By David Wojick |October 20th, 2020|Climate
Climate science is dominated by alarmists addicted to the idea that increasing carbon dioxide will cause dangerous global warming. How much warming is thus the central scientific question.
This question has been surprisingly difficult to answer despite 40 years of research, costing tens of billions of dollars. Now the issue is exploding because two different answers are emerging, one harmlessly low and the other dangerously high. This divergence is a crisis for the alarmist community. How they handle it remains to be seen.
What follows is a slightly technical explanation of the situation.
The issue centers on a benchmark estimate of the impact of increasing CO2 on global temperature. This is called the “equilibrium climate sensitivity” or ECS. The basic question is what will the global average temperature be when the CO2 level is double the supposedly original level of 280 ppm? That is, what will it be when we hit 560 ppm.
However, since it may take the climate system some time to adjust to this new high level, the question is what the temperature will be when the system equilibrates to this doubling, which may be some time after we hit 560. Also, this is about sensitivity, so ECS is not the new high temperature. It is the number of degrees C higher than the original temperature that this new high temperature will be.
So if the new high temperature is, say, 2.2 degrees C higher then ECS = 2.2 degrees.
Technically ECS is often an abstraction, something that only happens in climate models, but model ECS is taken as an important estimate of real ECS. In the models ECS is often estimated by simply doubling the CO2 instantaneously, whereas in reality this takes centuries.
All this said, I can now explain the emerging crisis.
For many decades the accepted model estimates of ECS have ranged from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C. Different models give different values, but the acceptable range has not changed. That the range is so big has been a policy problem. Warming as little as 1.5 degrees might be harmless, while 4.5 might be dangerous. But the ECS range has been stubbornly persistent, refusing to narrow to a specific value.
Now, suddenly, there is a huge new problem. ECS has exploded! It is not that it is higher, or lower — it is both. Two new lines of research have diverged sharply on the estimated value of ECS.
The first line of research takes a new approach called observational ECS. The idea is that since the CO2 level is almost half way to doubling we should be able to derive ECS empirically from the observed relationship between CO2 increase and temperature increase.
There have been a number of observational studies and many are getting ECS values well below 1.5, which are harmless indeed. Values of 1.2 and 1.3 are common.
But at the same time there has been a new wave of modeling studies and these are getting ECS values way above 4.5, which would be truly dangerous. Here values of 5.2 and 5.3 are to be found.
Note that the modeling community is divided over accepting these new hot model numbers. After all, they imply that the modeling done over the last forty years or so has been wrong, including a lot of the recent modeling which is still within the old range.
The upshot of all this is that the science of ECS is in a shambles. Given that ECS addresses the core science of climate alarmism, this is truly a crisis. Has the modeling been wrong for 40 years? Is it wrong now? What about observation, which is supposed to rule in science? The scientific method says observation trumps theoretical modeling.
This is also a policy crisis. If we have no idea how sensitive the climate system will be to increasing CO2 levels then we have no basis for making climate change policy. If the observation values are right then there simply is no climate emergency.
How will this huge new uncertainty play out? Fortunately we will get at least a glimpse fairly soon. The latest IPCC assessment report (AR6) is presently under review and should be out in the next year or so. This report is supposed to review the state of climate change science, albeit from an alarmist point of view.
How the IPCC handles the exploding ECS range will be interesting to see, at the very least. They may choose to ignore it because it has to hurt alarmism. They may simply drop mention of the ECS altogether, it now being very inconvenient. But this glaring omission will be easy to call out.
Or they may only acknowledge the hot higher values, which favor alarmism. Here they risk making modeling look stupid (which it is). Plus this omission of critical evidence will also be easy to call out.
With the ECS range exploding the IPCC is caught between a hot rock and a cold hard place. So is alarmism. Stay tuned.
Author
David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see
http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html
For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see
http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/
Available for confidential research and consulting.
“The basic question is what will the global average temperature be when the CO2 level is double the supposedly original level of 280 ppm? That is, what will it be when we hit 560 ppm.” No. The basic question is How does CO2 affect the temperature of the planet, if at all? As there is not one empirical study which shows that CO2 is causing the current slow apparent warming, what is all the fuss about??
You’re talking about the potential of losing all those juicy climate alarmist paychecks! That’s reason enough for the entire climate scientist community to be up in arms. There’ll be blood in the streets for this.
Spot on there S86. Think big tech fighting to protect their monopolies, big pharma fighting to protect its product reputation, Wall St fighting to retain its influence, Boeing doing dodgy software fixes to offset engineering modifications and never mind hundreds of lives are at risk, think ‘The Swamp” and massive, soulless self interest is the common thread. Climate science has become the Thalidomide of science, estroying its reputation for objectiveity and humility.
https://truepundit.com/bill-gates-shutting-down-economy-not-nearly-enough-to-stem-climate-change-we-need-to-get-rid-of-emissions-from-all-the-different-sectors/
Considering that temperatures increased at about the same rate from 1650-1850 than it has from 1850-2020, I’d say that it has about 0.0 effect on temperature. Because what absorbs also emits, CO2 increases emissivity of the atmosphere and absorption is not the only way the atmosphere is heated. If the Modern Maximum of the sun is over, so too is climate alarmism – until they switch back to the Ice Age (glacial period) scare, which is the only one we should give any concern about.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in the climate “crisis” scam, but the temperature didn’t increase at the same rate from 1650 – 1850 as it has in the last ~century. The longest continuous temperature record, the Central England Temperature, shows a slight uptick in the last ~century. Consistent with expectations, winter temperatures have slightly warmed in the last century, summer temps haven’t. Fall has also slightly warmed, not so much for spring. For climates at England’s latitude, that’s actually a good thing – certainly nothing to get your panties all in a bunch over.
