April 7th, 2020 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
The COVID-19 disease spread is causing a worldwide shutdown in economic activity as business close, airlines cancel flights, and people shelter in their homes. For example, there was a 28% decline in global commercial air traffic in March 2020 compared to March of last year.
Last month I described a simple method for removing the large seasonal cycle from the Mauna Loa CO2 data, and well as the average effects from El Nino and La Nina (the removal is noisy and imperfect), in an effort to capture the underlying trend in CO2 and so provide a baseline to compare future months’ measurements too.
What we are looking for is any evidence of a decline in the atmospheric CO2 content that would be strong enough to attribute to the economic downturn. As can be seen, the latest CO2 data show a slight downturn, but it’s not yet out of the ordinary compare to previous month-to-month downturns.
I personally doubt we will see a clear COVID-19 effect in the CO2 data in the coming months, but I would be glad to be proved wrong. As I mentioned last month, those who view the economic downturn as an opportunity to reduce atmospheric CO2 would have to wait many years — even decades — before we would see the impact of a large economic downturn on global temperatures, which would occur at great cost to humanity, especially the poor.
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Read the graph, for X!#% sake!
as a hobbyist, I have done an investigation into the CO2 warming thing, looking at it from a completely different angle, here
https://1drv.ms/w/s!At1HSpspVHO9pwx0EPc_q0yoFNKR?e=kE8DTl
I would very much appreciate any comment.
I didn’t look at your calculation after you mentioned Weins displacement. Weins displacement refers to blackbodies ie solids and liquids (non-gray bodies, but doesn’t matter). Gases don’t have blackbody radiation they emit and absorb in lines and don’t emit a continuous spectrum. Further analysis is therefore suspect unless you can explain why you used Wein at all. I’m not trying to discourage you.
To give you a background as to how I arrived at an analysis of the spectrum of CO2, just click on my name to read my comprehensive report on the matter.
CO2 levels are higher than the benchmark period leading up to Trumps shutdown on March15. Thus we can be confident that higher CO2 is leading to the reduction in new COVID across Europe.
Monckton has established this methodology in several recent posts here on WUWT.
As a serf, you are quite correct in tugging your forelock before a lord.
That sounds like an ad homonym attack to me. The resort of those who do not have a valid argument.
Richard. I suggest you look up what ‘ad hominem’ means .
If you read Greg’s comment again you will notice that he was making a joke about higher CO2 levels reducing Covid in Europe.
I wasn’t insulting Greg at all.
Henry,
It looks like you get .0768 EV per molecule from the energy of about a photon in the center of the planets radiated spectrum (about 10u). You seem to be considering the effect of only 1 photon per second per molecule over 60 years.
Regarding Alex’s comment about BB radiation, yes, atmospheric gases don’t ordinarily radiate as a BB, but water does, including oceans and clouds, so while atmospheric gases don’t emit BB radiation, clouds do and clouds cover 2/3 of the planet. Note that at high densities and pressures, (i.e. approaching a liquid or solid state) collisional broadening morphs line spectra into a Planck spectrum.
Understanding emitting bodies, most importantly gray body emitters, is absolutely crucial for understanding the macroscopic behavior of the planet’s energy balance. Th SB Law and COE are all you need to quantify the climate sensitivity which is the derivative of the SB Law using an emissivity established by the ratio of planet missions to surface emissions (about 0.62).
The sensitivity is then 100% deterministic as 1/(4eoT^3) which for T = 288K, e =0.62 and o=5.67E-8 becomes 0.3 C per W/m^2 or about 1.62 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing which is less than the IPCC’s lower bound of 0.4C per W/m^2 and far less than their upper limit of 1.2C per W/m^2. At the current CO2 concentration and a baseline at the end of the LIA, this results in about 0.75 W/m^2 for all CO2 emitted since the end of the LIA which coincidentally occurred just before the start of the Industrial Revolution (or was it the warming climate that resulted in the IR?).
CO2isnotevil
Thx.
What you are saying, is that the way from the top down is not exactly the same as from bottom to the top?
From a general point of view,
I could argue that if 34K warming is caused by the presence of the 0.8% GH gasses in the atmosphere (the rest, 99.2 is transmitting all radiation through)
-if I believed that-….
then
34/80 =0.426 K / per 0.01 %
= 0.426 x 0.08/0.17 =0.3K (see my Excel file)
Would you say that is correct?
What I’m saying is that you’re only counting 1 photon per CO2 molecule per second. The flux in and out of each molecule is many times more than 1 photon per second. While the rate of spontaneous emissions are low, the probability that an energized CO2 molecule will emit a photon upon absorbing another is close to 100%. Similarly, collisions often have enough energy to perturb the electron cloud of an energized CO2 molecule and cause it to emit a photon returning it to the ground state.
The 34K of warming is more than 1/2 from clouds and the rest from GHG’s, including water vapor. GHG’s between the surface and clouds are largely irrelevant to surface warming, as there’s a high probability that the cloud would be absorbing those surface emissions anyway and returning half to the surface, just as a GHG would do.
Furthermore, the 34K of warming can’t be separated from the 16K or so of cooling caused by the reflection by surface ice and clouds. Without water and weather, the Earth’s albedo would be closer to 0.1 and not the 0.3 as it is now. Note that the largest component of the GHG effect is water vapor while water is also responsible for reflection, absorption and emission by clouds. From a macroscopic perspective, water, weather, clouds, ice and GHG’s combined increase the surface temperature by only about 18K.
CO2
Thx. That would reduce that value of 0.3 to less than half….
Do you understand why I had a look at the spectrum of CO2? Click on my name to read my report that led me to see what the net effect is of one molecule.
Henry,
The effect of one molecule starting from the ground state is to
1) within microseconds, a photon at an appropriate energy will pass close enough to the GHG molecule to be captured and energize the molecule.
2) once energized, within microseconds another photon will be captured significantly increasing the probability of spontaneous emissions
3) either the molecule will spontaneously emit a photon after absorbing enough other photons, or a collision will perturb the molecule enough to cause to to emit a photon and transition to a lower energy state.
You still haven’t acknowledged the mistake in your earlier analysis. If you want to convert the effect per GHG molecule from Joules to Watt-seconds, you need to multiply the energy per transaction times the number of transactions per second per molecule. You’re multiplying it by 1 transaction per second per molecule which is why you get such a low value.
On a related topic, the idea of ‘thermalization’ is based on net energy coming or going into rotational states and then subject to sharing by collisions. This works both ways, where vibrational state energy is either given up or taken from a rotational state upon either a collision induced or spontaneous emission, so there’s no NET transfer of vibrational energy to rotational energy, thus no NET thermalization. The relatively symmetric fine structure in the absorption spectra on either side of primary lines is clear evidence of this transfer happening in both directions.
The bottom line is that GHG molecules act as a transmission line specific to absorption band photons traveling between the surface and space where the transmission line has an impedance mismatch causing about half the energy entering it from the surface to be ‘reflected’ back to the surface.
CO2
Thanks for your comments.
My thinking was always that the way for a photon from the bottom to the top is the same as from the top to the bottom. If we know the ratio’s of the warming and cooling effects, as determined by me from the absorption spectra, I was hoping for a simple comparison to determine the effect of 0.01% CO2 in W/m2 rather than relying on the ‘historical’ measurements concerning this.
I understand your argument, but if you could somehow help me on the way doing it correctly using my Excel file with the NIST data?
I should perhaps also mention that NIST ends at 2.6 um, whereas if you look in:
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/disksite/library/turnbull06a.pdf
fig 6 (bottom) there also seem to be absorption peaks from 1.4 to 2.5 um…
Apart from that there also seem to be small absorption lines in the UV which is how we identify and measure the concentration of CO2 on other planets.
That means the net warming effect could indeed be lower than 0.07 eV.
My understanding of the physics [from what I am seeing happening, especially from the Turnbull report] is that in the areas where there is absorption the photons cannot get ‘through’ the molecule. As you said, once filled – which is probably a microsecond after the light falls on the molecule – the photons have to go back; If we assume the molecule is like a sphere, I would say 62.5% in the direction of the source and 37.5% scattered in any other direction. Very much the same way as when you put your bright lights on in misty conditions.
Henry,
The way I’d do it is using MODTRAN or its equivalent. An accurate analysis is too complicated for a spreadsheet.
What I’ve found is that when CO2 is doubled from pre-industrial concentrations, the incremental surface emissions absorbed by CO2 increases by about 4 W/m^2. Numerically, this is consistent with the IPCC’s claimed forcing of 3.7 W/m^2 from doubling CO2, except that only half of the incremental absorption is returned to the surface to offset additional emissions, while they IPCC assumes that many times more than the incremental absorption will ultimately offset increased surface emissions. It could also be that the IPCC fails to account for surface emissions clouds would absorb anyway despite increased CO2 concentrations, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a good source describing the methodology used to arrive at the equivalent forcing from doubling CO2.
