are shown to contain about 4000 gigatons of CO2 while the sedimentary rock reservoir contains upward of 100 million gigatons! This is truly a staggering amount of carbon dioxide, and all of it at one time passed through the global atmosphere before it was taken up by the oceans, converted into biogenic calcium carbonate, and locked up in the Earth’s crust. This is a clear implication that the ocean acts as a powerful pump, constantly extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and ultimately sequestering it into carbonate sedimentary rocks, where it remains for a very long time. The natural process of oceanic uptake, or absorption, is constantly depleting the Earth’s atmosphere of carbon dioxide, and if not replenished it would relatively quickly reduce the amount of CO2 to a concentration too low for effective photosynthesis.”
“Finally, note that we have an additional interesting piece of information in the second graphic. The total amount of CO2 residing in the atmosphere is given as 750 gigatons (same as the first chart) along with an additional +3 gigatons per year due to burning of fossil fuels. Hopefully the reader is paying attention to the extent that they will see that this +3 gigatons is about half the amount initially introduced into the atmosphere due to fossil fuel combustion, given as 5.5 gigatons in this chart and 6 gigatons in the Raven & Berg chart. A substantial portion of the difference between CO2 released through combustion and the actual measured amount in the global atmosphere has been referred to as the “missing sink.”
Humans are only contributing an extra 6 gigatons on top of attainted 750 gigatons circa 2004, but the oceans hold 38,000, and the proxy data is clear that when they do overlap, ocean temperature precedes co2 concentration.
Nick states:
“The rate at which we are adding it exceeds the rates at which it can equilibrate with the sea. ”
Seems odd to me that nearly half of the 6/38000 gigatons is sequestered without fail, coupled with the insignificant addition per the ocean saturation.
Seems like a mountain out of an ant hill. Any claims that it can’t keep up, when C3 and C4 plants thrive at 1000-1200ppm illustrate an profound lack of historical perspective. It is this lack of perspective and hyperbole that finally broke the spell for me as a true believer, to begin approaching this topic with clarity and reason.
Nick, you are great with number crunching, but you have accepted a theory that is unfalsifiable, and you consistently dismiss the copious amount of historical and observational evidence (including defending all the dubious temperature adjustments) negating Co2 as a major player.
Also, the perspective that is constantly dismissed or at least clearly omitted, is the fact we had 2 miles of ice in North America just over 10,000 years ago with the global seas rising 400 feet in very short order. That’s a geological blip. A sneeze, and it was very recent. Those ice sheets extended down to Kentucky and Indiana.
Moderate cold kills 20 times than moderate warmth. Every decline in human population, bubonic and Justinian plagues coincide with cooling, while the Renaissance, Roman rule, coincide with warming. Cathedrals building abruptly abandoned, grapes no longer growing in UK to compete with France, Greenland settlements dying off from encroaching ice.
Nearly every single observable metric illustrates it is cooler now than the 1930s, and the trend is continuing to slightly cool. BOM has zero credibility, so that is unacceptable as a rebuttal. We’ve been down that road.
F4 and F5 tornadoes declining
SLR roughly linear for the last 10000 ish years
Major hurricanes declining
Days above 90 and 100 declining in the United States, with the supposed best historical land temperatures data
Wettest and coldest overtime through May in untied started historical record 2018-2019
180ppm (IIRC) dendrochronology established basement for plant life, with humans adding only approximately 1 in 10,000 since the onset of the industrial age
Greening of the planet about 15% over the last 3 decades
All you have is numbers on paper based off an erroneous, misanthropically founded, unfalsifiable theory with zero regard for perspective.
All of this mumbo jumbo about ECR and other Charney and Feedback maths and Fritos and fruity loops is inconsequential. There observational data is clear:
There is no catastrophe, except the possiblity of another cooling phase in the midst of leftist eugenics based hysterics forcing unreliable renewables and the costs on the citizens (see that disgusting governor and Democrats in my state of Colorado screwing over all the poor and middle class just recently)
Co2 is logarithmic, and it’s inconsequential after the first few 100ppm, with only re-radiating outing lwir at 15 microns. It’s a big fat nothing burger.
