From Dr Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on December 27, 2019 by curryja |
An alternative perspective on 3 degrees C?
This post was originally intended as a short comment questioning certain aspects of the methodology in JC’s post of December 23, “3 degrees C?”. But every methodology is bound to have shortcomings, raising the possibility that Judith’s methodology might nevertheless be best possible, those shortcomings notwithstanding. I was finding my arguments for a better methodology getting too long for a mere comment, whence this post. (But if actual code is more to your fancy than long-winded natural language explanations, Figures 1 and 2a can be plotted with only 31 MATLAB commands .)
Judith’s starting point is “It is far simpler to bypass the attribution issues of 20th century warming, and start with an early 21st century baseline period — I suggest 2000-2014, between the two large El Nino events.” The tacit premise here would appear to be that those “attribution issues of 20th century warming” are harder to analyze than their 21st century counterparts.
The main basis for this premise seems to be the rate of climb of atmospheric CO2 this century. This is clearly much higher than in the 20th century and therefore should improve the signal-to-noise ratio when the signal is understood as the influence of CO2 and the noise consists of those pesky “attribution issues”. Having used this SNR argument myself in this forum a few years ago, I can appreciate its logic.
Judith also claimed that “The public looks at the 3 C number and thinks it is 3 C more warming from NOW, not since the late 19th century. Warming from NOW is what people care about.” Having seen no evidence either for this or its contrary, I propose clarifying any such forecast by simply prepending “more” to “degrees” (as in my title) and following Judith’s suggestion to subtract 1, or something more or less equivalent.
Proposal
So what would be an “obviously alternative” methodology? Well, the most extreme alternative I can think of to 15 years of data would be to take the whole 168 years of global annual HadCRUT4 to 2017.
The data for 1850-1900 is certainly sparser than for its sequel. What that does not address however is the extent to which that sparseness compromises the final analysis. By including that data instead of dismissing it out of hand, we may have a better chance of understanding that extent.
Besides increasing by an order of magnitude the duration of the data constraining the priors, another modification we can make is to the target. Instead of taking the goal to be estimating climate for 2100, perhaps plus or minus a few years, I suggest estimating an average, suitably weighted, over the 75 years 2063-2137.
This widening of the window has the effect of trading off precision in time for precision in temperature, as a sort of climate counterpart to the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. More generally this is a tradeoff universal to the statistics of time series: the variance of the estimate of the mean tends to be inversely proportional to the sample length.
This wide a window has the further benefit of averaging out much of the bothersome Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. And its considerable width also averages out all the faster periodic and quasiperiodic contributors to global land-sea surface temperature such as ENSO, the 11-year solar cycle, the 21-year magnetic Hale cycle, the ongoing pulses from typical volcanoes, etc.
But of what use is a prediction for 2063-2137 if we can’t use it to predict say the extent of sea ice in the year 2100? Well, if we can show at least that the average over that or any other period is highly likely to lie within a certain range, it becomes reasonable to infer that roughly half the years in that period are lower and half are higher. So even though we can’t say which years those would be, we can at least expect some colder years and some warmer years, relative to the average over that period. Those warmer years would then be the ones of greatest concern.
A 75-year moving average of HadCRUT4 would be the straightforward thing to do. Instead I propose applying two moving averages consecutively (the order is immaterial), of respectively 11 and 65 years, and then centering. This is numerically equivalent to a wavelet transform that convolves HadCRUT4 with a symmetric trapezoidal wavelet of width 75 years at the bottom and 55 years at the top. The description in terms of the composition of two moving averages makes it clearer that this particular wavelet is targeting the AMO and the solar cycle for near-complete removal. After much experimenting with alternative purpose-designed convolution kernels as wavelets I settled on this one as offering a satisfactory tradeoff between simplicity of description, effectiveness of overall noise suppression, transparency of purpose, and width—a finite impulse response filter much wider than 75 years doesn’t leave much signal when there’s only 170 years of data. Call climate thus filtered centennial climate.
The point of centering is to align plots vertically, without which they may find themselves uselessly far apart. The centering function we use is c(d) = d – mean(d). This function merely subtracts the mean of the data d from d itself in order to make mean(c(d)) = 0. Hence c(c(d)) = c(d) (c is idempotent).
Lastly I propose 1.85 °C per doubling of CO2 as a proxy for HadCRUT4’s immediate transient climate response to all anthropogenic radiative forcings, ARFs, since 1850. This proxy is reconstructed from ice cores at the Law Dome site in the Australian Antarctic Territory up to 1960 and as measured more directly at Charles Keeling’s CO2 observatory on Mauna Loa thereafter, giving the formula ARF = 1.85*log ₂(CO2) for all anthropogenic radiative forcing. The proof is in the pudding: it seems to work.
Results
Applying our centennial filter to HadCRUT4 yields the blue curve in Figure 1, while applying it to ARF (anthropogenic radiative forcing as estimated by our proxy) yields the red curve.
The two plots ostensibly covering the 30-year period 1951-1980 actually use data from the 104-year period 1914-2017; e.g. the datapoint at 1980 is a weighted average of data for the 75 years 1943-2017 while that at 1951 similarly averages 1914-1988. In this way all the data from 1850 to 2017 is used.
During 1951-1980 and 1895-1915 the two curves are essentially parallel, justifying the value 1.85 for recent and early transient climate response. But what of the relatively poor fit during 1915-1950?
Explaining early 20th century
We could explain the departure from parallel during 1910-1950 as simply an underestimate of TCR. However the distribution of CO2 absorption lines suggests that TCR should remain fairly constant over a wide range of CO2 levels. An explanation accommodating that point might be that the Sun was warming during the first half of the century.
To see if that makes sense we could plot the residual of the above figure against solar irradiance. While there used to be several reconstructions of total solar irradiance prior to satellite-based measurements, I’m only aware of two these days, due to respectively Greg Kopp (a frequent collaborator with Judith Lean) and Leif Svalgaard. Both are based on several centuries of sunspot data collected since Galileo started recording them, along with other proxies. The following comparison uses Kopp’s reconstruction.
It would appear that the departure from parallel in the middle of Figure 1 can be attributed almost entirely to solar forcing SF defined as centennial solar sensitivity times absorbed solar irradiance (ASI) as a fraction of total solar irradiance TSI received at top of atmosphere (TOA). The albedo (taken here to be 0.3) is the part of TSI reflected back to space as shortwave radiation. The remaining 70% is the portion absorbed by Earth. This is then averaged over Earth’s surface, which at 4πr² is four times the cross section πr² of the intercepted solar irradiance at TOA, whence the division by 4. That is, ASI = (1 – Albedo)*TSI/4. Lastly ASI (in W/m2) is converted to solar forcing SF (in °C) by multiplying by centennial solar sensitivity CSS (1.35 °C per W/m2 as estimated by Kopp’s reconstruction).
It is almost impossible to evaluate the goodness of this fit by looking just at Figure 1 and the red curve in Figure 2a. The residual (blue curve in 2a) needs to be plotted, and then juxtaposed with the red curve.
Any fit this good implies a high likelihood of four things.
- The figure of 1.85 for TCR holds not only on the right and left but the middle as well.
- CO2 is a good proxy for all centennial anthropogenic radiative forcing including aerosols.
- The filter removes essentially everything except HadCRUT4, ARF, and solar irradiance.
- The peak-to-peak influence on GMST of the evident 130-year oscillation in TSI is 0.07*5/3 = 0.12 °C. (The centennial filter attenuates the 130-year oscillation to 3/5 of its amplitude, compensated for by multiplying by 5/3 to estimate the actual amplitude.) Not only is the Sun not a big deal for climate, that 130-year oscillation makes its influence predictable several decades into the future.
As a check on Kopp’s reconstruction we can carry out the same comparison based on Leif Svalgaard’s reconstruction, leaving TCR and the residual completely unchanged.
On the one hand Svalgaard’s reconstruction appears to have assigned weights to sunspots of only 70% those of Kopp, requiring a significantly larger solar sensitivity (1.95) to bring it into agreement with the residual. On the other hand the standard deviation of the residual for Figure 2b (GMST – ARF – SF) is 2.3 mK while that for 2a is 3.7 mK, which is interesting.
