By David Wojick |October 26th, 2020|Climate
Precision research by physicists William Happer and William van Wijngaarden has determined that the present levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor are almost completely saturated. In radiation physics the technical term “saturated” implies that adding more molecules will not cause more warming.
In plain language this means that from now on our emissions from burning fossil fuels could have little or no further impact on global warming. There would be no climate emergency. No threat at all. We could emit as much CO2 as we like; with no effect.
This astounding finding resolves a huge uncertainty that has plagued climate science for over a century. How should saturation be measured and what is its extent with regard to the primary greenhouse gases?
In radiation physics the term “saturation” is nothing like the simple thing we call saturation in ordinary language, just as the greenhouse effect is nothing like how greenhouses work. Your paper towel is saturated when it won’t pick up any more spilled milk. In contrast greenhouse gases are saturated when there is no more milk left to pick up, as it were, but it is far more complex than this simple analogy suggests.
Happer is probably best known to our readers as a leading skeptical scientist. He co-founded the prestigious CO2 Coalition and recently served on the staff of the National Security Council, advising President Trump. But his career has been as a world class radiation physicist at Princeton. His numerous peer reviewed journal articles have collectively garnered over 12,000 citations by other researchers.
In this study Professors Happer and van Wijngaarden (H&W) have worked through the saturation physics in painstaking detail. Their preprint is titled “Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases“. They have gone far beyond the work done to date on this complex problem.
To begin with, while the standard studies treat the absorption of radiation by greenhouse molecules using crude absorption bands of radiation energy, H&W analyze the millions of distinct energies, called spectral lines, which make up these bands. This line by line approach has been an emerging field of analysis, often giving dramatically new results.
Nor do they just look at absorption. Here is how Professor Happer put it to me:
“You would do our community a big favor by getting across two important points that few understand. Firstly: Thermal emission of greenhouse gases is just as important as absorption. Secondly: How the temperature of the atmosphere varies with altitude is as important as the concentration of greenhouse gases.”
So they looked hard, not just at absorption but also including emissions and atmospheric temperature variation. The work is exceedingly complex but the conclusions are dramatically clear.
Happer and van Wijngaarden’s central conclusion is this:
“For the most abundant greenhouse gases, H2O and CO2, the saturation effects are extreme, with per-molecule forcing powers suppressed by four orders of magnitude at standard concentrations...”
Their graphical conclusions are especially telling:
“Fig. 9 as well as Tables 2 and 4 show that at current concentrations, the forcings from all greenhouse gases are saturated. The saturations of the abundant greenhouse gases H2O and CO2 are so extreme that the per-molecule forcing is attenuated by four orders of magnitude…”
The other three greenhouse gases they analyzed are ozone, nitrous oxide and methane. These are also saturated but not extremely so like water vapor and carbon dioxide. They are also relatively minor in abundance compared to CO2, which in turn is small compared to H2O.
Clearly this is work that the climate science community needs to carefully consider. This may not be easy given that three major physics journals have refused to publish it. The reviews have been defensive and antagonistic, neither thoughtful nor helpful. Alarmism is in control of the journals, censoring contrary findings, hence the preprint version.
Undaunted, H&W are now extending their analysis to include clouds. Alarmist climate science gets dangerous global warming, not from the CO2 increase alone, but also using positive water vapor and cloud feedbacks. Given that carbon dioxide and water vapor are both extremely saturated, it is highly unlikely that cloud feedbacks alone can do much damage, but it requires careful analysis to know this for sure. Stay tuned.
In the meantime the present work needs to be front and center as we strive for rational climate science. Professors William Happer and William van Wijngaarden are to be congratulated for an elegant and timely breakthrough.
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.
this will be popular.
Fakebook….Tweeter….and all of ’em will ban any mention….down the memory hole….never happened.
Actually I don’t know.
I could see our Social Lords and Masters deciding to let this trend, purely to distract from all those posts from people hunting for a second hand computer.
Make it easier on yourself. Just conglomerate them as TwitGooFace.
How about goo faced twit? Sounds like a small song bird.
Things happened. The reality is that truth often finds a way of revealing itself sometimes very visually.
My biggest question today is did Joe and Barack know about Hunter and Malia?
Yeah… we need a new system of communication and information dispersement. This internet is like a science project gone out of control bad. We used to laugh about the “revenge of the nerds.”
You forgot the sarc tag.
I don’t believe this study will ever make it into the majority of informational outlets. As far as the typical media, not a chance.
I read it as sarcasm.
You mean we can’t expect Joe Biden to retract his strident fossil fuel statements in the last debate?
“Climate Change” is merely a useful excuse for many petroleum company hating activists. If they saw a potentially more successful way to destroy the fossil fuel economy they would not be adverse to changing tactics, no matter where those led.
It does not say that more CO2 could be added with no effect.
…but down the rabbit burrow we go.
And Wojick’s ludicrous “no more CO2 warming” spin gets everyone here breathless with excitement; a skepticism-free zone. I suppose the desperation is understandable given the relentless warming observation: 429 months of above average temperature.
But, but, maybe next month it’ll start to cool or pause or something…
Nuh, and clearly not for thousands of years.
Loydo quote “429 months of above average temperature.”
Above what average exactly. As for that graph, it is total bullshit as what happened to the 1930’s and you have to remember Loydo that we have been coming out of the little ice age or does that not make a difference? :((
Loy, It says “saturated”
What don’t you comprehend this time ???
1… Do you have any empirical scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2?
2… In what ways has the global climate changed in the last 50 years , that can be scientifically proven to be of human causation?
Duck and weave again, petal !!
NOAA/GISS ADJUSTMENTS look almost exactly the same
Find some REAL data next time, loy, not a blatant fabrication.
And of course the slight warming since the LIA has been totally beneficial and driven by natural forces such as the SUN and AMO/PDO cycles.
Mike, last century’s average. Its global not just the US. If you think its bs, which global data set do you prefer?
I am sorry Loydo but that previous graph was complete bullshit and the next one is probably no better. For one going back to 1850 so much of the world was not even covered with a thermometer so a global average back then is an undoubted load of bullshit. As well as that if the temperature was -30C and you were reading the thermometer would you quibble about a degree or two. In science you are not meant to use a precision greater than the least precise one and yet we are meant to believe it is so precise they can tell to a tenth of a degree. As well as that a global average actually tells us nothing. So many of today’s stations are a joke, like being on a roof within metres of an air-conditioning unit.
We also know how much the temperatures have been adjusted which would be believable except that the adjustments ALWAYS go in one direction. So you can throw as many graphs at me as you like but I won’t be believing them just like I won’t believe you. You have dirtied your nest too often.
Loydo, poor petal that he is thinks we can average global temperature. He thinks they can do it to 1/100th Cº.
Nobody knows why it has warmed since the LIA.
Nor does anybody know when that warming will stop.
Besides, we’re only talking about the atmosphere; it’s the oceanic heat content that wags the atmospheric tail and nobody knows ‘that thing’s’ trend.
Long term we are cooling, folks; that will bring the climate damages.
Anthropogenic warming is net beneficial and anthropogenic greening is cornucopic.
=============
Just like in Lake Woebegone, all of the temperatures are above average.
Loydo cannot support ‘and clearly not for thousands of years’.
Eat your Wheaties, Hon, and try again.
=========
It really is amazing how strongly the warmunists cling to their discredited “science”.
Loydo, please provide evidence that any, much less most of the warming from the last century was caused by CO2.
lee, Loydo not only believes that we can measure the temperature of the earth today, to 100th of a degree, he also believes that we can measure the temperature of the earth back in 1850, to the same degree of accuracy.
Loydo – sea level rise and glacier retreat start around 1850 – 1860, which is 50 years too early for HadCrut4 and way too early to be consistent with IPCC forcings (which don’t even start to turn positive on decadel averages until after 1910 and don’t get going properly until the 1950s).
So what caused the warming from 1910 – 1945? In Hadcrut4 the warming rate for 35 yrs 1910 – 1945 is virtually identical to the 35 yr period 1975 – 2010, yet the IPCC forcings are a factor > 3x different for the two periods. Physically impossible, given the forcings. See:
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1910/to:1945/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/to:2010/trend
And how come global alpine glaciers were melting from as early as 1840 and the sea level rising at a steady rate since 1850? Completely impossible if you accept the IPCC forcings which are all negative (cooling) decadel averages until 1910.
See Jevrejeva (2014), Nussbaumer (2007), Zumbahl (2011), Leclerc & Oerlemans (2012)
Nobody knows why it has warmed since the LIA.
Well, then my name is ‘Nobody’. It was higher solar activity kim.
Perhaps so, Bob W, and I suspect so too.
But I’m not sure, not knowing the mechanisms of possible change in the sun, and/or change in the temperature effect of an unchanged sun.
===========
Loydo
Nuh, and clearly not for thousands of years.
That’s priceless hilarity to rival anything from Laurel and Hardy.
Don’t forget that you’re supposed to at least pretend to believe in “natural” climate change.
Loy is SO DUMB, that he still hasn’t caught on that all those are built using the same mal-adjusted data .
No accounting for his ignorance.
They can’t measure a global temperature now, and they certainly couldn’t back in the 1850s.
You can see the LIES in the graph knowing that the 1930s,40s were similar temperatures to now.
Also by looking at the fact that UAH, RSS and all other satellite data shows no warming between 1980 and 1997 and no warming between 2001 and 2010.
The graphs present are FAKE….. A fraudulent fabrication.
““no more CO2 warming”
There is no evidence of any warming by atmospheric CO2 in the first place.
It is LUDICROUS to say there is…
especially when loy knows he/she/it cannot produce any evidence.
Table 5 says “clear sky” climate sensitivity of 2.2, not “no more CO2 warming”…it’s possibly a test to see who reads content versus headline….
Why does the study merely “suggest” no more warming? Doesn’t it literally mean no further increase in the greenhouse effect due to CO2 emissions?
On a day when the US Southern Central Plains is suffering through an awful ice storm in October, this may not be taken by all readers as good news.
/s
Weather.
Yes ….
deepest snow this early since 1880s ….
weather.
They suggest with evidence and you watch the temperature and doomster predictions. That’s how science works.
Steve,
Partial answer might be that they studied clear sky conditions. Not enough data or understanding yet about cloudy sky conditions. Geoff S
Actually it doesn’t. The conclusions states:
“ The surface warming increases significantly for the case of water feedback assuming fixed relative humidity. Our result of 2.3 K is within 0.1 K of values obtained by two other groups as well as a separate calculation where we used the Manabe water vapor profile given by (87). For the case of fixed relative humidity and a pseudoadiabatic lapse rate in the troposphere, we obtain a climate sensitivity of 2.2 K”
So the paper is suggesting a temperature rise of over 2 K in response to a doubling of CO2. Which is at the lower ends of typical estimates.
Izaak Walton: “So the paper is suggesting a temperature rise of over 2 K in response to a doubling of CO2. Which is at the lower ends of typical estimates”.
WR: I suppose it should be read: “an INITIAL temperature rise of over 2K”. The word ‘initial’ is always forgotten. There is a forcing which means nothing else than that there could be an initial rise in temperature but only “when all other things would remain the same”. But on Earth nothing remains the same: in case of a temperature rise all kinds of cooling processes are activated to come back to the previous ‘equilibrium point’. Willis Eschenbach has shown many examples, for example here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/22/where-the-temperature-rules-the-total-surface-absorption/
Others did so as well. Roy Spencer also emphasizes the role of clouds and we know: more water vapor when it is warming: more (tropical) clouds develop and more shading of the surface results. A major cooling effect resulting from initial warming. Daily observable.