There hasn’t been a single downside from this warming, milder weather, slightly warmer evenings, and all this coming off the heels of the friggin little ice age!
You are so focused on proving your faith the only truth, you’ve discounted the entire planets worth of evidence to the contrary
Good points, Matthew.
It is of interest that they do the same thing with the carbon budget that MB indicates they are doing with ECS: take the equilibrium as a given, and then build the delta-budget on top of that as if the two systems were totally independent and decoupled.
Smack on. What is there is what counts towards forcing, not its derivative w. r. t. time
Nick,
(1) I appreciate you are making a distinction between water vapour as a feedback and not a forcing.
How does Schmidt et al 2010, “ Attribution of the present-day total greenhouse effect”, impact on all this?
Does it not say that Greenhouse gases constitute about 1-2% of Earth’s atmosphere and of these water vapour and clouds cause at least 75% of greenhouse warming?
Further only about 3% of the CO2 placed in the Earth’s atmosphere each year is from human emissions.
So of the 25% of the greenhouse effect that is due to CO2 and methane, only 3% of this is due to manmade sources.
That would suggest only a very small percent of the greenhouse effect is due to mankind.
(2) Are Fischer et al (1999) and O. Humlum et al (2010) correct in stating that CO2 significantly lags temperature in the Ice Core records?
” water vapour and clouds cause at least 75% of greenhouse warming”
That is where the forcing issue comes in. Yes, they do, in the sense that without them and other GHG, the Earth would be about 33°C colder. But we aren’t forcing them. Insofar as their effect varies, it is through temperature, which changes the balance of evaporation and precipitation.
“Further only about 3% of the CO2 placed in the Earth’s atmosphere each year is from human emissions.”
That is a commonly quoted factoid. It is true that there is a big seasonal cycle. In summer
plants store CO2 through photosynthesis, and the oceans emit CO2 because they get warmer, and CO2 is then less soluble. But the plant stored CO2 doesn’t stay stored; vegetation rots, or is eaten, or burnt in wildfire. And the ocean cycle is truly reversible. It gets cold again in the winter, and dissolves CO2 again. In fact, there are lots of arbitrary decisions in even summing this up. The plant and sea processes counter each other – do you take gross or net? And the hemispheres are out of phase.
But the key thing is that that cycle, however you do the accounting, has been going on for millions of years and CO2 has not accumulated. But when we started baurning C on a grand scale, the amount in the air grew exponentially and about half the burning rate, consistently.
“CO2 significantly lags temperature in the Ice Core records”
Yes. Putting C directly in the air, from a new source, is a novelty. In the past, CO2 moved around passively, in response to temperature, which it lagged. Now it responds to a different stimulus – our mining.
“As far as I can tell, Nick studiously ignored that part”
Not deliberately. But let me make amends. You wrote
G = (T – offset) / (ip – ref)
G being the gain. ip is the input signal, suggested as log(CO2). I am not sure why the denominator is written as a standard state difference with ref, which the corresponding term for T is described as offset. But the comment says that the offset is determined from the reference state, so it seems to be the same thing.
Now I agree with that; it defines G as a rate, in a standard calculus way. Gain and feedback factors belong in the world of rates. Now what happens of you try to add something, reference temperature or whatever, into the numerator? It isn’t a difference, but will be treated as one. IOW, the gain will be calculated as if part of the change was a shift to the reference temperature from zero. And of course that is not true, but worse, it happens regardless of the smallness of the actual changes. The rate G is not a stable limit that you can put a number on, but goes to infinity.
Not in the system as explained by Hansen et al. It is a constant. Indeed, if it is not a constant, then we are not dealing with a linear time invariant (LTI) system and the whole discussion is moot.
The motivation for using linear approximations is to avoid intractable math. As long as we understand a system sufficiently, linear approximations are a valid and useful engineering tool. Anyway, that’s the approach Hansen used and that’s what we’re talking about.