Next, they implicitly multiply 3.7 W/m^2 of equivalent forcing by a closed loop power gain of 4.4 to arrive at the 16.3 W/m^2 increase in the surface emissions corresponding to the nominal 3C increase claimed to arise from doubling CO2. They obfuscate what they are doing by multiplying 3.7 W/m^2 of forcing times the equivalent 0.8C per W/m^2. They hide the absurdity of a power gain of 4.4 by expressing the output as a change in temperature. The logic is that 0.8C per W/m^2 seems plausible, while 4.4 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 will raise too many questions, even though both are equivalent representations of the same amount of change, moreover; the later relationship is already linear and incorrectly assuming that approximate linearity around the mean is sufficient to apply feedback analysis is not required. Another reason this is so absurd is that all W/m^2 must affect the surface similarly and if each of the 240 W/m^2 arriving from the Sun contributed 4.4 W/m^2 to the surface emissions, the surface temperature required to emit that much power would be close to the boiling point of water.
The alarmists will cite non linearity and feedback is how the next W/m^2 can be so much more powerful than the average. Of course, the only reason it seems non linear to the alarmists is because they falsely linearized the relationship between W/m^2 and degrees and besides, the feedback analysis the alarmist rely on to massively amplify the forcing doesn’t actually apply.
0.03 deg F/yr NC dT for the last 150 yrs, dT
11,500,000,000,000,000,000 lbs atm
8.28E+16 btu gained per year
1314000 hrs = 150 yrs
63013698630 btu/hr atm gain
18274 MW
18273972603 W
5.101E+14 m^2, surface area of planet earth
3.58243E-05 W/m^2
number even smaller than Pool’s?
Looks reasonable.
You can also look at it this way: one CO2 molecule needs to share that absorbed energy with 2500 other molecules, which will be an immeasurable impact.
Eyeballing the graph it appears there was a similar decline at about the same time last year. Spring has sprung in the northern hemisphere and it’s amazing how quickly the forests green up as their flowers and leaves pop out. Just the pollen out put itself must be a sizable carbon sink yet small compared to the new burst of leaf and wood growth.
meiggs,
The asymmetry between hemispheres is why we see the signature of the N hemisphere seasons in the global response. That there is a seasonal response is clear from the seasonal sawtooth signature in the CO2 record. What many don’t recognize is that this same response is seen in the ice cores, where during ice ages, less of the planet is supporting biomass and lower CO2 concentrations will result (or are required). This can also account for the multi-century lag between temperature and CO2 concentrations since it takes centuries for forests to die off (or start up) relative to slowly varying conditions plus it takes time for CO2 to accumulate in order to support a larger biomass.
Biomass will never completely adapted to increasingly favorable conditions, plus as conditions improve, more CO2 is required to fully take advantage of the better conditions thus conditions can get worse for a while before the biomass is in exact equilibrium with the conditions after which it starts to follow the now deteriorating conditions, delayed by a few centuries. The reverse happens as conditions get worse. This is the nature of a time constant.
Henry Pool – April 8, 2020 at 10:47 pm
Any comment, ….. huh? ……. Better here that at the bottom.
Quoted excerpts by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Absolutely correct statement, …… with the results of the above “shutdown” being responsible for a horrendous decrease in anthropogenic emissions of CO2.
In other words, if the aforesaid “shutdown” has resulted in an estimated 80% decrease in human activities, ….. then one must assume that there is also an 80% decrease in anthropogenic emissions of CO2.
Well now, the appropriate place to look for the above noted “evidence” is in the Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Record which should reflect the aforesaid estimated 80% decrease in anthropogenic emissions of CO2.
So, given the fact that said “shutdown” has occurred during the Northern Hemisphere’s fall/winter (Oct-March) there should be a noticeable “decrease” in the wintertime increase in atmospheric CO2. A decrease that is equivalent to that which occurs as the result of a strong La Niña or large volcanic eruption.
Now just why would you be glad to be proved wrong, …… when you have already testified that you believe “anthropogenic CO2 emissions” are partly responsible for CO2 causing near-surface air temperature increases ……. as well as Anthropogenic Global Warming Climate Change?
A clear COVID-19 effect would cause a noticeable decrease in atmospheric CO2 ppm, which, according to your belief, would cause a decrease in globally average near-surface air temperatures, therefore confirming your belief.
Sam
You can click on my name and learn what let me to doubt that CO2 is causing any warming at all.
“This multiplied by 0.0768 gives us 0.08448 x 10^39 eV. Converted to Joules, this is 0.01352 x 10^20. This is the same as 1.352 x 10^18 Watt.seconds.”
Say what? You want to try and explain your math here, including where all the magic numbers came from?
The CO2 “Greenhouse effect”, if you buy into that hypothesis, is based on the absorption of certain wavelengths of light, and then the scattering of the re-emitted light. It increases the amount of time that energy is within a specific layer (so kind of like a heat battery). Actually most of the increase in heat is due to the estimated amount of additional water vapor that is in the air due to the slight warming of CO2 itself (positive feedback).
The Greenhouse Effect is not at all how an actual greenhouse works, but then climate activists like making up and/or using non-meaningful names and labels to make everything sound more scientific. Even if we accept it as an actual process whereby the near surface heats, it is completely overwhelmed by convection which the climate activists try to ignore. More surface heat, more convection, more rainfall, more cooling. Earth’s temperature control mechanisms are really quite amazing.
Robert of Texas – April 9, 2020 at 12:40 pm
There ya go, Robert, …… I fixed that for you.
Remove the H2O vapor from the near-surface air, such as is common in desert locales, and things cool down lickety-split as the Sun starts setting, …. even though desert locales have the same atmospheric CO2 ppm as the rest of earth’s surface.
Henry — I don’t see any obvious errors. But I think you might need to consider a broader picture. A few simple gases have no internal electric dipole at the molecular level. Theoretically, they can’t absorb or radiate electromagnetic radiation in the infrared. And that actually seems to be mostly true in practice as well as theory. As it happens, the Earth’s atmosphere is composed almost entirely of such gases — Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon. Their IR radiative activity is said to be detectable, but VERY low.
But the non-radiative gases do have mass. The molecules can move about and exchange energy via collisions — which are very frequent at least in denser the lower levels. So the atmosphere can be heated by conduction and warmed or cooled air can rise or fall (Convection). But radiation if it has any affect at all, has to be mediated by collisions of non-radiative air molecules with things that can absorb and emit radiation — the ground, water (including clouds), particulates (including ice) , and radiative gases — water vapor, CO2, etc. Thus, radiative gases would seem to have importance out of all proportion to their relative paucity in the atmosphere.
I don’t think any of that is a mystery to atmospheric scientists. But modeling it isn’t all that easy.
Where I have questions and you might as well, is with CO2. I think (maybe I’m wrong) that the strong lines in the CO2 IR spectrum come from activation of vibrational and rotational modes in the CO2 molecule. But from what I read, these are first excited states — one step above the ground state. And one apparently one has to consider (yechhh) quantum mechanics which severely constrains how much energy can be transferred to/from that transition by interaction with photons.
At this point, I’m not sure that energy gained and lost by CO2 by IR radiation can be effectively transferred to/from other gas molecules by collisions. If it can’t (at Earth atmosphere temperatures and pressures), then the energy is real enough, but it presumably represents latent heat (doesn’t show up on thermometers) rather than sensible heat.
If you choose to look into this, you’ll want to check out the “principle of equipartition”. The issue would presumably be how many “degrees of freedom” does atmospheric CO2 actually have in practice? If the answer is 3, then CO2 is probably a very minor bit player in the atmosphere. If it is 5 or 7, CO2 will possibly be an important agent in transferring atmospheric energy via radiation.
Or I could by very, very confused. It’s not like I am, or have ever been, much good at physics.
DonK
Indeed, as far as I understand it, the atmosphere only contains about 0.8% GH gasses which includes clouds – I would think. The other 99.2% lets all types of radiation through, even the back-radiation of GH gases.
CO2 has absorption in the 15um region causing back radiation to earth. That is the warming effect. As I discovered (read my recent answer to CO2is not Evil)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/08/march-2020-co2-levels-at-mauna-loa-show-no-obvious-effect-from-global-economic-downturn/#comment-2961167
there also cooling effects as CO2 also has absorption in the sun’s spectrum, namely from 1.4 to 5 um.
Study the Turnbull report and you will figure out the physics.
Henry
I think you missed my point. That’s OK, I didn’t explain it all that well. The issue isn’t the 15um, 4.3um, 2.8um CO2 absorbtion/emission peaks backradiating to Earth. Pretty much everyone agrees that happens although they don’t necessarily agree on the details and exact numbers.