What don’t you comprehend about the word “saturated”, izzy ?
1… Do you have any empirical scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2?
2… In what ways has the global climate changed in the last 50 years , that can be scientifically proven to be of human causation?
Do you have any empirical scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2?
There is plenty of evidence for CO2 contributing to radiative forcing. I don’t think that is in dispute.
“Loydo October 27, 2020 at 1:52 am
There is plenty of evidence for CO2 contributing to radiative forcing.”
Please post that evidence (Above 350ppm/v). (Can’t wait).
Well I wish to dispute one part of David W’s post…
“We could emit as much CO2 as we like; with no effect”.
There would be an effect, a definite and large net beneficial affect. More food grown on the same amount of land, with no additional water required. More crops, increased drought and frost tolerant, fewer frost nights, more and larger trees, more rapid forest recovery.
The known and demonstrated benefits of CO2 would continue to increase on a linear scale while the predicted and failed to appear harms would continue to be absent.
Why not just say you DON’T HAVE ANY EVIDENCE of warming by atmospheric CO2…
….and stop your childish ZERO-SCIENCE garbage posts !
Stop pretending you have the vaguest clue what you are talking about, because you make it patently obvious that you don’t.
Try again, clueless one…
1… Do you have any empirical scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2?
2… In what ways has the global climate changed in the last 50 years , that can be scientifically proven to be of human causation?
“There is plenty of evidence… blah, blah…”
Then POST IT, and stop slithering about like a stranded eel !
Loydo doesn’t think.. who knew?
Loydo,
That response is the same class of statement as “There is plenty of evidence that Jesus is the son of God. I don’t think that is in dispute.”
In an 18th Century European context, that would have seemed self-evident to Catholics and Protestants alike, with a 97% consensus. They had already accepted various things on faith. It would not strike an 18th Century east Asian as a valid claim backed by any evidence whatsoever.
Even if I agree that you’re right that CO2 contributes to warming, it is obviously “in dispute”. Simply asserting your belief or appealing to the popularity of your belief, is not evidence.
Responding to someone who is challenging your belief by saying that your belief is not in dispute, is irrational (since it was just challenged), or deeply disrespectful (implying that they have no right to question you and do not deserve to be given actual evidence).
You don’t want to be irrational or disrespectful do you?
Rich, do doubt CO2 is contributing to radiative forcing?
“In the 19th century, scientists realized that gases in the atmosphere cause a “greenhouse effect” which affects the planet’s temperature….”
https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm
Loydoo sez:
I don’t think
that is in dispute.Fixed for ya.
No, loy
Back in the 19th century, scientists hypothesized that CO2 causes a radiative effect, which, all other things being equal, should result in warming. They did not “realize it” any more than they realized that electromagnetic waves require the ether or that flames involve phlogiston.
It has not been demonstrated that this hypothesized effect is significant or harmful. The period from 1945 to 1975 calls the hypothesis into question or at least demonstrated that not all other things remain equal.
Even though I think the hypothesis seems logical, I don’t know of incontrovertible empirical evidence to show that warming is attributable to CO2 rather than to other factors which must logically be admitted to exist in order for temperatures to have dropped while atmospheric CO2 rose.
Has anybody here read the initial work of Scientists in the 1890s to understand what CO2 does?
They used experiments, the results are fascinating, there was great disagreement between Svante Arrhenius and Knut Ångström and his assistant Herr Koch discussed here.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2020/05/25/pick-your-a-team-arrhenius-or-angstrom/
I think Mr Wattts or a mod should make a post of the famous american that carried out those experiments and also reviewed the then current science.
The american Frank Very was requested by the senate to conduct the research.
His paper can be found here, warning it is very long and contains a great deal of data.
ftp://ftp.library.noaa.gov/noaa_documents.lib/NOAA_historic_documents/WB/Bulletin/Bulletin_G.pdf
It is ironic that NOAA of all people have this study.
One money quote for me is this one “no change in radiation for CO2 until it was below 20% of the test amount”. Also that optical depth has little effect for CO2.
The pages around 50 onwards contain a lot of tests data.
“For the case of fixed relative humidity”
Which is completely unrealistic, as anyone who knows anything about atmosphere physics is aware. Humidity increases with temperature, yes, but not nearly enough to keep relative humidity fixed.
The only reason for this nonsense is that it is too complex to estimate the actual humidity change. The GCM aren’t up to it so let’s just “simplify” the atmosphere a bit.
Assuming fixed relative humidity introduces a huge error into a climate model.
Relative humidity is the ratio of the actual mole fraction water vapor in the air to the mole fraction at saturation (where the partial pressure of water vapor is equal to its vapor pressure). In the range of ambient temperatures normally found on earth, the vapor pressure of water increases nearly exponentially with temperature, by about 6.0 to 7.5% per degree C.
If a climate modeler assumes that IR absorption by CO2 causes a given volume of air to be warmed by 1.0 C, the assumption of constant relative humidity requires an additional 6 to 7.5% of water vapor to be transferred to the air, in addition to the water vapor initially present. This water must come from somewhere, presumably by evaporation of liquid water from the sea or other body of water (lake, river, swamp, puddle, etc.). Evaporation of liquid water requires heat, and the heat of vaporization of the additional water vapor would be supplied by the air that has been warmed (heat transfer from warm to cold).
At temperatures above 20 C, at relative humidities above 70% (typical over tropical oceans), the heat of vaporization required to maintain constant relative humidity can consume 30% to 50% of the heat required to warm the air by 1 C. This means that a climate model assuming constant relative humidity is ignoring a negative feedback of -0.3 to -0.5 in the heat balance over the tropical oceans, which would have a huge impact on over-predicting the warming.
Over land, during dry weather, where would the additional water come from to maintain constant relative humidity? If the air warmed over dry land, the relative humidity would decrease, otherwise the model would violate conservation of mass.
Any climate model purporting to predict future climate must not assume constant relative humidity, and must account for the heat and mass transfer effects of water between its phases (water vapor, liquid water, ice/snow).
@Steve:
You are certainly on the right lines hereBut I would prefer to use absolute humidity rather than relative. The system is the Hydro Cycle which acts as a Rankine Cycle, where any increase in energy input results in an increase in the RATE of circulation but NOT the MASS being circulated. Thus any increase in evaporation would result in an increase in precipitation, giving a constant absolute humidity. The IPCC has got it wrong here.
Delving deeper into the thermodynamics reveals that water provides a strong NEGATIVE feedback to the purported GHE contrary to its claim that it is POSITIVE.
I am not alone in this as John T Houghton who was one of the lead authors for the IPCC states in his book “The Physics of Atmospheres” that the GHE is halted when the water vapour is saturated with respect to ice or liquid . (Page 16 in my copy).
I don’t believe so. As I understand the preprint of the study, the “saturation” they refer to is the amount of surface radiation absorbed by the atmosphere for each spectral line due to all GHGs that absorb in that line. But conventional GHG theory says that, even after the atmosphere absorbs all radiation from the surface in a particular band or line, adding more GHGs that absorb in that band sill leads to further warming, but at a logarithmic rate of increase by slowing the escape of heat to space.
What they seem to be saying is that for CO2 and water vapor, which have overlapping spectral bands with many other GHGs, the saturation is so great that the added forcing merely from doubling CO2 is much less than what would otherwise be expected if you were to only consider CO2 (they say only 2.3K with water vapor feedback – see the matrices on page 29 of the preprint where the top number(s) reflect surface temperature increase from doubling).
“Suggest” is scientific language. One study does not prove anything. Plus they have not done clouds.
The use “suggest”. the alarmists use “will warm”.
Check these warmists:
http://prairieclimatecentre.ca/
Dear Steve. Real scientists use words like suggest, may, could etc because being definitive is arrogance in that they can now go and attend to their gardens as the matter is closed.
Yes it does, Mr. Reddish. What caught my attention was the “flipping” of the viewpoint. The sun emits a finite amount of energy which means absorbtion by greenhouse gases is finite as well. If saturation has occured, then additional CO2 becomes available for greening ,
which is happening. While the math, physics is undoubtedly complex, my understanding is that of taking a gallon container of water and pouring it into a half gallon container i.e.one will eventually need a mop.
Happer must not be a leading scientist….
It shouldn’t matter what names are behind any scientific hypothesis.
All that should matter is the “fit” with observations.
(sorry, mine is sarcasm. don’t you know that “all leading scientists” say we have 10 years to give our lives over to the progressives or we will bake?)
Yeah, I got it, but when you have a comment like that from Joe Houde below, apparently serious, anything is possible.
You have convinced us all with that impressive comment.
Climate Change is now at the superstition level of belief among US Democrats and the Left globally. And the smarter ones globally know Climate Change has never been about climate, but about Change. A political-social change to socialism and a two-class system in the West is the real objective of Climate Change policy.
Simply telling someone that clings to their rabbit’s foot or to a 4-Leaf clover that that doesn’t bring them “Good Luck” still doesn’t stop them from clinging. So it is the same with a saturated GHE of 400 ppm CO2 to a catastrophic Climate Change believer. They’ve drunk too much Liberal Koolaide to turn back on their superstition. And pseudoscientists like Mike Mann have all their tainted reputations on the line to support the climate scam, so support it they do.
How do you explain the hostile reviewers, Joel? They’re presumably trained Ph.D.-level research physicists.
Politics over science for them, is it? Or just blinded into incompetence?
What’s your take?
The superstition is in the general public and the politicians, people too lacking in critical thinking skills to evaluate what the climate scientists are feeding them for that next grant, especially when what they are being fed fits an affirmation of a bias.
Climate change, as formulated by the IPCC and the CMIP series of model ensembles, is an institutional belief to be defended by the Consensus. Trenberth’s hopes that AGW becomes the Null Hypothesis has gained institutional traction without the “institution” even being fully aware of it. I firmly believe the Consensus of climate scientists, whose careers, reputations and grants are built upon that consensus, understands the fundamental aspect of Einstein’s response to the 100 Scientists against him.
“Einstein was told of the publication of a book entitled, ‘100 Authors Against Einstein’, he replied: “Why one hundred? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.”
So Pat, your paper on the fact that supercomputer climate models are iterating millions of time steps that it creates such uncertainty into unfathomably large statistical error makes the output meaningless puts them out of business. Entire fields of climate beyond modeling and all the non-climate fields that have attached themselves like leaches to RCP 8.5 alarmism have a stake in maintaining the consensus that the models outputs are somehow relevant to policy.
Maintenance of the consensus is the imperative for climate science. Because the data for another incipient “Pause” is looking stronger with the building ENSO La Nina and a solar minimum in the next several years going into the consensus IPCC AR6 alarmism hopes.
Thank-you, Joel. But why do Ph.D. research grade physicists buy into it?
Their training and critical minds should make them see right through it.
I plain don’t get it.
Pat,
The math in the paper is too hard or tedious for them. Easiest to throw in the towel and go with the Establishment. Intellectual laziness? Geoff S
perhaps they are right and you are wrong?
Wrong again Loy..
You are invariably WRONG.
Please explain where Pat is “wrong”.
“perhaps they are right and you are wrong?”
Nah, that couldn’t possibly explain it, could it? Thousands of climate scientists and hundreds of national science institutes all have it wrong and a couple of bloggers have it all figured out because, well because it gotta be anything but CO2, and, and Marxists…
Jeez, its CO2, its ours and its rapidly warming. Don’t be surprised if there are another 400 months of warm anomaly will you.
