Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
According to NASA, we have the following exciting news about a new study.
Direct Observations Confirm that Humans are Throwing Earth’s Energy Budget off Balance
Earth is on a budget – an energy budget. Our planet is constantly trying to balance the flow of energy in and out of Earth’s system. But human activities are throwing that off balance, causing our planet to warm in response.
“Off Balance” … sounds scary, huh? Plus according to NASA, this isn’t some computer model output, it’s “direct observations” …
The paper, sadly paywalled, is entitled “Observational evidence of increasing global radiative forcing” by Kramer et al., hereinafter Kramer2021. It claims that from 2003 through 2018, human actions increased the downwelling longwave infrared radiation from the atmosphere by 0.53 ± 0.11 watts per square meter (W/m2).
So let me see if I can explain the manifold problems with this hot new Kramer2021 study. Let me start by explaining the size of the system we’re talking about, the huge planet-wide heat engine that we call the “climate”. Here is an overview of what happens to the sunlight that warms the planet. The Kramer2021 study has used CERES satellite data, and I am using the same data.
Figure 1. Solar energy on its path from the top of the atmosphere (TOA) to the surface.
Note that we are talking about hundreds of watts per square metre of the surface of the earth.
Next, to the same scale, here’s a look at the energy absorbed by the atmosphere that is returned to the surface via downwelling longwave thermal radiation.
Figure 2. Sources of energy that power the downwelling longwave radiation that is absorbed by the surface. Read it from the bottom up. This is to the same scale as Figure 1.
So … how much of this downwelling longwave does the new study claim is of human origin during the period 2003 to 2018? See that skinny line to the right of the “300” on the vertical axis? That’s how much the energy is “off balance” …
That’s their claim.
Too big a scale to see how much the study is actually claiming? OK, here’s a detail of Figure 2:
Figure 3. Detail of Figure 2, to show the size of the amount that we’re claimed to be “off balance”.
The “whiskers” to the right of the “355” on the vertical axis show the size by which they are claiming that humans have made the downwelling longwave radiation from the atmosphere “off balance” …
So that’s the first problem with their analysis. They are claiming to diagnose an almost invisible change in downwelling longwave, in a very chaotic, noisy, and imperfectly measured system.
The next problem is with the claim that they are using “direct observations” to get their results. Sounds like they’re avoiding the myriad problems with using the global computer models (GCMs) to get results. From the NASA press release linked at the top of the post, we have (emphasis mine):
Climate modelling predicts that human activities are causing the release of greenhouse gases and aerosols that are affecting Earth’s energy budget. Now, a NASA study has confirmed these predictions with direct observations for the first time: radiative forcings are increasing due to human actions, affecting the planet’s energy balance and ultimately causing climate change.
However, what they really mean by “direct observations” is that they are using direct observations as inputs to “radiative kernels”. Here’s the abstract to their study, emphasis mine:
ABSTRACT
Changes in atmospheric composition, such as increasing greenhouse gases, cause an initial radiative imbalance to the climate system, quantified as the instantaneous radiative forcing. This fundamental metric has not been directly observed globally and previous estimates have come from models. In part, this is because current space-based instruments cannot distinguish the instantaneous radiative forcing from the climate’s radiative response. We apply radiative kernels to satellite observations to disentangle these components and find all-sky instantaneous radiative forcing has increased 0.53±0.11 W/m2 from 2003 through 2018, accounting for positive trends in the total planetary radiative imbalance. This increase has been due to a combination of rising concentrations of well-mixed greenhouse gases and recent reductions in aerosol emissions. These results highlight distinct fingerprints of anthropogenic activity in Earth’s changing energy budget, which we find observations can detect within 4 years.
And what are “radiative kernels” when they’re at home? They’re a computer-based analysis of the instantaneous radiative forcing and radiative flux changes due to changes in things like temperature, water vapor, surface albedo and clouds.
And as a result, they can never be any more accurate than the underlying temperature, water vapor, surface albedo, and cloud etc. datasets …
Not only that, but to give an accurate result regarding human influence, the “radiation kernels” have to include all of the factors that go into the radiation balance. From Figure 2 above, we can see that these include the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the atmosphere (including the clouds), the sensible heat lost by the surface, the latent heat lost by the surface, and the longwave radiation emitted by the surface.
However, I find no indication that they have included all of the relevant variables.
And in any case, how accurately do we know those values? Not very well. Let me return to that question after we discuss the next problem.
The next problem with their study is that they seem totally unaware of the issues of long-term persistence (LTP). “Long-term persistence” in terms of climate means that today’s climate variables (temperature, rainfall, pressure, etc.) is not totally different from yesterday, this year is somewhat similar to last year, and this decade is not unrelated to the previous decade. Long-term persistence is unmentioned in their study. Long-term persistence is characterized by something called the “Hurst Exponent”. The value of this exponent ranges from 0.0 to 1.0. Purely random numbers have a Hurst Exponent of 0.5. An increasing Hurst Exponent indicates increasing long-term persistence.
And natural climate variables often show high long-term persistence.