Ummm, enchiladas. Drool……
With this in the N.Stokes lead : “People outside climate science seem drawn to feedback analogies for climate behavior. Climate scientists sometimes make use of them too, although they are not part of GCMs.”
That is a clear signal the feedback game is over, and will be consigned to the “never existed” bin with previous warming data (a rather stuffed cellar).
It is a clear signal the climate game is not over, though – another meme is being cooked up (warmed over?).
I’m just waiting to see the reworked IPCC recommendations, which are likely now being feverishly kneaded.
The feedback battle may have been won, but not yet the war. Watch out!
Oh yes they are. link
“Oh yes they are.”
The first sentence of the abstract of your link says otherwise:
“A comparison is performed for water vapour, cloud, albedo and lapse rate feedbacks taken from published results of ‘offline’ feedback calculations for general circulation models (GCMs) with mixed layer oceans performing 2 · CO2 and solar perturbation experiments.”
They do ‘offline’ calculations, because the GCMs do not themselves calculate feedbacks. They have no need to, and couldn’t usefully use such an averaged entity anyway. They solve local relations expressed by PDEs.
This will take a lot more digging.
The error that Monkton makes is to assume that the feedbacks are constant and act
independent of the reference system. He needs to read the paper by Roe (“Feedbacks, Timescales, and Seeing Red”) which states “Gains and feedbacks calculated with respect to different reference systems cannot be directly compared.” Which is what Monkton is doing — trying to compare the feedbacks operating in one reference system (the one where the sun is not shining and thus turning it on makes a huge difference) to the standard reference system which is the earth in 1850. Roe
as Nick Stokes mentioned has an entire section pointing out that feedbacks are just an alternative way of writing a Taylor series (to first order) and nobody should be surprised if the derivative of
a function f(x) is different for different values of x. Knowing the slope of the function at one point does not allow you to estimate the slope at a very different point. The only function for which that is true is a straight line. So essentially what Monkton is claiming is that the temperature is a linear function of the forcing for all values of the forcing ranging from the sun being turned off to today. This is an astonishing claim and one for which there is no evidence.
“Izaak Walton” has perhaps not appreciated that at any given moment the feedback processes then subsisting must perforce act upon the entire reference signal. In climate, in 1850, that reference signal (a.k.a. reference or pre-feedback temperature) was the sum of the 255 K emission temperature and the 10 K directly-forced warming from naturally-occurring, noncondensing greenhouse gases: i.e., 265 K.
But the output signal (a.k.a. equilibrium temperature after feedbacks have acted) was a measured 287.5 K. Therefore, in 1850, which is a long way from when the Sun was not shining and the Earth was without form and void, the feedback response was the difference between 287.5 and 265 K: i.e., 22.5 K. Now, climatology’s method in effect ascribes all of that feedback response to the 10 K reference sensitivity, which is plainly daft, because that leaves no room at all for any feedback response to the 255 K emission temperature.
We are not dealing with multiple reference systems but with a single reference system. From 1850 to 2011, for instance, the reference temperature increased by a mere 0.75 K; and from 2011 to doubled CO2 compared with 2011 would add only another 1.05 K. These values are simply not large enough to engender major nonlinearities in the feedback regime. To make assurance doubly sure, we carefully considered each of the sensitivity-altering feedbacks, and none of them would suddenly account for a a tripling (or worse) of the feedback fraction between 1850 and doubled CO2 compared with 2011.
It is blindingly obvious that climatology has made a large mistake.
One can actually calculate the curve of, say, an exponential function provided that one has two points on the curve. We have (0, 0), the point through which all feedback response curves must pass, and (265, 287.5) in 1850. The exponent, then, is simply ln(287.5) / ln(265), which is just 1.0146, not greatly different from unity. To the nearest 20th of a Kelvin, the Charney sensitivity based on that exponent would be 1.15 K, just about identical to the linear case.
Why is this so? Because, as the head posting points out, in 1850 the reference temperature was more than 92% of equilibrium temperature – which is much as one would expect in an essentially themostatic dynamical system (see e.g. Jouzel+ 2007, where it is demonstrated that in 800,000 years surface temperature has varied by little more than 3 K either side of the 800,000-year mean).