I do agree that solar irradiance has likely been slightly increasing, – just look at Be-10 concentrations, but CO2 probably does has a small effect too (it’s a little like putting insulation in your attic – warms in the winter – cools in the summer) but it’s known to be logarithmic so future temperature increases will be well bounded.
http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=7603
Meab:
..temperature didn’t increase at the same rate from 1650 – 1850..
Proxies not withstanding, I have a problem with such staements as above. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invented his thermometer as I recall in 1729 and refused to share it for many years lest someone copy it. Given also that the basis of his absurd scale were, as he believed, three immutable absolutes namely melting ice, body temperature, and boiling water which all had to be divisible by four.
Since all three happen to be variables, and the calibration/manufacture of his thermometer was dubious at best, I remain puzzled as to how we can assert that such small temperature variations, fractions of a degree, have any meaning.
Cheers
Mike
Quite. Stromatolites started pumping Oxygen out when CO2 was 80% of the atmosphere and the atmosphere was anoxic. This level of CO2 is way way beyond any ‘tipping point’ that some have asserted we cannot pass or all life dies. If my maths is correct then when the CO2 was at 80% that is 200,000 times the current level, and life as we now it took off.
What’s interesting is that all the life-giving atmospheric O2 has come from CO2 via photosynthesis.
The O2 given off by plants and other photosynthesizers comes from water, not CO2. Hydrogen (actually protons) from water attaches to CO2 in the dark reactions to form sugar. The oxygen atoms separated from hydrogen in the light reactions is emitted as a waste product, although land plant roots need oxygen, since their cells can’t photosynthesize, not being exposed to sunlight.
OK. My bottom line was that all O2 in the atmosphere came from the photosynthetic cycle, which depends on CO2, not which specific molecule it came from.
Penn State researchers found that pre-Oxygen Catastrophe air was 25 to 50% CO2, but take that with a grain of micrometeorite:
https://earthsky.org/earth/earth-ancient-atmosphere-carbon-dioxide-nitrogen-meteorites#:~:text=These%20particles%20from%20space%20%E2%80%93%20a,carbon%20dioxide%20of%20around%200.04%25.
I dunno. Ask Prince Charles…he wants to get the military involved to solve this case.
God please let Elizabeth outlive Charles!
God save Princess Anne, please.
“Has the modeling been wrong for 40 years? Is it wrong now? ”
The modeling has always been and always will be wrong until the IPCC is disbanded. They are the ones pushing the 3C nominal increase because they need it that large to justify their existence while the IPCC has become the arbiter of deciding what defines what the ‘consensus’ believes by what they choose to put in their reports.
The best estimate is closer to 0.3C per W/m^2, which puts the increase from the stated equivalent forcing from doubling CO2 at about 1.1C. The average W/m^2 of solar forcing contributes about 1.62 W/m^2 to the surface emissions. Each W/m^2 must contribute equally to the work done to maintain the average temperature which is proportional to T^4. The next W/m^2 will be no more powerful than any other and will also contribute 1.62 W/m^2. Increasing the current average temperature by 0.3C will increase the average emissions by about 1.62 W/m^2.
If someone can explain how the Earth can tell the next Joule of forcing from the average Joule so that the next one can do so much more work than the average one would be deserving of a Noble prize for finding a way to circumvent Conservation Of Energy.
The average W/m^2 of solar forcing contributes about 1.62 W/m^2 to the surface emissions. Each W/m^2 must contribute equally to the work done to maintain the average temperature which is proportional to T^4.
Define ‘solar forcing’.
Net solar input of about 240 W/m^2.
Only W/m^2 from the Sun actually forces the system, regardless of what initially intercepts those W/m^2. The test is whether or not something would heat the surface in the absense of any other W/m^2 that also actually heats the surface. Without solar power, CO2 ‘forcing’ would have no effect on the steady state average temperature.
Forcing said to be a consequence of CO2 is more properly characterized as the equivalent amount of solar forcing that would have the same same temperature effect on the surface while holding CO2 concentrations constant.
Only W/m^2 from the Sun actually forces the system
Don’t carry on about CO2. Define solar forcing.
How do you get 1.62 W/m^2?
Take the average SB emissions of the surface and divide by the net solar input.
The state of the system is its temperature and its SB emissions equivalently represents the same thing. Whatever effect non radiant energy entering the atmosphere (for example, latent heat) has on the temperature has already been accounted for by the state, i.e. the temperature.
Take the average SB emissions of the surface and divide by the net solar input.
Show the numbers. And in the ratio the units [W/m^2] cancel, so no W/m^2 on the result.
Try again.
Take the average SB emissions of the surface and divide by the net solar input.
So, you say that 1.62= SB emission / net solar input.
I.e. SB emission is 62% higher than solar input (clearly wrong).
Try again. Define solar forcing correctly.
Leif,
“.. .and in the ratio the units [W/m^2] cancel, ”
As they must. Each W/m^2 of solar forcing must have the same influence on each W/m^2 of surface emissions. This ratio is properly dimensionless, otherwise COE would be violated as it would require different Joules of input to perform a different amount of work relative to the output, and as I presume you already know, the units of work are Joules and the work required to maintain a specific surface temperature in the steady state is proportional to T^4.
Relative to feedback analysis, a DIMENSIONLESS ratio between the output and input is called the gain and a DIMENSIONLESS fraction of the output is returned to the input is the feedback fraction. If g is the closed loop gain, G is the open loop gain and f is the fraction of feedback, g = 1/(1/G – f) and f, g and G MUST all be dimensionless values. The fact that climate science has bastardized the concept of gain to have the units of degrees per W/m^2 while assuming G is a dimensionless 1 and that changing CO2 forces the system is the origin of the broken science as it purposefully hides the T^4 dependence of W/m^2 and the intrinsic linearity of W/m^2 of actual forcing to W/m^2 of surface emissions. Th W/m^2 of equivalent forcing from CO2 are not new Joules entering the system!