I don’t get it either. The paper doesn’t bring any “revolutionary” results. The findings are in close agreement with those of other authors, although the calculations were much more stringent with less assumptions being made. They have also compared the results of their calculations with observed spectral data over three different regions of the Earth, and the comparison (not a parameter adjusted fit like the IPCC models) to modestly put it, is really impressive. Another very sound paper where the climate sensitivity is estimated to be around 2.2.
My concern is, that one can prove by A+B that something is wrong. Unfortunately, political abuse of power seems to be way above that, where science is just cherry picked for the things that suit the AGW narrative, the rest being discarded, or “cancelled”.
Pat: Why do Ph.D. research grade physicists buy into it?
Because their university will loose money if they step out of the gravy train. That makes tenure somewhat difficult for a PhD grade physicist. It is part of the structure that includes, for example the iPCC and NASA Climate Division. Look at their Terms of Reference and think.
If this paper is true, and I suspect it is because it renders the otherwise inexplicable paeoclimate and many recent papers explicable, but we cannot yet be sure. We can do away with IPCC, windmills, solar power and electric cars. Perhaps we can spend some of the wasted $1.5 Trillion p.a. on cancer research, clean water and sanitation, raising the standard of living of the poorest 2/3 of the world population and repairing some of the environmental damage that Climate Craziness has caused.
As a lay person my theory is that people including very academically clever people believe what they are told by clever people. The majority have neither the time nor the inclination to study the data and methodology, particularly when there are few dissenters. History is full of examples of clever people following the herd despite the flaws being obvious to a minority. Basically it’s human nature to follow the herd.
I’ve been reading recently about the remnants of pre-Big Bang blackholes being theorized and possibly detected. This may well lead to Big Bang denial.
‘Perhaps’!
Perhaps alarmism has too much wrong with it.
Perhaps Walton will perceive that before his grandchildren do. Perhaps not.
=========
“its ours and its rapidly warming”
More arrant anti-science RUBBISH from Loy
He/she/it KNOWS they can produce ZERO-evidence to back up that statement…
…. but still yabbers on with brain-washed monotony.
Those “climate scientists” are like you , loy
They can’t produce any actual empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2
Its all base on models and assumptions. None of which are proven or validated.
It has never been observed or measured anywhere on the planet.
If you think it has.. PRODUCE THE EVIDENCE.!
Or just keep yabbering mindlessly.
Pat,
Far too many Ph.D research physicists have been allowed during their careers to ignore uncertainty. I had four semesters of physics in college, including one on nuclear physics. Not a single professor ever once mentioned uncertainty in their classes. You calculated out your answers on a slide rule and the answer was the answer. I didn’t learn about uncertainty until I started my electrical engineering labs using analog computers and physical components. You learned very quickly that different results of multiple independent project runs identified the uncertainties in all of the component settings. When the dial on the field current potentiometer was marked to the nearest ohm you could get different readings for stall current on a motor and that was assuming you could read the current accurately each time! Even the resistors used in lab circuits were only 5% tolerance – guess what kind of different answers different students could get from building the same circuit!
Engineers careers and livelihoods are based on accurate assessment of uncertainty. Lives depend on it. That’s a big incentive. How many climate scientists have that kind of incentive to properly analyze their CGM outputs?
Izaak and Loydo,
When the climate scientists don’t bother to do an uncertainty analysis of their models and just assume the model outputs are correct how do you or they determine if they are right, wrong, or indifferent? An ensemble of models that have no uncertainty analysis can’t let you know if you have an accurate answer. If it could then all of the models would, sooner or later, coalesce into one model that gives an accurate answer. That doesn’t seem to be happening at all!
It’s as simple as understanding that averaging 1000 independent temperature measurement stations together, each with their own uncertainty interval, will give you a final uncertainty interval that is wider than what you are trying to measure. Root sum square is an established method of determining the uncertainty associated with independent measurements. Yet it seems that not one single consensus climate scientist understands that. Any so-called “global average temperature” has such an uncertainty interval that it is impossible to get an accurate answer. And using “anomalies” instead of absolutes doesn’t help at all! The anomalies have the same uncertainty interval as the absolute temperatures!
Eric,
“I don’t get it either. The paper doesn’t bring any “revolutionary” results. The findings are in close agreement with those of other authors, although the calculations were much more stringent with less assumptions being made. ”
I’ve been running FTIRs all over the world for my entire career and nothing in what I see at first glance disagrees with real world data. If anything, the AGW hypothesis of increasing water vapor causing more warming is an extraordinary claim thats contradictory to evidence. I can’t even make the mental jump from CO2 to Water Vapor to comment on that.
A Ph.D. research grade physicist wants to see his (or her) papers published in the future. Publish – or perish.
Mike, more importantly is that the regions of the world that can do wind or solar is not nearly as large as people think. For instance, Germany spent upwards of 2T dollars to achieve almost no reduction in carbon emissions because geographically Germany has neither the wind corridors nor enough sun to to make either leading renewable power generating source viable. They are starting to burn dirty soft coal because they need the power. Interestingly, the country with the greatest renewable footprint available is the US, however the availability of almost free natural gas, which is very clean on the carbon scale makes its adoption senseless. Renewables have a way to go, and no technology we currently have are really usable on a large scale in a cost to power generation capacity sort of way.
So we should reorient our thought on CO2 appropriately. None of the carbon free solutions meet the goals of either side, assuming the alarmists want a successful growing US economy.
“Jeez, its CO2, its ours and its rapidly warming.”
It’s not rapidly warming. You want to see rapid warming? Go back to the end of the last glaciation, and do your chicken little dance.
Pat,
Clever people, even when dealing with science, simply seem to become blind to things which should be obvious. A good example is this: The CMIP5 model average is always shown in comparisons to historic temp series (because the actual models runs are so noisy). So if its ok to average the model runs, to see the ensemble response, then its ok to subtract the model ensemble average from each ensemble member to see what each run contributes. If you subtract the model ensemble average from each ensemble member and look at the residuals what you see is uncorrelated, random noise. That’s an immediate tell for me – the models do nothing beyond what the input forcings instruct.
Then if you inspect the model ensemble average you discover you can reconstruct it (to a correlation of R = 0.94) from a simple linear regression of just two amalgamated forcing inputs – all the +ve anthropogenic and all the natural forcings summed into just two time series.
Taken with my first point, what this means is that the model outputs are simply the input low frequency prior model (the forcings) plus random noise. If you didn’t give the models the prior forcings they wouldn’t have any trends. In fact, I suspect they wouldn’t do anything at all except trivially derive simple properties of global temperature such as latitudinal variation etc (which we can do in a simple spreadsheet, of course).
Now I work in seismic inversion. Exactly the same problem pertains. Lots of very clever PhD people think that adding in the prior model is really part of the inversion. But the seismic data has a frequency range of about 5 – 65 Hz, so there is no actual data in the low frequency range and yet clever people actually believe its real (not just an added and unmodified prior).
Beats me how clever, educated, trained PhD’s just can’t see something so simple and obvious.
Pat,
Why do these “research grade physicists buy in to it?”
Some influences are:
1) Too many universities graduating too many mediocre minds.
2) Mediocre minds still want a career and comfortable income.
3) Mediocre minds are still clever enough to turn a backwater science field
into a golden goose by hyping potential calamity and catastrophe. They have willing allies in political and environmental activists.
4) Those scientists questioning the narrative threaten their golden goose. Hence they are shunned, vilified and declared anathema. “Nullius in verba” is revered only in the Orwellian sense.
5) There is a portion of the public that wants to believe that disaster is just around the corner and man’s pride and accomplishments must inevitably end in some type of Armageddon. In other words, to them it would be bad news if it turned out there was no climate catastrophe brewing.
Pat Frank says: “Thank-you, Joel. But why do Ph.D. research grade physicists buy into it?
Their training and critical minds should make them see right through it.
I plain don’t get it.”
Pat, they need to eat. They don’t get paid/published/promoted unless they toe the line. Like any other walk of life.
“History is full of examples of clever people following the herd despite the flaws being obvious to a minority. Basically it’s human nature to follow the herd.”
That’s true, and applies to even some of the smartest people.
Following the herd is a survival instinct, so it is ingrained in every human being to one degree or another.
It is easiest to go along so that you can get along, and it is safer too because when you listen to your group’s Voice of Authority, you get information from those with experience that helps you survive..
If you are unsure of something, you fall back on depending on the society’s “Voice of Authority”.
Unfortunately, today’s “Voice of Authority” is the Lying Leftwing Media. So instead of getting good advice from the Voice of Authority, you get propaganda and lies.
So in this case, following the herd, gets society in all sorts of trouble. Lies and distortions are poison to freedom. Our Main Stream Media is currently poisoning millions of people with the horrible False Reality they create every day.
“How do you explain the hostile reviewers,”
Gravy train.
$ leaving the station.
This is little different than any time in history when the established science is challenged. The reaction is mostly irrational. Pasteur comes to mind.
I’m beginning to wonder if reviewers should have to sign SEC statements that their work is independent of personal or institutional investment portfolios.
Only in it for the gold.
And for the the fame.
But mostly for the power, and for this they had to sell their integrity.
It’s a tragic episode in the history of science.
===============
Joel
Unfortunately, I believe you are exactly correct :=(
“Simply telling someone that clings to their rabbit’s foot or to a 4-Leaf clover that that doesn’t bring them “Good Luck” still doesn’t stop them from clinging. So it is the same with a saturated GHE of 400 ppm CO2 to a catastrophic Climate Change believer. They’ve drunk too much Liberal Koolaide to turn back on their superstition. And pseudoscientists like Mike Mann have all their tainted reputations on the line to support the climate scam, so support it they do.”
Maybe this study will allow them to turn back. They can accept this study and say, “See, we were right that CO2 raises temperatures, and at the time, we thought it was necessary to reduce CO2 so temperatures wouldn’t go any higher, but now, with this new study, we see that is no longer necessary and we can forget about reducing CO2, since it is saturated now, and we can forget about doing away with fossil fuels and we can forget about building any more of those ghastly windmills and solar power plants.
Happer’s study is the way out for those who want to bail out of the human-caused climate change scam now without serious repercussions.
Of course, that won’t pay the bills or cause power to be accumulated, so I don’t know how many alarmists will take advantage of this moment. There’s your out, Michael, James, et al. We no longer need to worry about CO2.
Now this is on the net its time for a real debate. Will any atmospheric physicist step up to the mark?
‘Fig. 9 as well as Tables 2 and 4 show that at current concentrations, the forcings from all
greenhouse gases are saturated. The saturations of the abundant greenhouse gases H2O and
CO2 are so extreme that the per-molecule forcing is attenuated by four orders of magnitude
with respect to the optically thin values. Saturation also suppresses the forcing power per
molecule for the less abundant greenhouse gases, O3, N2O and CH4, from their optically thin
values, but far less than for H2O and CO2.’
Red team/Blue team is needed.
makes sense…..and explains some things that have not been explained
If I recall correctly, this was known (about H2O and CO2) many years ago, based on just the rough analysis. But it is good to have the detailed spectral breakdown, plus the work on the other gases.
I will not be at all surprised if the detailed analysis of clouds follows Willis’s results, just more precisely defined. H2O is the lightest major component of the atmosphere, which obviously causes the most convective uplift, and it is the only component that condenses – with a large energy emission at the transition, which occurs above much of the rest of the atmosphere. (Condensation being a function of both the transition temperature and partial pressure – low partial pressure being why we don’t have CO2 or methane clouds floating around up there.)