What I’m concerned about is whether at Earth atmosphere temperatures and pressures, there can be significant energy interchange between CO2 molecules and molecules of the non-radiative gases. i.e. can a collision between a CO2 molecule and, for example, a Nitrogen molecule cause the CO2 molecule to enter an excited state from which it can subsequently fire off a photon and return to its initial state. And vice versa. Can a CO2 molecule absorb a photon, enter an excited state, then transfer the energy to a Nitrogen molecule during a collision?
If CO2 can effectively act as an intermediary to allow normally non-radiative gases to alter their temperature via absorption and emission of radiation by CO2, CO2 is going to have much more affect on atmospheric temperatures than if it can’t.
I’m reasonably sure that at very cold temperatures, there is no meaningful interaction between kinetic energy and radiation for any gas. And I’m equally sure that at high temperatures they can and do interact. But I have no idea what the breakover points are for CO2. Here’s a link that discusses some aspects of the situation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat_capacity#Polyatomic_gases
I agree that there is not much exchange of heat between gh gases & other gases. Most people have a wrong idea of how the gh effect actually works. They are or have been confused by the word ‘absorption’. In my days it was still called extinction. (You should be able to calculate how old I am….)
Einstein agrees with you:
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/02/16/albert-einstein-said-no-to-co2-radiative-warming-of-the-atmosphere/
DonK
I am afraid, like most people, you donot realize exactly what the warming effect is of a GHG….and how it works. Nothing to do with ‘thermalization’. That is the usual ‘education’ coming from Phil. & a few others.
I would advise you to ignore it. There is not much ‘thermalization’ because except for the 0.8% GHG’s, the gases in the atmosphere cannot absorb any re-radiation or back radiation from the GHG’s.
I try GHG 101, again…as I realize that the people that I encounter on most scientific blogs don’t understand the chemistry principle of extinction / absorption and subsequent re-radiation. In my opinion, very few people do understand it because if they did they would have raised the alarm bells ringing long time ago. But they all got stuck at Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius. …
They know that CO2 (carbon dioxide) “absorbs” in the 14-15 um region. Most people think that what it means is that the molecules absorbs photons here which then subsequently get transferred as heat to neighbouring molecules. Then it absorbs again, and so on, and so on…and all the absorbed light is continuously transferred to heat…
Although this may happen up to a certain saturation point as soon as the light or radiation hits on the gas, that is in fact not what is causing the heat entrapment.
The best way to experience re-radiation is to stand in a moist dark forest just before dawn on a cloudless night. Note that water vapour also absorbs in the visible region of the spectrum. So as the first light of sun hits on the water vapour around you can see the light coming from every direction. Left, right, bottom up, top down. You can see this for yourself until of course the sun’s light becomes too bright in the darkness for you to observe the re-radiated light from the water vapour.
A second way to experience how re-radiation works is to measure the humidity in the air and the temperature on a certain exposed plate, again on a cloudless day, at a certain time of day for a certain amount of time. Note that as the humidity goes up, and all else is being kept equal, the temperature effected by the sun on the plate is lower. This is because, like carbon dioxide, water vapour has absorption in the infra red part of the spectrum. Remember that sometimes you will grab for your sunglasses even when there are no clouds and the sun is shining in your back? That is when the RH is still high…..and the re-radiated light of the water vapor still irritates your eyes.
We can conclude from these simple experiments that what happens is this: in the wavelengths areas where absorption takes place, the molecule starts acting like a little mirror, the strength of which depends on the amount of absorption taking place inside the molecule. Assuming the molecule is like a perfect sphere, 62,5% of a certain amount of light (radiation) is send back in the direction where it came from. This is the warming or cooling effect of a gas hit by radiation. It is like when you put your bright lights on in very misty conditions. The light goes back in the direction where it came from, mostly. ca. 37.5% is scattered in all directions.
Unfortunately, in their time, Tyndall and Arrhenius could not see the whole picture of the spectrum of a gas which is why they got stuck on seeing only the warming properties of a gas.
If people would understand this principle, they would not singularly identify green house gases (GHG’s) by pointing at the areas in the 5-20 um region (where earth emits pre-dominantly) but they would also look in the area 0-5 um (where the sun emits pre-dominantly) for possible cooling effects.
In all of this we are still looking at pure gases. The discussion on clouds and the deflection of incoming radiation by clouds is still a completely different subject.
So what everyone should be doing is looking at the whole spectrum of the gas molecule 0-20 um. Unless you come to me with a balance sheet of how much cooling and how much warming is caused by a gas, we don’t actually know whether a substance is a GHG or an anti GHG or even neutral.
Hence, the investigation I did, as shown in the very first comment on this thread.
Seeing that CO2 also causes cooling by taking part in the life cycle (plants and trees need warmth and CO2 to grow), and because there is clear evidence that there has been an increase in greenery on earth in the past 4 decades, I think the total net effect of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could even be zero or close to zero. But unless we cone up with a test method and measurements, we will never know for sure.
Note that in one of my earlier comments, I referred to the Turnbull report. You should try and understand how and what they measured as that will give you the clues you need.
They measured the re-radiation from CO2 as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction was sun-earth-moon -earth. Follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um. It all comes back in fig. 6 top.
This paper here shows that there is absorption of CO2 at between 0.21 and 0.19 um (close to 202 nm):
http://www.nat.vu.nl/en/sec/atom/Publications/pdf/DUV-CO2.pdf
There are other papers that I can look for again that will show that there are also absorptions of CO2 at between 0.18 and 0.135 um and between 0.125 and 0.12 um.
We already know from the normal IR spectra that CO2 has big absorption between 4 and 5 um.
So, to sum it up, we know that CO2 has absorption in the 14-15 um range causing some warming (by re-radiating earthshine) but as shown and proved above it also has a number of absorptions in the 0-5 um range causing cooling (by re-radiating sunshine). This cooling happens at all levels where the sunshine hits on the carbon dioxide same as the earthshine. The way from the bottom to the top is the same as from top to the bottom. So, my question is: how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the CO2? How was the experiment done to determine this and where are the test results? (I am afraid that simple heat retention testing might not work here, we have to use real sunshine and real earthshine to determine the effect in W/m2 per 0.01%.
I have started the process, as indicated in the very first comment on this thread. If CO2isnotEvil or somebody could help me in getting that photon flux right? That would be great!
Top Fig 6 black data line goes below the zero datum between ~ 1.9 to 2.1 um, Bottom Fig 6 green CO2 line exhibits dips in “relative reflectance (?)” but does not go negative. Are the Fig 6 vertical scales for both top and bottom “relative reflectance?” What is negative reflectance and why does it not occur bottom Fig 6?
(Great stuff btw, been meaning to dig into this myself after seeing Jim Steele’s (Fig 44) plot of temperatures over the S pole not being affected by rising CO2 in the atm.)
Meiggs
I am still busy trying to calculate what the effect is of 0.01 percent more CO2 in the atmosphere.
I am sure Phil. can give you the correct answer.
From unscientific observations.
Henry Pool April 11, 2020 at 4:37 am
We can conclude from these simple experiments that what happens is this: in the wavelengths areas where absorption takes place, the molecule starts acting like a little mirror, the strength of which depends on the amount of absorption taking place inside the molecule. Assuming the molecule is like a perfect sphere, 62,5% of a certain amount of light (radiation) is send back in the direction where it came from. This is the warming or cooling effect of a gas hit by radiation. It is like when you put your bright lights on in very misty conditions. The light goes back in the direction where it came from, mostly. ca. 37.5% is scattered in all directions.
This is not what happens at all, the molecule does not act as a ‘little mirror’. It certainly does not behave like an elastic scatterer (water droplets in a fog).
The CO2 molecule absorbs a photon of the energy needed to excite a vibration of the bonds of the molecule, specifically the bending mode. Some time after this event the molecule will lose the excess energy, either by radiating it away (not necessarily at the identical wavelength) or by collision with surrounding molecules (higher pressure favors the latter).
Phil.
I was waiting for you to trash me, again. If you know and measured all those so called rotations and vibrations, why don’t you calculate for me how much the effect is in W/m2 and degrees K of 0.01 percent CO2? Show me your calculations. I want to laugh.
Henry Pool April 11, 2020 at 10:30 pm
Phil.
I was waiting for you to trash me, again. If you know and measured all those so called rotations and vibrations, why don’t you calculate for me how much the effect is in W/m2 and degrees K of 0.01 percent CO2?
I did not ‘trash’ you, I just pointed out once again that you have a flawed understanding of the interaction of IR light with gas molecules. Your explanation refers to elastic scattering and proposes something akin to the Mie scattering of light by small particles (water drops) comparable with the incident wavelength. For a gas molecule which is much smaller than the wavelength Rayleigh scattering is the appropriate elastic scattering mechanism which yields backscatter/forward scatter ~1. However for incident IR of the appropriate wavelength it is inelastic scatter which occurs and the photon is absorbed and its energy excites the appropriate ro-vibrational mode.