At an average temperature of 288K, the surface emits an average of about 390 W/m^2 which when divided by 240 W/m^2 is about 1.6 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing. A dimensionless ratio like this is already linear just as feedback analysis REQUIRES, so there’s no need to incorrectly assume that approximate linearity around the mean is sufficient to satisfy one of the preconditions for applying the analysis (the implicit power supply requirement is not satisfied in either case). A dimensionless sensitivity expressed as W/m^2 of surface missions per W/m^2 of forcing is the proper form of the gain. BTW, per Bode, the definition of sensitivity actually applies to something completely different and is also dimensionless. What climate science calls the sensitivity is really the closed loop gain.
If you want a T output, convert W/m^2 of output to T using the SB Law. Incremental or absolute W/m^2 results in the same ratio precluding the need for incremental analysis which is only done to obfuscate the non linearity between T and W/m^2. When you add about 1.62 W/m^2 to the 390 W/m^2 of surface emissions at 288k and convert back to a temperature, it’s 0.3C higher than it was.
This ratio is properly dimensionless
Yet you quote it as 1.62 W/m^2…
At an average temperature of 288K, the surface emits an average of about 390 W/m^2 which when divided by 240 W/m^2 is about 1.6 W/m^2
No it is 1.6 with no units. no W/m^2…
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing
Solar forcing:
“For solar irradiance (i.e. “solar forcing”), the radiative forcing is simply the change in the average amount of solar energy absorbed per square meter of the Earth’s area. ”
The ‘change’ is usually considered relative to the year 1750 (pre-industrial)
Everything else equal that is simply the relative change of TSI (minus what is reflected and corrected for the Earth being a sphere).
Here is an image for comparison with other forcings
Leif,
The 1.62 ratio is what the data converges to, the 240 W/m^2 of input and 390 W/m^3 of output are only approximations. I usually quote it as a dimensionless gain of 1.62 or a sensitivity of 1.62 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing. Both mean the same thing.
Note that the reciprocal of 1.62 is about 0.62 and is the equivalent emissivity of a gray body whose temperature is that of the surface and whose emissions are that of the planet. Maintaining constant EQUIVALENT emissivity is the goal of chaotic self organization by clouds as this is the condition that minimizes changes in entropy as the system changes state. This math shows how 1.62 is the only possible gain and 0.62 is the only possible effective emissivity and is why I specified it as 1.62 (it’s actually 1.6180…).
http://www.palisad.com/co2/chaos2gold.pdf
Most of what Wikipedia says about climate science is wrong, largely because they simply echo what the IPCC says who has very little right and a whole lot wrong. It’s also been horribly biased by people like W. Connolly who seems to have a very weak grasp of fundamentals.
The proper definition of forcing is all of the NEW energy entering the system. Anything else is just redistributing existing energy. The Wikipedia definition of radiant forcing is incorrect and also contributes to why climate science per the IPCC is so wrong. Proper forcing is not just the change in solar power, but all of the solar power. A change just makes all of the solar power larger. Making the analysis incremental is a red herring designed to obfuscate the intrinsic linearity between W/m^2 of forcing and W/m^2 of surface emissions by inferring fake linearity between W/m^2 and temperature. This also enables improperly considering changes in CO2 concentrations as forcing, while the reality is that the W/m^2 of forcing attributed to doubling CO2 is really the amount of new W/m^2 from the Sun that are required to have the same temperature effect as doubling CO2 while holding CO2 concentrations constant. Changing CO2 concentrations is a change to the system and does not add new energy to the system, but any change to a forced system is always properly characterized as an equivalent change in forcing while keeping the system constant.
I suggest you read and understand Bode. He properly defines forcing, sensitivity, gain and feedback, rather than how climate science has bastardized the concepts even as they claim their nonsense conforms to Bode.
Consider an ideal BB, you must agree that the emissions sensitivity of a BB is 1 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of solar input. What about a gray body whose emissivity is 0.62. How can this be anything other than 1.62 W/m^2 of BB emissions at its temperature per W/m^2 actually emitted? An emissivity is simply a linear attenuation factor applied to the emissions of an ideal BB.
If the Earth is not equivalent to a gray body radiator, what kind of radiator is it? Are you trying to claim that the T^4 dependence of emissions doesn’t apply to the Earth’s surface? Even Trenbreth agrees that it does and as long as the T^4 dependence is present, there’s no possibility other than an ideal black or it’s non ideal cousin the gray body. The Stefan-Boltzmann Law is a law of physics, not just a suggestion that can be ignored to satisfy a narrative.
Smirnov, in 2018 calculated:
That was using the standard GHGE model, which is pseudoscience anyhow; since it’s falsified. I can’t see the point to what people like Monckton are doing. The standard GHGE model is falsified by reality – by the tests it fails. Why reanimate this GHGE zombie?
It’s also falsified by the Vostok ice-core record, which shows that temperatures always change before CO2.
This all begs the question of “exactly what does the term ‘global average temperature’ mean anyway?
Climate is the totality of the temperature profile at any one location. There is *no* global average location anywhere on the earth so what does a global average temperature tell you? It can’t tell you what the maximum temperatures are going to be at any location. It can’t tell you what the minimum temperature is going to be at any location. If you don’t know these two things then you don’t know the actual climate at any location either!
Concocting a global average temperature by averaging together hundreds or thousands of independent measurements gives you an uncertainty interval so large that you really can’t tell what the average actually is anyway. The uncertainty interval becomes larger than what you are trying to calculate.
It’s all a lot of time and money spent on something useless in the reality where we live.