One week from tomorrow – VOTE!!! (Unless you already have, I’m not advocating the tactics of a certain political party…)
Writing Observer: “H2O is the lightest major component of the atmosphere, which obviously causes the most convective uplift, and it is the only component that condenses – with a large energy emission at the transition, which occurs above much of the rest of the atmosphere. (Condensation being a function of both the transition temperature and partial pressure – low partial pressure being why we don’t have CO2 or methane clouds floating around up there.”
WR: Writing Observer could you elaborate more on the non-condensing of other components than H2O? Why does H2O do what other components don’t do in our atmosphere? What conditions are needed for other components to condense?
At 1.0 ATM, N2 liquifies at ~77.4 K. At lower pressures, even lower temperatures. Vapor pressure of saturated N2:
https://www.bnl.gov/magnets/Staff/Gupta/cryogenic-data-handbook/Section6.pdf
Not even Antarctica can condense CO2:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_(data_page)#Vapor_pressure_of_solid_and_liquid
It doesn’t get that cold in Earth’s atmosphere. It often however is cool enough for H2O to condense at pressures found in our air.
There’s a lot of energy moved by the evaporation and condensation of H2O. The condensation can take place at a very different location both at altitude and latitude and longitude from the vaporisation. Which means energy has been moved in 4 dimensions.
Can’t help thinking that’s different from moving non condensing gasses in exactly the same way.
CO2 effectively condenses at ocean temperatures with the help of sunlight and echinococcidae and their manifold cousins.
The bones of those sea plants precipitate as carbonates and there are more and more silting bones as CO2 rises in the ocean.
This reaction is nearly irreversible, and will lower the residence time of all atmospheric CO2, anthropogenic and naturally derived.
==============
Yup. Kim gets it.
Simple chemical-physical models of the CO2 cycle are clearly inadequate. The simple rate of conversion of gaseous/solution CO2 to dissolved carbonate/bicarbonate ions is speeded up by about 6 or 7 orders of magnitude by carbonic anhydrase in biofilms covering the worlds oceans.
The biosphere is chugging CO2 like a tramp on chips, at an increasing rate. Increasing as fast as human emissions. That the atmospheric concentration is increasing is probably just due to the mixing times: The CO2 from your SUV has to go into the atmosphere first before it can be swallowed up elsewhere by photosynthetic organisms. I’ve seen nothing to persuade me that this is not the case.
Generally, as far as increased CO2 in the atmosphere is concerned, I can only quote Arthur C. Clark and the movie “2010”:
My advice for investors: Go long on manufacturers of lawnmowers and hedge trimmers.
@Writing Observer:
You make some good points here; but have conflated convection with the buoyancy of water in the vapor/gas form. The two are very different. Convection depends on a temperature differential whereas buoyancy does NOT as it is a function of the molecular weights. You are not alone here as just about all articles I read whether alarmist or sceptical make the same mistake and reveals a basic lack of understanding of how clouds work.
Where you are spot on is in the transfer of large energies up through the atmosphere and beyond by means of the Hydro Cycle. This done irrespective of Greenhouse Gases and operates in opposition to any warming that they are purported to generate. This means that water has a strong net NEGATIVE feedback to the GHE which is contrary to the IPCC et al claim that it is POSITIVE
Alasdair,
Respectfully, buoyancy force is caused by a differential in the pressure exerted on two different sides of an entity, e.g. the top and bottom of a particle. It’s not really a function of the weight of the particle. The weight of the particle comes into play in determining where the buoyancy force and the weight of the particle balances.
@Tim Gorman:
Not sure of what point you are making here. You are right of course; but so what?
Incidentally a balloon filled with water vapor/gas provides about twice the lift of an equivalent hot air balloon. With a bit of imagination you can see the atmosphere infested with these skinless water balloons rising up through the clouds.🤔
Cheers👍
My point was what Writing Observer also pointed out. The buoyancy force is the same for all particles at the same altitude in the atmosphere since it depends solely on the mass above the particle and below the particle. The point where the weight of the particle and the buoyancy force balance is where the the particle will finally settle unless other conditions apply. It is this that causes stratification of the various gases and other particles in the atmosphere.
H2O is only about 0.8 the weight of CO2 so individual molecules of H2O will rise much further in the atmosphere than individual molecules of CO2.
@Tim:
You are right. The upward force calculation or buoyancy will depend on the relative densities and will reduce as the densities reduce and eventually reach a point where it becomes negligible, giving, more or less, a maximum height to be reached.
I’m not sure what happens at the Tropopause but understand that water vapor does find its way up into the stratosphere in small quantities.
@Alasdair – molecular weight is 100% of buoyancy – but also affects convectability (sigh-not-a-word, too late of a night and too early of a morning for me, so please deal with it). This is why, even with a strong temperature differential, a planetary atmosphere still has distinguishable layers of (non-condensing) gases. Not so evident on Earth, but take a look at a Venusian atmospheric composition profile sometime.
@John – thank you for an excellent (and probably much less windy) explanation of why nothing else in our atmosphere condenses. For some reason, the WUWT comment system does not work well for me on replying, so I am frequently quite delayed – if I reply at all. Checking the “Notify me of follow-up comments” floods my inbox with EVERY comment on a post, sorted by time – the actual reply to my own comment, if any, is lost in the weeds.
@Writing Observer:
Yes there are always other things to consider. My point is that the buoyancy aspect never seems to get a mention. Take for example the inversion situation at the top of those Anvil Cumulus clouds. The convection stops but the vapor/gas which we do not see, still rises due to its buoyancy, carrying with it the Latent Heat upwards for dissipation, some of which winds up in space.
This buoyancy also comes into play in the Cirrus clouds, up there nudging the Tropopause which are fed by what is left of the vapor after its travels through the atmosphere. These clouds are ice crystals at some -50C but still supported by the vapor and radiate into space on a NET basis on the simple fact that they are growing dendritically. Eventually this growth destroys the buoyancy as the crystal mass increases, thus initiating the return to earth under gravity, to complete the Cycle.
None of this buoyancy aspect ever gets a mention as the current mindset seems fixed mainly on matters of radiation which fails to explain these things.
Well; that’s my beef, for what it’s worth!
I haven’t read the paper yet. Is there an experiment we can construct to show this and support the paper experimentally?
Cat,
The paper compares calculations with observations. Near identical match. What more do you want?
Geoff S
Oh, a lot more. Most hypotheses match observations at the time they are proposed. They have to make predictions that are unique to the hypothesis and distinguish it from other hypotheses to convince skeptics.
Good one, Javier.
It exposes a difficult problem though, the attribution of cause to any future warming.
Attribution, she’s a bitch,
Don’t know why, just scratch that itch.
Puff, the Magic Climate,
Lived by the CO2,
Nature turned and bit him, someplace rich.
============
Calculations about CO2 lines with predictions about climate sensitivity. Others predict similar climate sensitivities.
As far as I can tell, the atmosphere of the Earth is just rolling around the bottom of multi dimensional well that that took billions of years to evolve. Move on thing then something or somethings move to compensate. The only thing that seems to move the atmosphere somewhat up the wall of the well, for a time, are large meteorite strikes.
Patience. Persistence.
“Through adversity to the stars.”
This only goes to prove that the Chinese were geniuses by negotiating a position in the Paris Accords of pretty much doing nothing.
The Chinese have never believed in CAGW. That hasn’t stopped them from making huge amounts of money selling solar panels and windmills to credulous Westerners.
Climate alarmism has been a deliberately fabricated and released viral meme to damage industrial society in the developed West.
So far it has been more damaging than the ‘Rona’, but it has had, and will have, longer to run. The beauty of the Coronavirus Panic is the threat of immediate consequences.
The warming panic is flawed in comparison, despite great ‘Big Lies’ being told about the immediacy of damages from anthropogenic warming.
We’ll learn, but Oh, my God, the ongoing costs from these panics!
==============
I agree that there will be no more CO2 warming.
This study looks at the radiation forcing of CO2 only.
All of the CO2 radiation studies, including the above study, fix the Lapse rate (rate of change in the atmosphere with elevation) in the atmosphere to calculate the simplified toy model (so called one-dimension model) effect of CO2 temperature.
A toy model is a simplified model that is hoped to be representative of the physical thing.
The Fixed Lapse rate assumption in the toy is physically incorrect. It is too big an effect and it is all cooling to ignore.
The Lapse rate changes because CO2 changes the specific heat of the gas which increase convection cooling which off sets the radiation effect warming. There is more than one physical effect of CO2 on atmospheric heat transfer.
Convection motion in atmosphere, moves heat up through the atmosphere, where there is less CO2 molecules and where there are free electrons and protons which radiate at all frequencies.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2015/07/collapse-of-agw-theory-of-ipcc-most.html
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B74u5vgGLaWoOEJhcUZBNzFBd3M/view?pli=1
Collapse of the Anthropogenic Warming Theory of the IPCC
4. Conclusions
In physical reality, the surface climate sensitivity is 0.1~0.2K from the energy budget of the earth and the surface radiative forcing of 1.1W.m2 for 2xCO2. Since there is no positive feedback from water vapor and ice albedo at the surface, the zero feedback climate sensitivity CS (FAH) is also 0.1~0.2K. A 1K warming occurs in responding to the radiative forcing of 3.7W/m2 for 2xCO2 at the effective radiation height of 5km. This gives the slightly reduced lapse rate of 6.3K/km from 6.5K/km as shown in Fig.2.
The modern anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory began from the one dimensional radiative convective equilibrium model (1DRCM) studies with the fixed absolute and relative humidity utilizing the fixed lapse rate assumption of 6.5K/km (FLRA) for 1xCO2 and 2xCO2 [Manabe & Strickler, 1964; Manabe & Wetherald, 1967; Hansen et al., 1981]. Table 1 shows the obtained climate sensitivities for 2xCO2 in these studies, in which the climate sensitivity with the fixed absolute humidity CS (FAH) is 1.2~1.3K [Hansen et al., 1984].
In the 1DRCM studies, the most basic assumption is the fixed lapse rate of 6.5K/km for 1xCO2 and 2xCO2. The lapse rate of 6.5K/km is defined for 1xCO2 in the U.S. Standard Atmosphere (1962) [Ramanathan & Coakley, 1978]. There is no guarantee, however, for the same lapse rate maintained in the perturbed atmosphere with 2xCO2 [Chylek & Kiehl, 1981; Sinha, 1995]. Therefore, the lapse rate for 2xCO2 is a parameter requiring a sensitivity analysis as shown in Fig.1.
The followings are supporting data (William: In peer reviewed papers, published more than 20 years ago that support the assertion that convection cooling increases when there is an increase in greenhouse gases and support the assertion that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will cause surface warming of less than 0.3C) for the Kimoto lapse rate theory above.
(A) Kiehl & Ramanathan (1982) shows the following radiative forcing for 2xCO2.
Radiative forcing at the tropopause: 3.7W/m2.
Radiative forcing at the surface: 0.55~1.56W/m2 (averaged 1.1W/m2).
This denies the FLRA giving the uniform warming throughout the troposphere in
the 1DRCM and the 3DGCMs studies.
(B) Newell & Dopplick (1979) obtained a climate sensitivity of 0.24K considering the
evaporation cooling from the surface of the ocean.
(C) Ramanathan (1981) shows the surface temperature increase of 0.17K with the
direct heating of 1.2W/m2 for 2xCO2 at the surface.
“Convection motion in atmosphere, moves heat up through the atmosphere, where there is less CO2 molecules …”
The assumption that CO2 is generally well mixed on several-year annual timescales in the troposphere is on pretty solid observational data.
Maybe you meant to write H2O, which does decrease significantly with altitude?
A Biden moment?
The mole fraction might be fairly constant but the a ir is thinning.