Again Mr. Monkton you need to read Roe. The feedbacks are defined in terms of the
reference system. In the discussion it is clearly stated that:
The very idea of a feedback implicitly partitions a system into a feedback process and a reference system on which that process acts. If you change the reference system, you change the feedback. Feedbacks can be meaningfully defined only when also accompanied by a choice and a clear definition of the reference system. In general, there is no single correct choice, and which one makes most sense depends on the problem. Loosely speaking, one possibility is to think of the reference system as containing the things that are known well, as in the case of choosing a blackbody planet as the reference for the climate system, and to think of the feedbacks as the things that are uncertain.
Another possible partition is to regard the reference system as the things not being studied and to think of the feedbacks as the processes of interest. Here, though, it becomes important to appreciate that the expression for fi in Equation 19 depends on the reference state. When feedback processes are compared quantitatively, it is a requirement that they have been evaluated against the same reference system.
What you are doing is trying to compare feedbacks for two different reference systems. Since the systems are
different then the feedbacks are different as well. In the first system the reference system would appear to be the earth without the sun shining and then the feedbacks are the entire climate system. The second reference system is the earth and its climate in 1850 and hence the feedbacks are only the bits of the climate that change when you change the forcing. So when discussing the change in forcing from 1850 one doesn’t need to take
into account the entire solar input since that is now part of the reference system and so all of the feedbacks
operating have already been included.
Again as Roe states in the discussion
For example, the Stefan-Boltzman relation is often described as a negative climate feedback acting to regulate temperature anomalies. In fact, for a blackbody planet, which is the simplest imaginable reference system for the climate that is still meaningful, the Stefan- Boltzman relation is part of the reference system and therefore not a feedback at all. These are not semantic or esoteric issues—the quantitative intercomparison of different feedbacks can be done only when the reference system is defined and held constant.
The main feedback is stated as due to water vapor change due to temperature change engendered from a small CO2 induced change. If this is so, since seasonal temperature variation is very large compared to CO2 effects, where is the huge summer temperature increase due to feedback?
“where is the huge summer temperature increase due to feedback”
Well, it does get warm in summer, and there probably is a component due to wv feedback; there is no easy way of telling. But the climate wv feedback applies to annually averaged temperature, at least, and globally averaged too.
“Izaak Walton” has misundertood Roe. The reference system we use is the pattern of temperatures or temperature changes in the absence of feedback. At any given moment, there is a reference temperature, before feedback acts, and an equilibrium temperature, after feedback acts (though not all of the equilibrium temperature necessarily comes though immediately).
And our paper treats the SB law as part of the reference system, and not, as climatology does, as a feedback. On this, as on much else, we agree with Roe, whose paper we cite in ours.
It doesn’t seem to me logical that applying anything (in this case feedback) to a system can be done be selecting an arbitrary point (in this case 1850) and saying “everything starts from here”.
If I understand the argument 1850 seems to have been chosen as some point at which the climate, or at least temperature, is considered to have been “stable”. But climate has never been stable and even if temperatures had been the same for several centuries that does not make them “stable”.
At the risk of my looking an idiot (!) it appears to me that Nick is falling into the same trap as those who argue that 10°C is twice as warm as 5°C. The starting point for calculating feedbacks must surely by 0°K not whatever the temperature happens to have been in 1850, or 1750, or 45BC!
In response to Newminster, please refer to the block diagram in the head posting. All we are saying is that 1850 was a good year for doing calculations because there was a temperature equilibrium that year (the least-squares linear-regression trend on the HadCRUT4 dataset was zero for the next 80 years). Also, HadCRUT4 publishes the 2-sigma uncertainties as well as the mindrange estimate. By plotting the least-squares linear-regression trends on those uncertainties and on the midrange, we were able to determine that the uncertainty in 1850 in the HadCRUT4 data was less than 0.3 K either side of the midrange – and that is simply not a large enough error margin to have any appreciable effect on our calculations.