@Tim Gorman. I’ve always considered the use of a ‘global average temperature’ a major stumbling block in the debate, regardless of what opinion one has of the effect of CO2. But I think it’s even more problematic than you state. Even if you do know the maximum and minimum temperatures in any locality, that alone is not going to tell you the climate, you also need to know rainfall and seasonality. Suggestions that increased CO2 would be beneficial by increasing plant growth also fall into this trap of false global averaging: more CO2 won’t produce more plants in areas with inadequate water.
Surely average temperature is useless without a corresponding measure of humidity? Humid air (I’m assuming air is being measured) carries a lot more kinetic energy than dry air at the same temperature.
If so, then surely the idea of an average temperature is ludicrous. We nead heat (kinetic) energy measurements.
Actually, if you average longitudes (based on the purely arbitrary zero line set by the Greenwich meridian, you get a point located in international waters in the Gulf of Guinea (Atlantic Ocean) just off the west African coast.
Very meaningful.. NOT !
The Greenwich meridian being zero degrees is not arbitrary – its British!
And are you saying the British aren’t arbitrary 😉
Just look at their parliament !
A common definition of zero degrees was needed to make map-making and navigation more trustworthy and economic. The Greenwich Meridian was agreed at an international convention, of which the French were the only dissenting voice. They continued to use Paris as the zero mark on their maps.
The Greenwich Meridian passes through France and Spain but not much of the UK as most of the UK lies to the West of the Prime Meridian. Which means that the Outer Hebrides are about 7’30 west About 30 minutes “behind” London, some would say it’s actually about 100 years.
There is some discussion in the UK and EU about having year round summer time, not popular in the parts of Britain North and west of London. Does make you wonder why there was such a fuss about the choice in first place.
In Thor 2, when the evil dark elf is attacking the union of all space and time, the battle takes place at Greenwich.
Thus proving that the choice of Greenwich is not arbitrary.
It has divine sanction.
Actually it will, since water loss is less in a CO2 rich atmosphere.
Because leaf stomata don’t have to open as much to get sufficient CO2, so there is less water loss from plant to atmosphere (transpiration).
Yes, more CO2 can and does produce more plants in dry areas, such as the Sahel. Greening of arid regions has been observed, for good reason.
With more plant food in the air, leaf stomata need stay open for less time to take in the gas essential for photosynthesis to make sugar. Thus they retain more water, with less time for it to transpire.
“more CO2 won’t produce more plants in areas with inadequate water.” Plant respond to a lack of water by reducing the stomata openings. Smaller stomata reduce water evaporation and allow more energy to maintain plant growth. Or possibly, nearby areas produce more plants, having a similar effect if the moisture is uniformly distributed.
On the other hand, the climate models erroneously treat the earth’s surface as a flat disk with an adjusted uniform absorption of solar energy. Unfortunately, plants don’t respond linearly to insolation. Plants going into the dark or coming into the light during rotation don’t have uniform responses. I’ve never seen anyone claiming an “average” response back it up with actual data about plant respiration or any other climate process.
Looking at all the climate processes none of them have strictly linear averaged responses. Thunder storms anyone? The result of heavy insolation an water at ground level, more or less automatically produces thunderstorms that limit the temperature increase during the day to ~30degC(Thanks Mr. Eschenbach). Deserts without excess moisture have MUCH higher temperature swings, especially around the equator.
Well argued, Tim. The average global temperature has no practical significance to anyone on the planet. If you live in Edmonton it makes no difference what the temperature is in Kuala Lumpur. Even the annual average temperature in the my hometown is essentially useless, because I have to live my life today. If it’s cold I have to dress for the cold, even if the average annual temperature is much warmer.
And, as you point out, it is probably prohibitively difficult to determine the global average temperature anyway. Climate catastrophists talk about the effects of a temperature change of half a degree. Is it possible to calculate the global average temperature to that precision? I doubt it.
With weather, average is not normal. The actual temperature at any place at any moment in time is equal to the average annual temperature for that place for only for a a minute or two, twice per day in the spring and fall, and maybe occasionally in the winter and summer (in a mild climate).
If you take the average hight of a population of 100 people, it’s possible, even probable, that no individual in that population will have exactly the average hight. Lots of averages are not normal, some don’t even exist.
I increased my daily average temperature by 40 F by moving from North Dakota to Arizona, somehow these old bones are a lot happier in Arizona. My Canadian winter neighbors will have to forgo their winter warmup this year, it really to bad. I am thinking they would like a lot of global warming right now.
+1000
In theory,. the global average location, would be around the whole equator.
Or maybe the very center of the Earth…
That doesn’t help much.. does it 😉
Tim,
Your explanation accords precisely with that given by the late Professor Robert Carter in his useful book, “ Taxing Air” –
“ Is there such a thing as a global average temperature?”
“ Yes, but it is difficult to assess and its usefulness is not established.
….Such averages are difficult to assess and have no physical existence, but represent instead convenient statistics that are generated from many separate pieces of data gathered from disparate places.In the case of temperature it is not the measured values that are compared but instead globally averaged anomalies of temperature. Thus the commonly referred to nominal 0.8C surface temperature increase during the 20th century actually represents the change in globally averaged annual anomalies over the century.
….Accepting that, nonetheless a global average temperature statistic can obviously be calculated using results from many individual weather stations.
Some scientists argue that such a number can have no more meaning than does a global average telephone number. The fact you can calculate such numbers does not, per se, confer any deep meaning or usefulness upon them.
Importantly, while changes in regional temperature contribute towards changes in global average temperature, a change in global average temperature tells us nothing about the regional patterns and differences in temperature that have led to the changed average. This is important when we consider the potential impact of changing global average temperature on regional climate.