Yes. Which means there is less CO2 molecules the free path before a photon strikes a CO2 increases.
Yes. I think the “Optical Depth “ fits in somewhere here ; but not sure what the relationship is with “Saturation”.
per WA above
“Convection motion in atmosphere, moves heat up through the atmosphere, where there is less CO2 molecules and where there are free electrons and protons which radiate at all frequencies.”
The heat moves both up and laterally due to ground winds, jet stream, or trade winds. I am not sure why this always seems to be conveniently forgotten or at least not mentioned. I hope, are we integrating this heat transport system over a cross-sectional mono layer of air molecules across a specified volume or at least know how much energy is stored in a mono layer plane of a specfied surface or surface area air molecules? It seems to me that where the heat from the surface leaves Earth is completely decoupled from it is origins. The other thought that comes to mind is there are numerous ways for that energy to be attenuated in its journey, for example, if that heated air moves over a body of water.
Anyway just some stream of consciousness….
“The Lapse rate changes because CO2 changes the specific heat of the gas which increase [sic] convection cooling which off sets [sic] the radiation effect warming.”
The specific heat of CO₂ differs from that of air by only 12.5%. Addition of 400 ppm of CO₂ to air will only change the specific heat of the mixture by an infinitesimally small amount. Changes in the lapse rate would be negligible.
The specific heat of dry air is about 29.19 J/mol K and CO2 is about 36.94 J/mol K. Looks closer to a third than an eighth. It is not the specific heat number alone that is important . The combination with mass is.
Mass of dry air is about 28.9 g/ mol and CO2 is about 44.01 g/mol.
Given the same input say 1000 J you get a temperature increase of 1.18 C for dry air and .615 C for CO2.
Because of the mass increase adding CO2 to air requires more energy to obtain the same temperature.
Thermodynamics says the the energy can be in “any form”. If thermodynamics is correct then there can be no forcing from addition of CO2. Specific heat is a property and accounts for its heating capability if any.
I say again if CO2 could do this why is it not mentioned in specific heat tables, the Shomate equation, or the NIST data for CO2?
CO2 is only 0.04% of the atmosphere. It has virtually no effect on the specific heat or density of air.
Water vapor on the other hand has a vastly greater effect and is much more variable.
Bulk mechanical movement of air between pressure and density gradient in the atmosphere CONTROLS the atmosphere….. not radiation.
Convection, winds, etc etc…
This is wishful thinking. Look at Venus! Denial won’t make the climate crisis disappear
(Your url has a lot of spam in it) SUNMOD
Griff? That you?
The atmospheric pressure on Venus is 93bar so no comparison with earth’s atmosphere.
Joe, Venus is warmer due to the denser atmosphere.
So, the proximity to the sun wouldn’t have anything to do with that?
Whatever gave you the ridiculous notion that Venus is a model for the earth’s atmosphere.
For one thing, Venus never cooled off enough for the water vapor to condense out of it’s atmosphere. As a result it’s atmosphere is thousands of times thicker that the Earth’s.
Secondly Venus receives 16x the heat energy the Earth does.
Poor Joe. There is NO CLIMATE CRISIS, except that invented by those you gullibly follow.
There is no empirical evidence that atmospheric CO2 causes any warming at all.
The current rise in atmospheric temperature since the LIA has been totally beneficial to all life on Earth, just like the rise in atmospheric CO2 has been
If you have any evidence to answer these two simple questions, then produce it.
1… Do you have any empirical scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2?
2… In what ways has the global climate changed in the last 50 years , that can be scientifically proven to be of human causation?
At the same atmospheric pressure as on Earth’s surface, Venus is almost exactly the temperature it should be when considering its relative distance from the Sun.
CO2 makes NO DIFFERENCE
Thanks for saying we should look at Venus .. dolt !
Joe,
A basic analysis or real data shows the rocky planets in our solar system, include Venus….
… surface temperature, is determined by two parameters….
Atmospheric pressure (not greenhouse gas content)
And top of atmosphere solar irradence.
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/new-insights-on-the-physical-nature-of-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect-deduced-from-an-empirical-planetary-temperature-model.php?aid=88574
Our analysis revealed that GMATs of rocky planets with tangible atmospheres and a negligible geothermal surface heating can accurately be predicted over a broad range of conditions using only two forcing variables:
top-of-the-atmosphere solar irradiance and total surface atmospheric pressure.
The hereto discovered interplanetary pressure-temperature relationship is shown to be statistically robust while describing a smooth physical continuum without climatic tipping points.
This paper is also interesting and comes to the same conclusion
https://www.scirp.org/pdf/ACS_2014111714391836.pdf
Do Increasing Contents of Methane and Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere Cause Global Warming?
This model allows one to analyze the global temperature changes due to variations in mass and chemical composition of the atmosphere. Even significant releases of anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere do not change average parameters of the Earth’s heat regime and have no essential effect on the Earth’s climate. Thus, petroleum production and other anthropogenic activities resulting in accumulation of additional amounts of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have practically no effect on the Earth’s climate.
The above conclusions and analysis makes sense a set completely independent analyses (there are more than six different independent physical proofs) shows that human CO2 emission caused no more than around 10% of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2.
CAGW is completely incorrect. There is no sensitivity question to the rise in CO2 or the rise temperature. Humans caused neither. That is a fact.
@Joe H
No one who is serious about this should ever use Venus as an example for Earth. Please educate yourself.
They believe they are comparing to apples to apples when they are in fact compairing Plankton to an Oak Tree.
Earth and Venus are in vastly different realities. Their only similarity is the star in which the revolve around. Full Stop.
Let’s wait until the paper is peer-reviewed and published before getting too excited.
Simon the peer-review process doesn’t mean too much these days as it has become pal-review instead in a lot of cases. I know of one scientist that has completely give up on it when it ceased to be a double blind review where the reviewers didn’t know the name of the author or the other reviewer.
Simon, click on the link and read. Let us know what you find wrong.
Simon
It’s out for peer review right here. As to whether it gets published in a well-known journal, it remains to be seen.
You have to understand that there are two kinds of peer review. The first step is for gate keepers to decide if there is any risk to the reputation of the publishing journal. The real science peer review takes place after publication. There was once a time when publishing options were very limited. The internet has changed that! Now, any scientist that wants to see the thinking and data of a peer can do so without subscribing to a very expensive journal.
It doesn’t need peer review, it needs consideration, pro and con, as to the basic radiation physics involved and examination of the analysis and calculations used to reach its conclusions. That is, the kind of thing that used to be carried out at scientific conferences and through detailed argument in responding papers that actually engage with what this paper reports.
Anyone want to bet whether or not there will be anything of the sort from the consensus?
Andy
You said, “…, it needs consideration, pro and con, as to the basic radiation physics involved and examination of the analysis and calculations used to reach its conclusions.” That is what peer review is supposed to be.
Funny how you take the opposite position for papers who’s results you agree with.
Wait and see before getting too excited … good advice. Let us take, and follow, that advice.
Great to see that Simon also reckons there is no climate crisis.
Nothing happening outside NORMAL VARIABILITY of the AMO/PDO
and the effects of a grand solar maximum last century
So everybody should stop WASTING TIME AND MONEY on irrational, ineffective solutions to a NON-PROBLEM.
That is what you were saying, isn’t it , Simon?
As reported, “Clearly this is work that the climate science community needs to carefully consider. This may not be easy given that three major physics journals have refused to publish it.”
Note: and they never will publish. Cancel culture is the new norm.
Combine Happer and van Wijngaarden’s findings with the message in Ed Berry’s new book “Climate Miracle” and you can understand why no correlation can be found in properly detrended time series of CO2 changes and temperature changes.
Scientists say …
Study suggests …
The future climate will be …
And I can sell you my 25% share in the Brooklyn Bridge for 50 percent off !
No climate journal will publish it because if the do, and the paper’s thesis is accepted, that will dry up 90% of the money going into climate science.
Look, I am re-reading the Band Played On (about the early AIDS epidemic.) All the craven and hysterical elements we see in the here and now were on grand display back in those days.
In the end, nature had its way. That’s how things usually work out.
Same with the COVID virus Lock-down hysteria on the Left trying to stop a highly infectious respiratory virus.
Telling young mean who felt immortal and who loved to have multiple risky anal sex with a dozen other strange men in a San Fran bath house in the 1980’s to stop simply wan’t going to work until the quite lethal HIV virus burnt through them.
Lock-downs will never stop this COVID virus, only slow it. Luckily thuis virus is far, far, far, less lethal than HIV on healthy people. Herd immunity will eventually in a few years will render the SARS-2 virus inconsequential above the background of seasonal cold viruses, of which it will just become another one of many. The vaccine by next summer will be irrelevant except to the Big Pharma companies needing a fat ROI for their shareholders.
Any volunteers to peer review .
Or are they all working on their next grant application ?
This study will never see the light of day.
The CO2 climate crisis has been successfully oversold by the political left and in politics perception trumps reality…all the time.
Witness the New York Times, National Geographic, Time Magazine, The Economist, PBS, CBS, NBC and the rest of the MSM. These organizations avoid explaining how the CO2 warming mechanism actually works…deliberately.
Our elites cannot admit to being wrong, the world has to remain clueless, so the line where the science ends and perception begins is kept out of sight.
This stinky little climate change creature has legs and will be around for a few more decades…what a mess.
Mann-the truth hurts eh! But it never was about climate was it.
“Given that carbon dioxide and water vapor are both extremely saturated, it is highly unlikely that cloud feedbacks alone can do much damage, but it requires careful analysis to know this for sure.”
If CO2 and H2O are saturated, there is no forcing to induce a feedback.
There are no cloud feedbacks, when forcing change is zero.
With the work of Happer and van Wijngaarden, it’s game, set, and match for GHG-induced global warming, climate change, climate weirding, and whatever else they want to call it.
It’s all natural variations in weather, in air temperature, and in the rest of the climate. And no way to know it hasn’t been over recent history.
The entire climate change industry is down the tubes. Entire careers will crash and burn, and deservedly so.
Huzzah, I say, and another huzzah for Happer and van Wijngaarden.
And their hostile reviewers should be consigned to driving a cab.
Pat
Note Table 5 in their preprint. It appears to me that they are getting values for ECS that are comparable to the low end of estimates published by others. The title suggesting no more warming is not born out by Table 5.
Clouds are confusing. If you look at 60% cloud cover this year versus 60% last year, you will end up saying that cloud forcing is a little negative or a little positive, but you are missing the elephant in the room. An EXTRA square meter of cloud with .7 albedo can reflect 800 watts of incoming sunlight back to outer space, never to be absorbed into the .06 albedo ocean surface below. And one degree warmer ocean surface temperature has 7% higher equilibrium water content in the air above that patch of ocean. As that moisture convects into the stratosphere, it makes clouds a couple of days later and a couple of hundred miles away.
The formation of clouds as a result of ocean surface temperature, are what controls the heat balance of the planet. CO2 doesn’t form clouds so it is a bit player.
oops….convects into the troposphere….
I think I’ve never heard so loud
The quiet message in the clouds;
Here it now, what were the odds?
The raucous laughter of the gods.
==========
er ‘hear’ it now.
===========
Thanks, Clyde. Looking at Table 5 and the discussion, it looks like they are using variations of the Manabe-Wetherald model to calculate those ECS values under varying assumptions of cloud feedback, etc.
It looks like they did that to compare the results from their improved radiation theory, with with previously calculated results.
That being true (tentative and provisional), their ECS’s are for comparative purposes, and are not necessarily a physically accurate prediction of how the real climate will respond.
More warming?
What warming?