Both fits are achieved with TCR fixed at 1.85. We were able to find a tiny improvement by using 1.84 for one and 1.86 for the other, but this reduced the standard deviations of the residuals for Figures 2a and 2b by only microkelvins, demonstrating the robustness of 1.85 ° C per doubling of CO2 as an ARF proxy.
The MATLAB script producing figures 1 and 2a,b from data sourced solely from the web at every run is in the file curry.m at http://clim8.stanford.edu/MATLAB/ClimEtc/.
I would be very interested in any software providing comparably transparent and compelling evidence for a substantially different TCR from 1.85, based on the whole of 1850-2017, and independent of any estimates of AMO and other faster-moving “attribution issues”.
Projection to 2063-2137
Regarding Is RCP8.5 an impossible scenario?, I prefer to think of it as a highly unlikely scenario. Not because Big Oil is on the verge of exhausting its proven reserves however, but because of its strange compound annual growth rate when computed in MATLAB as diff(rcp)./rcp(1:end-1)*100.
If that had been a stock market forecast one would suspect insider trading: something is going to happen around 2065 that will cause an abrupt reversal of climbing CAGR when it hits 1.2%, but the lips of the RCP8.5 community are sealed as to what it will be. Or perhaps 2060 is when their in-house psychologists are predicting a popular revolution against Big Oil.
Well, whatever. RCP8.5 is just too implausible to be believed.
Is any projection of rising CO2 plausible? Let me make an argument for the following projection.
Define anthropogenic CO2, ACO2, as excess atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm. The following graph plots log₂(ACO2) since 1970. We can think of log₂(ACO2) as the number of doublings since ACO2 was 1. However the ±5 ppm variability in CO2 over its thousand-year history makes ACO2=1 a rather virtual notion.
ACO2 was pretty straight during the past century, but has gotten even straighter this century. It reveals a compound annual growth rate of just over 2%.
What could explain its increasing straightness?
One explanation might be that 2% is what the fossil fuel industry’s business model requires for its survival.
Will this continue?
The argument against is based on speculations about supply: the proven reserves can’t maintain 2% growth for much longer, the best efforts of the fossil fuel industry notwithstanding.
The argument for is based on speculations about demand: even if some customers stop buying fossil fuels for some reason, there will be no shortage of other customers willing to take their place, thereby maintaining sufficient demand to justify the oil companies spending whatever it takes to maintain proven reserves at the requisite level for good customer service, at least to the end of the present century. Proven reserves have been growing throughout the 20th century and on into this one, and speculation that this growth is about to end is just that: pure speculation with no basis in fact. The date for peak oil is advancing at about the same pace as the data for fusion energy break-even.
There is a really simple way to see which argument wins. Just keep monitoring log2(ACO2) while looking for a departure from the remarkably straight trend to date. Any significant departure would signal failure to continue and the argument against wins. But if by 2100 no such departure has been seen, the argument for wins, though few if any adults alive today will live to see it.
Today CO2 is at about 410 ppm, making ACO2 130 ppm. If the straight line continues, that is, if ACO2 continues to double every 34 years, two more doublings (multiplication of 130 by 4) bring the date to 2019 + 34*2 = 2087 and the CO2 level in 2087 to 130*4 + 280 = 800 ppm. Another 13 years is another factor of 2^(13/34) = 1.3, making the CO2 in 2100 130*4*1.3 + 280 = 956 ppm.
If the 1.85 °C per doubling of CO2 that has held up for 168 years continues for another 80 years, then we could expect a further rise in CO2 from today’s 410 ppm to 956 ppm to be accompanied by a rise in global mean surface temperature (land and sea together) of 1.85*log₂(956/410) = 2.26 °C.
Per decade, this comes to an average of 2.26/8 = 0.28 °C (0.51 °F) per decade. This is merely an average over those 80 years: some decades will rise more than that, some less.
But what if Figure 4 bends down sooner?
I have no idea. My confidence in what will happen if it remains straight is far greater than any confidence I could muster about the effect of it bending down.
For a more mathematical answer, bending down would break analyticity, and all bets would then be off.
A real- or complex-valued function on a given domain is said to be analytic when it is representable over its whole domain as a Taylor series that converges on that domain. In order for it to remain analytic on any extension of its domain it must continue to use the same Taylor series, which must furthermore remain convergent on that larger domain. Hence any analytic extension of an analytic function to a larger domain, if it exists, is uniquely determined by its Taylor series. This is the basis for the rich subject of analytic_continuation. Functions like addition, multiplication, exponentiation, and their inverses (subtraction, division, logarithm) where defined, all preserve analyticity.
Figure 4’s curve is analytic when modeled as a straight line. This would no longer remain the case if it started to bend down significantly
The essential contributors to centennial climate since 1850 look sufficiently like analytic functions as to raise concern when CO2 as its strongest contributor ceases to rise analytically. In particular drawdown by vegetation seems likely to respond analytically if we ignore the impact of land use changes governed by one of the planet’s more chaotic species.
So what does all this mathematical gobbledygook mean in practice? Well, it seems highly unlikely that the vegetable kingdom has been responding to rising CO2 anywhere near as fast as we have been able to raise it. While plants may well be trying to catch up with us, their contribution to drawdown is hardly likely to have kept pace.
But presumably their growth has been following CO2’s analytic growth according to some analytic function. The problem is that we know too little about that dependence to say what plants would do if our CO2 stopped growing analytically.
Le Chatelier’s principle on the other hand entails a sufficiently simple dependence that we can expect a decrease in CO2 to result in a matching decrease in drawdown attributable to chemical processes. The much greater complexity of plants is what makes their contribution the biggest unknown here. In particular if the vegetable kingdom continued to grow at only a little less than its present pace until CO2 was down to say 330 ppm, its increasing drawdown could greatly accelerate removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.
But this is only one possibility from a wide range of such possibilities.
On the assumption that Figure 4 stays straight through 2100, and Earth doesn’t get hit in the meantime by something much worse than anything since 1850 such as a supervolcano or asteroid, I feel pretty comfortable with my “Two more degrees” forecast for the 75 years 2063-2137.
But if it bends down I would not feel comfortable making any prediction at all given the above concerns. (I made essentially this point in column 4 of my poster at AGU2018 in Washington DC, “Sources of Variation in Climate Sensitivity Estimates”, http://clim8.stanford.edu/AGU/ .)
Nice argument, Mister. And now, for my guess: Less that one degree C by the end of the century. I’ll let you know where to send my winnings after I die….
Nobody’s got a human “thermostat” on the Earth’s atmosphere, and nobody’s got a crystal ball either. You can HADCRUT until you go blue in the face, but we won’t know until we get there. It’s like trying to play poker with only a quarter of the cards. Most of these temp. differences are statistical constructs only, and so minor they’re the difference between the temp. standing and bending over to tie your shoes. Hey, I’d be delighted with Carolina-style winters in New England; what’s not to like?
And any politician running on changing the weather is a free stupidity test for every American voter.
The politicians running on global warming are playing a safe game, they believe, because it makes them appear caring and is supported by the propaganda media that will draw a halo around them. It costs them nothing as they don’t change their behavior.
We could also attribute the early 20th century warming to natural processes. It seems to me that it’s the most parsimonious explanation. If you have to twist yourself into a pretzel trying to explain another cause, (rude comment redacted).
“If you have to twist yourself into a pretzel”
You should read on. That isn’t the cause that he proposes.
“However the distribution of CO2 absorption lines suggests that TCR should remain fairly constant over a wide range of CO2 levels.”
Restating the quote I had trouble with:
If I take the CO2 in 1910 as 300 ppm and that in 1950 as 311 ppm, and take the temperature change as 0.5 C, I get a totally ridiculous value for climate sensitivity.
dT = k log2(311) / log2(300)
That gives k of approx. 10.
What do you get?
My point is that CO2 doesn’t explain the temperature change between 1910 and 1950. Trying to explain it away as an underestimate of TCR doesn’t work.