….In any case, real world environmental effects are not imposed by changes in global average conditions but by changes in specific local conditions. What is of concern to citizens of different cities and farmers around the globe is whether their own local temperature, rainfall or sea level are going up or down, not what conceptual global averages might be doing.”
Exactly, and as I’ve said before, no living thing on Earth can sense, or respond to, the “average global temperature.” As it has been said about politics, all climate is local.
The earth has a temperature gradient from the equator to the poles. What does a Global Average Temperature (GAT) tell you about the gradient? Not much. If I show you a block of matter and tell you what the average temperature is can you tell me the temps at the two opposite ends? No, you can’t. Can you tell me what the gradient looks like? Nope. If the average temperature changes was it the hot end, the cold end, or the gradient shape? Who knows!
If you start at the Arizona desert the diurnal temp range is large. Just a few hundred miles north it isn’t near as large. Why? Water Vapor. Land usage. Lots of things.
A basic model requires a hot spot in around the equator so as to raise the gradient. We are about halfway to doubling CO2. If the ECS is 4 degrees, then the tropics should have a hot spot 4 degrees higher. Since most of the change is in the first half, then we should see 2.5+ degrees of change. Nope, can’t find any regions in the tropics that have that amount of warming. The models are simply not right!
“In the case of temperature it is not the measured values that are compared but instead globally averaged anomalies of temperature. Thus the commonly referred to nominal 0.8C surface temperature increase during the 20th century actually represents the change in globally averaged annual anomalies over the century.
Thermometers don’t measure in anomalies. They measure in temperature and the readings have an uncertainty interval associated with them. And when individual measuring devices can have +/- 0.5degC uncertainty (a one degree interval) what does a 0.8C anomaly actually mean? Especially when the uncertainty grows by root square sum when they are averaged together.
And I seem to recall that even Hansen has described global average temperature as “not a useful metric”.
But the argument is a futile one anyway. As Graeme says, evidence is that temperature changes precede CO2 changes and the only justification the eco-liars have for demonising the stuff is that they want to put an end to modern life. If their claimed objective were the true one they would be enthusiastic supporters if nuclear power generation, not pointless, intermittent, anti-environmental windmills and solar panels.
(The big puzzle in this farce is why so many apparently sane politicians have fallen for this hypocritical mendacity!)
They haven’t fallen for it, they are using it. Makes a difference.
Tim,
I have been meaning to bring this point up to the very bright people who post here! I am not even close to being a scientist but my common sense has always questioned the concept of a “global climate”. Now I know I’m not alone!
Please, “raises the question”. “Begging the question” is the name of a logical fallacy. It doesn’t mean “raising the question”.
Then there are physicists who put sensitivity way lower.
Collision and radiative processes in emission of atmospheric carbon dioxide
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/aabac6/meta
“The line-by-line method gives the change of the global temperature (0.4+-0.1) K as a result of doubling the carbon dioxide concentration. The contribution to the global temperature change due to anthropogenic injection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, i.e. resulted from combustion of fossil fuels, is approximately 0.02 K now.“
“Here values of 5.2 and 5.3 are to be found.”
Getting the earth’s temperature back to levels found during the Holocen Optimum are by definition dangerous?
Please defend that assertion.
Thank you, MarkW. I too found the assertion of “dangerous” elevated temperatures to be questionable.
Regards,
Bob
”How they handle it remains to be seen.”
I can guess…. ”Modelling shows that temperatures will continue to rise dangerously while potentially masked by natural factors not yet fully understood”…
This gets the prize!
I’m sure that is exactly what will happen (and already has happened regarding The Pause)
Models are just calculations. Usually in science, calculations must be confirmed by observations, if the conclusion is to be drawn that the calculations are correct.
That isn’t how climate “science” works. First you decide what answer you want, then you program a computer to give you that answer. Then, you hunt down any dissenting data and change it to match the answer you wanted.
The concept of a given temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 is based on the assumption that CO2 is the only absorber. However, it is well established that water vapor (H2O) not only plays a role, but is probably the dominant absorber. H2O is relatively constant, albeit perhaps increasing slightly with increasing temperatures. It seems to me that the correct approach is to add the absorbance of both H2O and CO2 (which have overlapping absorption features) and estimate when the addition of CO2 to the H2O results in a doubling of the absorption. That should be the basis of the ECS, not a doubling of CO2 alone.
Judith Curry makes a strong case that an ECS > 4.5C is borderline impossible and one > 6C is flat out impossible. link
When discussing the goodness of a computer model, we talk about verification and validation. link The most obvious criterion is to compare the model output with real world data.
Since the usual climate models make incorrect predictions, the obvious way to validate models runs counter to the needs and desires of the alarmists. They, therefore, invent different criteria for validation. ie. they will claim that their models are verified and validated.
Since the model predictions run hot when compared with real world data, that should be prima facie proof that they are invalid.
When we look at the inner workings of climate models it becomes obvious that they are neither verified nor validated.
It is easily shown in the lab that incoming IR of appropriate wavelength will heat a gas mixture containing CO2. There is fundamental physics to support this.
But this is not enough.
If CO2 in the air is warmed, it will try to cool. Any object warmed above ambient tries to cool. Laws of Thermodynamics.
The wide range of ECS numbers comes from a lack of observation about natural cooling – where it happens, how fast it is, if there is a feedback involved, what the numbers are and so on.
The alarmism around us comes from those who accept the physics of the warming but say next to nothing about the physics of the cooling. Half a process does not describe a complete process.
Here is a thought. Suppose that there is a concentrated source like a chimney emitting CO2. What if a part of it is reacted away, like taken up by tree growth for example, before it moves far enough to register miles away at Mauna Loa and similar as part of the well-mixed atmospheric gas. That is a mechanism that could affect our understanding, but I have never seen it tested to give numbers. Such point sources do not seem to show up in data from satellites that detect CO2. The mechanism might explain the many, many historical chemical analyses of many hundreds of ppm CO2 that are simply ignored by mainstream activism. Geoff S
Show me the paper about your first paragraph. I’ve been looking for years and never seen one.