I didn’t say anything about your calculations, if I were to make such a calculation I’d use something like Modtran.
“That gives me a final result of 7 x 10^- 7 W/m2
As you can see: Added to the normal continuous output of earth of ca. 232 W/m2, it compares almost to nothing……….”
Henry, I applaud your efforts. There is often more than one path to understanding even complex matters. The devil then becomes the details. My estimate is two orders of magnitude larger than yours. However, both round to zero when compared to the output of earth.
+0.03 deg F/yr NC dT for the last 150 yrs
11,500,000,000,000,000,000 lbs atm
8.28E+16 btu gained per year
1314000 hrs = 150 yrs
63013698630 btu/hr atm gain
18274 MW
18273972603 W
5.101E+14 m^2, surface area of planet earth
3.58243E-05 W/m^2
Meiggs
I like your calculation! But is flawed of course. It assumes all warming was due to the CO2?
It is a good indicator, though, to see if we are getting in the right direction.
Myself, I don’t believe we should even look at the warming of the atmosphere. There is no mass… The mass is in the oceans. And there is thermalisation, as well, as water absorbs in the IR and in the visible, and especially in the UV. It is the variation in incoming UV that largely determines warming or cooling of earth. It is the oceans that warm the atmosphere. So what happens when you look at SST?
Henry, everything I do is flawed, I’m human. But I assume my line of reason is reasonably correct while it is entirely possible that the math or the inputs or both are flawed. Nevertheless, I assume nothing about CO2 concentration in the atm. Here is my line of thought from the little I know about thermodynamics:
1) My interpretation of NOAA data for Asheville, NC leads me to believe that temperature there has been trending upward for the past 150 years at the modest rate of 0.03F/yr. Fact or fiction I do not know.
2) The atm is all I have historic temperature data for. Though I agree atm mass is slight compared to the ocean as one that plays with compressible fluids the atm is still a force to be reckoned with. I used the mass of the atm from a random internet source. Fact or fiction I do not know.
3) I understand your point that the proportion of energy absorbed by subcritical water easily exceeds that absorbed by supercritical fluids in this system. We happen to exist in a system where water can exist in all three phases simultaneously though it is rarely in a supercritical state. Water is a major power broker.
4) So my estimate, mathematically correct or not, and inputs factual or not, is simply based on the notion that q = m*c*dT. I have faith in that notion as I have successfully applied it to reality, year over year.
5) Based on an assumed mass of atm, specific heat of atm, dT of atm I arrive at the net BTU input required to explain the alleged change. Dividing that by 150 years I arrive at the power needed to drive the change which is not much…it’s less power than I’ve helped put on-line in 31 yrs…in other words I have a real sense of what 18 GW means, ain’t much but is a little.
6) I take the estimated power and spread it out over the surface area (also info at random from the internet) of the planet and arrive at a very small number, math correct or not and inputs askance, it’s the same engineering units as yours…apples to apples. I’m within 2 orders of magnitude of your line of reasoning. But my number is an “all in” number and cannot distinguish contributions from H2O or CO2 or the sun or anything else.
7) I agree insolation is the power source and water is the power broker.
8) SST is hideously complex in my limited exp. Just from looking at thermal transients in steam lines I can tell you quantifying SST mechanisms to the point where you can split the hair you are trying to split will be near impossible or at least credibly disputable (Phil for example).
9) Thermal diffusivity in metals and other materials (compare liquid water to air for example) is another way of thinking about how light energy scatters…diffusivity hints that thermal energy can travel “upstream” of the main flow which is what the alarmists hang their hats on. Yes, you can get down to quantum theory which I have total faith in but, other than principal, is way beyond my quantitative skill set.
10) Your description of little mirrors and sun diffused by fog is adequate for purposes of the discussion and makes perfect sense. Which ways the O’s wobble on the C is too much detail until the fundamental order of magnitude of CO2’s ability, or not, to influence atm temperature is firmly quantified minus political or technical bias.
11) I am in your camp and the Steele camp that the oceans call the shots. It is still imperative that someone with your interest and skill set show us the true nature of a trace of CO2 in a large supercritical sea being irradiated by a yellow dwarf. An now appears to be a very good time to demonstrate that!
meggs
“1) My interpretation of NOAA data for Asheville, NC leads me to believe that temperature there has been trending upward for the past 150 years at the modest rate of 0.03F/yr. Fact or fiction I do not know”
Three reactions:
1) isn’t the temp rocking up and down in Asheville? Up some, down some over 150 years? That is different than saying it is trending up, which phrase contains the implication of a straight line with confirmed abnormal warming, playing into the hands of cherry-picked start and end dates;
2) the organic sine curve for the entire US shows the rocking through 4 degrees Fahrenheit. But larger, the two full cycles of rocking show a settling-down, which is a pure Holocene motion.
3) I’ll look at the Ashville data and make a chart later tonight.
Here’s the sine wave:
http://theearthintime.com
Cheers
windlord-sun
re rxn 1) Yes, sawtooth similar though more chaotic than CO2 ppm in AK. However the overall trend in sensible T is up in NC, just like SP CO2. But that being said the overall trend in precip is also way up. So, what is counter-intuitive to most is the warming of the atm due to phase change resulting in transient mass transfer from the ocean to the atm means simply that the sink is cooling but must transfer thru the supercritical compressible sea above made even more complex by this really weird stuff called H2O which insists on maintaining a vapor dome above all. The vapor dome rules and I don’t envy Henry in trying to parse the effect of supercritical CO2 out of the larger subcritical water vapor dome…which is not noise, it is reality…H2O being around the saturation lines tends to eclipse all else and gives rise to such beings as trees and corals and all sorts of other things.
re rxn 2) agree with the rock, entirely natural. But for purposes of the political discussion is it vitally important that that be made clear to the average voter. And the contribution that CO2 has or has not made to the rock. Personally, I’ll go with Steele, even if the rise is real and it well could be as it has happened before and as you contend, can Henry tease out the effect of CO2 rise during the same period of history? And even if he can I’ve yet to read the link cited by McRae that claims transient analysis shows that human contribution to the atm CO2 mass budget has recently been around 8%. What is that 8% really worth in the great scheme of things? To me it may be around nothing. But that does not win elections. The human mass contribution to atm CO2 and its ensuing effect on sensible T must be quantified such that the average voter gets it. Simple as that.
3) I lack the skill to cut and paste my Asheville NOAA graph into this blog though have tried. My sensible T observation is based on the NOAA published “average” per annum. If factual, it’s gone up. Spending most of my life in this region I am inclined to believe that. It now rains more and snows less than it used to. With the Pb out of the gasoline however, in spite of jacked up CO2, the local plant life everywhere, including the high ridges, is doing much better discounting the intrusion of diseases and competitors introduced by globalizm.
Hi meggs,
I plotted Asheville TMAX Fahrenheit per GHCN. There is no Asheville station in USHCN. When I saw the Asheville plot it went against my religion. Upward only since the 1970s ice age.
So, I found three other stations nearby, plotted them, for both USHCN and GHCN. The resulting sawtooth is in my image below.
The other stations show a relationship to the organic sine curve (my religion) but Asheville does not. This could be UHI in play. Certainly Asheville has developed far more and faster than the other stations’ areas. However, supposedly NOAA has already adjusted this dataset for UHI. So … ?
CAVEAT: this data is not raw data. It is verbatim right out of NOAA downloads, and therefore has been adjusted.
The GHCN Asheville station has this for Lat/Long: 35.6536 -82.5728 which appears to be north of town and just to the east of i-26. Is that right?
Windlord: The coordinates land me at what looks like house with a swimming pool…I don’t see a weather station. But, yes, those coords land me E of I-26 and N of downtown Asheville. If the data is adjusted it has no meaning to me. Asheville leans rather left as well and very sympathetic to the GW cause in words though not in action. UHI might explain but the coords you cited land you above I-26 so if there is a weather station there it could be in an upslope draft of warm air off the interstate. Asheville is in a bowl topographically and occasionally the temperature is warmer in the bowl than at lower elevations in SC & TN. The steady trend up could be topography + machine related. Or change in prevailing winds shoving warmer air into the bowl. Or data adjustment. Or as someone once suggested, stick a thermometer in a bucket of water and check it once a day at the same time, the water being an integrator, maybe the Asheville bowl acts like an integrator. No way to know. Here’s what I’ve been following for Asheville, fact or fiction:
https://www.weather.gov/media/gsp/Climate/AVL/newAVLmonthlyTobs.pdf
https://www.weather.gov/media/gsp/Climate/AVL/newAVLmonthlyPobs_htm.pdf
meiggs,
This is a piece about CO2, so I won’t extend the examination of temp. I leave off with a conjecture that there’s something odd in Asheville.