Aarggh!
dT = k log2(311 / 300)
k = 0.5 / log2(311/300)
It’s approximately 0. 5 / 0.05
Where climate sensitivity (k) is expressed as degrees per doubling of CO2.
Excerpted from article:
Food for thought …. concerning ingassing/outgassing of atmospheric CO2 quantities.
Increases in World Population & Atmospheric CO2 by Decade
year — world popul. – % incr — May CO2 ppm – % incr — avg ppm increase/year
1940 – 2,300,000,000 est. ___ ____ 300 ppm est.
1950 – 2,556,000,053 – 11.1% ____ 310 ppm – 3.3% —— 1.0 ppm/year
[March 03, 1958 …… Mauna Loa — 315.71 ppm]
1960 – 3,039,451,023 – 18.9% ____ 320.03 ppm – 3.2% —— 1.0 ppm/year
1970 – 3,706,618,163 – 21.9% ____ 328.07 ppm – 2.5% —— 0.8 ppm/year
1980 – 4,453,831,714 – 20.1% ____ 341.48 ppm – 4.0% —– 1.3 ppm/year
1990 – 5,278,639,789 – 18.5% ____ 357.32 ppm – 4.6% —– 1.5 ppm/year
2000 – 6,082,966,429 – 15.2% ____ 371.58 ppm – 3.9% —– 1.4 ppm/year
2010 – 6,809,972,000 – 11.9% ____ 393.00 ppm – 5.7% —— 2.1 ppm/year
2019 – 7,714,576,923 – 11.7% ____ 414.66 ppm – 5.5% —— 2.1 ppm/year
Source CO2 ppm: ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Based on the above statistics, to wit:
Fact #1 – in the past 79 years – world population has increased 235% (5.4 billion people) – atmospheric CO2 has increased 37.3% (112 ppm) 37.3%
Fact #2 – human generated CO2 releases have been exponentially increasing every year for the past 79 years (as defined by the population increase).
Fact #3 – the burning of fossil fuels by humans has been exponentially increasing every year for the past 79 years. (as defined by the population increase).
Fact #4 – a biyearly or seasonal cycling of an average 6 ppm of atmospheric CO2 has been steadily and consistently occurring each and every year for the past 61 years (as defined by the Mauna Loa Record and Keeling Curve Graph).
Fact #5 – atmospheric CO2 has been steadily and consistently increasing at an average yearly rate of 1 to 2 ppm per year for each and every year for the past 61 years (as defined by the Mauna Loa Record and Keeling Curve Graph).
Conclusions:
Given the above statistics, it appears to me to be quite obvious that for the past 79 years (or the 61 years of the Mauna Loa Record) there is absolutely no direct association or correlation between:
#1 – increases in atmospheric CO2 ppm and world population increases:
#2 – the biyearly or seasonal cycling of an average 6 ppm of atmospheric CO2 and world population increases;
#3 – the biyearly or seasonal cycling of an average 6 ppm of atmospheric CO2 and the exponential yearly increase in fossil fuel burning;
#4 – the average yearly increase in atmospheric CO2 of 1 to 2 ppm and the exponential increase in fossil fuel burning;
#5 – there is absolutely, positively no, per se, “human (anthropogenic) signature” to be found anywhere within the 61 year old Mauna Loa Atmospheric CO2 Record.
#6 – this composite graph of 1979-2013 uah satellite global lower atmosphere temperatures and yearly May max CO2 accumulations is literal proof that green growing/decomposing NH biomass and/or near surface air temperatures have little to no effect whatsoever on atmospheric CO2 ppm quantities.
Plotted CO2 data on above graph, to wit:
1979 – 2019 YTD CO2 — “Max” ppm @ mid-May (5) … “Min” ppm @ end of Sept (9)
year mth “Max” _ yearly increase ____ mth “Min” ppm
1979 _ 6 _ 339.20 …. + ….. El Niño ___ 9 … 333.93
1980 _ 5 _ 341.47 …. +2.27 _________ 10 … 336.05
1981 _ 5 _ 343.01 …. +1.54 __________ 9 … 336.92
1982 _ 5 _ 344.67 …. +1.66 El Niño __ 9 … 338.32 El Chichón
1983 _ 5 _ 345.96 …. +1.29 _________ 9 … 340.17
1984 _ 5 _ 347.55 …. +1.59 __________ 9 … 341.35
1985 _ 5 _ 348.92 …. +1.37 _________ 10 … 343.08
1986 _ 5 _ 350.53 …. +1.61 _________ 10 … 344.47
1987 _ 5 _ 352.14 …. +1.61 __________ 9 … 346.52
1988 _ 5 _ 354.18 …. +2.04 __________ 9 … 349.03
1989 _ 5 _ 355.89 …. +1.71 La Nina __ 9 … 350.02
1990 _ 5 _ 357.29 …. +1.40 __________ 9 … 351.28
1991 _ 5 _ 359.09 …. +1.80 __________ 9 … 352.30
1992 _ 5 _ 359.55 …. +0.46 El Niño __ 9 … 352.93 Pinatubo
1993 _ 5 _ 360.19 …. +0.64 __________ 9 … 354.10
1994 _ 5 _ 361.68 …. +1.49 __________ 9 … 355.63
1995 _ 5 _ 363.77 …. +2.09 _________ 10 … 357.97
1996 _ 5 _ 365.16 …. +1.39 _________ 10 … 359.54
1997 _ 5 _ 366.69 …. +1.53 __________ 9 … 360.31
1998 _ 5 _ 369.49 …. +2.80 El Niño __ 9 … 364.01
1999 _ 4 _ 370.96 …. +1.47 La Nina ___ 9 … 364.94
2000 _ 4 _ 371.82 …. +0.86 La Nina ___ 9 … 366.91
2001 _ 5 _ 373.82 …. +2.00 __________ 9 … 368.16
2002 _ 5 _ 375.65 …. +1.83 _________ 10 … 370.51
2003 _ 5 _ 378.50 …. +2.85 _________ 10 … 373.10
2004 _ 5 _ 380.63 …. +2.13 __________ 9 … 374.11
2005 _ 5 _ 382.47 …. +1.84 __________ 9 … 376.66
2006 _ 5 _ 384.98 …. +2.51 __________ 9 … 378.92
2007 _ 5 _ 386.58 …. +1.60 __________ 9 … 380.90
2008 _ 5 _ 388.50 …. +1.92 La Nina _ 10 … 382.99
2009 _ 5 _ 390.19 …. +1.65 _________ 10 … 384.39
2010 _ 5 _ 393.04 …. +2.85 El Niño __ 9 … 386.83
2011 _ 5 _ 394.21 …. +1.17 La Nina _ 10 … 388.96
2012 _ 5 _ 396.78 …. +2.58 _________ 10 … 391.01
2013 _ 5 _ 399.76 …. +2.98 __________ 9 … 393.51
2014 _ 5 _ 401.88 …. +2.12 __________ 9 … 395.35
2015 _ 5 _ 403.94 …. +2.06 __________ 9 … 397.63
2016 _ 5 _ 407.70 …. +3.76 El Niño __ 9 … 401.03
2017 _ 5 _ 409.65 …. +1.95 __________ 9 … 403.38
2018 _ 5 _ 411.24 …. +1.59 __________9 … 405.51
2019 _ 5 _ 414.66 …. +3.42 __________9 … 408.50
La Nina – El Nino index: https://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm
Commie the real answer is who cares for speculation we are going to at least 480 ppm, that is locked in and lets see when we get there.
Good. We need the extra food crops.
Thanks for all the plankton.
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First of all, I’ll admit this article as most articles on this site is way over my head. I can follow Tony Heller but not the complexity of the arguments here.
I vaguely recall my college textbooks in chemistry and physics. They seemed easy by comparison to “climate science”. There seemed no doubt in the minds of those authors. Those sciences could be tested and numeric answers were usually with multiple decimal places, confidently.