Alex,
You have a microwave oven?
Apart from that, Guy Callendar (1938+) and Svante Arrhenius (1896) were among the first to give crude papers about lab results. They did other work on climate that has since been refined. Follow the paper trail.
Note how quiet the Establishment has been, after an estimated 8% reduction in measured CO2 emissions by Man have not shown any lower measured CO2 put in the air by Man and Nature, in the first 6 mnths of 2020 with Covid.
There is a point where the physics of CO2 in the lab cannot be easily extended to CO2 in the air. Arrhenius and Callendar did not deliver the final answers. Geoff S
Hi Geoff,
Sorry for the dumb question, but what do ~12cm long microwaves heating the water and fat in one’s food have to do with 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micron infra-red waves being absorbed by CO2 in a test gas mixture?
I think the question is, that after absorbing EM radiation, do the molecules cool or do they trap the heat like so many say CO2 does ? Heating is only part of the process. Explaining the cooling process properly is also necessary.
Jim
They do ‘cool’ after absorbing. After absorbing they gain mass (E=mC^2). Conservation of momentum tells me that they must slow down after absorbing and speed up after emitting.
You have to put 2+2 together. The field of microwave spectroscopy is well studied. Gas molecules absorb energy at wavelengths which are determined by the physical properties of those molecules. Off the top of my head, I’d say that Hertzberg’s work would be a good place to start.
Geoff, I say your first paragraph is wrong.
Thermodynamics says in the subject of specific heat that the energy required to cause a temperature increase can be of “any form”. If I use specific heat tables there is no mention if Q has any IR involved. The Shomate equation has no mention of adding in an IR function when calculating a mixed gas Cp with CO2 as a component.
Besides no one has yet explained how IR, which causes vibration not translation, makes nitrogen or oxygen increase in velocity. Every interaction cannot be additive. More like 50/50.
@mkelly:
And the whole thing goes tipsy turvy when water is present as the IR disappears apparently into Latent Heat without temperature change.
It’s worse than we thought.
“How much warming is thus the central scientific question.”
Maybe, and doubling of Co2 will cause at most .5 C of global warming.
But a important question is how much warming would be bad?
And that question includes, when will such warming occur?
And start with we had some warming, and was that, bad?
Answer is, it was good.
And one should be smart enough to know that we are currently in Ice Age, and no one is seriously claiming any possible warming would actually cause us to leave the Ice Age we
are in.
Some make wild claims that Man made global warming could delay returning our future glaciation period by tens of thousands of years. {And somehow that is bad??}.
So, how much increase in global surface air temperature would be bad?
If we were not in an Ice Age, the global surface temperature would be MUCH warming- like it could be 25 C rather than the cold 15 C we having at the present point in our interglacial
period.
Maybe one could ask, why are in an Ice Age with it’s extremely low CO2 levels of 400 ppm?
Everyone knows why. The reason is we have a cold ocean.
Our average temperature of our liquid ocean is about 3.5 C.
For you not to be in an Ice Age, the our ocean has to be at least 5 C
For global air temperature in be around 25 C, our ocean must be at least 10 C.
And during the last million year of our Ice Age, the ocean has remained within range
of 1 to 5 C.
One might ask what have been highest average global temperature while we have been
in our Ice Age. Probably, as warm as 18 C or more. And when it has been warmer, our ocean has been warmer.
During last time we were in an interglacial period, Eemian, our ocean warmed to about 4 C {or more}. And seems as low estimate global average air temperature was about 17 C.
Now for about last hundred year we have been say our global air temperature has been about 15, and we say it’s about 15 C at the moment. And we don’t know if it’s at 15 C or cooler or warmer. Rather it’s about 15 C and so kind of unrealistic to say can know what global temperature was over 100,000 years ago. So can say about 17 C and saying it was 17.5 C would simply be a lie. As would be a lie saying our current average temperature is, say 15.25 C.
Roughly we know, the southern hemisphere is about 1 C cooler than northern hemisphere.
Roughly we know global land temperature is about 10 C, global ocean about 17 C and average of the 70% ocean and 30% land is about 15 C. Or our best guess to date is average land is about 10 C, and ocean surface temperature of 17 C is less certain.
We measure the difference rather knowing what the temperature is.
So, is a 2 C increase in our global temperature, a bad thing?
I would say if ocean temperature increase by .5 and became about 4 C, that would “cause”
increase in global temperature by about 2 C. And the thermal expansion would amount about 1 foot rise in sea level. And it’s estimated that in last 100 year the ocean thermal expansion has be about 2″, and total rise in sea level has been about 7″.
And there some claims that during Little Ice Age, sea level dropped, and we since gained back more than we lost during this cooler period, ending around 1850 AD.
And question about whether ocean will increase to being 4 C or 17 C is question about how much time will it take. Well, it’s not going to occur within 20 years, and could happen within 200 years.
And it seems to me, one should only be concerned about such change within 100 years.
And if serious, within 50 years.
I don’t expect that the IPCC will have any difficulty rationalizing their way to an ever more hysterical conclusion that “it is worse than we thought” in our last 5 assessments. They have surely purged, intimidated and cancelled all competent, ethical and scientifically scrupulous authors and reviewers from their exclusive club of alarmists. They could certainly save a great deal of time and expense by just assigning the writing of the new assessment report to Micheal E. Mann and Bill Nye. Maybe get Ben Santer and Bill McKibben to write the SPM.
Exactly, this is no crisis. A crisis would require objectivity.