Alice: “More tea? But I haven’t had any yet.”
Alice: “More acid? But the oceans aren’t acid yet.”
…and they never will be, perhaps an infinitesimal bit less alkaline.
Indeed – What warming?
https://youtu.be/b1cGqL9y548?t=15m56s
The wishful thinking premise of positive feedback due to clouds, as I understood, was a feedback of the resulting warming, not of CO2 itself. If there is no more CO2 induced warming, there can be no more possibility of positive cloud feedback from the CO2 induced warming
That’s about it in a nutshell WR2 the water does not respond to the CO2 it responds to the warming.
Its amazing that each winter we even emerge, or come out of the summer at all.
Judging by the geological record there were a number of world-wide glaciations when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were much higher than they are today (e.g. 5,000 ppm CO2 in the Late Proterozoic vs 420 ppm today). The geological data reinforces the findings of this latest study.
Only if you assume that atmospheric CO2 is the only factor that influences temperature. Actually many others are possible.
John, I wouldn’t put a lot of faith in paleo CO2 estimates other than bubbles in ice-cores for “recent” in geologic terms times. Even ice-cores have their problems since ice is not a material you’d probably pick to store an atmospheric sample for a few hundred thousand years without cross contamination. At best 5000ppm in the late Proterozoic is a WAG. It might not be that good.
But your underlying point seems correct. We probably know enough about the past few hundred million years to roughly describe paleo-climates. We don’t seem to have much idea at all about why past climates were what they were.
Well Don, if you consider the huge amount of CO2 sequestration that happened in the laying down of the Carboniferous/Permian coal sequences then you would have to infer much higher pre-Carboniferous atmospheric CO2, right? Anyway there were 4 worldwide glaciations in the Late Proterozoic and as John Tillman points out below there was also the Ordovician glaciation that preceded the coal sequences.
By the way John I have seen many sequences of Proterozoic stromatolites during my field work in Australia and I reckon that there would have been extended warm periods in between the glaciations.
Yes, that would be consistent with what we know of more recent glaciations.
Don’t have to go that far back, when solar output was lower.
The Ordovician Glaciation occurred with around 4500 ppmv CO2 and solar radiation at 96% of present.
The concept of radiation saturation is readily understood in terms of the original Arrhenius experiment, where shining a beam of IR light through a tube containing CO2 causes an increasing amount of relevant IR wavelength to be absorbed as the CO2 concentration is increased. The system becomes saturated when so much of the relevant IR has been absorbed that adding more CO2 will absorb little more.
But that is not an analogy as to how CO2 and other greenhouse gases cause most warming. Anything that decreases the flux of IR into space produces a disequilibrium between incoming solar energy and outgoing IR energy. If the IR out is decreased, Earth must warm to compensate.
The main factor here is the fact that over most of the Earth, atmospheric temperature decreases with altitude to the troposphere (sometimes miles high). and basic radiation physics dictates that the rate a molecule will emit IR photons decreases as the fourth power of temperature. CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere. As more CO2 is added, the CO2 concentration at the high altitude where most IR escaping to space originates thus increases. But the temperature is generally cooler there. Consequently, even less IR escapes Earth, and the Earth must warm a bit more.
The concept of saturation is not involved here.
“Anything that decreases the flux of IR into space” :
– show the measured data supporting that more CO2 induces less global IR emission from the atmosphere.
Remember : correlation is not causation.
“Consequently, even less IR escapes.” : again, show the data supporting this conclusion.
Actually, with respect to CO2, the only data observed support the exact opposite of your claim :
– there is indeed a negative (even if weak) temporal cross-correlation from CO2 concentration variations to global surface temperature variations.
See left part of the diagram below :
https://youtu.be/2ROw_cDKwc0?list=PLcApr99OxQEQPI11K0iaZBaL8Bwu5mduT&t=553
So your assumption is facing a negative correlation while even a positive one would not permit to conclude anything.
As shown by Angstrom, note the bottom plot.
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/angstrom1900/index.html
“Saturation” varies quantitatively with altitude. So “involvement” is non-zero.
In the boundry layer, CO2 is certainly saturated, and overwhelmed by H2O by orders of magnitude.
Adding CO2 to the lower troposphere has no effect on optical depth, so causes no addition of warming.
As altitude increases, CO2 reaches parity with H2O, eventually.
In the stratosphere, the lapse rate is reversed, more CO2 is a coolant, with H20 never going away.
Stratospheric O3 needs to be accounted for in the temperature profile.
That bottom plot shows that there is no saturation…
“Here is the explanation why Knut Angstrom could not detect a CO2 effect in the solar spectrum: There hardly is any CO2 absorption in the solar spectrum. Angstrom wrongly concluded that the CO2 spectrum is saturated and this theory is still hunting the climate Internet fora. “
donb,
Where is that increased heat seen? Rising MINIUMUM temperatures? If it is seen in rising minimum temperatures and not in rising maximum temperatures then where exactly is the alarm coming from? Rising minimums are a good thing overall, not a bad thing. Fewer people die of cold, longer growing seasons, more food, etc are all good things.
“We could emit as much CO2 as we like; with no effect.”
The paper says nothing like that. It goes through the old argument between Arrhenius and Angstrom; the Arrhenius argument prevailed, and this paper does not contradict it. The key outcome is probably Table 5, where they compare their CO2 sensitivities with those calculated 50 or so years ago by Manabe, and by Hunt and by Kluft (recent). The fixed relative humidity numbers are 2.9(2.2), 2.2, 2.7, 2.3. The last number is theirs, and is completely in line with the earlier results, and certainly does not say that CO2 could be added with no effect. It says the CS would be 2.3C per doubling.
The forcing increments due to GHG increase are shown in Table 3. They explicitly say, correctly,
“The forcing increments in Table 3 are comparable to those calculated by others.”
I agree with Nick. The paper is confusing. It does show the CS as Nick indicates. However, it also states that the GHE is saturated. These appear to be conflicting claims.
More text is needed if the paper is really claiming there’s minimal or no warming from increasing CO2 levels.
Richard: I agree with you and Nick. Nothing revolutionary here? Although the paper discusses “saturation” a bit, if it defines the term, I missed it. I probably need to think about the paper some more and reread it a few times over the next weeks.
My initial thoughts:
1. The science seems OK up to the limits of my understanding. But I’m no physicist and the limits of my understanding are quite low.
2. It’s probably more or less “Modtran looking down” on steroids. Nothing wrong with that I think.
3. One thing missing is that for wavenumbers greater than about 2000cm-1, GHGs have more affect on incoming radiation from the sun than on outgoing radiation from the Earth? That is to say that GHG bumps in the lines in the rightmost 20% of figures 2 and 4 most likely have a net cooling effect rather than a net warming effect.
4. My impression is that the affects of particulates including ice and water droplets (clouds) are largely ignored. Can you do that and get generally meaningful results? Hopefully I’m wrong.
5. In the case of H2O, “saturation” can have two meanings. One is “pretty much as much radiation absorption as will make any difference.” The other is “as much as the atmosphere can hold without condensation.” I’m pretty sure the authors mean the former.
5. The subject matter is challenging. Way above my pay grade. A I think that of most other people. I suspect that if there is much discussion of this paper, it’s mostly going to be between people who have only the vaguest idea what they are talking about. (At best).
“The most striking fact about radiation transfer in Earth’s atmosphere is summarized by
Figs. 4 and 5. Doubling the current concentrations of the greenhouse gases CO2, N2O and
CH4 increases the forcings by a few percent for cloud-free parts of the atmosphere.”
“Fig. 9 as well as Tables 2 and 4 show that at current concentrations, the forcings from all
greenhouse gases are saturated. The saturations of the abundant greenhouse gases H2O and
CO2 are so extreme that the per-molecule forcing is attenuated by four orders of magnitude
with respect to the optically thin values.”
From their conclusions. Did you read a different paper?
The “saturation” is what it is. The GHE still works. And, I repeat, their calculated CS is 2.3C/doubling. Right in the IPCC range. They have basically repeated the old calculation of Manabe with updated radiative properties, and got a very similar result.
I agree with previous comments that this is a very hard to read paper. That said, the CS that you quote is from 1/2 way through the paper. Tables 3 and 5 are hardly the last word .
In fact , as one reads through to the conclusions section:
For the case of fixed absolute humidity, the surface warms by 1.4 K which agrees
very well with other work as shown in Table 5. The surface warming increases significantly
for the case of water feedback assuming fixed relative humidity. Our result of 2.3 K is within
0.1 K of values obtained by two other groups as well as a separate calculation where we used
the Manabe water vapor profile given by (87). For the case of fixed relative humidity and a
pseudoadiabatic lapse rate in the troposphere, we obtain a climate sensitivity of 2.2 K
In brief, my reading of it is that they’re saying depending on how water vapour feedback actually works the CS is between 1.4K at the low end and 2.3K at the high end. 1.4K is diddly squat, and 2.3 K is hardly worth getting excited about . Most importantly though , if you accept their numbers (you did say they agreed with others Nick, you never said they were wrong ) then be default you’re agreeing that all those models showing numbers of 4 or 5 degrees or more are physically improbable to the point that we should worry more about the sun exploding or getting hit by a planet sized asteroid.
Its good news Nick. Celebrate!
“Its good news Nick. Celebrate!”
It isn’t news. They basically redid Manabe’s calc from 1967 and got a very similar answer. It has been known for that time that if you do a 1-D calc with just radiative, including simple hypotheses about the response of water vapor, you get CS in that range. But there is a lot more going on.
But there is a lot more going on.
There is ? The provided a range of CS from 1.4 to 2.3 which you agreed matched the work of others. They showed that their work was commensurate with observation. Now I know that observation is out of vogue with the climate modeling community , but you have to admit having both theory and observation agreeing with their range is pretty strong stuff. The range is not worrisome, and the range includes the likely effects of water vapour from small to large. What’s not to be happy about Nick?
Don’t answer, I ‘ve long since come to understand that the alarmist moto is “we’re not happy until you’re not happy”.
“we’re not happy until you’re not happy”.
David,
Misery can never be assuaged, so we must pass ours on to you.
Captures it in one.
Awesome!
But the part left unsaid is the humans do not in any way control atmospheric CO2 levels.
There is that huge puddle of water covering over 70% of the Earth’s surface, and if you can be bothered to look there then some aspects like pCO2 and ocean surface temperature loom.
I don’t expect any climate worriers to bother analyzing honestly, as they are enjoying basking in their current level of complacent ignorance.
Here are the the 3 things that the climate idiot savants can not understand —
1) Humans do not control the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 level.
2) Human’s do not control the Earth’s atmospheric temperature.
3) The Earth’s atmospheric temperature is not controlled by atmospheric CO2 levels.
To Nick Stokes. 1967 was 53 years ago. There’s a lot Manabe didn’t know.
At 1.4 C per 2x, it’s outside the IPCC/Charney range of 1.5-4.5 C. Even end of 2.3 C is in lower third of IPCC/Charney range, so no worries. It’s all good.
In 1979, Charney used Manabe’s derived CS of 2.0 and Hansen’s of 4.0 to estimate a range, with arbitrary MoE of 0.5 C. After over 40 years, IPCC hasn’t been able to improve on this.
Happer now shows that Hansen’s 1979 model was just as bogus as has always been known. So new range should be narrowed and lowered to 1.4 to 2.3 C.
However even that fails to account for negative feedbacks. The other things going on lower CS, net.
Meant “high end of 2.3”.
Call it the Manabe range, ie 2.0 degrees C per doubling of CO2, with error bars of +O.3 to -0.6 C.