It is also important to understand that in 1850 there were certain feedback processes operating; that they had perforce to respond to the entire reference temperature then prevalent; and that, therefore, the system-gain factor in 1850 (whatever may have happened before) was, at that time, 287.5 / 265, or 1.085. Since there was only 0.75 K reference warming from 1850-2011, far too small to engender a significant alteration in the feedback regime, one can take it that the system-gain factor is today about 1.085 and will remain close to that until all extractable coal, oil and gas have been extracted. That means just 1.15 K warming per CO2 doubling, not 3.35 K.
It is a simple argument, but a sound one.
The CO2 theory assumes all other variables are static EXCEPT for theorized positive feedback factors.
LM- thank you for this. I’ve always wondered (thought) that if there is so much feedback on a temperature perturbation, then why hasn’t the temperature already gone berserk!
Mr Graney has captured the main point. The temperature would have to be about thrice what it is if official climatology’s implicit midrange estimate of the system-gain factor, i.e. 3.2, had any physical reality to it.
Did anyone mention Gaia? I’d like to point out that a conference on Gaia will take place at the end of July in Exeter, UK. It is dedicated to the 100th birthday of James Lovelock, who will participate in a live event. Lovelock used to be a darling of the consensus but has fallen out of favor to some extent as he believes that global warming projections are exaggerated, among other politically incorrect positions. Make no mistake, however, as this conference will be warmist in nature.
https://lovelockcentenary.info/
I’ve been telling James he’s wrong for 25 years. I thought when he moved to Dorset he’d conceded.
Milord!
That was like ‘climate feedback for dummies’. And that’s what we need. I would also append some kind of short vocabulary explaining terms used, as Charney sensitivity – means that, emission temperature – means this. Definitions of those bad boys are embedded in the main text but would be nice just quickly jump to the vocab. By the way, why ‘sensitivities’? Like ‘equilibrium sensitivity’ instead of just equilibrium?
Under Nick’ text I asked him about this intriguing ‘big reference temperature term’ which ‘won’t go away’. He explained to me that it actually means something slightly different than it says it means – this big reference temperature should only be included in the first order terms and not included in higher order subsequent equations. Otherwise those higher order calculations go wrong.
Hah! IPeCaC! You crack me up, my Lord.
But seriously, your tireless efforts over the long years, characterized by scholarship, wit and humor, evidence your indefatigable nature. This article is another example of your clear reasoning and concise writing. I for one, salute you as one of our most intrepid warriors.
Many thanks to Mr Wilson for his very kind comments. I sense that we are getting close to slaying this particular dragon. If, as we find, equilibrium sensitivities are one-third of official climatology’s midrange estimate, then the climate “crisis” vanishes.
I admit I’ve shifted thinking back and forth on the two presentations – Nick vs Lord M. It is a good debate. My problem with all of it is, if CO2 is the elephant in the room, what brought the climate down from another established data point – The Medieval Warm Period – to the depths of the Little Ice Age without anthropo help.
I suggest there is another test that can be done to assess the consensus position. Assume CO2 is the control knob and calculate back what CO2 levels must have been in 1100AD to give us temperatures, as a secent approximation, very much as we have today. How does the derived CO2 compare with ice cores or other proxies. Since actual persisting anthropo CO2 is dwarfed by natural CO2 outgassing, most of the CO2 flux in the atmosphere is natural.
Gary
The descent from MWP warmth to lia coldness was often sudden and happened more than once , so the lia could best be termed intermittent. What caused these fluctuations from warm to cold and back again?
Climate variability is much greater than many realise. Dr Philip jones admitted this in his 2004 paper when examining CET during the 1730’s’ which had risen sharply from the tremendous cold of the 1690’s but was brought to a shuddering halt in the extremely severe winter of 1740.
Incidentally the 1730’s were the warmest decade until the 1990’s. The period around 1540 was probably warmer still, but within a couple of decades we descended into the severest winters imaginable, depicted by Brueghel in his famous paintings..
This reminds me that the climate scientists are asking the wrong question. The question they should be asking and answering is: How has the climate been kept relatively stable (enough to allow life to evolve) for millions of years.