In the above article, what causes me to scratch my head are words that indicate a lack of such confidence. For example, I count the word “if” 38 times. I see the word “but” 35 times. I see the word “estimate” 8 times. I doubt you could even find those words in a chemistry or physics textbook- leaving me to doubt what anybody says about climate science being a “settled” science. It can’t be tested- it can’t be proven, but sure can be argued fanatically by all sides. Perhaps everyone should just agree that nobody knows. Models get created that are often far fetched but politicians want to base major policies on them.
Personally, I doubt there is an existential crisis happening or about to happen. It’s a bit warmer and I say, “so what”. It may negatively effect some people but not all- it may effect positively many people. All sorts of things like wars, famines, plagues have effected people over the ages. Not really much we can do about it- and I doubt we should start spending trillions of dollars to change everything for a really big unknown, possible problem. Hey, I’m no scientist- just a forester since 1973. I’ve worked outdoors all these years in Massachusetts in very hot and very cold weather. I don’t sense that a POSSIBLE degree C increase in temperature is anything to get hysterical about. Hey, when I was young- I and most others my age were hysterical about Viet Nam because we didn’t want to go there- the problem was more pressing. I suggest for many people- the entire issue is getting tiring.
By the way, my comments here are not a criticism of the current article- as I said, it’s way over my head but I thought I’d offer some thoughts from somebody who doesn’t know the truth about the climate but who thinks the discussions and the science are all a bit dubious- we should give it a break and move on to more pressing concerns like avoiding more wars and fixing crumbling infrastructure. But I do think it’s wise to use less energy of all kinds- to save money, not the climate. And, I sure hate to see solar and wind “farms” and all the uncounted environmental damage they cause. It ticks me off that those who worship such “farms” totally ignore the damage the land. Here in Massachusetts, about 3,000 acres of forest have been destroyed and converted into solar “farms” in just the past 15 years. Makes me, as a forester, sick.
..spot on
“I doubt you could even find those words in a chemistry or physics textbook”
Many of those “solutions” are approximate (depending on measurement errors) also. In the physics realm there is this by a physicist no less (entire downloadable PDF is worth a read):
“Nevertheless, as a physicist travels along his (in this case) career, the hairline cracks in the edifice become more apparent, as does the dirt swept under the rug, the fudges and the wholesale swindles, with the disconcerting result that the totality occasionally appears more like Bruegel’s Tower of Babel as dreamt by a modern slumlord, a ramshackle structure of compartmentalized models soldered together into a skewed heap of explanations as the whole jury-rigged monstrosity tumbles skyward.
It would be surprising if the strange world of subatomic and quantum physics did not lead the field in mysteries, conceptual ambiguities and paradoxes, and it does not disappoint. The standard model of particle physics, for instance (the one containing all the quarks and gluons), has no fewer than 19 adjustable parameters, about 60 years after Enrico Fermi exclaimed, “With four parameters I can fit an elephant!” Suffice to say, “beauty” is a term not frequently applied to the standard model.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275701468_The_Man_Behind_the_Curtain
The problem we have is that science has been formulated on a basis of
Observation–> Hypothesis–>Experiment–> Theory. The scientist makes observations. Then they make an hypothesis that might explain those observation. Then they do an experiment(s) and modify the theory if needed. Repeat ad infinitum or die, allowing another hypothesis to enter the race.
The problem for climate science is trying to make enough observations to form an hypothesis. With processes that appear to go from seconds to multi-millenia they are impossible to observe so the whole science is based on trying to evaluate different conjectures.
CO2 was jumped on for political purposes, not science. In 2100 we will have about 21 centuries of data of highly variable quality. But at least there should be enough to prove or disprove the CO2 theory. The results will interesting but probably not useful since the original problem was a political one, not a science problem.
If you are following heller, you are being fooled.
Thank you Steven.
Oh, Steven, knock it off for a bit, please. Or, you could try to factually disprove Heller but that would take work and, in the end, be Impossible, wouldn’t it?
I would follow Heller, as well as and after doing my own research, than an English major any day.
Trolling with idiot comments like this has led to some posters being banned purely for posting idiot comments like this. Kudos to Anthony and CtM for not giving this clown “prince” of “climate science” the ability to boast that he was banned from WUWT – and for posting real science as, no doubt, his cognitive dissonance would have him believe.
Indeed, according to the climate prophets, following actual data and historical facts – as does Heller, most of actual scientists and informed people – is the worst thing to do if one wants to belong to the climate church.
Climate prophets’ motto :
“Ignorance is Strength”.
“If you are following heller, you are being fooled.”
If you follow Mr. Heller, you learn you are being fooled by the Global Temperature Data Manipulators. Steven happens to be associated with the Data Manipulators, so naturally he attacks Heller whenever he can, although his attacks are weak like the one above, and that would be because Steven cannot refute what Heller says so he snipes from the sidelines.
Steven, can you explain why the U.S. surface temperature record has been bastardized into a Hockey Stick profile?
Here’s what Heller shows, an unmodified U.S. surface temperature chart (actual temperature readings) followed by a bastardized U.S. surface temperature chart (a computer representation of temperature):
US Tmax Raw chart compared to bastardized Tmax:
Yeah, I know Steven won’t have a reply. I’m doing this for the benefit of those who are not familiar with the issues discussed here.
The Climategate Temperature Data Manipulators and their Spawn set out to make a case that CO2 was dangerous and was overheating the Earth to the point where it has never been hotter than today in recorded history. There was just one problem with the effort to promote this fiction: The historic regional temperature records from all over the world showed that temperatures were just as warm in the 1930’s as they are today, which proves that the Earth is *not* experiencing unprecedented warming due to CO2 or for any other reason.
So the Temperature Data Manipulators conspired (see the Climategate emails) to change the historic temperature records of the Earth and manipulate them so that it appears that the Earth’s temperatures have been steadily climbing for decade after decade and now show to be at the warmest temperatures in human recorded history. And they claim all this unprecedented warmth is caused by CO2.
But, according to the actual data, the temperatures were just as warm in the 1930’s, and even the IPCC says CO2 was not a significant factor in the 1930’s warming, yet the warming of today is no warmer than the 1930’s although CO2 has steadily increased in the atmosphere for all that time, and this goes to show that CO2 is *not* a significant factor in the present day warming, either.
The Temperature Data Manipulators bastardized the historic surface temperature charts of the world and now they are even bastardizing the U.S. surface temperature chart and even the charts of various U.S. States. Their arrogance knows no bounds.
Tony Heller explains all the tricks the Temperature Data Manipulators use. He is an invaluable part of the skeptic scene. Steven doesn’t like that.
says ground zero for hoof and mouth disease…..
If you listen to anything Mosher has to say, you are being lied to. His mentor is Professor Richard Muller who knows that climate change is a hoax but dares not say it because all his funding depends on it. Muller once made a speech denouncing Michael Mann as a charlatan and vowed never to read another paper of his. Michael Mann is the premier bedwetting climate scientist. If you know that Michael Mann is a charlatan, then you know that all of climate change is a house of cards.
Yes, Heller says we are being fooled by NASA/NOAA, etc.
Joseph Zorzin,
Ditto and thank you!
Two degrees? Wonderful. Please happen.
Where are all the climatistas? Vacationing in warm places.
Lots to disagree with here, but I do applaud starting to talk about the temperature now versus the warming from now. This is one of the big deceptions of the alarmist crowd is that they obscure what they are talking about. There’s nothing wrong with the temperature we have “now”. When I mention that, I get screaming about species collapse to which I calmly reply, name ONE. That usually gets the “deni*r” lable or similar thrown at me and discussion over.
But one issue raised in this article is one I’ve never thought of before. What happens if current CO2 fertilization enhances the biosphere to the point that when (if!) we ever stop using fossil fuels, the bulked up biosphere is then big enough to draw the CO2 levels down to plant starvation levels. What a hoot of an alarmist article THAT would make!
>This is one of the big deceptions of the alarmist crowd is that they obscure what they are talking about.
There is indeed no point entering any discussion before – and this I’ve now learned and practice – sorting out: are we a climate warrior? What is meant by this, what is meant by climate change? – and denial? – respectively. Fundamental really.