How much? It depends on the initial value subscribed as the Average temperature in 1880 or thereabouts. Given that Phil Jones said that until more buoys were deployed the normals for between 40 – 60 South were mostly made up; how can one subscribe to an average to within 0.01ºC ?
That is one reason you never see measurement uncertainty propagated throughout the calculations to determine averages of temperatures. And it is not only the oceans but much of the southern hemisphere.
If the ECS is 2C. Then the climate of Detroit would be about the same as Indianapolis Indiana or Columbus Ohio. Is that an existential threat? Also during the Cretaceous period temperatures were much higher than today but life didn’t die out. It was prolific.
To any person who has a modicum of scientific intelligence problems like this should highlight the fact that the whole modeling approach to establishing policy is bogus. Any attempt to finesse it will only further expose the whole climate change cabal as game playing.
“…. will be easy to call out”. Don’t bet on it – MSM haven’t called out much yet and as time goes by they, like alarmists scientists and most governments, stand to look stupid if they report that there really isn’t anything to worry about. It will take a long time to unpack the disinformation out there.
Beat me to it! I had “They may simply drop mention of the ECS altogether, it now being very inconvenient. But this glaring omission will be easy to call out.” ready to paste in for exactly that comment. Like the falling tree in the forest, does an opinion even exist if it can’t be heard? While the various media fawn all over alarmists and censor others, the alarmists can get away with anything. Absolutely anything. The alarmists keep going on about tipping points – well I think the POTUS election could be a massive tipping point: a Joe Biden win would give the alarmists so much power that the return of the Laurentide ice sheet could be explained away as runaway global warming.
Well, they already laid the groundwork for that claim nearly 10 years ago.
There is no crisis. They are simply wrong.
This number they keep using called “The Global Temperature” is a false abstraction – it has no real meaning or relevance. So what if in Canada where the average temperature for August might be 34F degrees it rises to 40F degrees? You think the caribous are going to complain? The rise in temperature is less where it’s warm and greatest where it is cold, less in the day and greater at night… It’s called moderation. All life will be better off, unless you only consider humans living in marginal areas and they fail to adapt – which is very unlikely.
I have no idea if humans are contributing to warming because the current science is so BAD. They might be, a little, but most of this is natural and anyone who studies the historical record knows it.
People need to understand what a computer model really is…it’s just a reflection of someone’s ideas on how something works – it is NOT reality. If you do not constantly test and adjust it without prejudice, then it’s completely worthless. Climate activists are incapable of working without bias, and so they too as scientists are completely worthless.
Robert,
Precisely.
See my response to Tim Gorman on this thread quoting the late Professor Robert Carter to the same effect.
People need to understand what a computer model really is…it’s just a reflection of someone’s ideas on how something works – it is NOT reality
Yet we’re constantly hearing, even in the “hard” sciences, about how “models PROVE…”
Observations and reality don’t seem to matter anymore.
Tony G great wisdom in your short comnent. A computer model is just the personal opinion of the owner and programmer. If it could make good predictions it might be a real model. Or just lucky. With bad predictios, as with all clonate “models” except one from Russia, they are just computer games used for climate alarmist propaganda. Models do not produce real data, as you could collect from observations. They are used for wild guess, nearly always wrong, predictions of the future climate, which no human has ever deminstrated the ability to predict.
ECS is a meaningless term because our planet is never on thermodynamic equilibrium. The TCS is unknown, but there is no evidence to suggest over +1.0 C. per CO2 doubling, and more evidence to suggest the right answer is NO ONE KNOWS. I only have a BS degree so am still allowed to say NO ONE KNOWS.
And also model runs are often referred to as “experiments”!
Its bollocks, not an experiment.
I suppose that’s a really easy way to “confirm” your hypothesis against “experiment” :smh
“The idea is that since the CO2 level is almost half way to doubling”
Eh ?? Hello, it’s logarithmic dude. The first half of a logarithmic curve is steeper than the second half. We passed the half-way point of effect at 396 ppm.
The calculation of ECS depends on the atmospheric model of the greenhouse gas effect. They’ve always used the same core model; derived from Manabe and Wetherald 1967 amended by Held and Soden 2000. This is the so-called ‘simple physics’ behind man-made climate change.
– Hansen et al.; 2011; Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 13421-13449, doi:10.5194/acp-11-13421-2011 (open access)
more CO2 in the atmosphere causes the atmosphere to be more opaque to infrared. That’s a falsifiable test. The data says:
The test fails. The optical thickness of the atmosphere to CO2 greenhouse gas is unchanged since 1950 for over 70 years since CO2 increased in the atmosphere from 315ppm to 415ppm.
So the core assumption of the greenhouse gas effect is wrong. What of the predictions? The first prediction is that man-made global warming happens because a change in CO2 is “reducing emission of heat energy to space“. We can measure that too, and have been; at least since 1985.
Far from reducing: the heat energy emitted to space increased since 1985 by a whole 1.5 W/m². The first falsifiable prediction of the core model shows the greenhouse gas effect model failing too.
In fact, OLR increases as a reflection of surface warming (notice the fall 1991-1994 due to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo cooling earth’s climate).
– Wikipedia
So less OLR emitted to space does not a cause warming. It simply reflects warming which already happened. The climate consensus at the IPCC are clear that humanity cause 90% of modern climate change. They are clear about the mechanism by which we are supposed to warm the planet. For humanity to have – caused 90% of modern climate change – OLR to space must’ve fallen in line with the mechanics of the greenhouse gas simulation.
A core assumption and a core prediction by the climate consensus greenhouse gas model are falsified. Those claiming man-made climate change is settled science are promoting pseudoscience.
Mark,
You are right but that does not stop alarmist scientists from trotting out Harries et al 2001, “ Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the earth in 1970 and 1997”,as an iconic paper and alleged evidence that LESS OLR has been shown to be emitted to space.