“Mr Stokes is quite right to say that there was a temperature equilibrium in 1850”
I have no idea when was the equilibrium, as far as I can see it could be at any time, at 1750 or 1950 or anywhere before, after or in between.
Judging by the best long temperature records colected from a little patch of the globe (CET)
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/CET-SW.htm
where almost all of the warming took place in the winter months, equilibrium appears to be at any summer of your choice. However the winter temperatures hardly show any equilibrium at any point in the 360 year long record.
In response to Vukcevik, in a dynamical system such as the climate, there is never really a true equilibrium: however, the least-squares linear-regression trend on the HadCRUT4 dataset shows no trend for 80 years after 1850, which makes the temperature of 287.5 K in 1850 a good enough equilibrium temperature for present purposes.
Besides, one advantage of using entire reference and equilibrium temperatures is that even quite large uncertainty in their values leads to a small uncertainty in their ratio, the system-gain factor.
Lord Monckton
Thank you for taking time to reply.
Considering that some 70%+ of the globe is water and most of it in the South Hemisphere, I have strong doubts that any global temperature before 1940s could be considered reliable for purpose of equilibrium.
Since there is no such a place which can be used as a representative of global temperatures, the next best is any place with a good and reasonably reliable record, the CET must be among the top few.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/CET-2018.htm
As it can be seen in the 80 years 1850-1930 temperatures are just unstable or even more so than anywhere between 1750-1990.
I’m not entirely convinced by Mr Stokes argument about temperatures equilibrium around 1850 or at any other time within period of the instrumental records.
MOB
By equilibrium I am to read, those values are recorded temperatures from a very few thermometers in the same location covering a relatively narrow latitude band, and the CO2 levels at that time. Temperature and CO2 values only?
Is this correct.
Regards
In response to Vukcevic and Mr Cropp, the HadCRUT4 dataset commendably publishes not only the midrange estimates but also the 2-sigma uncertainties for temperatures. In 1850, the 2-sigma uncertainties, calculated by reference to the least-squares linear-regression trends on the upper and lower bounds, were less than one third of a Kelvin either side of the midrange estimate. Since we accept all of official climatology except what we can demonstrate to be false, we take the midrange estimate for 1850 without demur. Other values might be chosen, but they would not much affect the calculation of the system-gain factor.
Please mods, unflag my name and let my comments go if there is no “word” infractions. Otherwise it makes good, thoughtful and timely contributions impossible. I’ve been a commenter since 2007 and never been banned or even warned. My earliest comments may have deserved criticism, but, I believe, most of my stuff over the last few years has been temperate. I am an experienced geologist and engineer and have contributed considerable educational input. I even studied paleoclimatology as part of historical geology in the 1950s as most geo students did.
Comments seem to be updated once per hour ….
hope this can be improved upon soon !
I don’t know if your name is flagged or not, but upstream IP issues can cause comments to go into the trash bin or otherwise awry. Mods basically check the “pending” folder randomly. No trend has been able to be determined for our moderating periodicity, despite extensive Monte Carlo simulations. In fact, coupled moderator-dynamics models are being generated by the Heartland Institute at this time to solve the puzzle. We expect to release projections (note: NOT forecasts) for moderator feedbacks in late 2020.
:p
rip
Thanks rip. Is it possible that anti WUWT persons could be gumming things up? It is after all the number one site globally for climate, much to the chagrin of post normal “progressive” globalists .
In response to Ripshin and Mr Pearse, because my head postings here pose (if correct) a fundamental challenge to the profits made by official climatology at the expense of the taxpayers who fund the governments they have panicked, some of the true-believers can become very angry and irrational. I have actually had hate-mail in my inbox from one troll. So the moderators are carefully reading everything, so as to keep the tone as far as possible within the bounds of civilized discourse. I, for one, have very good reason to be profoundly grateful for the trouble that they take on behalf of all of us, to keep the discussion on track and hence to provide one of the very, very few fora in which it is permissible for both sides to engage in discussion with one another at all on this subject.