…2 degrees in 80 years……when we had the most effect already and not hardly 1
ha
The casual assumption, without evidence, that plants can’t keep up with human-caused CO2 is poor. Human-caused CO2 is just 5% of total CO2 emissions. It would need just 1/100th of an inch of extra topsoil to consume it.
humans are 100% of the increase. plants have to keep up with the increase.
”plants have to keep up with the increase.”
They don’t have to do anything of the sort.
Not if the oceans are warming as much as your co-religionists claim.
Even you should know that warming oceans outgas CO2.
Steven Mosher,
That statement is BS and you know it.
Nature adds more CO2 to the atmosphere everyday, than mankind could ever do. Oceans outgassing CO2, volcanoes releasing CO2, animals and insects exhaling CO2, plants decomposing and releasing CO2, etc.
The natural carbon cycle involves emission and sequestration of CO2 throughout the year. The net effect has been a broadly constant level of CO2 (peaks in spring; troughs in autumn) in the atmosphere for the past several thousand years.
Though small in comparison , human emissions have disturbed this balance and have caused a steady increase in atmospheric CO2 levels since around 1850.
Because the natural cycle doesn’t differentiate between natural and human CO2 the proportion of ‘human’ CO2 in the atmosphere will over time be the same as the proportions emitted each year (i.e. about 4%).
However, both the 4% human and 96% natural CO2 will increase in concentration even though the proportions will remain constant.
John Dilks, Mosher’s statement is not BS.
Mosher & Finn are right. In fact, humans are responsible for MORE than “100%” of the CO2 increase seen in the Mauna Moa measurement record, because natural sinks exceed natural sources by a large margin. Nature is busily removing about 2.5 ppmv/year, net, but mankind adds about 5 ppmv/year. The result is that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing an average of about 2.5 ppmv/year.
However, saying “plants have to keep up with the increase” in CO2 is an odd statement. It’s like saying someone will have to keep up with a 45% increase in his salary. Please, please don’t throw me into that briar patch, Brer Fox!
It’s not like the plants are struggling. Plants love the increase in CO2.
They’ll love it even more when we increase it even more. Mankind has managed to raise outdoor CO2 levels by between 130 and 135 ppmv, so far. Commercial greenhouse operators typically use CO2 generators to raise daytime CO2 levels in greenhouses by about an additional 1100 ppmv (to roughly 1500 ppmv), because doing so makes the plants much healthier and more productive.
“humans are 100% of the increase. plants have to keep up with the increase.”
..for the first time in the history of the planet…………/snark
Steven: Warming oceans, ( think warming Coca Cola) probably produced most of the added CO2 – which became significant since ~1950.
More nonsense with ZERO proof as usual.
Steven Mosher:
humans are 100% of the increase. plants have to keep up with the increase. –>
humans + all other fauna are 100% of the increase. plants, flora is blooming keeping up with the increase.
oh jesus Steven Mosher !
I sincerely hope those 2 meagre degrees will be enough to hold off the encroaching cold, to make the coming ice age a little more bearable.
Well, at least for my lifetime….
What warming?
‘Warmer’ does not mean that the earth is or has been warming. See:
https://youtu.be/b1cGqL9y548?t=16m0s at 16:00 – 24:00
Scientists have been searching for the missing heat in diverse simulations without a consensus.
This is a nice video! Very interesting!
But the author neglected the possibility that our lower than expected CC might be mostly due to clouds reflecting incoming shortwave (cooling) and only a little due to additional CO2 (warming)…making the usual assumption that CO2 is the sole driver of long term average temperature, when any meteorologist can tell on a tephigram what temperature and humidity will cause clouds to form….and any chemical engineer can tell you that 1 C warmer water at 15 C drives 7% more water molecules into the air above it….clouds anyone?
2100 is 9 solar cycles away, a long time for things to change and remain the same.
From the article: “HadCRUT4”
HadCRUT4 is bogus, bastardized surface temperature data. The way to spot a fraudulent Hockey Stick chart all you have to do is look at where the 1930’s is located in relation to the present day temperatures. If the 1930’s do not show to be just as warm as our present temperatures, then you are looking at a fraudulent Hockey Stick chart.
Why would someone use fraudulent data to do science? The results you get are meaningless.
The 1930s were not as warm as “our present temperatures”. specific regions might have been close but most of the earth was cooler in the 1930s than now.
You can believe that but that all it is a belief, you have no proof no one does. All I know the climate world wide the weather was absolutely nuts in the 30s more high temperature reading world wide. Mega droughts and cold winters. Of course the tropics being the tropics did do much, like the tropics haven’t change a degree C in last several million years. So if you want to call that not changing fine, it a lie but as you should well know the climate change shows up in the middle and upper latitudes.
You can believe that but that all it is a belief, you have no proof no one does.
What proof do you want?
All I know the climate world wide the weather was absolutely nuts in the 30s
How do you ‘know’ this? What evidence do you have?
It sounds like you need to go spend some time at Tony Heller’s website.
I have a lot of regional surface temperature charts that show the 1930’s to be as warm as today. I doubt you can come up with one that shows anything much different. Can you produce an unmodified Hockey Stick-looking historic chart? I’m betting you can’t. I haven’t seen any.
The answer to the real temperature profile of the Earth is not a made-up computer model but taking the actual temperatures and seeing what they tell us. What they tell us is that all unmodified regional charts show it was as warm in the 1930’s as it is today. They all say the same thing. They all resemble the unmodified U.S. surface temperature chart. None of them resemble the fraudulent “hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick chart. The Hockey Stick chart is made up out of the fevered minds of human-caused climate change promoters and does not resemble reality.
The real temperature profile of the Earth where it was just as warm in the 1930’s as it is today tells us CO2 is not a danger to the Earth or the people that live on it. That’s why the Data Manipulators tried to hide the truth. They want everyone to be scared and are willing to lie about it to make that happen.
Here are a few unmodified regional surface temperature charts from around the world which show the 1930’s to be just as warm as the temperatures today. There is no unprecedented warmth today, we have been here before. CO2 is not the control knob of the Earth’s climate if you go by actual temperature readings.
Tmax charts
US chart:
China chart:
India chart:
Norway chart:
Australia chart:
And then we have the U.S. surface temperature chart which is representative of all the other regional surface temperature charts from around the world showing the 1930’s to be as warm as current temperatures.
On the U.S. surface temperature chart (Hansen 1999) the warmth of the 1930’s can clearly be seen and the depths of the cooling of the 1970’s, the time period when some climate scientists were thinking the Earth might be heading into another ice age, can also clearly be seen.
Notice that on the bastardized Hockey Stick chart below both the 1930’s warmth and the 1970’s chill have been changed from being significant to being insignificant, so the bastardizers of the global surface temperature record have drastically changed the temperature record to make it conform to their human-caused climate change narrative. In order to cool the 1930’s they also had to warm the 1970’s in their computers and that’s why the 1970’s cooling period has practically disappeared from the official temperature record, the Bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick. The bastardizers are manipulating the temperature record and trying to manipulate the thinking of the public.
U.S. surface temperature chart, Hansen 1999:
Bogus, bastardized modern-era Hockey Stick chart:
Is this article based on the assumption that CO2 is causing most of the warming? We should not all the fill ins being done around the world as well as the adjustments to raw data by NOAA/NASA.
So are we still doomed, or more doomed, or less doomed?
more less doomed. ’till now doomsdays stayed local – doomsday book, The Doomsday Cow, Armageddon already happened and time went on.
less’ say we’re more less doomed. thx
“The figure of 1.85 for TCR holds not only on the right and left but the middle as well.
YUP
CO2 is a good proxy for all centennial anthropogenic radiative forcing including aerosols.
YUP, we found this in 2012
The filter removes essentially everything except HadCRUT4, ARF, and solar irradiance.
YUP
The peak-to-peak influence on GMST of the evident 130-year oscillation in TSI is 0.07*5/3 = 0.12 °C. (The centennial filter attenuates the 130-year oscillation to 3/5 of its amplitude, compensated for by multiplying by 5/3 to estimate the actual amplitude.) Not only is the Sun not a big deal for climate, that 130-year oscillation makes its influence predictable several decades into the future.