About your sentence “If the data is adjusted it has no meaning to me.” The only reason I don’t give up on plotting this data is that even with NOAA’s adjustments, the claim “there is no abnormal warming” remains evident.
About your sentence “Asheville leans rather left as well and very sympathetic to the GW cause” …
I had a cynical smile when I read this from you earlier …
“[..] the local plant life everywhere, including the high ridges, is doing much better discounting the intrusion of diseases and competitors introduced by globalizm.”
… and mapped the ‘diseases and competitors’ to the influx of the aforementioned ‘left and sympathetic’ intrusions!
Phil.
you seem to think that water vapor is not a gas. Therefore my observations / examples are not ‘valid’. We had same arguments about this before…. I am not sure if it helps anything going into discussion with you. I trust MODTRAN as much as I trust SpectralCalc. Spectral is what you recommended to me some time ago. Remember? With the NIST file I proved that SpectralCalc was wrong. It appears to me Spectral was made especially to teach learners that CO2 is ‘warming’ the atmosphere.
I am a lab. person myself and I worked almost my whole life with spectroscopy, including FTIR, UV/Visible and AAS. I am puzzled by your comments. I am a forgetful person, hence I always forgot to switch all instruments off. In the case of me measuring CO2 in N2 with FTIR at 4.3 um, if there were any thermalization, and the instrument standing on for so long, with the bombardment of IR light, would you not expect that the holder with the sample should have exploded?
I never had any such problems….with any instrument. Never ever noticed the holder with sample getting much warmer, even standing on for days on end.
When measuring in the visible region, I once secretly looked into the cuvette holder to see what happens when you turn the wavelength dial slowly to the wavelength where I was supposed to measure. What I saw happening is exactly as I described: the light comes back to you, to the direction of the source, but also scattering somewhat to the left and to the right and all around. You never observed this? It is real nature. 62.5% in the direction of the light source. Just like I told you. But then you always disagree with that. So why would you continue going into discussion with me? I cannot change my way of thinking because I have to stick with what I am seeing happening. You prefer to stick to your ‘books’. Is that not so?
Did you ever read the full Turnbull report and do you understand it? Do you understand the analysis I made of the spectrum of CO2 and why I did this>? Did you see that in Turnbull et all there is more absorption below 2.6 um that is not even shown in the NIST file?
Did you see the graph showing you the transmittance of the CO2 molecule? Do you really understand the principle of absorption and subsequent re-radiation (extinction)?
Except for the physical water in the atmosphere (i.e. clouds, water (l), water (s)) there really is no thermalization. Or not much. Ozon is deflecting. No thermalisation there either.
But heh, that is just my opinion.
I would have loved to see your calculation showing me how much warming is caused by 0.01% CO2. But you always like to focus on something that you had see me write that is ‘wrong’. You never accept a challenge. I wonder if ever you calculated what I am interested in knowing. What did you think of the calculation by meiggs?
Anyway, death, where is your sting? Happy Easter to all my friends and foes!
BW
hp
meiggs, i apologize for getting your screen name wrong.
Don K – April 9, 2020 at 4:01 pm
But, but, but, …… Don K, ……
Don K, …. even though the IR radiative activity is VERY low, ….. the 209,500 ppm of atmospheric oxygen (O2) should cause one ell of a lot more “warming” than 400 ppm of atmospheric CO2, …… don’tja think?
209,500 molecules verses 400 molecules.
Sam
O2 has very small absorption. Officially I dont think it is regarded as a gh gas.
Official or not quantity has a quality all its own.
Samuel
Your logic is fine. But the best (well … actually only) quantitative estimate I have been able to find for how weak the radiation from N2 is, is down five (5) orders of magnitude. That appears to be less than one 20th the intensity of CO2 radiation and even further below H2O which has solid and liquid phase particulates floating around the atmosphere. Solids and liquids actually seem to behave a bit like “black bodies” whereas simple gases surely don’t at Earthly temperatures. Oxygen might be a little more active as there are small amounts of lightning generated Ozone(O3) in the lower atmosphere. I think Ozone has meaningful rotational and vibrational modes. But there isn’t very much of it because it’s quite reactive chemically and doesn’t last long after creation.
Overall when they say that the radiation interaction from non-radiative gases is low, they seem to be serious.
Don K – April 10, 2020 at 11:31 pm
So, Don K, ….. if the O2 molecule only has 1/20th the IR absorption/emission intensity of the CO2 molecule, ……. and there is 52.3 orders of magnitude greater quantity of atmospheric O2 molecules than there are of atmospheric CO2 molecules, …… which of the above two atmospheric gases do you suppose is absorbing/emitting the mostest IR thermal (heat) energy?
209,500/400 = 523.75 ……. 523.75/10 = 52.3 orders of magnitude
So, iffen molecule per molecule, O2 is only 1/20th as potent as CO2, …. but there is 523 times more O2 molecules than there are CO2 molecules, ….. therefore, the atmospheric O2 is 52 times more potent “greenhouse” gas than the atmospheric CO2
So, it appears that CO2 is still “the little end of nothing”
Now talk about brilliant statements, to wit:
“they say that the radiation interaction from non-radiative gases is low, they seem to be serious“
If you care to agree, if CO2 does not interact much with the other gases, the other gases are IR inactive, then the energy trap is set by the inactive gases.
I’d rethink the meaning of “greenhouse gas”, which not the IR active one but in my view the IR inactive gases!
Where I have questions and you might as well, is with CO2. I think (maybe I’m wrong) that the strong lines in the CO2 IR spectrum come from activation of vibrational and rotational modes in the CO2 molecule. But from what I read, these are first excited states — one step above the ground state. And one apparently one has to consider (yechhh) quantum mechanics which severely constrains how much energy can be transferred to/from that transition by interaction with photons.
The photons in question involve a ro-vibronic transition, an excitation to the first vibrationally excited state with rotational fine structure. That excited state has an average lifetime on the order of millisecs, during that time the CO2 molecule undergoes about 10 collisions per nanosec. Those collisions gradually chip away the excess energy a.k.a. thermalisation.
At this point, I’m not sure that energy gained and lost by CO2 by IR radiation can be effectively transferred to/from other gas molecules by collisions. If it can’t (at Earth atmosphere temperatures and pressures), then the energy is real enough, but it presumably represents latent heat (doesn’t show up on thermometers) rather than sensible heat.
Ultimately it’s kinetic energy.
Thanks Phil. I’ll check that out. My impression is that quantum mechanics wouldn’t allow the virbrational and rotational energy at those energy levels to be “chipped away”. You can lose all of it. Or none of it. But not little bits.
But as I freely acknowledge, I’m awful at physics. So checking it out will take me weeks or months.
But, thanks.
The point is that the separation between the vibrational levels is relatively large and between each vibrational level there are a large number of closely spaced rotational levels.
It is possible for a collision to remove some of that energy and drop the molecule to a different ro-vib state, it’s called ‘collisional quenching’. At the earth’s atmospheric pressure there are millions of collisions taking place during the normal radiative lifetime of the excited state. That’s why aurorae are observed at high altitude, they’re quenched lower down in the atmosphere.
Don, back in the day in my research lab I did some Laser Induced Fluorescence measurements of gas phase species. The species was excited using a laser tuned to a particular vibrational energy level and observing the light emitted. If the pressure was increased by adding an inert gas, then the light emitted went down due to collisional quenching. Check out Stern-Volmer.
I think Einstein had a different view!
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/02/16/albert-einstein-said-no-to-co2-radiative-warming-of-the-atmosphere/
CO2 appears to be on strike in NA, joined by their sympathizers O2 and N2…
https://www.iceagenow.info/bitter-cold-shatters-denver-record-for-april-14/
People are not driving to work or around due to the recent shutdown orders. That will show a change, far more so than airline flights.
Yes, it should show, and rather quickly. NO2 has fallen dramatically over cities for example, CO2 must follow.
CO2 has other emission sources.
Yes, but if manmade CO2 is so small it cannot be seen by measurement, then is manmade CO2 important at all?
“ CO2 has other emission sources.”
Shur nuff, Gerald Machnee, …… and termites are responsible for ten times (10X) more CO2 ending up in the atmosphere …… than humans are responsible for.
Termites contribute about 2% of the annual total, according to studies that evaluated both Co2 and methane from termites. Humans contribute about 3% according to published studies. I use 5% since it is easier for me to remember and I err on the high side. Still, termites are a significant source of Co2. But I do not believe for a second that Co2 has anything to do with climate. There are billions of molecules at the surface that radiate constantly for any one photon from Co2. That would be like trying to cook food by looking at it.