The moderators are to be warmly thanked and congratulated for their diligent and even-handed ministrations.
See also Nickolov and Zeller. Atmospheric composition is irrelevant. Game over.
See also Nickolov and Zeller. Atmospheric composition is irrelevant. Game over.
If only it were as Chaswarnertoo were correct. Unfortunately, however, Nikolov and Zeller had overlooked several key points in their analysis, not the least of which was that all their paper really does is to demonstrate empirically that, at any rate with respect to the half-dozen planetary bodies on which they based their analysis, the ideal-gas law is correct. They had not remembered that the surface atmospheric pressure, which they held out as the sole determinant of surface temperature (by a mechanism not satisfactorily described or demonstrated), is itself dependent upon the atmospheric composition, which of course includes the presence of greenhouse gases. Their argument was simply the wrong way round. In effect, they had perpetrated the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.
If only our universities still prevented anyone from studying there who had not mastered the elements of logic, how much more quickly we could all reach the truth on these climatological questions.
Milord, my understanding was that distance from the sun and albedo were also necessary information and yes, you are right, their surface pressure includes any greenhouse effect, dammit. I’ll need to read more.
Chris,
can you help with Brexit please. Just get us out.
🙂
Will do! Consider us gone.
Yesssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYGewudfxDk&t=2831s
Robin Tillbrooks English Democrats #MEGA has brought a judicial review, according to the pleadings to the court Brexit occurred on 29th March 2019.
https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/2019/06/01/the-eu-is-deeply-anti-democratic-the-uk-spring-will-be-a-european-spring-no-amount-of-potemkin-village-pretence-will-fool-the-european-public-further-once-bitten-twice-shy-en-marche-or-on-yer-bike/
In response to Mr Lewis, I looked at Tillbrook’s pleadings and was unconvinced by them, unfortunately, attractive though his proposition undoubtedly was. Had Parliament not altered the original statute mandating our departure on 29 March at 11.30 pm, with or without a deal, then on that date and time our EU membership would have been an unhappy and very expensive episode in our history. However, Parliament reversed itself, even though (if I remember correctly) it did not do so in a Bill, but merely by a resolution. However, once Parliament has spoken, even if it acts in manifest breach of its own rules (which, inter alia, require that legislation already on the statute-book cannot be amended except by subsequent primary legislation enacted by Parliament after all the 11 due stages), the Courts will not intervene.
“In response to Mr Lewis, I looked at Tillbrook’s pleadings and was unconvinced by them,”
Hello Lord Monkton, Thanks for the reply.
Obviously, this is the wrong Article and Forum to discuss the issue, perhaps you would be kind enough to make a comment on Robin Tilbrook’s blog where those of us interested in securing a Sovereign Parliament, both Commons and Lords can War Game the pleadings and make the best case possible.
I am a great admirer of your work on Climate Modelling problem and Skeptical voices are needed in civil society both sides of the pond at the moment.
Thanks for taking the time to comment,
Best Wishes
Roger
https://robintilbrook.blogspot.com/2019/04/detailed-submissions-in-re-queen-on.html
I have posted our interaction on Robins Blog, I hope you might find the time to come and add your invaluable insights to our efforts.
Sorry Scotty, not meaning to rock your boat, but got to say…
you still in the Planet B of some kind, as per Brexit, with Lord M as your guide there.
Sorry again, but you know the North Korea is still a Democratic Republic…
last I checked, still as such recognized…
Enjoy the latest form of democracy, the 21st century British one, no much different than the N.K. at this point in time… politically dictated all way through…
only responsive and accountable to political Machiavellian interests there, of the very few…
It really matters not much if Brexit goes “yes” or “no”, because;
what really matters is how it came to be, and how it ended up as a stagnating crises,
for a country like UK…
quite an expensive one…definitely not the fault of the people there, if you ask me.
Many of you there, at this point want out, many of you also want still to stay in…
and still you suppose to have a strong government and a strong Parliament to sort that out in and as per your behalf, as country in the whole.
Still not fricking fracking happening one or the other yet, even after three years.