YUP
The only thing I take issue with is your analysis of RCP 8.5
instead of working with c02 you should work in watts of forcing. take TOTAL FORCING from 1900 to today. Now project it to the future:
what do you get? about 9Watts.
the question is are there enough FF to get us to 9 watts.
Nice work and the kind of different take I would expect from you Vaughn
“FF” ?
Wow, you agree with people who agree with you.
Thanks for that. Longer than usual but even more pointless.
Steve, I can’t replicate the 9W/m² forcing total(in 2100?) How did you estimate this? If one calculates the trend 1900….2018 ( at this year the ERFtot was 2.8 W/m² according to L/C18 forcing data) and extrapolates one gets 9W/m² / 2 .
There is no CO2 signal in ocean sheltered, low humidity, long term, highest quality weather station data. The 1930s are just as warm as currently.
Funny about that..
CO2 either does nothing or there was some mystery warming in the 1910 to 1940 period that was placed there by a climate joker to make fun of SMs “physics”. I would hate to think that SM is wrong..
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0958305X18756670
Steven
How many less watts where there during the LIA and what caused it?
john ferguson December 28, 2019 at 10:12 pm
“FF” ?
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oh jesus Steven Mosher !
Steven Mosher, Not only is the Sun not a big deal for climate,
– for it’s oxygen + watervapor that makes the difference,
But too you seem to be ignorant that it’s oxygen + watervapor that makes the difference.
I have a spreadsheet that builds upon this idea that we look at simple calculations of consequences to look at how policy decisions and technical changes Effect outcome.
Rcp8.5 is impossible. I could not get to 1000ppm or higher and even getting to 900 ppm creates a world with 13 trillion people each having an average income of 90k current US dollars and producing energy at 25% greater than Americans average energy use today. That’s every single human.
This requires energy production 8 times higher than today all using mainly coal. So we are to believe that temperatures have been rising 10 degrees F and during this 80 years even though the consequences were happening and we were still using coal as our primary energy source people’s standard of living rises massively and yet they are suffering enormous consequences from the temperature rise and nobody in the 80 years uses other technology. It also requires that people retain almost exclusively ICE technology. It’s absurd.
Even I would concede defeat if we see another degree or 2 and get on the Greta vandwagon. Fact is it won’t happen. I don’t know exactly what will prevent it but it’s impossible.
I agree with choosing endpoints of the analysis period to dodge ENSO spikes, but, other than that, I suggest that you should look at the longest possible period of time for which the annual CO2 forcing increase has been rapid. That will reduce the effects of “noise” on your calculations.
Here’s a log-scale graph of the CO2 trend. It is log-scale so that it reflects the logarithmically diminishing climate forcing:
https://sealevel.info/co2_logscale_with_1960_highlighted.html
There was a “knee” in that graph in the 1950s & 1960s, so before that the CO2 influence is likely to be a small part, rather than the dominant part, of the cause of temperature changes.
Here’s a graph of temperatures from 1960 through the end of 2014 (to avoid the big El Nino):
As you can see, if 54 years temperatures increased 0.4°C to 0.8°C, depending on whose global temperature index you use.
If we project that trend another 80 years we’d get another 0.59 to 1.19 °C of warming.
You might object that during the early part of that 54 year period the annual forcing increase from CO2 was less than for the last forty years or so, and that’s true. However, I would counter that projecting a linear increase in CO2 forcing for another 80 years, i.e., continued exponential increases in CO2 levels, is unrealistic. Thanks to fossil fuel resource constraints, and to negative feedbacks that are removing CO2 from the atmosphere at increasing rates, the CO2 forcing trend is almost certain to fall below linear during the 21st century. So, while the last 54 years had a flatter CO2 forcing curve at the beginning, the next 80 years will have a flatter CO2 forcing curve toward the end.
I used this sort of analysis to calculate estimates of climate sensitivity. For that work I used a generous estimate of 0.625°C of warming over the 54 year period (which is probably too high, but not wildly so). That work is here:
https://sealevel.info/sensitivity.html
The tl;dr version is that if you attribute 100% of the 0.625°C temperature increase to anthropogenic forcings, and 75% of the anthropogenic forcings to CO2, you’ll calculate a TCR estimate of 1.41°C per doubling of CO2.
I still like these posts.:
7. David Archibald shows how the effect of increasing CO2 decreases logarithmically as CO2 increases in the following:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/08/the-effectiveness-of-co2-as-a-greenhouse-gas-becomes-ever-more-marginal-with-greater-concentration/
There is also another article on the Logarithmic heating effect of CO2:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
An important item to note is that the first 20 ppm accounts for over half of the heating effect to the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, by which time carbon dioxide is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas.
Unless something changes there will not be a 2 deg increase.
Projections of stuff that hasn’t happened yet based on what we think happened. Doesn’t it make you wish you’d bought Polaroid and PanAm?
One future thing is certain: In 2020 Climate etc will still be trying to lure doubters into the IPCC fold by friendly persuasion and appeals to their skepticism. It’s what spooks do. It’s what Climate etc was made for.
So if I’m reading this correctly you’re essentially saying 1.85C sensitivity is a really good fit when you smooth to the point where all detail is lost and account for the rest with a suitably chosen attribution from solar radiation changes.
Great. But it is still a projection on the assumption that CO2 is the primary cause and furthermore that the earth’s response wont change in the future and I find that very unlikely.
CO2 is emitted from the surface but for all intents and purposes is immediately is disbursed throughout the atmosphere. Plants on the other hand can only draw down upon that which is at the surface so its pretty obvious they cant draw down as quickly as we can emit. At any moment they only see a fraction of what we’re emitting. The fact they’re drawing down about half of what we’re emitting (plus other other sinks) is astonishing to me. The earth is greening at a frenzy right now.
Mosher says
How about projecting it back into the past to explain the ice ages and MWP?
Or would you prefer to believe those were regional and there were pockets of the earth that were really cold so your average temperature math works out?
Correlation does not prove causation – that is all you have to know to debunk this article.
I can find all sorts of data and plots that seem to correlate with temperature measurements (the distorted tortured data called land temperature data anyway). None of them may have anything to do with the actual “mechanism” of climate change. And if I use them to make predictions, at least a few will likely provide a near good answer! The problem is without understanding the mechanism, I am just throwing out guesses. You can add all the fancy words you want to a guess – it doesn’t make it more valid.
It is OBVIOUS to anyone that has taken time to study climate change that CO2 is NOT the only control knob. It might be an important one for the concentrations we are dealing with, or it might not…I can’t tell. The deeper I dig into the physics of how CO2 is supposed to control the climate temperature, the more I find it a dubious claim at best. I keep coming to the Earth can become more moderate – that is it can have less temperature differences – but it doesn’t become more extreme, it becomes less.
Pretend for a moment that the Earth is this rotating spherical object in a laboratory. There is a variable light source shining on it that we can tweak upwards and downwards. We can move the object closer and further away. We can adjust it’s tilt. We can increase and decrease the openings of these shutters (clouds and however they are formed). Inside the object there is a gas that absorbs some light, but some hits the solid surface inside. We can increase and decrease the vertical circulation, and the wind speeds. There is a lot of water inside that can evaporate or move about. I am still leaving a ton out of this little thought experiment and I haven’t even considered the trace gas CO2.
All that I know with absolute conviction is that somehow that life has survived on sphere and it has never turned into a runaway warming event. This means there are negative forcings controlling the heat on the sphere – likely there are many of them.
From this article;
“So what would be an “obviously alternative” methodology? Well, the most extreme alternative I can think of to 15 years of data would be to take the whole 168 years of global annual HadCRUT4 to 2017.”
#DataGate! First ever audit of global temperature data finds freezing tropical islands, boiling towns, boats on land
http://bit.ly/33V7cmS
HadCrut4 Global Temperature, 1850 – 2018.