But model-assumed positive water vapor feedbacks aren’t in evidence, so observed physical rather than modeled range should be the no-feedback 1.1-1.2 C, with net negative to slightly positive MoE, hence 0.5 to 1.5 C ECS range.
This allows for some environments with a cooling effect from added CO2, as observed.
Nick Stokes: “Saturation does not actually block; energy is still transferred. This has been known for a very long time.”
WR: The main question from the point of view of surface (!) cooling is whether absorbed radiation will be net transferred upward again, just by radiation and if so, to what extent. It has to be transferred through a saturated/opaque environment which is possible because air is thinning upward.
If researched and known I am interested in the delay this causes in surface heat loss: does this way of upward transport by re-radiation take one day extra to deliver surface radiated energy to space, will it take two days extra, more days or less? Or is this way of transport negligible if compared to the quantity of energy transported upward by convective transport of latent and sensible heat?
What is the share for respectively radiation and convection in upward transport of energy from the average altitude surface radiation became first absorbed? And what exactly is the altitude of first absorption? Preferably a number for every latitude and divided in Ocean and Land.
One should expect those fluxes to be researched and known. But so far I did not encounter them somewhere. Perhaps you know, Nick.
@Wim:
In the case of water the transport of absorbed energy upwards for dissipation to space is well known. The absorbed energy at evaporation is converted to Latent Heat rather than an increase in temperature. This latent heat is then carried upwards in the vapor/gas produced as it is lighter than dry air.
It is well known but gets ignored as the current consensus mindset prefers to only consider radiation in matters of the climate budget.
Thanks Alasdair, I knew about latent heat. But what I specifically want to know is how once absorbed radiation continues its trip to ‘launching height’ in the upper air: by radiation or by other means and in what quantity/time. With ‘launching’ I mean radiation straight into space.
@Wim:
Yes this Latent Heat movement takes time unlike radiation; but I can’t help here. Also the Latent Heat gets depleted as it moves upwards, morphing into potential energy and other losses. Although still receiving radiation from above – Just to confuse us all!
I suppose my beef generally is that these matters never seem to get discussed in the literature or elsewhere. Perhaps it is all too inconvenient!
Nick,
I take saturation to mean that the addition of more GHG will not result in the same interactions with radiation as before. Or, that more added GHG will not affect the various temperature affects greatly, if at all.
Yes, the ECS comparisons are noted, but what is your conclusion derived from the rather strong proof of saturation?
The way I read it, if you want to explore the tradition mechanisms, you get much the same sensitivity as earlier researchers. However, if you look beyond past methodology, to the rather conclusive effect of saturation, you have a mechanism that can be taken to mean that there is next to no more GHG warming left in the pipeline. Are you OK with this?
Now, take that with the lack of observed change of the measured CO2 in the atmosphere in the first 6 months of 2020 with the covid lockdowns. Several months of an estimated 8-9% reduction in global emissions, no change in actual measured CO2, something does not balance. Do you have an opinion on its meaning, either theoretical or practical? Geoff S
Geoff,
“Yes, the ECS comparisons are noted, but what is your conclusion derived from the rather strong proof of saturation?”
My conclusion is the same as their conclusion. After the saturation is noted, the calculation still gives the same ECS (2.3C/doubling) as Manabe and those who followed got. The point is that, as W&H note, radiative transfer is much more complicated that people realise. IR energy that is absorbed leads to local warming, which in turn leads to thermal emission, but not by the same molecules, and not necessarily at the same frequency. That further emission my be absorbed, leading to more emission. Saturation does not actually block; energy is still transferred. This has been known for a very long time.
“Do you have an opinion on its meaning, either theoretical or practical?”
Yes. As I said in response to Roy’s posts on the matter, you need to calculate what effect that emission reduction would actually have on CO2 ppm, and then look at the results to decide whether you should actually be able to observe it, given other noise. The answer is, not for a considerable time.
This looked interesting Nick
The most striking fact about radiation transfer in Earth’s atmosphere is summarized by
Figs. 4 and 5. Doubling the current concentrations of the greenhouse gases CO2, N2O and
CH4 increases the forcings by a few percent for cloud-free parts of the atmosphere. Table 3
shows the forcings at both the top of the atmosphere and at the tropopause are comparable
to those found by other groups.
They need to run their preprint past a spell checker!
Shown by measurement that any absorption tappers off at around 280ppm
The paper is WRONG – how can there be NO MORE warming when there NEVER WAS. The “greenhouse effect” is a complete con. It is laughably silly on any reality check.
The simple 10 second test – if water vapour caused the planet to heat, why is there any water left. It would form a positive feedback and just all boil off.
Fact is, the ocean surface temperature is constrained to 273.1K near the poles and 305K at the equator; finely tuned upper and lower limits that are controlled by the physical properties of water.
Inspection of data from the tropical moored buoys easily verifies this reality:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/drupal/disdel/
Any measurement that indicates “global warming” as a long term trend is indication of a flawed measurement system not any global warming. Sure the ocean circulations can change the distribution of heat from time-to-time and orbital geometry can play a huge role in the heat distribution but fundamentally the ocean surface temperature is tightly constrained between two limits. CO2 plays ZERO role.
The only exception to the upper limit is the Persian Gulf because the topography, small body of water jammed between deserts, precludes monsoon or tropical cyclones forming.
“The “greenhouse effect” is a complete con. It is laughably silly on any reality check.”
Can you believe people still write stuff like this in 2020? I mean, you don’t have to believe we are all going to die tomorrow, but denying the greenhouse effect is real is like denying apple pie.
The year doesn’t matter; humans are not smarter than 50,000 years ago, prejudices don’t stand for knowledge. Is there empirical proof of greenhouse effect outside laboratory conditions, and what is the extent of it?
“Simon October 27, 2020 at 12:05 am
I mean, you don’t have to believe we are all going to die tomorrow, but denying the greenhouse effect…”
Simply stating that as fact demonstrates you don’t understand how greenhouses work.
“denying the greenhouse effect ‘
Its miss-named. It is nothing to do with blocking convection as a greenhouse does..
…… because it doesn’t.
The proper terminology is the atmospheric mass effect.
You know you have absolutely zero evidence that CO2 has anything to do with the atmospheric pressure gradient or the highly beneficial warming since the Little Ice Age.
Your comments are just empty mindlessly regurgitated rhetoric, simon..
…. . because it all you are capable of.
“It is laughably silly on any reality check.”
So true that is !!!
Simon doesn’t understand REALITY
He lives in his own little fantasy world where actual science is meaningless and cannot be allowed to intrude.
Still waiting for evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2, slimy one. !
Before you prove yourself a dill, take a good look at the data. The more water vapour in the atmosphere, the more heat rejected:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNg2_DukRksyuhIkZ8
Reflecting sunlight by clouds is way more powerful than the small reduction in radiating power due to the clouds.
If there was such a thing as “greenhouse effect” with atmospheric water causing heating it would become positive feedback causing all the water would boil off.
The simple 10 second test – if water vapour caused the planet to heat, why is there any water left. It would form a positive feedback and just all boil off.
It would cause the planet to be warmer than it would otherwise be. There’s a big difference between that and runaway warming. I don ‘t burst into flame when I put a sweater on, I just get warmer than I otherwise would be.
In which case, what stops the run away effect and what is the upper limit davidH?
Physics stops the runaway effect. Stefan-Boltzmann Law to be specific, but if you want to simplify it , call it the law of diminishing returns. You put the sweater on, you warm up a certain amount in the first 5 minutes, and say half of that in the next five and so on until you get to a number to small it can’t be measured. At that point the sweater has re-established equilibrium and neither it nor you warm further unless some other factor changes.
There is no effect to stop. It is rubbish. More water in the atmosphere results in more heat rejection. Reflection trumps reducing radiating temperature by a factor of 2.
The atmosphere changes gear once TPW exceeds 38mm. It is observed as monsoon and cyclones. These form highly reflective clouds that cool the surface below by reflecting up to 300W/sq.m, on average, of insulation while reducing OLR by 100W/sq.m on average. These clouds result in strong net cooling of water surface below.
@Steve:
It is water that stops it through the Hydro Cycle which provides a strong net Negative feedback to the GHE.
Fortunately for us the IPCC et al got it wrong ; so we won’t be cooking. Unfortunately It won’t admit it ; so we are now lumbered with the CAGW Virus which ha reached pandemic levels.
In trite terms one can say that the Earth sweats to keep cool, just like you, I and overheated scientists.
david,
CAGW assumes you keep piling on sweaters till you suffocate.
It does no such thing . It correctly assumes that a sweater warms you up. The debate is by how much more a sweater double the thickness of the one we already have will warm us up.
Except the atmosphere COOLS the surface if its too warm (ie more than the atmospheric pressure gradient can allow.)
The jumper/blanket analogy is a load of donkey farts.
Davidmhoffer: “The debate is by how much more a sweater double the thickness of the one we already have will warm us up.”
WR: The debate should be about the holes convection makes in the double thick sweater to bring the heat of your body outwards. In the atmosphere the upward transport of surface energy by convection rises a lot for every degree rise in temperature. Not quantified is how much. But temperature goes up by one degree and evaporation of water vapor by 6-7% per degree Celsius and both are fueling convection that enhances wind that enhances evaporation that enhances convection etc. etc.. How much energy is transported by convection away from the surface when temperatures rise by one degree? By how much heat the colder layers in the upper air are warmed? How much surface area with warmer dry descending air is created by that high convection, dry air that enables a lot of space ward radiation over those large surface areas? And how big are the areas of shading clouds that are created over the tropics and how early on the day? A lot of fundamental questions, not answered (publicly) by mainstream climate science. Only 10% of all surface radiation directly reaches space, 40 W/m2 from about 390 W/m2. When greenhouse gases are added that % will go down further and not up, leaving a higher % of surface heat for the other already dominating way of upward heat transport, convection. For every degree extra the air is able to contain 6-7% extra water vapor (latent heat of evaporation) and extra sensible heat from conduction and from (extra) absorption of surface radiation. A huge cooling machine for the surface gains momentum as temperatures rise by only one degree. How much remains of that one degree INITIAL temperature rise?
Please explain why the “sweater” does not achieve the same balance over the Persian Gulf. The only sea surface where the temperature exceeds 32C.
As much as I admire and respect Will Happer, I’m going to hold off doing any celebrating over this until two things are cleared up about his paper (which I haven’t read yet).
Did he say what year CO2 started to warm the atmosphere, and did he say what year it saturated?
I can demonstrate the ocean produces CO2 when it warms via outgassing such as Law Dome CO2 shows happened as the southern ocean warmed since the 1850s (plot 7 first link). Then there’s the five month lag between SST and ML CO2. The ocean is the main heat reservoir, not the air, so any CO2 aborption warming in the air is fleeting and insubstantial, not affecting the ocean (no feedback), nor climate change, so Arrhenius was wrong.
Quotation: “Given that carbon dioxide and water vapor are both extremely saturated, it is highly unlikely that cloud feedbacks alone can do much damage, but it requires careful analysis to know this for sure”.
I have carried out tens of spectral calculations of different GH gas compositions applying the average global atmosphere and the spectral calculation application by name Spectral Calculator. In this application, a user can compose temperature, pressure ja GH gas profiles in the atmosphere.
The GH effect is not totally saturated with respect to any GH gas. If this would be the case, the absorption caused by the water vapor should be the same in different climate zones. In fact, this absorption varies significantly in different climate zones according to their water contents.
Ha!
The warming is just begun.
Ho! The cooling has just begun
Excellent review of a very important study. For non physicists (like me) the review helps to understand further the full weight of this (very technical) paper. The study has far reaching consequences.