You got a really really big mess there friends…
cheers
This all helps me to understand the Butterfly Effect that began in 1850 or the data artifact of it in the minds of modelers.
Add that to the Butterfly Effect of the hanging chad in Al Gore’s trajectory through space-time and I am almost ready to move on to the connection between minute quantum fluctuations and the macro scale Big Bang.
In response to Paramenter, who has taken a commendable interest in these threads and has been full of constructive comments, emission temperature is the temperature that would prevail on Earth in the absence of any non-condensing greenhouse gases and before any feedback had operated. Its official value is about 255 K.
Charney sensitivity is equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 after all sensitivity-altering feedbacks have operated and the climate has resettled to equilibrium. Official climatology estimates it at 3.35 K (midrange), but our midrange estimate is just 1.15 K.
Equilibrium temperature is the sum of reference temperature (i.e.., the entire temperature at a given moment, before accounting for any feedback) and the feedback response.
Yes Mr Stokes would prefer not to take account of reference temperature in 1850, but the ineluctable fact remains that the feedbacks present in 1850 had perforce to act upon and respond to that entire reference temperature, and not only to some part of it. Therefore, it should be taken into account in deriving the system-gain factor, and, if it is taken into account, it is obvious that Charney sensitivity is about a third of official climatology’s midrange estimate.
Milord,
That’s quite interesting stuff, isn’t it? Initially I was sceptical about the idea that climatology could get basics so embarrassingly wrong. But as it stands I don’t see convincing refutation of your thesis. Your critics are talking about meaning of words, redefine some terms what feedback really means or what disturbance really means, use analogies and gedankenexperiments instead of direct evidence or exercise maths gymnastics with no clear linkage with the subject. Obvious signs that you and your co-authors may have hit a sweet spot.
Yes Mr Stokes would prefer not to take account of reference temperature in 1850, but the ineluctable fact remains that the feedbacks present in 1850 had perforce to act upon and respond to that entire reference temperature, and not only to some part of it.
I reckon Nick tries to hide this elephant by exploring concept of derivatives where original reference temperature has no place but that sounds very peculiar, at very least. Often in weighting contrary opinions consistency, coherence and clarity matter the most. Quick look on the feedback loop system diagram from a textbook tells more what constitutes the input and output signals than long and muddy reasoning.
OK, look at your system diagram. What comes out of the first adder? E, the error signal. What goes into the side branch? D, the disturbance variable. All products of the perturbation. Which embraces the ongoing emission temperature?
In the block diagram, emission temperature comes in at top left. Then just follow the arrows. The perturbation from the preindustrial naturally-occurring greenhouse gases is added to emission temperature. Then the anthropogenic reference sensitivity is added. At this point, then (let us call it 2011), the reference signal is the sum of emission temperature (255 K), the natural reference sensitivity (10 K) and the anthropogenic reference sensitivity (0.75 K). Total: 265.75 K referencve temperature. That reference temperature is fed to the feedback loop and, after modification by that loop, because the equilibrium temperature.
In control theory, summative nodes marked “+” are simply additive: all temperatures entering such a node are summed and passed to the next node in sequence.
Hey Nick,
OK, look at your system diagram.
For me, it’s fairly straightforward. To the ‘main’ reference input (reference temperature) disturbances are added on later stages. Finally, such output, including reference temperature in it, is fed back as the input for the next iteration of the process.
I think though that it may not be the ‘game over’, as our Lord indicated in his text, but rather ‘endgame’. If no serious scientific objections are raised against main thesis of this work I believe it will be eventually published. But because the weight it carries application of damage control tactics at the same time will be massive. First step it try to ignore and ridicule. If that does not work try to ‘fence’ those findings and minimise the impact. Looking forward to that!
Arglwydd Mawr! Diolch unwaith eto.
It may be read alongside this, of just 6 days ago:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/02/modelling-the-climate-of-noonworld-a-new-look-at-venus/
That has a theoretical message for climaniacs which is similarly explosive.
If true.
Yep, Diolch.
Diolch yn fawr! Cymru am byth!