Absurdity everywhere in Hadley Met Centre data
Thanks to Dr John McLean, we see how The IPCC demands for cash rest on freak data, empty fields, Fahrenheit temps recorded as Celsius, mistakes in longitude and latitude, brutal adjustments and even spelling errors.
Why. Why. Why wasn’t this done years ago?
So much for that facade. How can people who care about the climate be so sloppy and amateur with the data?…
CRUTEM — HADCRUT
Climategate’s “Harry Read Me” File is a Must Read!
As another pundit said: this isn’t just the smoking gun pointing to the fraud of global warming, it’s a mushroom cloud!
http://bit.ly/2KAglcK
As you read the programmer’s comments below, remember, this is only a fraction of what he says.
– “But what are all those monthly files? DON’T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And that’s useless …” (Page 17)
– “It’s botch after botch after botch.” (18)
– “Oh, GOD, if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite.” (37)
– “As far as I can see, this renders the (weather) station counts totally meaningless.” (57)
– “COBAR AIRPORT AWS (data from an Australian weather station) cannot start in 1962, it didn’t open until 1993!” (71)
– “What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah — there is no ‘supposed,’ I can make it up. So I have : – )” (98)
– “You can’t imagine what this has cost me — to actually allow the operator to assign false WMO (World Meteorological Organization) codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially when dealing with a ‘Master’ database of dubious provenance …” (98)
– “So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option — to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations … In other words what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad …” (98-9)
It goes on but, you get the point.
Yep that about it, my brother graduated with a man who now has three science Doctorates, he runs a department for a major food corporation, his comment to my brother on how “climate scientist” operate with their data. If I did that I would get fired. My thoughts on his statement yes that true and the firings in climate science are long overdue.
Re: “Lastly I propose 1.85 °C per doubling of CO2 as a proxy for HadCRUT4’s immediate transient climate response to all anthropogenic radiative forcings, ARFs, since 1850.”
That means TCR is much less than 1.85 °C, because TCR is defined to be the response to increasing CO2 level alone, not the response to CO2 + all the other forcings which happened to have increased at the same time.
If 100% of the warming is attributed to anthropogenic causes, and 3/4 of it is attributed to CO2, and 1/4 to other anthropogenic GHGs (which I think is pretty conventional), then TCR becomes 0.75 * 1.85 = 1.39°C (which is almost identical to the 1.41°C that I got for TCR).
Sorry, I didn’t mean to shout so much. As usual, I botched a </b> tag.
Albeit my ears were overloaded 🙂 … I also made a comment at Judies following yours and I calculated the CO2 -part to 2/3, not 3/4 following the forcing data of L/C 18. This gives the TCR by it’s correctly definition from the post :1.23. Very well in coincidence with L/C 18 for HadCRUT4 (1.2).
best Frank
Surface temperature responds immediately (3 hours) to a change in forcing. Mid day, sun peaks, 3 pm, temp peaks. Todays high temperature is not the result of accumulated sun rises going back centuries. It is the result of todays peak isolation.
Cloudy day, lower peak, cloudless day, higher peak.
CO2 is no different, it adds 3 watts and it’s effect is immediate.
TCR and ECS are the same thing. And they are both low, at most 1 C, very likely half this due to existing water vapour overlap.
“TCR and ECS are the same thing.”
Simply wrong.
“CO2 is no different, it adds 3 watts and it’s effect is immediate.”
Also wrong. It adds 3.8W/m² when the content in the Atmosphere of it is doubled. And every heating has not only an immediate effect but also an delayed effect due to the thermal inertia, e.g. of the deep ocean.
It’s no enigma…
“the thermal inertia, e.g. of the deep ocean” yep an that is true and no one has a clue what going on there, anyone who claims to know is a lair. You can’t tell what going on in the oceans by random measuring it in a few thousand places mostly mid ocean and have a clue what going on.
There is no thermal inertia of the oceans when it comes to warming from CO2.
The oceans are already warmer than the air, heat cant pass to them by conduction.
Longwave cant penetrate water to any meaningful depth and cant warm the oceans by radiation.
TCR and ECS are one and the same thing. As the surface responds to an increase in forcing each day at sun rise, in a matter of hours, it does the same to CO2 forcing.
A watt is a watt. Power from CO2 is no different to power from the sun.
Are amphipods being counted as “plants”?
—————
[Some commenter whose name I didn’t save:]
This recent observation that C14 (C14 that was created by the atomic bomb testing) is making to the deepest ocean with no delay is an observational fact that disproves the CAGW team created absurdly non-physical so-called IPCC Bern model of CO2 sinks and sources and resident times.
The Bern model assumes that ocean circulation (with hundreds of years delay) is the only method for deep sequestration of CO2 in the ocean.
“The alleged long lifetime of 500 years for carbon diffusing to the deep ocean is of no relevance to the debate on the fate of anthropogenic CO2 and the “Greenhouse Effect”, because POC (particular organic carbon; carbon pool of about 1000 giga-tonnes; some 130% of the atmospheric carbon pool) can sink to the bottom of the ocean in less than a year (Toggweiler, 1990). ”
https://www.livescience.com/65466-bomb-carbon-deepest-ocean-trenches.html
============
Bomb C14 Found in Ocean Deepest Trenches
‘Bomb Carbon’ from Cold War Nuclear Tests Found in the Ocean’s Deepest Trenches
Bottom feeders
Organic matter in the amphipods’ guts held carbon-14, but the carbon-14 levels in the amphipods’ bodies were much higher. Over time, a diet rich in carbon-14 likely flooded the amphipods’ tissues with bomb carbon, the scientists concluded.
Ocean circulation alone would take centuries to carry bomb carbon to the deep sea.
But thanks to the ocean food chain, bomb carbon arrived at the seafloor far sooner than expected, lead study author Ning Wang, a geochemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou, said in a statement.
Thank you, Roger Knights, for this information.
It appears that the quote (beginning “The alleged long lifetime of 500 years…”) is from:
Segalstad, Tom V. (1998). Carbon cycle modelling and the residence time of natural and anthropogenic atmospheric CO2: on the construction of the “Greenhouse Effect Global Warming” dogma. In Bate, R. (Ed.): “Global Warming: The Continuing Debate“, European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF), Cambridge, England (ISBN 0952773422), pages 184-219, 1998.
This is the (very interesting!) Toggweiler 1990 paper to which Segalstad referred:
Toggweiler, J R., 1990: Bombs and ocean carbon cycles. Nature, 347, 122-123.
I’m sorry but while this analysis looks good it has one basic flaw. The same basic flaw most all climate studies seem to have.
Most temperature readings in the 20th century, and especially back into the 1800’s, simply do not provide more than a units digit in precision, plus/minus 0.5deg. Yet it seems endemic in most of these type studies to try and project this into a precision out to the tenth or hundredth of a degree.
You simply cannot average physical readings of temperature and gain significant digits. Doing so violates all the rules for analyzing physical data. I know that many mathematicians and statisticians think you *can* do this but it is just becomes “data in, garbage out” when you do so. It’s mathematical trickery and sleight of hand.
How do you get an anomaly of 0.1deg when you can only read to the nearest half degree? The entire Fig 1 data, from -0.2deg to +0.3 degree is indistinguishable physically for most of the 20th century. You truly do not know where in that interval the true value of the temperature actually lies. The entire curve could be flat or even descending, you simply don’t know. And no amount of averaging and or even calculating the average out to 100 digits will not change that fact.
I implore each and every reader of this forum to go study up on the rules for significant digits. They were drummed into me by my engineering professors 50 years ago. Do they not teach this any more?
Nope. Error, sources of error as systematic or random, propagation of error all appear to be unknown concepts to the kids I meet coming out of college.
…giving the formula ARF = 1.85*log ₂(CO2) for all anthropogenic radiative forcing. The proof is in the pudding: it seems to work.
Since CO2 follows SST, there is no point to such an obvious curve-fitting exercise. CO2 doesn’t add or store heat to the climate.
The entire exercise reproduces built-in bias towards CO2 warming, hence it’s circular thinking.