That paper was cited by Dr. Myles Allen in the famous tutorial to Judge Alsup in the Cal.v BP litigation.
It was again cited by the Australian CSIRO in response to Senator Malcolm Roberts’ demand for a paper showing CO2 is causing dangerous warming of the planet (WUWT passim).
Ouch! Apologies.
(1) I should not use the word reflection. It has a precise scientific meaning but, above, I was using it in an everyday metaphorical sense.
(2) More OLR emitted to space is a proxy for surface warming. Obviously: since the S-B law calculates OLR increasing as the 4th power of temperature increases.
(3) What’s bizarre about this is how many dedicated warmists have tried to convince me of man-made warming based on this broken model (Ken Rice – are you listening?) They merely repeat this wrong, Platonic, model of the greenhouse gas effect and smirk – see you can’t disprove our logic so that means earth is catastrophically warming. I cannot dispute the logic. All I can do is falsify the pseudoscience. PS: One famous blogger has a reputable website dedicated to promoting this broken model. Why do so many reputable scientists promote pseudoscience?
Thanks Herbert for the tip. I will root those warmist citations of this paper out to ridicule them further!!
In addition to the 2 falsifications of the standard greenhouse gas effect atmospheric model there are at least 2 more.
3) The model says that an increase in temperature due to more CO2 will cause atmospheric humidity to increase. In fact, it decreased.
The chart above was made from NOAA radiosonde data, by NOAA, at 300 mb (about 9.2 km altitude), over the tropics (30N to 30S latitude).
4) The resultant, more humid atmosphere, causes a hotspot over the tropics at altitudes of 10km to 12km). Climate consensus scientists agree the hotspot should be there but isn’t found:
PS 1: quotes above are cited from: Haimberger, Tavolato, Sperka; J. Climate () 25(23): 8108-8131. http://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00668.1
PS 2: They’re talking about GCM models here not the simpler, atmospheric model of the GHGE I referred to above.
Their ‘solution‘ to this missing hotspot is to homogenize the radiosonde data. A few homogenizations were done and eventually they tortured the data enough to find a hotspot (as explained in the paper above), so settled on a preferred homogenization.
I’ve always thought that the debate over equilibrium climate sensitivity, and its difference from transient climate response, was silly in regards to the effect of a change in input that occurs so slowly that the word glacial doesn’t come close to being an adequate descriptor. There is no possible way that the Earth’s climate system could ever be far from a theoretical equilibrium state for any given CO2 level, simply because the increase in CO2 has been so gradual.
Look at it this way. If I crank a stove top under a pot of liquid up from low to high very quickly, I can see that it would take a while for the liquid temperature to achieve equilibrium for the new state. But if I change from low to high so slowly that it takes 20 years to get there, will there ever be a point in time where had I just stopped, the water temperature would be far off from the equilibrium temperature for the setting I stopped at? It’s hard to imagine that this would be so.
Every day, every patch of land/water on Earth undergoes rapid, large swings in heat flux above and below equilibrium that completely dwarf the infinitesimal incremental daily increase due to rising CO2, and every patch of land/water responds quickly to those very large and rapid changes, to try to achieve heat equilibrium via the daily swings in temperature. The idea that, say, an area of the earth surrounding a corn field in Kansas, when responding to the 1 kW or so increase in solar radiation from 4:00am to 1:00pm on a sunny mid-summer day, will be so completely flummoxed by the extra 0.00001 W/m2 that it has to squirrel that tiny increment of extra heat away on its way up to its daily maximum temperature (or down to its daily minimum), and keep doing this for a century or so, to allow these tiny increments to accumulate and wreak their holy vengeance on mankind at some distant date in the future is, well . . . . stupid.
You can quibble about what number to attach to “equilibrium climate sensitivity” for today’s CO2 concentration, but whatever it is, we’re living it now. There is no “heat in the pipeline.”
Much to do about nothing: The depth of the insanity of our current culture is that we spend $billions on the non-issue of CO2 induced possible warming and solving this non-issue by the unworkable $multi-trillion solution of capturing, and worse yet storing, sunshine and breezes.
copy
…there is nothing we can do to stop the Earth’s naturally occurring climate cycles. Even the worst of the worst, even the most maniacal pushing the Global Warming Hoax admit that, at best, we can only cool the planet a couple of degrees, which will do next to nothing if the planet is determined to again warm itself by seven degrees, as we now know it did 2,999,998 years before the Bad Orange Man approved a couple of pipelines.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
It is not really about how much. Mann claims Trump did it in 4 years.
And as the Connelly father/son duo show using data from 2 million balloon data sets….
https://youtu.be/XfRBr7PEawY?t=1444
….. the atmosphere is controlled by the molecular density.
The tropopause bounces up and down like crazy, showing it is forced by the surface temperature, not the other way around.
Many important people know that CO2 is the culprit in the dangerous warming of the world, and they intend to fix it.
There may be a few rational climate researchers that anguish over the spread in estimates of ECS. What percentage of “important people” can say what this acronym stands for?
The connection between CO2 and global warming is an axiom to these “important people” and to question this makes one a heretic. The modern solution is to cancel such people.
If ECS was truly 5+ and with most CO2 emissions having occurred after 1950 , the warming signal would be jumping out of the data and snarling at us like a rabid dog. Instead we’ve spent several decades trying to tease the warming signal out of the data, with prominent scientists wringing their hands over the “missing heat”.
The only way you get to 5+ degrees and still be credible is to assume natural cooling trends are cancelling a large amount of warming from CO2. In which case we’d best create as much CO2 as we can or the ice sheets will come for us.
So pick your poison alarmists. Sensitivity so high it means CO2 is the only thing between us and an ice age? Or so low that it doesn’t matter? I don’t even care which one any more, just pick one and be done with it .