John Shotsky, …… how much methane (CH4) do termites emit each year?
But still no indication in the CO2 figures. And by the propaganda fro the Greenies airlines emit so much CO2 that they should be banned for all except those Greenies going to conferences in exotic places.
Oh, oh! AOC is going to roast you on one of her video rants! Be ready! /s
The CO2 is not responding to Chicom-19. When everyone is hooked up to the ventilators then the CO2 output of each individual can be controlled. There is just not enough government control. That is the biggest problem.
People are staying home and using more energy then they would if they went to work. While personal auto emissions are reduced, commercial emissions are mostly unchanged, or even higher with all the delivery services being used. There may be a measurable net effect, but probably not much, especially since discretionary travel emissions are a tiny part of the CO2 emissions by China and India.
What this is telling us is that even turning off the electricity during the day when everyone is home under covid-19 like restrictions wouldn’t be sufficient to meet what the CAGW alarmists want.
Hell, the Hudson River in NYC, the River Thames in London, and Seine in Paris could all freeze over tomorrow (mid-April) and for the Left and their lackey rentseeker climate modelers it would still be decried as more evidence of Climate Change from CO2.
Climate Change ceased being about science over 20 years ago with the hockey stick lie in IPCC TAR (AR3).
It is all about climate scam policy to impoverish the affluent western middle class. A policy deeply funded by elitism billionaires and supported politically by socialists wannabe authoritarians. They are giving that authoritarianism a Test Drive right now with the epidemic inspired martial law.
Billionaires and commies sharing a common goal? Uh huh. Not all billionaires though, right?
Btw, great to see at least someone is sticking up for that downtrodden, disadvantaged, silenced, disinfranchised cohort of global victims: affluent westerners, so hard done by.
yeah we should treat them like those good chinese … anyone got a tank?
Loydo will stand in front of your tank, then disappear forever, just like tinamen square. Chau!
Most billionaires are found in China and India these days.
Pray tell us what it’s like when you lose your job and livelihood.
Lost my job when Obama imposed the unconstitutional ACA on Americans and have not found gainful employment since! I’ll just let you imagine how much I find that man extrordinarily repugnant, along with all the Democrats that implemented that excellent example of job-killing socialism!
Oh, and isn’t it interesting to see the lengths to which some Democrat governors and socialist leaders in other countries will use this crisis to implement their dreams of a leftist Nirvana, generally to the detriment of their fellow citizens?
I relish opportunities like this that expose the Greenies and Watermelons for their foolish policies that push their socialist, even communist, agenda but that do nothing to improve the environment or the challenges of humanity!
I’ve heard it called “The Great Awakening”!
@Loydo
As usual, only read half of the text, therefrom understood not even a quarter and wrongly quotet as well:
funded by elitism billionaires
Not all billionaires are. Communists, but many Communists are billionaires. It’s not an empty set on Venn diagram. Bernie is not yet a billionaire, but he’s got more time on his hands now. ,😀
I think we are all well aware of many billionaires and companies getting richer from all of this Loydo, pretty much have to be living under a rock not to notice this?
That is why this is such an odd couple.
Loydo,
You should educate yourself on history and current world affairs.
Putin has his billionaire oligarchs. Xi has his billionaire techies and all are ChiComm Party members. If any of them step out of line, they usually have their assets seized and they disappear. There is plenty of recent examples of this in both Xi’s China and Putin’s Russia.
Hitler and Mussolini both had their rich industrialists feeding off the cronyism and war machine profits, most joined the Nazi party to help get contracts and access to materials needed for production. Any who didn’t like it were either silent or silenced.
Henry Ford was a great admirer of how Hitler and the very efficient Germans were at pulling Germany out the Depression. Eugenics was always a favorite passion for the Progressives of the 1920’s-1930’s. Hitler and his goons just took it to its logical conclusion, and thus has fallen out of favor. But today’s Left still embraces it by promoting abortion in the inner cities, especially minorities.
Crony capitalism works very well in modern autocratic states because it uses ruthless style of capitalism to promote production efficiency, while enriching the very top, that the pure communist system can’t, an intractable problem which befelled the USSR and top-down 5 year plans because of massive bureaucratic inefficiencies.
If discrimination can be proved thru percentages regardless of intention, then why isn’t the left’s push to abort black unborns not considered genocide regardless of their intention.
Notwithstanding Loydo – the jealous bigot who lives in stereotypes – we do have a billionaire who has been at odds with the elites his entire life, who happens to be in office.
And go figure – life for the common-man improved. Dramatically.
Loydo, I wish you would give these comments a rest. You come in, do a drive by accusation or statement with no backing or inherent interest, and drop off. Honestly, What’s the point? No one is taking you seriously anymore. I don’t see how what you are doing can be remotely satisfying to you at this point. You barely get any answers these days, except for a couple of one-liners.
I personally enjoy a robust discussion, and would very much look forward to that. But you’re not providing it.
Just figured I’d point this out to you.
We are heading for snow and down to -5C overnights in Ottawa, Canada through the weekend, certainly, bordering states will see something similar. The last few springs have been cooler like this but I’m sure the global gov dreamers will will be happy to blame the reduced ’emissions’ from cov19.
Regarding correcting for ENSO, this will be made less effective because of the large cold SST regions outside of the narrow ENSO strips along the equator. i.e. we have de jure ENSO neutral conditions but de facto La Nina effects.
Its colder in Ottawa because Mr.Dressup’s carbon tax began last week April 1st.
The reduction in global warming was almost immediate.
Its the devil CO2!
And snow in Omaha, Nebraska, USA this weekend.
Ask for snow inn Norway the last days:
https://electroverse.net/norway-breaks-snowfall-records/
https://watchers.news/2020/04/08/record-breaking-snowfall-engulfs-parts-of-norway/
Actually, the current shutdown is a pretty good experimental representation of what would happen if we went worldwide Green New Deal. If jack-squat happens to atmospheric CO2, that should put paid to this nonsense for once and all. But only if WE PUT THE DATA OUT THERE. As long as we let alarmist narratives control the discussion, we’ll always be fighting a rear-guard action.
If there was going to be any detectable change from reduced economic activity it would be a reduction in global dimming from reduced aerosol masking, since the residence time of SO4 is days and weeks – a tiny fraction of CO2’s. In other words a warming effect.
Are you completely dim? The measurement is of CO2, not temp.
So far the most obvious change from reduced economic activity has been the hoarding of toilet paper.
I’ll bet the climate models didn’t predict that.
I’ve got my armaments ready to defend my toilet paper when the TP apocalypse zombies attack !!
Btw, Loydo, aren’t you speaking about SO2 ???
It could be that the increase in atmospheric content of carbon dioxide is more concerned about how warm the oceans are rather than if we burn fossil fuels.
Couldn’t agree more. I believe (feeling not scientific) that there will be only a tiny granular change in the ML readings, if any. Anthropogenic Input to royal CO2 is mere noise on this distribution – nature is the main thrust. Always has been and always will be.
Royal = total
as a kid i observed that a warm soda had gone flat(lost its co2).
More about Hawaii
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/04/08/hawaiianhotspot/
Roy,
“What we are looking for is any evidence of a decline in the atmospheric CO2 content that would be strong enough to attribute to the economic downturn. As can be seen, the latest CO2 data show a slight downturn”
Why a decline? If emissions went all the way to zero, you’d expect the atmospheric CO2 content to then be unchanging, not in decline. But there is still residual variation of unknown cause, and the slope is in fact downward. That can’t be attributed to emissions change (emissions won’t be negative). It certainly isn’t evidence that emissions have not reduced.
I wouldn’t be looking for a fall in the atmospheric CO2 concentration, but a slowing of the rate of increase should be apparent if the proposition that the increasing CO2 concentration is overwhelmingly due to human emissions is valid.
“a slowing of the rate of increase should be apparent”
But the rate of increase not only “slows”, but becomes a decrease.
OK a decrease in the rate of increase should become apparent.
If the rate of increase has become negative, I would say that “a decrease in the rate of increase has become apparent”
Yes, an apparent decrease in the increase, Nick! Congratulations!
But at what cost?
Last week, the US lost six million jobs; this week it repeats with another six million lost, for a total of twelve million jobs lost so far!
And we can expect to see another six million jobs lost next week and the next, until a significant portion of our 160 million jobs are lost! Certainly the economy won’t turn around for another month or two at best, so we could easily lose another 50 million jobs, pushing the total to 60 MILLION JOBS LOST, or about 40% of the total we had just two months ago!
But that isn’t all!
No, consider the innumerable consequential bankruptcies, foreclosures, divorces, heart attacks and suicides! Families destroyed, careers destroyed, lives destroyed, and children adversely affected!
Millions and millions of them, Nick!
I hope you’re happy!