God awful ludicrous article. Ardent luke warmers appear to have one thing in common with the thermageddon clisci set. They display and employ mathematical knowledge (magnified by Matlab and Excel) brutishly, excessively, confidently and inappropriately.
Most now are aware of the concept of garbage in, garbage out concerning computer analysis, though, in MS climate science there still is a devotional reverence for the “findings” and “experimental results” based on ‘data’ that has itself been tortured by mathematics and bias.
Mathematics, too, will do your bidding and give you answers that have no inderpinning in reality, like those in the above article.
Unintelligently used statistics is the sixteen pound hammer of mainstream climate science and one reason why not one of the hundreds of predictions of climate disaster has come to pass over the 40 yrs of strident forecasting.
Judith Curry is a courageous, honorable scientist who suffered the consequences of diverging from the mainstream Climate Synod. But even she is a 100% certain that it can’t be a cooler world by 2100.
In regard to prediction for 2063-2137 or average temperature by 2100 AD, one thing is for certain, we will still be in an Ice Age.
We have been in a Ice Age for millions of year, and in the last million years, has been coolest times in this Ice Age.
A Ice Age is also called an Icehouse climate, but I prefer to called an icebox climate. But anyhow no one can argue that we not in an Ice Age, though one argue about whether we living in the coolest Ice Age that has ever existed on Earth.
For instance, many claim that Earth endured global climate called Snowball Earth, and it’s argued that were snowball climates a few or several hundred million years ago.
An Ice Age is defined by having polar ice caps/ice sheets and a cold ocean. And of course we have ice caps and a cold ocean- and we in the interglacial period of this millions of years of an Ice Age.
And entire ocean average temperature has been in range of about 1 to 5 C during these millions of years. And if the ocean were to get warmer than 5 C, one might argue whether the ocean is still cold enough to count as being in an icebox climate.
It seems it be hard to argue if one had 5 C ocean and didn’t have polar ice caps, that we were still in an Ice Age. Or an Ice Age is defined by both these factors.
But it seems one have ocean which was 5 C, and might take while to melt the polar ice caps. And it’s possible that one ice cap might melt and the other {probably Antarctica[ could remain quite cold and frozen.
But it seems if one ice cap melted and the ocean was 5 C or warmer, that one could easily say that we leaving the Ice Age {and perhaps centuries or thousands of years later determine, that instead of leaving we were returning to the Ice Age.
Now, we don’t define an Ice Age by the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere, but in our millions of years of our Ice Age, the CO2 levels have been {and still are} at dramatically low levels.
One might imagine that the low levels of CO2 was factor causing us to be in an Ice Age, but most people would say the Ice Age caused CO2 levels to be lower, and what caused the Ice Age was geological changes of the Earth surface, such plate tectonic movement making Antarctica be at the south pole. But also many other types geological changes.
In terms of warming within 2063-2137 time period or by 2100, it seems the top portion of the ocean, say top 1000 meters, needs to warm up a bit. And if this significant portion of the ocean warms up, the result will increase in global air temperature. And over last couple decade, we measured this part of the ocean and it is warming. Though I will note there are “studies” indicating some deeper portions of the oceans have been cooling.
Our entire ocean average temperature is currently about 3.5 C. And it is commonly said that 90% of the oceans is about 3 C or colder.
Despite some deeper water cooling, it seems to me that over last century or so, the entire ocean average temperature has been increasing.
Anyhow, it’s said that about 90% of “global warming” is heating the entire ocean.
And if this was not the reality of how earth temperatures increase, but instead all the “warming” were to somehow only heat the atmosphere, the world would be quite hot.
Now that is very twisted way to look at it, it not the way the world works.
Global warming is basically mixing the heat of the ocean waters- less this happens, the less global warming.
Or we have cold water falling in polar regions, if not warming the ocean enough to at least balance the ocean cooling, the world’s average temperature gets colder.
Again I don’t understand all the math and science Mr. Pratt has provided us. I’m sure it makes some sense to many of the readers here at WUWT.
My problem is that neither him or Dr. Curry address the important issue at hand. CAGW. Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. The alarmists have been screeching at us for a couple of decades that we are all doomed if the average global temperature rises more than 2 degrees centigrade from what it was in pre industrial times. That is what is important, is the earth and mankind doomed to catastrophe if the average global temperature rises .5 or.9 centigrade in the next eight decades. If we are not all doomed then what is all the fuss about?
Considering that we were coming out of the little ice age in pre industrial times I just don’t see the problem. Will we hit the 2 degree increase? I’m sure we will and I am also sure that the earth will be fine and so will we.
–Considering that we were coming out of the little ice age in pre industrial times I just don’t see the problem. Will we hit the 2 degree increase? I’m sure we will and I am also sure that the earth will be fine and so will we.–
I think over last hundred years, the world has been recovering from the Little Ice Age. And over last 100 year global temperature has increased by about 1 C.
And currently, I think the global average temperature is about 15 C and during the Little Ice Age, the global average temperature was closer to 14 C.
But an aspect of global average temperature is that Southern hemisphere is about 1 C cooler than Northern Hemisphere and possible this imbalance will continue to 2100 AD. Or this imbalance has known about for more than hundreds and I know of no reason it will change one way or the other in next 80 years. Also many argue the Little Ice Age was mostly cooling of the Northern Hemisphere { I don’t think it was only cooling of Northern Hemisphere, but maybe mostly cooling of Northern Hemisphere.
I think it’s possible that by 2100 that the global average temperature could be 16 C though also possible it remains around 15 C. And also possible there a slightly larger or smaller imbalance of the hemispheres.
Now, it seems I would prefer .5 C of global warming rather than .5 C of global cooling, and seems to warming of last several decades has been a good thing, and I don’t think it’s likely global temperature will lower by .5 C before 2100 AD, it seems as unlikely global temperature will be more than 16 C or global temperature will increase more than 1 C before 2100.
But global average temperature is mostly the average temperature of the surface of the entire ocean, and that average is about 17 C. Or the tropical ocean is about 26 C and the rest of the ocean average temperature is about 11 C. And to increase the average global temperature by 1 C is mostly about warming the 60% of ocean outside of the tropics or increase the 11 C average temperature. And 11 C or even 15 C is not very warm.
Now ocean average surface is about 17 C and average land surface is about 10 C. And add those together and get about 15 C for global average temperature.
I think there is good change the arctic ocean become ice free or very close to ice free in the arctic summer by the year 2100 AD. I don’t think that would a serious problem, but it could the most dramatic climate change that occurs.
But seems we could more sea ice, rather than less, and that would worse than ice free arctic {probably, kill polar bears, which are currently booming in population}
The point is I just don’t see a catastrophe coming our way. If we aren’t facing a catastrophe what on earth is all the fuss about?
Heres the trick. You can put radiated energy through the surface of water but not physical heat. You need a bucket of water and a heat gun. Try it for yourself.
In periods of low solar activity, ionization of the lower stratosphere increases, which leads to an increase in the temperature of the lower stratosphere in high latitudes and cooling of the surface in winter at medium latitudes.
“Carbon-14 is produced in the upper layers of the troposphere and the stratosphere by thermal neutrons absorbed by nitrogen atoms. When cosmic rays enter the atmosphere, they undergo various transformations, including the production of neutrons.
The highest rate of carbon-14 production takes place at altitudes of 9 to 15 km (30,000 to 49,000 ft) and at high geomagnetic latitudes.
Production rates vary because of changes to the cosmic ray flux caused by the heliospheric modulation (solar wind and solar magnetic field), and due to variations in the Earth’s magnetic field.
The atmospheric half-life for removal of 14CO2 has been estimated to be roughly 12 to 16 years in the northern hemisphere. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14
“On the assumption that Figure 4 stays straight through 2100, and Earth doesn’t get hit in the meantime by something much worse than anything since 1850 such as a supervolcano or asteroid, I feel pretty comfortable with my “Two more degrees” forecast for the 75 years 2063-2137.”
OK – answers the question “will Planet Earth get uninhabitable 12+ resp. 75+ years from now” with – NO.
Well done, thx !