“Clearly this is work that the climate science community needs to carefully consider. This may not be easy given that three major physics journals have refused to publish it. The reviews have been defensive and antagonistic, neither thoughtful nor helpful.”
In science opposing visions SHOULD be published. Discussion needs to take place in public and not ‘out of sight’ by selected peer reviewers. Not publishing a scientific study like this is equal to denying important weighty scientific findings. Which should not happen in science.
“In science opposing visions SHOULD be published.”
It isn’t an opposing vision. It is a rehash of an old calculation yielding a very similar result. It is always going to be hard to publish that in a research journal.
“It is a rehash of an old calculation yielding a very similar result. It is always going to be hard to publish that in a research journal.”
Unless it reinforces an alarmist result.
Nick Stokes: “It is a rehash of an old calculation yielding a very similar result. It is always going to be hard to publish that in a research journal.”
WR: The way to come to that very similar result is rather different. From the scientific point of view a new (more real Earth) calculation must be interesting enough to publish. Progress in science is not depending purely on results – if ever.
From the text of the post: “The reviews have been defensive and antagonistic, neither thoughtful nor helpful.” Nothing here about results.
Stokes
Are you saying that HITRANS has been used previously to calculate the line-by-line impact of absorption features?
Old Calculation? Does the value of an equation like E = Mc^2 diminish every time it is used?
“Are you saying that HITRANS has been used”
The Kluft paper that he cited used HITRAN. Lots of people do.
“Does the value of an equation like E = Mc^2 diminish every time it is used?”
No. But it’s publishability does. You will have trouble getting a discovery of it published nowadays in a research journal.
Manabe’s paper is a classic. The W&H equivalent results tell us nothing new.
Nick Stokes: “Manabe’s paper is a classic. The W&H equivalent results tell us nothing new.”
WR: You have a point with the results. But the new publishing of the same results half a century later than Wanabe could have an awakening effect: how could it be that with such low results for radiative effect a climate hysteria has developed while all of surface cooling (!) factors still have to be taken into account? How is it possible that we still get super hot running models like CMIP6 without any discussion about the small factor the INITIAL radiative input played?
To avoid such a discussion you should not publish the same results again. People would wake up saying: “Hey, how can? What is happening here? Where in fact is that climate hysteria based on? Can anyone explain?”
Avoiding such a discussion is at the detriment of the well functioning of science. That discussion should be in the center of Science. When ‘crystal balls’ dominate public debate, isn’t it time for Science to correct?
Stokes
You claimed, “You will have trouble getting a discovery of it published nowadays in a research journal.” Nevertheless, it seems that every year there is something published about yet another test of one of Einstein’s theories, again confirming it. By your logic, none of these recent tests of a 100+ year-old theory should be publishable. However, I keep reading about them!
Stokes
You claim, “Manabe’s paaper is a classic. The W&H equivalent results tell us nothing new.” However, W&H remark, “Our result of 2.2K is substantially lower than the value obtained by the pioneering work of Manabe and Wetherald [35] who obviously did not have access to the current line by line information. In a later publication [39] the authors explained that their 1967 result for the surface warming decreased by about 20% when they replaced their radiation transfer scheme by that used by Rodgers and Walshaw [27] which they felt was superior.”
Clyde Spencer October 27, 2020 at 6:46 pm
Stokes
Are you saying that HITRANS has been used previously to calculate the line-by-line impact of absorption features?
Certainly has, Clough and Iacono 25 years ago comes to mind.
Concurs with a graph I saw from a study by Pielke and Soon showing that CO2 saturation occurs about 200- 240ppm. So any CO2 driven warming effect drops off rapidly after that point.
The weather / climate doesn’t seem to be getting warmer or ‘wilder’, nor is the ocean rising, there’s still ice in the Arctic and Antarctic and the only place climate / weather disasters are happening is in breathless press releases.
I have been reading other articles on saturation. Overall, Dr. Happer is in agreement with them, but I think he might mean that the CO2 molecule is saturated so that it cannot absorb any further IR that would aid in heating the atmosphere.
In this article he is saying that when the molecule is saturated no matter how much more CO2 you add it will not increase the temperature. But for that to happen, all the IR would need to be absorb, if it isn’t, then any new CO2 added would then absorb the remaining IR and cause a warming.
But even with this warming, it warms with a algorithmic scale. 400pm CO2 would increase temperature 1 degree, to get another 1 degree, it would be double that amount, or 800 ppm. Then for the next 1 degree, it would take 1600 ppm.
So, even if mankind is doing the increase, we would need a lot of time to get to 800 ppm just to have a additional 1 degree of warming. I believe that is what Dr. Happer and others are trying to emphasize.
The saturation issue is a red herring. The issue is, and always have been, the effective height of emission. More CO2 –> higher effective height of emission –> emission from a colder layer –> more surface warming required to increase emissions. More greenhouse gases always increase surface temperature. The question nobody has been able to answer is by how much, as it is a very complex question and depends on a lot of things. The orthodox approach (IPCC) is to consider all warming due to GHGs, but that is incongruent with paleoclimatic evidence from the Holocene and the last deglaciation. If a significant part of the warming has other causes (solar, natural variability), then the answer is that an increase in GHGs causes little warming.
That is the essence of the scientific climate debate.
“The use of the term ‘The Science’ in public debates expresses its advocates’ insecurity with the absence of certainty. This leads to a defensive posture where scientists are reluctant to entertain the possibility that they might be wrong and that their critics might have a point. Sadly, a science that cannot work with the assumption that it might be wrong has more in common with a religious dogma than with open-ended experimentation. Such moralization of the imperative of fear has important implications for the conduct of public life. By representing scepticism and criticism as a threat that deserves to be feared, disciples of The Science set in motion a cultural dynamic that is inherently hostile to the free and open exchange of views. As we explain later, a palpable sense of intolerance towards freedom, particularly towards free speech, is intimately connected to the working of the culture of fear.”
Frank Furedi. “How Fear Works. Culture of Fear in the 21st Century.” 2018
Hear, hear!
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Fear has a big advantage for everyone who wants to manipulate: people simply stop thinking, not because they don’t want to think but because they simply cannot think anymore. Fear blocks rational thinking.
Make a ‘construct’ (for example within the UN) that makes people fearful. When you are telling about ‘some results from some scientists’ you have to look very fearful yourself: look at the eyes of alarmists. They always express fear. In the end nearly everyone feels fearful but nobody understands why because no one is able to think. Then the receipt is: “Follow the self-proclaimed leader”.
Of course you need to avoid any serious discussion. Then people would start to think again. A real climate debate has never been there: the first debate about climate still has to start.
@Wim:
Agree. The UN and its acolytes have a great deal to answer for. my observations over 12 years has convinced me of that.
I also find it very frustrating, that the publication of such an important scientific contribution to the GW debate gets hindered due to politics and censure. Hopefully it won’t take as long as it did for Henrik Svensmark or Pat Frank.
No reference made to the work of Ferenc Miskolczi :
Miskolczi, F.M., 2007. Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres. Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service, 111(1), pp.1-40.
Miskolczi, F.M., 2010. The stable stationary value of the earth’s global average atmospheric Planck-weighted greenhouse-gas optical thickness. Energy & Environment, 21(4), pp.243-262.
and still their work gets rejected by peer review.
What a surprise. /sarc
Miskolczi has calculated greenhouse gas absorption even more accurately with 9 greenhouse species, at each of 3490 wavelengths, in a 3D atmospheric analysis with 150 levels with 5th order gaussian model. He found similar results.
Miskolczi, F.M., 2014. The greenhouse effect and the infrared radiative structure of the Earth’s Atmosphere. Development in Earth Science, 2, pp.31-52.
https://www.klimarealistene.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Miskolczi_DES111.pdf
.
The most important part of Miskolczi’s work was not the modelling (although that was more enlightened than most since it found nonlinear adaptation and attractor-seeking).
The most important thing that Miskolczi did was look at data – lots of radiosonde balloon measurements over many decades, to show that in the real world, emission height does not change.
Anyone heard of radiosonde balloons recently?
I’ll rephrase that – has anyone heard of radiosonde balloons?
“I’ll rephrase that – has anyone heard of radiosonde balloons?”
Phil
Have a look at the work the Connolly’s are doing with radiosonde data.
Connolly, R. and Connolly, M., 2019. Balloons in the Air: Understanding Weather and Climate
https://www.nvtech.com.au/Climate/July-18-2019-Tucson-DDP-Connolly-Connolly-16×9-format.pdf
Philip
Thanks – the Conolleys’ work is interesting.
I was just being rhetorical about the tendency for climate science to ignore empirical data and focus on pure modelling.
David Wojick made a similar point in this recent post:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/10/20/crisis-looms-in-alarmist-climate-science/
Current levels where? My understanding is that water vapor concentrations in polar and desert regions are all but radiation saturated and that is where additional carbondioxide still has additional forcing effects?
It has been well known for a very long time that the warming due to increasing CO2 is logarithmic. This alone should have dampened alarmist claims. It was argued that peak broadening could occur. This is pressure broadening and doppler broadening. The alarmists then claimed that this meant that increasing CO2 would still cause warming and this became a scientific fact in alarmist science.
Happer has looked at broadening line by line and has concluded that saturation is reached. This is a major result and should spell the end of global warming, but we all know that this cannot be allowed. Happer’s success will never be given publicity except for ridicule.
“We could emit as much CO2 as we like; with no effect.
This astounding finding resolves a huge uncertainty that has plagued climate science for over a century.”
Call me cynical, but I can’t imagine how this finding resolves any uncertainty. It’s more likely to plague consensus climate scientist with exponentially greater uncertainty over future justifications for their funding. Half of them will dismiss this finding while the other half pretends it never happened.
How consensus works #94
Loydo October 27, 2020 at 2:26 am
“perhaps they are right and you are wrong?”
Nah, that couldn’t possibly explain it, could it? Thousands of climate scientists and hundreds of national science institutes all have it wrong and a couple of bloggers have it all figured out because, well because it gotta be anything but CO2, and, and Marxists…
Jeez, its CO2, its ours and its rapidly warming. Don’t be surprised if there are another 400 months of warm anomaly will you.
No proof, just political bolleaux really
science is a curious thing sometimes. it’s amazing how a junior patent clerk wrote and published 3 papers one year 115 years ago and our understanding of everything changed radically. And a few years after that – after they were validated – a hundred nazis scientists claimed they were all wrong in a petition. Unfortunately for them, nature continued to agree with the patent clerk and paid no attention to the nazis scientific community.
I’m positive that there is an element of truth in the saturation concern. A refusal to address it is willful scientific blindness.
I do not think the research can conclude the end of warming for the time being. Happer himself believes that the majority of warming occurring is from more natural causes than anthropogenic causes. But saturation would be a factor paving the way for the next cooling a century from now. I mean, we’re talking climate, not weather. Right?
Bearing in mind ‘climate change’ (or ‘global heating’ if you’re the hysterical Guardian) is supposed to be ‘The Greatest Threat To Humanity, Ever’, this discovery ought to be greeted with joy unconfined.
A thorough peer review process should be undertaken to see if humanity really does stand on the cusp of the greatest escape from catastrophe in history.
In short, if true this is THE best news in all of human history!
In reality it’s already being traduced and rejected out of hand. That’s not because it may be wrong but because it may be right. At a stroke this paper would destroy a million reputations, careers and fortunes, and most importantly, political traction at the highest levels, and we can’t have that.
Hence ‘The Problem’ will be protected and maintained at all costs.
CO2 is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas.