Exhaustive study finds more CO2 and water molecules will not cause dangerous warming
David Wojick, Ph.D.
Precision research by physicists William Happer and Willem van Wijngaarden has determined that the current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor are “saturated.” In radiation physics that means adding more CO2 or water molecules will bring modest warming that will benefit plant growth, and thus all life on Earth. More CO2 and H2O will not cause dangerous warming.
From this point forward, emissions from burning fossil fuels will bring little additional global warming, and what does occur will improve forests, grasslands and agriculture. There is no climate emergency.
This finding is astounding, paradigm shattering, contrary to what alarmist scientists have told us for decades. Scientifically, it resolves a huge uncertainty that has plagued climate science for over a century: How should saturation be measured, and what is its extent regarding the primary greenhouse gases?
Just as “the greenhouse effect” is nothing akin to how greenhouses work, in radiation physics “saturation” is nothing like the simple, everyday concept of saturation. Your paper towel is saturated when it won’t pick up any more spilled milk. Greenhouse gases are saturated when adding more water, methane or carbon dioxide molecules has no significant further effects on planetary warming and climate.
Dr. Happer is known as a leading skeptic of “dangerous human-caused climate change.” He co-founded the prestigious CO2 Coalition and served on the National Security Council, advising President Trump. But his career has been as a world-class radiation physicist at Princeton. Dr. van Wijngaarden teaches and conducts research in pure and applied physics at York University in Canada. Happer’s numerous peer-reviewed journal articles have collectively garnered over 12,000 citations by other researchers.
In their study, Professors Happer and van Wijngaarden (H&W) analyzed saturation physics in painstaking detail. Their preprint, “Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases,” goes far beyond any work done previously on this complex problem.
To begin with, standard studies examine the absorption of solar radiation by greenhouse molecules using crude absorption bands of radiation energy. H&W go far beyond this, to analyze the millions of distinct energies, called spectral lines, that make up these bands. Their detailed line-by-line approach is an emerging field that often yields dramatically new results – and here contradict prevailing climate theory.
Moreover, H&W do not look only at absorption. As Dr. Happer explained it to me:First, thermal emission of greenhouse gases is just as important as absorption. Second, how the atmosphere’s temperature varies with altitude is just as important as its concentration of greenhouse gases.
The two physicists therefore looked hard, not just at absorption, but also at emissions and atmospheric temperature variation. The work is far more complex than I, most non-physicist scientists, and certainly most citizens and politicians can understand. However, the conclusions are simple and 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. (Forcing power means effects on atmospheric temperature.)
Their graphs are especially compelling: Figure 9 and Tables 2 and 4 show that, at current concentrations, the forcings from all greenhouse gases are saturated. The saturations of the most abundant greenhouse gases, H2O and CO2, mean the per-molecule forcing is weakened by a factor of 10,000.
The other greenhouse gases analyzed are ozone, nitrous oxide and methane. These are also nearly saturated, but not as completely as water vapor and carbon dioxide. They are also even less significant components of the atmosphere than CO2 (0.0415% or 415 ppm), which in turn is tiny compared to H2O (3% or less). At just 0.00019% methane truly has minuscule influence on climate.
The climate science community clearly needs to consider this work very carefully. This may not be easy since three major physics journals have refused to publish it. Their reviews have been defensive and antagonistic, instead of thoughtful, science-based or helpful. Climate alarmism seems to control these journals, and they tend to censor contrary findings. That’s why H&W released the preprint version.
Undaunted, H&W are now extending their analysis to include clouds. Alarmist climate science bases its “dangerous manmade” global warming, not on the CO2 increase alone, but also on incorporating positive water vapor and cloud feedbacks: emphasizing heat-trapping properties of clouds, while largely ignoring the degree to which clouds also block or reflect incoming solar radiation. Because carbon dioxide and water vapor are both saturated, it is highly unlikely that any positive cloud feedbacks can do much damage. However further careful analysis is needed to know this for sure. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, America and the world are forced to ponder only “permissible” climate science – which is being used to justify demands that we eliminate the fossil fuels that provide 80% of all US and world energy, and replace that energy with enormous numbers of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, new transmission lines … and mines to produce their raw materials … all with major environmental impacts.
“Permissible” climate science is also being used as the basis for computer models that purport to predict planetary warming and weather 50 to 100 years from now. The models have not gotten anything correct up to now, which is understandable since the physics on which they are based is so faulty.
The good news, says Science and Environmental Policy Project president Ken Haapala, is that humanity’s use of fossil fuels and addition of CO2 to the atmosphere are not causing a climate crisis. Cutting existing atmospheric CO2 levels in half would have little effect on climate – but would harm plant growth and the ability of forests, food crops and grasslands to survive droughts and other stress. “Carbon capture” (actually carbon dioxide capture) is of little value, and would just increase electricity prices.
As to climate “tipping points” – at which the Earth gets inexorably hotter, never to cool down – the very notion is laughable. Over the ages, our planet has swung back and forth from moderate to very warm periods; from ice ages and mile-high glaciers across half of North America and Europe to interglacial periods, like the one we are in now; from the Medieval warm period to the Little Ice Age, 1350-1810, Haapala notes. (The LIA was ending just about the time the fossil fuel and industrial era began.)
Put another way, because greenhouse gases are already saturated, there is no reason we should accept IPCC or other claims that planetary temperatures could rise more than 3.0 ͦ C (5.4ᵒ F) without compelling empirical evidence of strong atmospheric warming. That evidence is totally lacking in IPCC reports, and satellite measurements find no strong warming. Accepting alarmist claims is science denial.
In reality, according to atmospheric temperature trends measured by satellites and weather balloons, and tracked by the Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama-Huntsville, the warming trend is modest. Since January 1979, it has remained at +0.14ᵒC/decade (+0.12ᵒC/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18ᵒC/decade over global-averaged land areas). That’s just 0.25ᵒF per decade, or 2.5ᵒF per century – modest, beneficial warming; certainly nothing remotely catastrophic.
Some of that warming is likely to be manmade. But most of it is natural and not at all unprecedented.
Moreover, the atmospheric “hot spot” above the tropics predicted by climate models is nowhere to be found. Put another way, for carbon dioxide to have significant impacts on global temperatures, humanity would have to burn more fossil fuels than are known to exist on our planet, Haapala concludes.
It’s no wonder climate alarmists, computer modelers, Green New Deal proponents, and wind turbine, solar panel, battery and concrete salesmen want to silence Happer and van Wijngaarden – or at least keep their work out of scientific journals. It’s also not surprising that China is happy to see the H&W science suppressed: its companies will be the ones selling us turbines, panels and batteries. Follow the science!
David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science, logic and human rights in public policy, and author of numerous articles on these topics.
A version of the Happer and van Wijngaarden paper (May 25, 2020) is available on Willem van Wijngaarden’s personal website. https://wvanwijngaarden.info.yorku.ca/publications/
The major conclusions in the report (quote):
“Radiative forcing depends strongly on latitude. Near the wintertime poles, with very little water vapor in the atmosphere, CO2 dominates the radiative forcing.
“…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 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.”
“Doubling CO2 concentration will cause a temperature decrease of the upper atmosphere of about 10 K … to restore hypothetical radiative-convective equilibrium. For the case of fixed absolute humidity, the surface warms by 1.4 K which agrees very well with other work …. The surface warming increases significantly for the case of water feedback assuming fixed relative humidity. … we obtain a climate sensitivity of 2.2 K. The corresponding climate sensitivities determined by other groups differ by about 10% which can be expected using slightly differing temperature and water vapor profiles. The issue of water feedback would undoubtedly be greatly clarified if additional observations of water vapor concentration as a function of altitude were available.”
“… the overlap of absorption bands of greenhouse gases causes their forcings to be only roughly additive. One greenhouse gas interferes with and diminishes the forcings of all others. But the self-interference of a greenhouse gas with itself, or saturation, is a much larger effect than interference between different gases. …
The version you cite is about two weeks older than the version cited by Wojick; nevertheless, Wijngaarden’s personal website is a trove of other interesting papers.
The sentences you pick are not about reality. Happer tells me that his best estimate of the sensitivity is less than 1.0 degrees.
Given that the per molecule forcing from CO2 and H2O is just a few tenthousandth of the low concentration, the warming from 400 to 800 ppm should be negligible. We are way out on the asymptote of the saturation diagram.
“1.0 degrees”?
No such sensitivity is demonstrated in the paper. Once he allows for the effect of water vapor, he gets the same ECS results as everyone else, as DW’s quote from their conclusion says.
No one has ever stated a physically possible way that atmospheric CO2 could ever measurably influence any temperature near Earth’s surface.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/20/emergent-constraints-on-tcr-and-ecs-from-historical-warming-in-cmip5-and-cmip6-models/#comment-3066518
The ‘smiley” apparently does not show in my above message about “imaginary numbers.” 🙂
Seriously, I regards ECS and TCS as parameters of religious faith – in a religion based on the belief that increasing atmospheric CO2 significantly drives atmospheric temperature.
Where is the global-scale evidence that that increasing atmospheric CO2 significantly drives atmospheric temperature? Molecular-scale arguments are not convincing, since we know that scale-up to global scale from molecular scale is huge, and many of the physical phenomena that impact this scale-up are not well-understood or quantified.
What we do understand is that atmospheric temperature changes precede atmospheric CO2 changes at all measured time scales – thus the above religious belief assumes that the future causes the past – so that belief is disproved via precedence.
If we do accept the above religious belief, and calculate temperature sensitivity based on that belief, we get a sensitivity of about 1C/[hypothetical doubling of CO2) based on warming intervals (Christy and McNider 2017, Lewis and Curry 2018) and the alleged global warming crisis disappears to insignificance. If we similarly analyze the cooling period 1940 to 1977 we calculate a hypothetical climate sensitivity of approx. MINUS 1C/(2*CO2). Again, the global warming crisis disappears to insignificance.
The alleged global warming is averted due to lack of any credible evidence that it exists. It is an imaginary crisis, based on imaginary numbers! [insert smiley face]
Regards, Allan
Indeed, Allan.
Like the Grand Old Duke of York, (He had 10 thousand men),
They modelled themselves up to the top of the hill and, should they wish,
They could model themselves back down again.
The models do not meet acceptable standards to be described as either working, or useful. Except for political purposes.
“Climate sensitivity” is just a phrase to deceive the ignorant.
It is not a number that represents some kind of fundamental measurable constant or quantity.
It is the hypherlutin’ way of saying “This result is what my model says will happen.”
Not only does the result depend on “other things being equal” (which is never true), but it also depends on which parameters the modeller arbitrarily chooses to assume such that he can get the result he wants or expects.
To put it another way (sorry for the multiple posts), many people on the street would be shocked at what a big difference it can make when the modeller makes very small changes to the “other things being equal” terms in the models.
Further to my above post, Ed Berry’s recent paper and book “put the cat among the pigeons”.
I recommend Ed Berry’s new book “Climate Miracle: There is no climate crisis Nature controls climate”
https://www.amazon.ca/Climate-Miracle-climate-crisis-controls-ebook/dp/B08LCD1YC3/
My review: 5 Stars.
An excellent, readable book that destroys the scary global warming / climate hypothesis.
Reviewed in Canada on November 11, 2020
Verified Purchase
woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah6/from:1979/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
Author Dr. Edwin Berry demolishes the IPCC’s very-scary catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis. Ed proves from basic principles that the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere is primarily natural, not man-made. Berry’s analysis is consistent with my 2008 publication that atmospheric CO2 cannot significantly drive temperature, because changes in CO2 lag temperature changes in the modern data record, as they do in the longer-term ice core record. Kuo et al (1990) and Keeling (1995) made similar observations in the journal Nature, but have been studiously ignored by global warming propagandists. “The future cannot cause the past.”
_____________________________________
Berry’s hypo is complicated, and somewhat counter-intuitive.
The world is a big place, and the carbon cycle is never in equilibrium – it chases gradients as they occur, all over the planet. Henry’s Law does work – but locally.
Note the people who contributed strongly to Berry’s paper: Ed Berry, Richard S Courtney, Will Happer, Murry Salby, Hermann Harde and others – I know most of them, and they are certainly among the most intelligent people on the planet. It would be foolish to dismiss their conclusion without doing the work and locating a fatal flaw – which I suggest none of the detractors have done.
It is too easy to shoot-from-the-hip and miss the target. Many years ago, someone called this remarkable relationship “spurious correlation”. It supports Berry’s hypo and is not spurious.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah6/from:1979/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
Regards, Allan 🙂
THE STOLEN USA ELECTION – BACKGROUND INFORMATION FROM A NEW SOURCE
canucknews.ca/post/canada-dominion-voting-systems-and-soros-connections
canucknews.ca/post/the-dominion-voting-system-uncovering-the-deep-state-ties
canucknews.ca/post/the-great-reset
More at canucknews.ca/
Hopefully they will use it and demonstrate what really happened.
Can we use this analysis to quantify the benefit of forcing CO2 levels to 800ppm or more?
Why not….more plant food with humanity thriving.
You’re on the right track Jean. The huge increases in plant growth from rising CO2 will have far greater impact than rising temperatures. However, for some reason we hear almost no studies being reported addressing this.
Many of these effects will be positive. Agriculture will become more productive. Decreased plant water requirements will likely counteract the desertification effects of warming.
A negative effect we are likely to see is worsening of the number and severity of wildfires resulting from the increased carbon sequestration into plants and excessive fuel buildup in wild areas. The smoke levels of these fires could even reach levels that result in a cooling effect on the atmosphere.
When I look at Table 3 and Table 5 of the paper, it seems like the results of this paper line up with other papers within 10-20%. So, the exact opposite of “astounding, paradigm shattering”.
This is an unfortunate confusion. Here is how Happer puts it:
“William van Wijngaarden and I both think that doubling CO2 will cause some overall surface warming. We did not mean Table 5 to be an estimate of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), that is, average surface warming due to doubling CO2 concentration. As we tried to make clear in the table and captions, the numbers are the amount of local surface warming you would need to restore radiative-convective equilibrium at a temperate latitude with the current altitude profiles of greenhouse-gas concentrations and temperature shown in Fig. 1.
Several factors persuade us that the equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely to be less than any of the figures of Table 5. Some of these are:
1. The assumption of constant relative humidity probability exaggerates the increase of water vapor increases in the upper atmosphere and gives too large a water-vapor feedback.
2. We have not taken clouds into account yet. Our educated guess is that clouds will substantially decrease the surface warming from doubling CO2.
3. We have yet accounted for changes in heat transport from the tropics to poles by atmospheric and ocean convection.
4. So far we have not had time to look at solar (short wave) forcing, mainly associated with changes in cloud conditions.
My own guess is that when these and other important factors are taken into account, the predicted ECS will be about 1 C.”
I think it will be a lot less.
“This is an unfortunate confusion”
It isn’t a confusion. They did the calculation and reported the results, with perfect clarity. Now Happer says, disregard our paper, we think the result is much lower because…
“Our educated guess is that …”
“We have yet accounted for changes…”
“So far we have not had time to look at…”
“My own guess is that…”
No wonder journals are inclined to disregard their paper.
The paper specifically states that clouds are ignored and as such is not a full model of physical reality, but a simplified case to make the analysis easier. It is an interesting result in getting a better handle on the RADIATIVE heat transfer in the atmosphere.
CLOUDS control the planet temperature.
A 1 degree change in sea surface temperature causes a 7% increase in water vapor molecules above that surface, and significant buoyancy of the warmed air parcel.
As it convects to top of troposphere which is -55 C, where CO2 content is 400 ppm, but water is only 20 ppm, having all rained and snowed out, …that water vapor forms clouds, clouds, and more clouds….
Clouds reflect sunlight away from the planet at hundreds of watts per square meter. A few minutes of clouds reflect much more SW than all day of CO2 LW forcing. CO2 is limited to its actual absorption of about 1.2 degrees per doubling, but probably much less due to cloud increase. Clouds bring the heat balance back to a balance within hours or days depending on which way the wind is blowing.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL073105
and that paper’s many references show the effects.
I’m afraid I have to agree with Nick on this. The authors used detailed line by line calculations and get the same radiative forcing from 2XCO2 others have gotten. How much warming occurs largely depends upon feedbacks, which were not the main subject of the paper. Talk of near-saturation is nothing new, this is known and included in climate models. There is no such thing as total saturation of the GHE. Ask Venus (with over 200,000x our CO2).
I would think that total saturation is an acceptable approximation at sea level. I would also think that the 2C increase in temperature is more due to the increase in altitude at which the CO2 and other GHG lines come out of saturation.
Funny thing is that Mars has more CO2 in its atmosphere than the earth, but not 200,000X more.
Yes but when you adjust for the pressure differentials between the atmospheres of earth and Venus, the associated thermal gradient and adjust for the higher insolation of Venus you get an atmospheric temperature that is very similar to earth.
Dr. Spencer’s invocation of Venus in this context puzzles me.
So long as the greenhouse-gas content of its atmosphere is still great enough to put the effective radiation altitude near the top of the atmosphere, why wouldn’t atmospheric mass be the dominant determinant of surface temperature? I.e., why would any greenhouse-gas increase make much difference after a substantial opacity is reached?
A few years ago, a very prominent scientist also thought it will be a lot less:
“Attempts to assess climate sensitivity by direct observation of cloud processes, and other means, point to a conclusion that doubling of CO2 would lead to about 0.5°C warming or less.”
Lindzen, 2008.
“William van Wijngaarden and I both think that doubling CO2 will cause some overall surface warming. We did not mean Table 5 to be an estimate of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), that is, average surface warming due to doubling CO2 concentration. As we tried to make clear in the table and captions, the numbers are the amount of local surface warming you would need to restore radiative-convective equilibrium at a temperate latitude with the current altitude profiles of greenhouse-gas concentrations and temperature shown in Fig. 1.
Several factors persuade us that the equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely to be less than any of the figures of Table 5. Some of these are:
1. The assumption of constant relative humidity probability exaggerates the increase of water vapor increases in the upper atmosphere and gives too large a water-vapor feedback.
2. We have not taken clouds into account yet. Our educated guess is that clouds will substantially decrease the surface warming from doubling CO2.
3. We have yet accounted for changes in heat transport from the tropics to poles by atmospheric and ocean convection.
4. So far we have not had time to look at solar (short wave) forcing, mainly associated with changes in cloud conditions.
My own guess is that when these and other important factors are taken into account, the predicted ECS will be about 1 C.”
Except 1°C is already in the rear-vision mirror and we’re not even half way there.
”Except 1°C is already in the rear-vision mirror ”
Which almost certainly was due to co2.
Most likely adjustments.
Mike and Loydo:
There are Zero measurements to indicate that it is CO2.
Mostly natural unless PROVED otherwise.
NO feedbacks have been measured.
I said in a previous post a few weeks ago:
Sensitivity is 0.0 + or – 1.0.
Correction! That should be NOT due to co2!!!!!
Evidence please?
Ha ha, Loydo still having problems with those wascally wogawithms.
The half-way point of the effect (assuming 280ppm pre-industrial) is at 396 ppm, and no we haven’t had that warming since 1950.
Loydo must try harder in class.
In other words, most of the warming we will see has already happened-assuming co2 is really a control knob capable of over riding natural variation.
Even the IPCC does not claim that all the (supposedly) observed surface warming is from the CO2 increase. In the AR5 WG1 SPM they list about ten different positive anthro forcings, with CO2 being just one.
Stop disinforming.
“Humans emissions and activities have caused around 100% of the warming observed since 1950”, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) fifth assessment report.
The recent US fourth national climate assessment found that “between 93% to 123% of observed 1951-2010 warming was due to human activities”. https://science2017.globalchange.gov/downloads/CSSR2017_FullReport.pdf
Wait, I’ve misinterpreted you.
“ten different positive anthro forcings, with CO2 being just one.”
Just one out of ten? ah, so you’re not skeptical about AGW, just skeptical about fossil fuel caused AGW, got it.
CO2 contributes ONLY 70%. Disinformer.
Poor loy-dumb,
Can’t you see that EPA and Climate scammer nonsense is based on IGNORANCE and mindless conjecture and provable wrong models, which have that CO2 warming baked into them
They have absolutely ZERO evidence of that, just mindless whim.
Just like you. !
Stop MAL-informing
Attribution studies based on ignorant AGW mantra are NOT SCIENCE.
Like you , they have ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE of warming atmospheric CO2
And yes, in the USA nearly all the warming is caused by humans…..
… adjusting the data…
Let’s try again.. see how far you can run 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?
Poor loy-dumb.
Has to fall back on the ANTI-SCIENCE mal-information of the IPCC and EPA.
You do know that these are just theoretical and model-faked constructs based on erroneous ideas of how the atmosphere functions, don’t you?
Please show us where warming by atmospheric CO2 has EVAH been observed or measured anywhere on the planet.
You KNOW that you can’t.
And you KNOW it doesn’t.
Maybe 1C of NATURAL warming since the coldest period in 10,000 years
SO WHAT !! Great News !!
You have NEVER been able to provide one single bit of scientific evidence that this highly beneficial warming was caused by human CO2.
You remain EMPTY. !
Marcus,
yes, Wojick makes interpretations which can’t be seen in the W&H paper. Happer has previously stated the saturation effect in his slide presentations.
Tipping points, feedbacks, forcings, oh my we’re doomed and the burning hell on earth…what? This slight elevation of plant food and water is actually beneficial? We might have put enough extra CO2 into the atmosphere to get us through another glacial cycle of this Ice Age we live in? But Presumptive President-Elect Joe Biden has a Climate Czar, John Kerry, no less, and he is going to tackle this problem. Maybe we should try to talk him/them out of this? I’m busy so someone else will have to do it. Thanks.
No surprise that a facts based CO2 Paper came from a non-USA source. Our science communities corruption is only surpassed by our politics.,,assuming there is any separation between the two (IMHO).
O-o.
Ordered retreat?
I can confirm Happer and van Wijngaarden’s findings in respect of CO2 saturation from practical experience.
In my last job I designed refrigerant gas leak detection equipment based on IR absorption. CO2 has the refrigerant designation R-744 and is used in a number of supermarkets.
The detector was required to alarm at concentrations greater than 1000 ppm but the 15um band was so saturated at 400 ppm background level that it was impossible to get a detectable difference in absorption between the background and alarm levels. We had to move to a band at a much shorter wavelength.
We used the HITRAN database and the very handy ‘HAPI’ (Hitran Application Programming Interface) to confirm this.
For readers with python programming experience I recommend downloading HAPI (and the Spyder IDE) and giving it a try. It really does show how absorption levels off as concentration increases. If I could post a graph here I would, to demonstrate for non-python readers.
Because this is not the first time as the results of Wijngaarden & Happer have been referred, I also repeat my comment. Basically the same message as from Danley Wolfe.
For some strange reason, bloggers repeat the saturation effect of CO2. I recommend reading the original article if you do not believe my references.
The message of these stories has been “at current concentrations, the forcings from all greenhouse gases are saturated.” This is a strange conclusion directly conflicting with the results of the article of W&H. They conclude that doubling the CO2 concentration will cause the case of fixed absolute humidity, the surface warms by 1.4 K which agrees very well with other research studies.
Indeed, in The AR4 the IPCC reports that “In the idealized situation that the climate response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 consisted of a uniform temperature change only, with no feedbacks operating, the global warming from GCMs would be around 1.2°C”.
W&H reports that “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.” So, what is the IPCC value in the case of water feedback? The IPCC reports in AR 5 that “It can be estimated that in the presence of water vapor, lapse rate and surface albedo feedbacks, but in the absence of cloud feedbacks, current GCMs would predict a climate sensitivity (±1 standard deviation) of roughly 1.9 ⁰C ± 0.15 ⁰C.”
The conclusion looks pretty strange to me. The IPCC’s TCR value is 1.9 ⁰C and the same of W&H is 2.3 ⁰C, and the TRC values without any feedbacks are 1.2 ⁰C versus 1.4 ⁰C. The warming values of W&H turns to be greater than those of the IPCC. The claim of saturated CO2 effects by W&H is not true at all.
In my country, the expression that humidity, for example, is saturated, means that the water content of the air does not increase, no matter how much water has been increased into the air. Is it so that in the USA if you try hard enough, some more water can be added and the air becomes over-saturated?
That is not their conclusion. Happer says this:
“William van Wijngaarden and I both think that doubling CO2 will cause some overall surface warming. We did not mean Table 5 to be an estimate of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), that is, average surface warming due to doubling CO2 concentration. As we tried to make clear in the table and captions, the numbers are the amount of local surface warming you would need to restore radiative-convective equilibrium at a temperate latitude with the current altitude profiles of greenhouse-gas concentrations and temperature shown in Fig. 1.
Several factors persuade us that the equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely to be less than any of the figures of Table 5. Some of these are:
1. The assumption of constant relative humidity probability exaggerates the increase of water vapor increases in the upper atmosphere and gives too large a water-vapor feedback.
2. We have not taken clouds into account yet. Our educated guess is that clouds will substantially decrease the surface warming from doubling CO2.
3. We have yet accounted for changes in heat transport from the tropics to poles by atmospheric and ocean convection.
4. So far we have not had time to look at solar (short wave) forcing, mainly associated with changes in cloud conditions.
My own guess is that when these and other important factors are taken into account, the predicted ECS will be about 1 C.”
“That is not their conclusion.”
It is the conclusion of the paper they submitted.
No it Is not Nick. Happer’s explanation makes this clear. People are reading more into the paper than is there.
The paper itself does not provide any conclusions contrary to mainstream climate science. All of the “several factors” from Happer’s quote above are external to the paper. The factor about relative humidity misses the point, as climate scientists do not assume constant relative humidity. The 2nd factor is more relevant, but no evidence for negative cloud feedbacks is provided in this paper. Happer doesn’t even provide an estimated directionality for the effects of factor 3 and 4, but regardless, they aren’t in the paper either.
Just go to the IPCC: Appendix 8.A of the 5th Assessment Report (https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf) has radiative efficiency by gas in W/m2/ppb. CO2 is 1.4e-5. CH4 is 3.6e-4 (more than 20 times larger). N2O at 3e-3 is another magnitude larger. And CFC-11 at 0.26 is two orders of magnitude larger yet. So, yes, it is part of standard climate science that the “per molecule forcing power” of CO2 is much smaller than for other gases. But we are also emitting very large amounts, such that CO2 is still the most important human-emitted greenhouse gas.
” such that CO2 is still the most important human-emitted greenhouse gas.”
Yes, It is HIGHLY IMPORTANT that we keep emitting it.
ONLY CO2 can feed the planet.
But there is NO ACTUALLY EVIDENCE that CO2 does anything except enhance plant growth.
btw, CO2 is a radiative gas, used in greenhouses to enhance plant growth.
It has no measurable atmospheric influence and acts as just another conduit for cooling of the lower atmosphere.
“This finding is astounding, paradigm shattering, contrary to what alarmist scientists have told us for decades.”
Absolute nonsense! We’ve been through this before. After all the “Gee, isn’t this a big number” stuff, they actually calculate the climate sensitivity using their revised figures. They compare with other, older, similar analyses in Table 5. They are absolutely in the same range. Almost identical. And they say so in the discussion, eg:
“All groups [including W&H] obtain similar surface warming for the case of fixed relative humidity using a pseudoadiabatic lapse rate in the troposphere. Some variation of the results is to be expected since the calculations used different water vapor concentration profiles as well as temperature profiles that differ slightly near the tropopause.”
Their ECS with fixed relative humidity is 2.2 K per doubling, just as others going back to Manabe (1967) have found. From their conclusion:
“Doubling the CO2 concentration will cause a temperature decrease of the upper atmosphere of about 10 K as shown in Fig. 11 to restore hypothetical radiative-convective equilibrium. 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. The corresponding climate sensitivities determined by other groups differ by about 10% which can be expected using slightly differing temperature and water vapor profiles”
So you obviously still “think” there is a climate crisis.
There is nothing new in this manuscript to change anyone’s mind.
Oh no…a tiny bit of warming. Please sell me your beachfront property for cheap.
Nick,
“Absolute nonsense! We’ve been through this before.”
If so, which prior authors have noted the severity of saturation noted by W&H?
Which have reported line-by-line studies in comparable detail?
Geoff S.
“Which have reported line-by-line studies in comparable detail?”
Kluft et al just last year published a much more detailed and thorough review; W&H proudly note that they got the same results. But the calculation was done back in the ’80s by Hunt and Wells here, using similar data, again with the same results. All W&H are adding is some “Gee that’s a big number” commentary.
I have published a research study based on the reproduction of the study of Myhre et al. applying spectral analysis tool using the line-by-line method in 2014. The result is for RF= 3.12*ln(CO2/280), which gives 2*CO2 to be 2.16 W/m2, and TCR/TCS is therefore only 0.6 C.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/17/on-the-reproducibility-of-the-ipccs-climate-sensitivity/
Nick, do you think there is a climate crisis that needs a Paris Climate Accord or a Green New Deal as a solution?
And based only on radiative energy transfer.. a small amount of what actually happens.
Atmosphere is NOT controlled by radiative effects , but by bulk energy transfer.
So looking at just theoretical radiative effects is a waste of time.
Does this mean that the journals refusing to publish the H&W paper don’t know it supports the IPCC? Or, maybe they just used reviewers who can’t understand it? Seems like it climate change enthusiasts would want to see it published if it supports their position.
No, they just read it and noted that the authors are repeating the same old calculation, and getting the same old results, as the authors acknowledge. That’s not what research journals publish.
On the contrary, these findings are revolutionary. Table 5 does not say what you think it says.
“Table 5 does not say what you think it says.”
Its caption describes it as:
“Climate sensitivity in Kelvins for different model configurations.”
The text (7.5) says
“A comparison of our result for the climate sensitivity defined as the surface warming due to doubling the CO2 concentration from 400 to 800 ppm, to other work is given in Table 5.”
The conclusion says
“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).”
So if Table 5 isn’t showing their calculated result for climate sensitivity, what is it showing?
Nick asks: “So if Table 5 isn’t showing their calculated result for climate sensitivity, what is it showing?”
It appears to be showing clear sky sensitivity. They did state clouds were not considered. Since the Earth has over 67% cloud cover it would appear the 2.3 C value only applies to about 1/3 of the planet. Doesn’t this mean the overall sensitivity would be more like .8 C with cloud cover considered?
“It appears to be showing clear sky sensitivity.”
Yes. The conclusion starts:
“This work examined the transmission of infrared radiation through a cloud-free atmosphere from the Earth’s surface to outer space. A line by line calculation used over 1/3 million lines of the five most important naturally occurring greenhouse gases”
The paper is all about that radiative calculation. There, with their extra effort, they still got the same forcing result as earlier, as shown in Table 3. The clear sky sensitivity of Table 5 is a consequence, and so is naturally also in line with earlier results. And that is all the new information there is in the paper. There is nothing to help us with the effect of clouds or other feedbacks etc. And so nothing revolutionary, at all.
Nick states: “There is nothing to help us with the effect of clouds or other feedbacks etc. ”
Since you added nothing with this claim it appears you are telling us that the IPCC also knows nothing about the radiation effects when clouds are present. So, does this mean when the models show large amounts of warming they are based on a cloudless Earth? Hilarious.
It seems to me that clouds are already absorbing nearly 100% of any radiation coming from below. Hence, more CO2 cannot add much to the sensitivity calculation. Above the clouds we are dealing with energy already in the atmosphere and hence cannot add to warming of the atmosphere.
“Their ECS with fixed relative humidity is 2.2 K per doubling,”
That is only 2/3 of the UN IPCC’s latest estimate. A significant drop. One of my favourite curves plots estimated ECS as a function of time. Sure, a decade ago there was a case for alarmism, now there absolutely is not. As time goes on the IPCC model ensemble mean is falsified to greater and greater sigma levels – and eventually will be as discredited as the Imperial College infection model (whose source I could look at, most scientists don’t have a clue how to write good software – because I used to be one of them but learned how to do it professionally).
But hey, you personally profit from the hoax, plus your self-image is tied to its continuation, so of course you will used motivated reasoning.
Which is why the Global Cooling -> AGW Hypothesis -> Climate Change is political and not scientific. if you followed the observational science you’d end up in the same position as Drs Curry, Spencer and Pielke.
“That is only 2/3 of the UN IPCC’s latest estimate. A significant drop.”
No, it is well within the IPCC’s stated range. The results of a 1D calculation allowing only for water vapor feedback have been around for at least 50 years, and as the authors acknowledge, they have not changed since Manabe et al updated their radiative data in the 1970’s. We knew that. Much more is covered by the GCM estimates.
The IPCC’s stated range is so wide as to be worthless other than to reveal that no-one really has a clue.
Nick, you are misreading the paper,which many do re Table 5. Here is what Happer says:
“William van Wijngaarden and I both think that doubling CO2 will cause some overall surface warming. We did not mean Table 5 to be an estimate of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), that is, average surface warming due to doubling CO2 concentration. As we tried to make clear in the table and captions, the numbers are the amount of local surface warming you would need to restore radiative-convective equilibrium at a temperate latitude with the current altitude profiles of greenhouse-gas concentrations and temperature shown in Fig. 1.
Several factors persuade us that the equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely to be less than any of the figures of Table 5. Some of these are:
1. The assumption of constant relative humidity probability exaggerates the increase of water vapor increases in the upper atmosphere and gives too large a water-vapor feedback.
2. We have not taken clouds into account yet. Our educated guess is that clouds will substantially decrease the surface warming from doubling CO2.
3. We have yet accounted for changes in heat transport from the tropics to poles by atmospheric and ocean convection.
4. So far we have not had time to look at solar (short wave) forcing, mainly associated with changes in cloud conditions.
My own guess is that when these and other important factors are taken into account, the predicted ECS will be about 1 C.”
I do not find any indication that W&H has calculated ECS values. In the Introduction, they write like this: ” The instantaneous” forcings resulting from doubling concentrations of CO2, N2O and CH4 were compared to those published in the literature”. The ECS calculation means that various feedback processes must be applied, which practically duplicate the TCR/TCS values. It is impossible to find any indication about this kind of feedback calculation applied in the paper of W&H. It is a question about TCR/TCS values. If you think otherwise, then you should show at least one feedback process that W&H has used. The truth is that they have carried out instantaneous line-by-line calculations only.
“I do not find any indication that W&H has calculated ECS values.”
Section 7.5 starts:
“A comparison of our result for the climate sensitivity defined as the surface warming due to doubling the CO2 concentration from 400 to 800 ppm, to other work is given in Table 5.”
The only feedback they include is water vapor, by holding RH constant:
“The surface warming increases significantly for the case of water feedback assuming fixed relative humidity. Our result of 2.3 K …”
Sorry Nick, but you insist on reading the paper incorrectly. If the per molecule forcing of CO2 and H2O is just a few tenthousandth of the low concentration value, as the paper finds, then there is almost no forcing left. This is the finding, not some minor added discussion about unreal conditions.
So your claim that there is nothing new here is wildly false.
Nick, genuine question here. Are you saying that the ECS of 2.2 K per doubling of CO2 concentration is what is generally expected, so this isn’t news? I assume that includes the roughly 1+ degree C warming (I can’t convert to Kelvin) that has already occurred? I’m trying to figure out what is the general consensus in ECS is that you feel Happer is confirming and that is consistent with warmist calculations. I’ve seen quite a spread and am trying to understand this better. Thank you.
The notion of doubling CO2 is itself a false premise. The earth naturally produces 95+% of all Co2 annually, humans contribute only a measly 5%. What would cause EARTH to suddenly double it’s own natural Co2 output, and then fail to absorb it back? If ALL human generated Co2 were to be halted permanently, the earth would not even notice. Neither would we.
Doubling of Co2 is a red herring, used to scare people that don’t understand the slight amount that humans actually contribute to the whole.
Many studies show that earth’s temperature changes first, then Co2 concentration changes. You can’t have it both ways.
John,
This has been discussed many times here in the past. The natural fluxes are almost in balance. That is, the amount of CO2 that is outgassed from natural sources is almost the same as the amount absorbed/consumed each year by natural sinks. The natural sinks are a little bigger than the natural sources.
The amount of CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning is much smaller as you said, but still about twice as much as the amount added (accumulated) in the atmosphere annually. We do not currently extract any significant CO2 from the atmosphere so our sources are not balanced by our sinks. The concentration of CO2 would go up faster if it were not for the fact that natural sinks are dynamic and remove about half of the excess that we emit.
The amount of CO2 we produce by fossil fuel burning is pretty accurately known based on fuel production statistics. The amount in the atmosphere is a simple calculation, and thus the amount needed to raise the concentration by a ppm is also very accurately known. It’s impossible to make the math work unless the increase in CO2 is coming from our emissions.
You might like to dismiss human emissions because that would mean that whatever effect CO2 has on climate, it would not be due to our emissions, but that’s fantasy. We are raising CO2 concentration. Fortunately the only significant effect is greening the earth.
Forest productivity is outpacing management practice in some locations. That is resulting in higher fuel loads and leading to more intense wild fires. So there is a downside to increased greening.
Well we can use chainsaws and bulldozers when we have the will. It’s better than letting property start on fire.
The fact that Green politicians have put limitations on forest management practices is not evidence that more CO2 is a problem.
I have to spend a lot more time on taxes now that I’m no longer poor. So there is a downside to wealth.
Outpacing? Well I suppose that’s one way to describe thirty years of preventing any appropriate forest management.
Rich Davis,
You assert,
“The natural fluxes are almost in balance. That is, the amount of CO2 that is outgassed from natural sources is almost the same as the amount absorbed/consumed each year by natural sinks. The natural sinks are a little bigger than the natural sources.”
Really? You Know that? How?
In reality the errors in the estimates of the sources and sinks are greater than their accounted changes. And, importantly, annual CO2 emissions from human activities have no relationship to annual change in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
For decades I have been pointing out that if the extra CO2 emission of human origin was the only emission, then in some years, almost all of it seems to be absorbed into the sinks, and in other years almost none.
Accounting differences and errors probably account for some of this discrepancy. For example, if a record of some national CO2 emission is delayed from one year to the next then the total global CO2 emission from human activity will be lowered in the first of those years and increased in the other year. However, all such problems would be overcome by a three-year running mean of the annual data.
The IPCC uses a FIVE-year running mean to the data because that is the amount of smoothing required to obtain agreement between the global CO2 emission from human activity and the rise of atmospheric CO2 predicted by its carbon cycle model (the Bern model).
In 2008 at the first Heartlands Climate Conference I expanded on findings in one of our papers published in 2005 (ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005) ).
I then said,
“This presentation reports attribution studies that have used three different models to emulate the causes of the rise of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the twentieth century. These numerical exercises are a caution to estimates of future changes to the atmospheric CO2 concentration. The three models used in these exercises each emulate different physical processes and each agrees with the observed recent rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration. They each demonstrate that the observed recent rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration may be solely a consequence of the anthropogenic emission or may be solely a result of, for example, desorption from the oceans induced by the temperature rise that preceded it. Furthermore, extrapolation using these models gives very different predictions of future atmospheric CO2 concentration whatever the cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Each of the models in this paper matches the available empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’ such as the ‘5-year smoothing’ the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to get its model to agree with the empirical data.
So, if one of the six models of this paper is adopted then there is a 5:1 probability that the choice is wrong. And other models are probably also possible. And the six models each give a different indication of future atmospheric CO2 concentration for the same future anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide.
Data that fits all the possible causes is not evidence for the true cause. Data that only fits the true cause would be evidence of the true cause. But the above findings demonstrate that there is no data that only fits either an anthropogenic or a natural cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Hence, the only factual statements that can be made on the true cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration are
(a) the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have an anthropogenic cause, or a natural cause, or some combination of anthropogenic and natural causes,
but
(b) there is no evidence that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has a mostly anthropogenic cause or a mostly natural cause.
Hence, using the available data it cannot be known what if any effect altering the anthropogenic emission of CO2 will have on the future atmospheric CO2 concentration. This finding agrees with the statement in Chapter 2 from Working Group 3 in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001) that says; “no systematic analysis has published on the relationship between mitigation and baseline scenarios”.(9)””
And I explained those findings saying,
“”Figures 1 and 6 provide an apparent paradox. The annual anthropogenic emission of CO2 should relate to the annual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere if one is causal of the other but Figure 1 shows these two parameters do not correlate. However, Figure 6 shows that – using each of these different models – we were able to model the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere as being a function solely of the annual anthropogenic emission of CO2. It is important to note that we did not use any ‘fiddle factors’ such as the 5-year-averageing used by the IPCC (that cannot be justified because there is no known physical mechanism that would have such effect).
The apparent paradox is resolved by consideration of the calculated equilibrium CO2 concentration values, Ce. These are shown in Figure 7. Each model indicates that the calculated CO2 concentration for the equilibrium state in each year is considerably above the observed values. This demonstrates that each model indicates there is a considerable time lag required to reach the equilibrium state when there is no accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. In other words, one has to reckon with a considerable time lag to reach the equilibrium state Fa = 0 when Fin increases to a certain value with increasing Fem.
As Figure 2 shows, the short term sequestration processes can easily adapt to sequester the anthropogenic emission in a year. But, according to these models, the total emission of that year affects the equilibrium state of the entire system. Some processes of the system are very slow with rate constants of years and decades. Hence, the system takes decades to fully adjust to the new equilibrium. And Figure 6 shows the models predicting the atmospheric CO2 concentration slowly rising in response to the changing equilibrium condition that is shown in Figure 7.”
And in that presentation I also said ,
“Qualitative consideration of the carbon cycle suggests the carbon cycle cannot be very sensitive to relatively small disturbances such as the present anthropogenic emissions of CO2. However, the system could be quite sensitive to temperature. Indeed, the considerations suggest that the relatively large increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the twentieth century is likely to have been caused by the increased mean temperature that preceded it. The main cause may be desorption from the oceans. The observed time lag of half a century is not surprising. Assessment of this conclusion requires a quantitative model of the carbon cycle, but such a model cannot be constructed because the rate constants are not known for mechanisms operating in the carbon cycle.”
That is important because recent work by Ed Berry provides a solution to the problem of needing to know the rate constants for individual mechanisms. That solution is a breakthrough in understanding which I and all others failed to make. The book by Ed Berry is commended by Allan MacRae in another |WUWT thread at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/11/24/wmo-the-covid-19-lockdown-had-very-little-impact-on-global-co2/#comment-3133163 .
Richard
What you have done here is a detailed analysis of the data that should be used to determine the uncertainty in this climate issue. If I have read you correctly, the uncertainty is so large that it covers all possibilities and therefore there is no way to isolate what the exact interactions are.
Jim Gorman.
Yes, you have understood our work correctly.
But please note my final paragraph which states how the recent work of Ed Berry overcomes the problem our work identified.
Richard
Jim Gorman,
Yes, you have understood our findings correctly. But please note my final paragraph that states how the recent work of Ed Berry has overcome the problem which we identified.
Richard
It is likely that I am too dim to grasp my error. However, a mass balance calculated over the atmosphere must yield:
In – Out = Accum
Accum (accumulation) is given by the change in CO2 concentration from the start to the end of the measurement period, times the total mass of the atmosphere.
“In” represents all sources of CO2 entering the atmosphere during the measurement period.
“Out” represents all sinks removing CO2 from the atmosphere during the measurement period.
Next we can say
In(FF) + In(o) = In
where (FF) is fossil fuel combustion and (o) is all other sources (natural or human caused other than FF burning).
Thus
In(FF) + In(o) – Out = Accum
Here we consider all sinks as natural.
The fossil fuel source and the accumulation are quantities that are reasonably easy to measure, especially if we consider a period of several years. The change in ppm is of course the least controversial.
Fossil fuel production over a period of say five years is subject to less measurement error from timing of reporting, etc. Of course I admit that there could possibly be a consistent under- or over-reporting of production data that should be considered. But my take is that we have a decent handle on those two terms.
That leaves the other (non-fossil fuel) sources and the sinks. Is it not reasonable to expect that these are slow changing factors?
The heart of my argument is that the closely estimated amount of CO2 produced by fossil fuel combustion is about twice as large as the also closely estimated accumulation based on the change in concentration.
How can we close the mass balance such that natural sources (say ocean outgassing) are the primary driver of the accumulation?
Just throw out some arbitrary numbers to illustrate:
In(o) – Out = Accum – In(FF)
890 – 900= 10 -20
The sinks have to be bigger than the non-fossil fuel sources in order for the mass balance to close.
The only way for other sources to be greater than the sinks is if the fossil fuel source is actually considerably LESS than the accumulation. Our best estimate is that the fossil fuel source is about double the accumulation. Certainly the accumulation number should not be very controversial, so for that to be true, our estimates on fossil fuel consumption must be overestimated by something like a factor of 3 (so that the fossil fuel source would be about 1/2 the accumulation. In that scenario, the accumulation would be equally balanced between fossil fuel and other natural sources.
Is it really conceivable that the fossil fuel consumption has been overestimated by a factor of more than 3? I don’t see how the case could be made. Unless the estimate on fossil fuel consumption is overestimated by more than a factor of 3, it could not be said that ocean outgassing is the primary source causing atmospheric concentration to rise.
Rich Davis,
You say,
“It is likely that I am too dim to grasp my error. However, a mass balance calculated over the atmosphere must yield:
In – Out = Accum”
Perhaps you are “too dim” but it is more likely that you chose not to read my having written,
“Really? You Know that? How?
In reality the errors in the estimates of the sources and sinks are greater than their accounted changes. And, importantly, annual CO2 emissions from human activities have no relationship to annual change in atmospheric CO2 concentration.”
Your basic error is stated by you when you write,
In – Out = Accum
when you should write
(natural In – natural Out) + (human In – human Out) = Accum
However, (human out = ~0 ) and, therefore, we can simplify that to
(Natural In – natural Out) + human In = Accum
You are assuming the’ natural In’ and ‘natural out’ do not change so
(Natural In – natural Out) = ~0
Hence, you are assuming, human In = Accum
But we know that is not true because, as I also said,
“annual CO2 emissions from human activities have no relationship to annual change in atmospheric CO2 concentration”.
The IPCC takes note of this disagreement between reality and the notion you promote. They handwave it away with unjustifiable smoothing. As I also said,
““”Figures 1 and 6 provide an apparent paradox. The annual anthropogenic emission of CO2 should relate to the annual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere if one is causal of the other but Figure 1 shows these two parameters do not correlate. However, Figure 6 shows that – using each of these different models – we were able to model the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere as being a function solely of the annual anthropogenic emission of CO2. It is important to note that we did not use any ‘fiddle factors’ such as the 5-year-averageing used by the IPCC (that cannot be justified because there is no known physical mechanism that would have such effect).”
And I explained how our models solved that paradox.
I hope that is adequate explanation of your “error”.
Richard
Rich Davis,
This is an addendum to my explanation of your “error”. I deliberately provide it as a separate post.
You display several misunderstandings of reality and this one is so great that it alone is sufficient to demonstrate the profundity of your misunderstanding. You say,
“The heart of my argument is that the closely estimated amount of CO2 produced by fossil fuel combustion is about twice as large as the also closely estimated accumulation based on the change in concentration.”
The annual “accumulation” of CO2 in the air is the residual of the seasonal variation of CO2 in the air for each year. And the seasonal variation is an order of magnitude greater than the total CO2 from all human sources and the annual accumulation. Mauna Loa has the smallest observed seasonal variation (which is why it was chosen as the first continuous measurement site) and can be seen here
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
It is a stretch to suggest the natural variations of sources and sinks are not relevant to the sum of natural and anthropogenic sources and sinks when the observed net natural variation of sources and sinks is an order of magnitude more than the anthropogenic emission.
Richard
Rich Davis,
I write to add an amusing anecdote to lighten our discussion which seems to be geting heavy.
Some years ago I attended a Royal Society (RS) event held at the HQ of the RS in London.
A representative of the Hadley Centre stood and explained how they determined the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration by accounting sources of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
When he had finished his presentation I stood to ask a question, and I began saying,
“Sir, you say you determine the rises of atmospheric CO2 emissions by summing the emissions of CO2 from human activities. On Thursday of last week Indermuhle and his colleagues published in Nature an analysis that indicates a significant fall in atmospheric CO2 concentration occurred three hundred years ago. So, my question to you is, Where were the power stations shut three hundred years ago …?”
At this point I was interrupted by the large audience bursting into laughter.
When the laughter had died down, I completed my question by saying,
“Can you please tell me where the power stations shut three hundred years ago or, failing that, why don’t you account natural variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration?”
The Hadley Centre representative again stood.
He said, “We only consider anthropogenic emissions”.
Then he sat and said no more.
There being no further questions, the Chair called for the next speaker to come to the rostrum.
Richard
Mr Courtney,
If you are quite finished accosting me with redundant verbiage, I should be most grateful if you would explain how the mass balance closes simply by splitting the other (non-fossil fuel) sources term into an “other anthropogenic sources” term and a “natural sources” term; and also whether it is your assertion that over a period of five years (thus necessarily beginning and ending the measurement period at a similar point in the natural Keeling cycle), that the error in underestimating the change in atmospheric CO2 concentration or the error in overestimating fossil fuel production might possibly be such that what appears to be double is in reality substantially less than half?
Contrary to your supposition, and despite the length of your bloviation, I have read the entirety of your comments. In the interest of coming quickly to the point, I did not choose to address each fallacy in sequence.
However, if you insist, a shall address a few of the most egregious errors.
1) The mass balance argument which I have presented does not rely on estimation of any of the individual sources or sinks, other than the contribution to sources from fossil fuels. Thus it is irrelevant that when somebody else attempts to estimate the individual components of the total source or the total sink, they are unable to do so with any accuracy. These figures play no role in the formula.
2) As a corollary to the first point, I am not assuming that natural sources and sinks are unchanging. They certainly change. In fact this must account for a good portion of the lack of correlation between atmospheric concentration and fossil fuel sources which you cite as an argument putatively in your favor. Given that the natural sources and sinks are ~20 times larger than the fossil fuel contribution, and the certainty that these large sources and sinks are both seasonally variable and not perfectly constant in their cycles, it should not be the least bit surprising that the rise in CO2 concentration does not mirror exactly the rise and fall of the fossil fuel emissions.
3) I do not assume that human in = accumulation. As I noted, the fossil fuel contribution is about twice the magnitude of the accumulation. About half of the fossil fuel emissions are absorbed by the dynamic natural sinks, most probably the biosphere, leading to the dramatic greening effect being observed.
4) Setting the measurement period to align with several natural cycle periods is not an unwarranted fiddling as you claim. On the contrary, it reduces the % error in the two factors which I propose to estimate. Over the longer period, the error introduced by natural fluctuations around the endpoints of the measurement period will be a much smaller percentage of the overall rise. Thus the error in the Accum term will be smaller. Similarly, errors arising from timing lags in fossil fuel production reporting, or from fluctuations in fuel inventories will be a much smaller percentage of the total production over the longer period. Thus the error in the In(FF) term will be smaller.
Kindly address the two points at the top of this comment if you wish to continue the discussion.
Rich Davis,
It seems that polite conversation is beyond your capabilities.
You say to me,
“If you are quite finished accosting me with redundant verbiage, I should be most grateful if you would explain how the mass balance closes simply by splitting the other (non-fossil fuel) sources term into an “other anthropogenic sources” term and a “natural sources” term; and also whether it is your assertion that over a period of five years (thus necessarily beginning and ending the measurement period at a similar point in the natural Keeling cycle), that the error in underestimating the change in atmospheric CO2 concentration or the error in overestimating fossil fuel production might possibly be such that what appears to be double is in reality substantially less than half?”
Well, that is almost entirely “redundant verbiage”.
Its only pertinent content says,
” I should be most grateful if you would explain how the mass balance closes simply by splitting the other (non-fossil fuel) sources term into an “other anthropogenic sources” term and a “natural sources” term””
I have repeatedly explained to you in different ways that
THE MASS BALANCE DOIES NOT CLOSE AND CANNOT BE CLOSED
because the errors in the variations of the natural sources and the natural sinks are larger than the changes you are attempting to “balance”.
But you demand of me,
“Kindly address the two points at the top of this comment if you wish to continue the discussion.”
Your first point is plain daft. You say,
1) The mass balance argument which I have presented does not rely on estimation of any of the individual sources or sinks, other than the contribution to sources from fossil fuels.”
You cannot do a mass balance without providing the estimates you wish to balance.
I explained to you that you are assuming the natural sources and sinks do not vary but their net effect is observed to vary by more than order of magnitude more than the total anthropogenic emission in each year. Simply, you are assuming the only variation of sources and sinks is the anthropogenic emission and
OBSERVATION OF REALITY SHOWS YOUR ASSUMPTION IS VERY WRONG.
Your second point is equally daft. You say,
“2) As a corollary to the first point, I am not assuming that natural sources and sinks are unchanging. They certainly change. In fact this must account for a good portion of the lack of correlation between atmospheric concentration and fossil fuel sources which you cite as an argument putatively in your favor.”
But that is denied by your attempt at a mass balance.
If you admit the natural sources and sinks are varying then how can you know that their variation is not responsible for all the rise? Simply, it is not possible to know what you claim to know without an understanding of the natural variations which nobody has.
As I told you in my first post to you,
“the short term sequestration processes can easily adapt to sequester the anthropogenic emission in a year.”
But you did not ask for explanation of that and filed it as “redundant verbiage” I suppose because it was beyond your ability to comprehend it.
As for you being willing “to continue the discussion” with me,
I enjoy sensible debate with those who disagree with me because I learn nothing from debating with a mirror, but so far your only contribution to this discussion has been to demonstrate you have meagre understanding of the subject. So, I suggest that if you want to learn then read what I have written for you and try to be polite instead of trying to hide your ignorance and bias behind rudeness. I am willing to try to answer any sensible questions and to debate any reasonable points.
Richard
The mass balance is a tautology, a statement which is true by virtue of its logical form. It cannot “not close”. In creating the formula, the terms are defined, not measured. It is nothing more than a logical expression of the physical reality that the difference between what you put in and what you take out is the balance remaining in the system.
We have an equation with four terms. We rearrange the equation to put the two that we are relatively able to measure on one side, and the difficult-to-measure terms on the other side. We propose to closely estimate the two on the right and then we look at the relationship to the other two unknown quantities that we defined but are not able to measure.
In effect, we collapse the formula to:
Net source = Accum – In(FF)
If we are able to estimate Accum and In(FF) to numeric values, then this becomes one equation with one unknown.
We establish from the fact that In(FF) is greater than Accum, that the Net source must be negative (thus in fact, a net sink).
If the fossil fuel source is greater than the observed accumulation, then the right side of the equation is negative and thus the left side must also be negative.
At which point in that process do you imagine a need to measure any of the specific sources or sinks other than the fossil fuel source?
Having calculated the difference between the Accum and In(FF), we now know the difference between the natural sinks and the non-fossil fuel sources. Of course we still do not know the values of the two unknowns (In(o) and Out), we only know the difference between them. We have one equation and two unknowns. Because we know that the difference is negative, we can state with certainty that the natural sinks must be greater than the other non-fossil fuel sources. We do not need to measure any of the non-fossil fuel sources or any of the sinks in order to arrive at this conclusion.
It is very basic algebra. Not an experiment, but a logical proof.
If you do not recognize this, then further discussion seems futile.
Rich Davis,
This is getting silly.
I replied to you asking me “explain how the mass balance closes” by saying,
“I have repeatedly explained to you in different ways that
THE MASS BALANCE DOES NOT CLOSE AND CANNOT BE CLOSED
because the errors in the variations of the natural sources and the natural sinks are larger than the changes you are attempting to “balance”.”
And you have responded to that saying,
“The mass balance is a tautology, a statement which is true by virtue of its logical form. It cannot “not close”. In creating the formula, the terms are defined, not measured. It is nothing more than a logical expression of the physical reality that the difference between what you put in and what you take out is the balance remaining in the system.”
Well if “it cannot “not close” then what was the point of your question?
It seems you have read a few talking points which you do not understand and are trying to bluster a case based on what you claim to “define” but is what you ASSUME despite having been told that observation shows reality is NOT as you “define” it.
I have lost patience with your twaddle so come back when you have learned enough to understand what you are blathering about.
Richard
Courtney,
This is all very basic engineering that I learned more than 40 years ago. And for you to call me rude is quite rich, given your continuous stream of abuse and condescension.
Do you have any education whatsoever? It is not apparent.
Davis,
You have ignored everything I have told you of our published work.
I have refuted with evidence each of your attempts to make a point.
You have accosted me with words and phrases such as “bloviating” and “redundant verbiage”.
I have patiently explained your errors.
You said to me, “Kindly address the two points at the top of this comment if you wish to continue the discussion.”
I replied to you by addressing those points yet again and adding,
“As for you being willing “to continue the discussion” with me,
I enjoy sensible debate with those who disagree with me because I learn nothing from debating with a mirror, but so far your only contribution to this discussion has been to demonstrate you have meagre understanding of the subject. So, I suggest that if you want to learn then read what I have written for you and try to be polite instead of trying to hide your ignorance and bias behind rudeness. I am willing to try to answer any sensible questions and to debate any reasonable points.”
I leave it to others to decide for themselves which of us is “condescending” and which of us knows what we are talking about.
Richard
+100
Eureka! But it never was about climate…
Exactly, and it doesn’t matter what “the science says” Biden & Co. will institute economy killing “Climate Change” regulations. Expect the COVID “life saving measures” to be repeated as Climate Change “planet saving measures”.
Why am I not surprised!
Some of that warming is also likely to be false.
This may be a good time to point out that readers should visit Dr. Happer’s CO2 Coalition site from time to time. It’s a good resource and provides some great content. Moreover, his organization has been active in attempting to provide our legislators badly needed education about what the real climate issues are.
Thanks, will visit now.
For those who have followed how badly almost all of the CMIP5 and CMIP6 climate models have over-predicted the actual warming and also followed the progression of the data-driven estimates of the climate’s sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 to lower and lower values, Dr. Happer’s recent study makes sense. We already knew that the “climate crisis” was a scam. Now, will the press finally start to look more critically at all the failed predictions of the climate alarmist scammers?
That’s an easy one.
No.
Every time I read that scientific journals are refusing to publish articles questioning climate change data, I am thankful that The University of Chicago published two of the most prestigious economic journals — The Journal of Political Economy and The Journal of Law and Economics. Keynesian economics was the dominant dogma in economics from the 1940s to the late 1970s. Economists developed large computer models to analyze the impact of various policies. They claimed these modeling studies allowed them to eliminate business cycles. Meanwhile Chicago economists led by Milton Friedman pointed out that these models were wrong because they did not incorporate monetary policy correctly. By the end of the the 1970s, inflation accelerated in the U.S., proving the Chicago economists were right. I think scientists need a journal that will print research by climate change skeptics.
Been asking for DECADES: So, what’s the problem with more CO2?
1. Plants thrive with more of it. I proved that 50 years ago with a school experiment, and growers have been improving output with it for decades as well.
2. What is the downside of global warming? If humans were not morons, who think it is their right to live below sea level (or very near) relying on Other People’s Money to rebuild their property when it is inevitably destroyed by sea-level rise temporarily as the result of natural disasters or permanently through either a rise of sea-level via a warmer climate or sinking just because, then they would just MOVE their frickin’ a$$e$ to a safer location like all of our “dumb” ancestors have done for generations. Hell, even Noah was smart enough to build a boat before the sea-level rose.
It is not only not nice to fool Mother Nature, Mother Nature WILL take care of herself. It is up to humans to use THEIR brains and THEIR own money to locate THEIR bodies where THEY are not in danger from climate change.
At least that’s what I think we should be doing. When I left the formerly Golden State, my one requirement was to move to a location where the snow did not stay on the ground for more than a few days at a time. Found it, and am happy with the location.
It might be helpful to post some of the defensive and antagonistic reviews from other journals now that the paper has been accepted for publication. While I have my suspicions, we need to know who is blocking legitimate climate science.
Indeed. It would be extremely helpful to us all to see the defensive and antagonistic reviews from other journals that have refused publication. It has been clear for a long time that understanding climate is not only a scientific issue, but a political one. If we could see the reviews (for this and for many other papers), then we might be able to understand the problems of credibility and integrity that have emerged. I perhaps have similar (although certainly less well informed) suspicions about who or what is blocking what you call (I think correctly) ‘legitimate climate science’. Can journals and/or reviewers freely give access to what were supposedly (or purportedly, or even really) anonymous reviews? Can one require these things on an FOI basis. I have done a good bit of peer reviewing (not in this field), and I was never required to think very hard about what could and could not subsequently be shared with a wider public. In any case, and frankly, in the domain that I worked, nobody was or would have been interested. Had some interest ever been shown in areas where I had been party to the process, I would have asked colleagues, but it never did. But for sure, in the climate science area, if we could have the paper trails, that would be a great resource.
We are experiencing a climate optimum by most authentic scientific measures.
The last 40 years have featured the best weather/climate for crop growing and overall living conditions for most creatures on the planet since humans have been around but the wonderful CO2 levels are especially making it an optimum for life.
CO2 is a beneficial gas in all of science…….biology, agronomy and so on.
The field that refers to CO2 as pollution is……….politics.
The planet has recovered from near CO2 starvation below 300 ppm. This is why its greening up!
It’s absurd to say that climate change is killing the planet, when the planet is massively greening up!
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
Two important properties of water control the energy balance on Earth.
1. Sea ice is a poor thermal conductor so slows heat loss from ocean surface at high latitudes. Sea ice forms when the surface cools to 271.3K.
2. Atmospheric ice, known as cloud, is a good reflector of short wave radiation so limits heat uptake at low latitudes. Clouds form when the water vapour cools to 273.2K. Once the atmospheric water column reaches 38mm the atmosphere swings into daily cloudburst mode result in persistent, thick and highly reflective cloud. So reflective that the water surface beneath can cool in the midday sun:
https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNg3qPDHvnq-L6w5-5
“Greenhouse Effect” is a fairy tale. The role of radiative gases in the atmosphere is important for precipitation of water above the level of free convection to produce convective available potential energy that drive cloudbursts but it does not matter what molecule radiates that energy. The water will be there and it will still precipitate as the energy is released. It only needs a level of free convection, which occurs when the water column reaches 30mm. Once the water column is 38nn the cloudburst will occur on a daily basis.
There is no forcing. This idea is contrary to thermodynamics in the area of specific heat. If forcing exists there needs to be two answers to the question of “how much energy is required to raise 1 kg of dry air 1 C.” One with IR involved and one without.
GHGs can not warm the surface, only the air above it. The warming from a doubling of CO2 is less than 0.02C. Which is essentially nothing.
I proved that at my lake this summer in Saskatchewan
Coolest wettest spring and early summer in memory. Never got above 21C until last week of July
Lake temp rose from just above freezing to 23c, swimming temps
Late July to end of august was as nice as can be remembered, many sunny days above 30c
At end of august lake was 17c after all that heat
Because sun was lower every day
Consensus science gone wrong
Flat geocentric earth
Phlogiston
Spontaneous generation
Humors
Expanding universe
Luminiferous aether
Blank slate
Water filled Martin canals
Static universe
Phrenology
Trepanning
Planet Vulcan
Cold fusion
To which I suggest adding
Greenhouse effect
and
Radiative forcing
Top 10 Most Famous Scientific Theories (That Turned out to be Wrong) – Toptenz.net
Famous Scientific Theories (old wife’s tales) that Turned Out to be Wrong | Did You Know Science
4 convincing scientific theories that fooled scientists for decades (siliconrepublic.com)
The ‘fish stage’ of human development
A planet built for humans
The theory (Bohr’s)that fooled Einstein
Electrons as tiny balls
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/20-of-the-greatest-blunders-in-science-in-the-last-20-years
Darsee and Slutsky and Fraud, Oh My!
The Debendox Debacle
Nuclear Winter of Our Discontent
Piltdown Chicken
Currents That Don’t Kill
Rock of Life
Y2K
(Don’t forget polywater.)
GHG’s absorb and emit in the same wavelengths- whatever wavelength they absorb, they emit. CO2 only absorbs/ emits in one thermally relevant wavelength:
Absent water vapor and the vast majority of the thermal radiation is unaffected by CO2.
The atmosphere is controlled by bulk energy transfers, NOT radiative aspects.
These bulk transfers are because of pressure and density gradients, NEITHER of which is ffected by atmospheric Co2 to any measureable degree.
A THEORETICAL value based purely on radiation is basically meaningless.
Could you imagine weather reports done by way of greenhouse gas concentrations and not pressure systems?
This is no lightweight, so the MSM ignoring his findings is clearly related to them having already decided not to publish authentic information that contradicts the fake climate crisis narrative.
It’s clear that authentic science which shows conclusively that we are not having a climate emergency/crisis is being censored.
They stated almost 2 decades ago “The science is settled and the Debate is over” and they meant it.
Anybody that has authentic science that disputes their speculative theory is smeared and called a denier(of their manufactured science) and no debate is allowed.
It’s a done deal.
And it is…………so that the Climate Accord and march to global socialism can proceed via a fake climate crisis……..using an agreement that includes a transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor countries and a discontinuation of the fossil fuels that are causing rich countries to be too rich and over consume natural resources at an unsustainable pace(in the eyes of the UN).
While doing almost nothing to affect the climate because its a complete ruse.
No one knows what the correct TCS or ECS is.
Everyone has an opinion
A Ph.D. doesn’t make the opinion better.
There seems to be a meaningless TCS / ECS guessing game.
You could take the very rough temperature measurements since the trough of the Great Depression and very rough CO2 concentration growth estimates since then (with more accurate data since 1958) as the CO2 level rose and CO2 emissions increased.
Then assume ALL that 100% roughly estimated warming since then was caused by CO2.
That rough estimate might be called a worst case assumption for TCS … but it has to assume no feedbacks, because no one knows what the feedbacks are. Not even whether they are negative or positive feedbacks.
The rough estimate worst case TCS is about +1 degree C., and definitely not +2 or more degrees C.
More than this rough back of the envelope calculation is mathematical mass-turbation, whether the wild guess is from a Ph.D. or a village idiot, or from Nick Strokes (I repeat myself).
Sometimes the right answer to a complicated question is “we don’t know”
(and we may never know for the rest of our lives).
“No one knows what the correct TCS or ECS is.”
No-one knows if they even actually exist.
They are a theoretical construct, nothing more, and probably a lot less. !
That construct totally ignores how energy is mostly transferred within the atmosphere.
[[Meanwhile, America and the world are forced to ponder only “permissible” climate science – which is being used to justify demands that we eliminate the fossil fuels that provide 80% of all US and world energy, and replace that energy with enormous numbers of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, new transmission lines … and mines to produce their raw materials … all with major environmental impacts.]]
That’s the only real truth in this article, namely, that the U.N. IPCC octopus of scientists, academics, journalists, and politicians is controlled by global Marxists who have long been pushing to frame CO2 emissions as causing global warming in order to make useful idiots who will dismantle the fossil fuel industry thinking they’re saving the world, but are in reality softening it up for a Marxist takeover. Nobody can laugh us off as conspiracy theorists anymore after the Green New Deal and Great Reset were announced, and no surprise, we’re on the verge of inaugurating a true believer in Joe Button, er, Biden as U.S. president.
I’ve provided extensive free documentation to arm your mind:
http://www.historyscoper.com/whatisenvironmentalismideology.html
The real question is, Why do so many scientists like Happer and van Wijngaarden get educated beyond their intelligence so that they are easy for the hardcore Marxists at the IPCC to use?
For the umpteenth time, the Earth’s atmosphere isn’t a greenhouse, it’s a giant chimney that cools the Earth’s surface of the heat deposited by the Sun, and can’t reheat it with its own heat because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That means not even 1 measly degree C, whatever the radiation bands or concentration.
Read my lips: CO2-driven global warming is a pure fake physics hoax pushed for political purposes. To even play along with the IPCC for one minute is a waste. Since we know that the IPCC is a political org. that has hijacked science, we should spend our energies fighting back with counter-agitprop on all available channels. One of the most open to us is quora.com. Check out my space there called New Real Climate Science and start publishing your own articles. Some people get tens of thousands of page views a month.
https://www.quora.com/q/newrealclimatescience
https://www.quora.com/What-specific-chemical-properties-of-carbon-dioxide-causes-the-greenhouse-effect-Why-chemically-is-carbon-more-reflective-than-other-gases/answer/TL-Winslow
https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-the-warming-from-human-CO2-contribute-to-the-entire-greenhouse-effect-of-33C/answer/TL-Winslow
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-that-we-will-have-a-runaway-greenhouse-effect-on-Earth-due-to-humans/answer/TL-Winslow
Back to Joe Biden. Only I provide a free historyscope of his checkered life and career. It’s worthy of serious study, especially now.
http://www.historyscoper.com/bidenscope.html
To be repetitious, you don’t play along with Marxists, you fight them, else they’ll win walking away.
Ok, so some people think this is showing something new and some people think it is same old same old. How about if Anthony asks Will Happer for an interview, and thrash out the contentious points? One obvious question would be in what way are these findings different from Kluft?
Great idea.
Unfortunately this just isn’t true.
https://skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm
Ahhhhhh ha ha ha ha ha ahhhhhh. The Kids playing “soyence” at SkS. Griff, you are a laugh! So you tell WUWT readers to “stay away from” the Gooraniad and YET, you post links to the other joke site, SkS!
I am going to have to break out my PlayTex 24hr girdle for this laugh!
Unfortunately griff is a gullible little twit !
The guys at SkS are good at one thing only. propaganda nonsense for their sympathisers.
CO2 energy absorption saturates at 280ppm
And CO2 has no measurable atmospheric warming effect anyway, as you continually prove.
1… Do you have any empirical scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2?
NO, YOU DON’T !!
2… In what ways has the global climate changed in the last 50 years , that can be scientifically proven to be of human causation?
YOU ARE STILL TOTALLY EMPTY ON THAT, AS WELL.
“Slight, beneficial warming from more carbon dioxide!”
And there is absolutely NOTHING, no evidence, no science, proving CO2 is doing that. NONE!
I keep challenging these CO2 haters to produce such evidence.
Still, NADA, ZIP… an abyss !!
They must KNOW that no evidence exist by now…. but seems they have to keep up the pretense..
Its like a twenty year-old child trying desperately to hang onto the idea of the Easter Bunny !
I attended a farming conference earlier this year. I asked a question of one presenter who was hot on sustainability “all other issues aside, what is the optimum level of CO2 for plant growth and crop yields ?”
His answer was – I’ve never been asked that question before!
Grimwig
“…. what is the optimum level of CO2 for plant growth and crop yields ?”
His answer was – I’ve never been asked that question before!”
Probably because it is an impossible question to answer. For starters, it would depend on the plant.
We know that plants LUV CO2 levels around 1000ppm at least
Or were you IGNORANT of that fact as well ?
Even C4 and CAM plants can revert to simpler paths for photosynthesis, hence more growth.
I don’t understand how the CO2 IR bands can be saturated, yet he calculates a climate sensitivity of 2.2K per doubling of CO2. Is it simply because the IR is absorbed at lower altitude with increasing CO2?
Is the paper saying the climate sensitivity HAS BEEN +2.2K per doubling of CO2, but it will be much smaller from this point on ?