Oh, could you estimate the decline in CO2 for us?…It’s so small I can’t put a number to it! And while you’re at it, could you run a cost/benefit analysis on your precious decline? I’ve given you mine!
And do it globally, too, considering that the impact to the US economy and our society can be multiplied by four to six times to approximate global destruction!
And you have a good day!
Nick you obviously need a coffee your statement basically says there is no CO2 turnover and that any CO2 molecule we put up there stays there forever 🙂
So there are no sinks and CO2 only ever increases … so how did the historic CO2 reductions occur … aliens?
since co2 residence time in the atmosphere is greater than 5 years, would you really expect to see a reduction after only a couple of months of CO2 reduction (it is not even zero – power stations and flaring of gas and transport are still here)
There are sinks ….. and sources.
I disagree slightly with Nick. If humans stopped all fossil fuel burning for a whole year I’d expect a small reduction (~1 ppm) of atmospheric CO2.
The human part of CO2 emissions is only about 5% of the total. The other 95%+ is entirely natural. So, if humans stopped all activity, the most that could be seen is a reduction of about 5%. However, earth’s variability is about 15% per year, so it would undoubtedly be unimpressive.
Given that it has been established multiple times that earth’s CO2 emission FOLLOWS temperature change, then a reduction in CO2 would have no impact whatsoever on climate. Climate is driven by earth, not by humans…sheesh!
How is 5% determined?
And the pre-industrial base line, how credible is that?
How credible are the Mauna Loa readings…any QA/QC of the data that would be accepted by a skeptic?
After all, Mauna Loa is an active volcano…
john shotsky, you can’t just blurt out the truth like that…some delicate liberal might accidentally read that and be traumatized. sheesh!
The reason the human contribution is “only” about 5% is due to the annual carbon cycle. This means that human total. total in the atmosphere will be similar to the annual emissions. However the human contribution that is re-absorbed replaces the natural CO2 that would have been absorbed – and so the atmospheric concentration still increases.
Human C)2 emission are responsible for about 40% of the total since they either remain in the atmosphere or are returned to the land & oceans INSTEAD of natural CO2.
Finn. — And you know this how? Does manmade CO2 have a sale tag on it?
CO2 is CO2. Gaia doesn’t know or care where it comes from.
“How is 5% determined?”
By very poor arithmetic. There are natural exchange processes that have been going on for millennia, with no nett result. CO2 is reduced by photosynthesis; the products are subsequently oxidised (“emission”). CO2 dissolves in the sea as it cools as winter comes on, in summer it returns to the air. The 95% is calculated by adding all the “emission” parts of these exchanges, without the balancing fluxes the other way.
Human emissions have no countervailing flux to balance them. Fossil fuels are dug up and burned. Since we have been emitting, CO2 has been going up and up.
Basic maths and facts for you to check Nick .. see how you go
Fact 1) There is currently 3210 gigatonnes of CO2 in the Atmosphere
Fact 2) Current human CO2 emission per year is 30 gigatonnes of CO2
Fact 3) IPCC says 1870 to 2014, cumulative carbon emissions totaled about 545 GtC.
Now divid Fact1 by fact2 = 107 years
We would need to be emitting for 107 years at 30 gigatonnes of CO2 to put all that CO2 up there which we obviously haven’t and there are sinks.
Fact3/Fact1 * 100 = 16.9%
Again that assumes that every CO2 molecule put up there by man is still there.
So now explain how you are going to get the current Human contribution above 17%
You can project 30Gt per year forward 80 years to the year 2100 and you still wont even get close to 50%.
Sorry Nick you are making stuff up and it fails basic maths and fact checks.
“Fact3/Fact1 * 100 = 16.9%”
“it fails basic maths”
You are failing basic science. Fact 1 has tonnes of CO2, fact 3 has tonnes of C. Not the same. The correct ratio is 16.9*44/12=62%
“We would need to be emitting for 107 years at 30 gigatonnes of CO2 to put all that CO2 up there which we obviously haven’t “
No-one said we put all that CO2 there. There was about 280 ppm before we started; there are about 410 now. The difference is 130, corresponding to 1018 Gtons CO2, or 34 years at 30 Gtons/year. That is actually about right; about half what we emitted went into the sea.
Proper arithmetic set out here.
I have no issue with correcting FACT 3 … don’t do a Stokes deflection stay with it.
So Fact3 is now 1018 Gtons CO2 … no issue I accept it.
So Fact3/Fact1 * 100 = 1018/3210 = 31.7% human created CO2
Remember none of the human made CO2 in that has been turned over every human CO2 molecule is magic and still up there but that is our entire historic maximum possible impact.
Lets walk it forward 80 years at 30Gt of C02 per year = 2400GT more so now 5600GT.
We add the 2400Gt to the 1018 Gt current
(1018+2400)/(3210+2400) * 100 = 60%
So even by the year 2100 burning CO2 at current levels and none of the magic human CO2 was turned over .. humans still only end putting 60% up there.
The point is if you want to call CO2 a pollutant and a problem thus apportion blame then Nature is a problem as well. I have given Nature a free pass thru all this but if you really want to call CO2 a pollutant you can’t it is just as bad as us.
“So Fact3 is now 1018 Gtons CO2 … no issue I accept it.”
No, it is 545*44/12=1998 Gtons CO2.
What % of (human generated + nature generated) does the 1998 Gtons represent?
meiggs
When we started emitting, the atmosphere had a near stable 280 ppm CO2, which is 2187 Gt CO2. It didn’t change with “natural emissions”, because these have to balance sinks; they are just moving the same carbon around. So the amount we added is almost equal to what had been there. However, just under half remained (airborne fraction), leading to the 130 ppm rise.
Nick Stokes
This is a fairy tale: “near stable 280.”
Denial. Denialer. Denialist. Denialism. Deny.
StraightStick280 is an insult the world.
CO2 levels have rocked back and forth all Holocene between 250 and 380 PPM, with spikes to 400 early on. Ice cores are blind to this, because ice can’t resolve spikes and sharp falls. So Mr. Stokes fairy tale is dead. However, it does not matter – there is no climate crisis due to human-release, no matter how much we spew.
To others: The End Is Near. The CO2-280 denialists will be hoisted on their own petard. This ‘pause’ is going to reveal the truth. They staked it all on one measurement, and when it does not behave, despite the fact that they will construct fantasias about why not, the truth will out. The house of cards will collapse. They did not heed the danger of SinglePointOfFailure.
Does anyone have this knowledge: how many stations are there in this world that are measuring the PPM of CO2 at this moment with the same type of gear as Keeling?. a) do they agree with Mauna Loa?; b) do they measure every day?; c) do we trust them all to be honest; and d) do any of them report a ding in the slope?
And are any not located on active volcanos?
“CO2 levels have rocked back and forth all Holocene between 250 and 380 PPM, with spikes to 400 early on. Ice cores are blind to this”
So how do you know?
For the last millennia, Law Dome data has very high resolution. Here is a plot of the last millennium. Before 1850, all readings are between 270 and 280 ppm.
Mr. Stokes, you are impervious to anyone’s point. Why did you direct me to and ice core reading?
I sincerely want to understand this … I made an emphatic claim that ice core readings, by their very nature, are slush. They cannot resolve short spikes. Therefore, your claim of “steady 280” is void.
I left myseld wide open for challenge with that claim. I did that on purpose. But instead of blasting me on that claim, you just ignore my point, and tell me to look at an ice core interpretation.
Answer this: do you fully get it, and this gambit you do to just jiggle out of the way is to annoy people? Or do you really not know how to respond to another’s claim?
I would appreciate it if you respond without jiggling away from that sentence. Thank You.
“you just ignore my point”
No. I asked you how do you know. You could try to answer that.
The ice core data shows many readings, uniformly between 270 and 280 ppm. These are from 3 separate cores. The readings are not slush.
It doesn’t matter what fictional number I allow your for FACT3 it comes down to there is a hell of a lot of Natural carbon in the system.
In the entire argument I have made all man made CO2 stay in the atmosphere for ever while “natural CO2” is allowed to turn over and you will still on get to 50% now and 70% in 80 years time.
Now lets get to the point … if it really is a problem there is a huge amount of CO2 that is given a free pass just because it is natural. So if you want us to cut human emissions we should also be looking at cutting natures. I get people of Nicks age yearn for a change back to the good old days when there were several billion less humans but it isn’t going to happen. You want the world to make tough decisions because it’s the end of the world then fine but then there should be nothing off limits including nature.
Nick Stokes
You are a master. Really. I have never encountered anything this slick.
Here’s how slick: I can’t voice my opinion on “are you that obtuse from confusion in a fogged brain, or are you a sharp-as-knife trickster to annoy?” If I voiced my opinion, it would just be putting the ball on a tee for you to huumph over the fence and end the game.
So, instead, I’ll just laugh at your thrash.
As per March, 29
If the lockdowns continue for another month, then there MUST be a noticeable downturn by May/June. If there isn’t then we can be certain that the increase in CO2 over the past 100 years is not entirely anthropogenic.
There is no way a decline in CO2 levels could be seen on that graph. Looking at the numbers CO2 rises
by about 2ppm per year due to human activities. Taking Dr. Spencer’s suggestion of a 27% decrease in flights
in March as a typical number for all human activities means that CO2 levels would be decreased by 0.05ppm
compared to last year for March. The levels on the graph shown are in terms of 2ppm so you have to split
each vertical grid into 20 by eye and then see if there is any decrease. Which is just not realistic.
Izaak, should one conclude from your argument that if 27% reduction in flights is equivalent to 0.05ppm then a complete banning of all flights in the future , as per the Green Deal, would shave 0.2ppm off the annual rise in CO2. This seems a very small advantage to be placed against the disadvantages for business and holiday travellers . Furthermore it suggests that the airport tax applied in many countries is not justified, that none of us should feel guilty about flyimg whether for busines or holiday , and that Greta’s stunt in sailing across the Atlantic instead of flying was just silly.
mikewaite April 9, 2020 at 1:39 am
“Greta’s stunt in sailing across the Atlantic instead of flying was just silly.”
————————
Of course it was as far as environmental improvement.
BUT
Can you imagine the backlash on here if she had flown
ALSO
She has principles that she follows for her life.
Is this bad?
As she seeks to impose her “principles” on everybody, I would say yes. It is bad.
‘she seeks to impose her “principles” on everybody’
Like all well-trained fascists.
Yes sir, Mr. Montelius.
And a few other things cited in my link
From https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/monthly.html ,the April 7 2020 CO2 reading at Mauna Loa is 415.60ppm.
“reduce atmospheric CO2 would have to wait many years — even decades — before we would see the impact of a large economic downturn on global temperatures”
Why would it take decades for a forcing from CO2 to affect land surface temperatures when it only takes a few hours for a forcing from the sun to take effect?
It wont. There is no lag in the system, this was made up to explain the lack of warming since 1999.
To give you a background as to how I arrived at an analysis of the spectrum of CO2, just click on my name to read my comprehensive report on the matter.
Very interesting. Thank you for the chemistry lesson.
Derg
Did you see this?
https://1drv.ms/w/s!At1HSpspVHO9pwx0EPc_q0yoFNKR?e=kE8DTl
CO2 increase is not entirely from humans. 3-50% is. It is suspect to say the least why it is ONLY the human CO2 that is the thermostat that dials in global temperatures/ “climate change” especially when the groups plugging the notion are instisting that paying money to them will fix the “problem.” It is pure propaganda to plug the notion that it is only the human component of CO2 increase that causes some problem that we are not even allowed to challenge.
“those who view the economic downturn as an opportunity to reduce atmospheric CO2 would have to wait many years — even decades — before we would see the impact of a large economic downturn on global temperatures, ”
This may be the case with temperature, but what about air pollution? With the 90 per cent close down of industry across the world and 90 per cent of diesel and petrol engines out of use worldwide, and with a virtual shut down of all air travel together with much of the shipping across the world, we should surely see an almost immediate effect all of this has on air pollution, which, if the Green fanatics are correct, should therefore have an immediate effect on the World’s health as far as those with respiratory illnesses are concerned. Do we know whether anyone has so far come up with current credible air pollution statistics or its effect on the worlds health?
Dehli before and after:
Air Quality Index dropped from the normal value in Dehli of over 200 to below 20.
Did you know the “Comment” field doesn’t have a “*” but it is a required field?
P.S. Ignore me, I’ve had too many beverages, just had a chuckle at that.
Thanks for the chuckle Cameron. Your comment is like a drunk text 🤓
And it is true, you cannot post with the comment field left blank.
The alarmist’s strategy is to control global temperature to below 2degC (Paris) or 1.5degsC (SR1.5) above pre industrial levels at 2100AD. This is to be achieved by reducing the CO2 level by Green New Deals or by (in U.K.) Lord Deben’s CC Committee lunatic zero carbon proposals costing each household £100,000 (GWPF est) . So here we think it will be ‘decades’ of impoverishment before any CO2 reduction will be observed? Year 2100 looming up fastish , yeah? Drivelling nonsense. Where did I put my yellow jackets?
Trying to understand the current models representation/understanding of mans impact on atmospheric CO2 levels and out contribution to the “rise”.
So my question is, if humanity and our co2 levels remained at pre-industrial levels with basically no added contribution to the atmosphere, what would we expect the current levels of CO2 to be? Would they still be rising, all-be-it at a lower rate, or would they still be at pre-industrial levels, remaining essentially constant?
Is that documented somewhere?
“What we are looking for is any evidence of a decline in the atmospheric CO”
I don’t understand the premise: looking for a decline, especially one month after some changes in global CO2 production. Would the first test not be a stop in the rise? Which seems to be confirmed.
If we take as gospel, for the sake or argument, that global emissions from fossil fuel and industry add 10 GtC yearly on top of all other CO2 budgets, then even a deeply affected industry will certainly still add part of that.
Now why would we see reduction happen in the suggested time frames? Do CO2 sinks function that fast? If it could be a few GtC this won’t mean we could even start seeing reductions at this stage. Looking for a decline seems to be a strange premise for a question. On which ground a decline would be expected?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/03/is-the-covid-19-economic-downturn-affecting-atmospheric-co2-mauna-loa-data-say-not-yet/#comment-453220
If Ed Berry is correct in this paper, human CO2 emissions play a minor part in the total increase in atmospheric CO2 and any human-caused downturn will be difficult to detect.
Regards, Allan
From the Abstract:
“Human emissions through 2019 have added only 31 ppm to atmospheric CO2 while nature has added 100 ppm.”
PREPRINT: “THE PHYSICS MODEL CARBON CYCLE FOR HUMAN CO2”
by Edwin X Berry, Ph.D., Physics
https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/human-co2-has-little-effect-on-the-carbon-cycle/
ABSTRACT
The scientific basis for the effect of human carbon dioxide on atmospheric carbon dioxide rests upon correctly calculating the human carbon cycle. This paper uses the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) carbon-cycle data and allows IPCC’s assumption that the CO2 level in 1750 was 280 ppm. It derives a framework to calculate carbon cycles. It makes minor corrections to IPCC’s time constants for the natural carbon cycle to make IPCC’s flows consistent with its levels. It shows IPCC’s human carbon cycle contains significant, obvious errors. It uses IPCC’s time constants for natural carbon to recalculate the human carbon cycle. The human and natural time constants must be the same because nature must treat human and natural carbon the same. The results show human emissions have added a negligible one percent to the carbon in the carbon cycle while nature has added 3 percent, likely due to natural warming since the Little Ice Age. Human emissions through 2019 have added only 31 ppm to atmospheric CO2 while nature has added 100 ppm. If human emissions were stopped in 2020, then by 2100 only 8 ppm of human CO2 would remain in the atmosphere.
This is actually massive and not some theory or prediction, but live data.
I’ve often thought that the human proportion as been over exaggerated to the extreme degree.
We now that is all being exposed.
End of the Manmade CO2 – Global Warming Scam
No Timbo, this is a religion for them. To them CO2 is the devil and provides no benefits.
This is silly. It would be impossible to detect any change in 3 months. The net accumulation of CO2 human fossil fuel burning is about ~2 ppm per year. So, if fossil fuel burning was halved for a whole year we might detect a 1 ppm increase (rather than 2 ppm) in CO2 concentration. Any change over a 3 month period will be lost in the noise.
John will we be able deduct in April? May?
Detect ….grr
This could finish up like Neil Sedaka’s “Calendar Girl”:
“January you set the world on fire…………..”.
Perhaps after a year we might note that CO2 hasn’t increased by as much as normal.
Remember we’re still probably emitting at 1950 levels -even with the shutdowns.
You can’t have the argument both ways !
In past years the MSM has been full of stories of us driving up CO2 levels due to XYZ – well now XYZ is notably reduced this should be noticeable in the live data.
Slight downturns in past years have been linked many times to either Chinese downturns, recessions or reduced GDP’s – We CV is an extreme event that dwarfs any of these – Its abrupt and its global and its signature should be seen in the data by now if humans the human element of co2 levels were as high as the GW movement makes out.
The MSM don’t understand the carbon cycle.
Roy W. Spencer,
“Last month I described a simple method for removing the large seasonal cycle from the Mauna Loa CO2 data,
andas well as the average effects from El Nino and La Nina”If there is no decline, the CO2 alarmists have no case.
Why would there be a decline? We’re still emitting CO2. It won’t increase by as much but it will probably still increase.