What’s the problem with this? Well, the uncertainty in any statistical analysis goes down as the number of observations increases. The number of observations is usually denoted by capital N. If I throw a die (one of a pair of dice) four times (N=4) and I average the answer, I might get a mean (average) value of 4.2, or of 1.6. But if I throw the die ten thousand times (N=10,000), I’ll get something very near to the true average of 3.5. I just tried it on my computer, and with N=10,000, I got 3.4927.
The problem is that if a dataset has high long-term persistence, it acts like it has fewer observations than it actually has.
To deal with this, we can calculate an “Effective N” for a dataset. This is the number of observations that the dataset acts as though it has.
The general effect of long-term persistence is that it greatly increases the uncertainty of our results. For example, finding longer-term trends in a random normal dataset is unusual. But because of long-term persistence, as the saying goes, “Nature’s style is naturally trendy.” Longer-term trends in natural datasets are the rule, not the exception. As that linked article in Nature magazine says, “trend tests which fail to consider long-term persistence greatly overstate the statistical significance of observed trends when long-term persistence is present.”
So let’s take for example the CERES downwelling longwave dataset, the one that they say humans are affecting. It is indeed trending upwards. Looking at the period they studied, it increased by 1.1 W/m2, and they claim about half of that (0.53 W/m2) is from human actions.
And if we ignore long-term persistence, the “p-value” of that trend is 0.0003, which is very small. This means that there is almost no chance that it’s just a random fluctuation. Ignoring long-term persistence, the trend in that data is highly statistically significant.
But that’s calculated with the actual number of datapoints, N = 192. However, once we adjust for long-term correlation, we see that particular dataset has a Hurst Exponent of 0.88, which is very high.
Figure 4. Hurst Exponent analysis of the 16-year CERES dataset used in the Kramer2021 study. The diagonal line is what we’d see if there were no long-term persistence.
This means that there is so much long-term persistence that the Effective N is only 3 data points … which in turn means that the apparent trend is not statistically significant at all. It may be nothing more than another of nature’s many natural trends.
To summarize the problems with the Kramer study:
• The way that they are isolating the human contribution is to measure every single other variable that affects the downwelling longwave radiation, and subtract them from the total downwelling longwave radiation. The residual, presumably, is the human contribution. To do that, we’d need to measure every single variable that either adds to or removes energy from the atmosphere.
- These include:
- CO2
- all other non-condensing greenhouse gases
- water vapor
- aerosols such as sulfur dioxide and black carbon
- surface temperature
- surface albedo
- solar absorption/reflection by clouds
- solar absorption/reflection by the atmosphere
- solar absorption/reflection by aerosols
- sensible heat loss from the surface
- latent heat loss from the surface by evaporation and sublimation
- sensible heat gain by the surface from the atmosphere
- latent heat gain by the surface from dew
- solar wind
- long-term melting of glacial and sea ice
- long-term changes in oceanic heat content
- transfer of cold water from the atmosphere to the surface via snow, rain, and other forms of precipitation
I do not see evidence that all of these have been accounted for.
• The uncertainty in any and all of these measurements presumably adds “in quadrature”, meaning as the square root of the sum of their squares. Their claim is that the total uncertainty of their result is about a tenth of a watt per square metre (±0.11 W/m2) … I’m sorry, but that is simply not credible. For example, even without accounting for long-term persistence, the uncertainty in the mean of the CERES 2003 – 2018 downwelling LW radiation data is more than half of that, ±0.08 W/m2. And including long-term persistence, the uncertainty of the mean goes up to ±0.24, more than twice their claimed uncertainty.
• And it’s not just that longwave radiation dataset, that’s only one of the many uncertainties involved. Uncertainties are increased in all of the datasets by the existence of long-term persistence. For example, using standard statistics, the uncertainty in the mean of the atmospheric absorption of solar energy is ±0.02 W/m2. But when we adjust for long-term persistence, the uncertainty of the mean of the absorption is twice that, ±0.04 W/m2, which alone is a third of the claimed uncertainty of their “human contribution”, which is said to be 0.53 ± 0.11 W/m2.
• They are claiming that they can measure the human contribution to the nearest hundredth of a W/m2, which is far beyond either the accuracy of the instruments or the uncertainty of the measurements involved. And they claim that they can measure human influence as being about 0.15% of the total downwelling longwave … which means that all of their underlying calculations must be even more accurate than that.
Let me close by saying that I DO think that human-generated increases in CO2 alter the energy balance. That much seems reasonable based on known physics.
However, I don’t think changes in CO2 alter the temperature, because the changes are very small and more importantly, they are counteracted by a host of emergent climate phenomena which act to keep the temperature within narrow bounds. In other words, I think that the authors of Kramer2021 are correct in principle (humans are increasing the downwelling LW radiation by a small amount), but I think that they are very far from substantiating that claim by their chosen method.
Not only that, but the change in downwelling LW radiation from increasing CO2 is trivially small, even over the long term.
Figure 5. Using the IPCC figures of an increase of 3.5 W/m2 for each doubling of CO2, the yellow/black line shows the increase in total downwelling radiation (longwave + shortwave) since the year 1700 due to increasing CO2. See here for details on the data used.
As you can see, over the last full three centuries the theoretical increase in downwelling radiation from CO2 is not even four-tenths of one percent of the total.
Now, when I analyze a system, my method is to divide the significant variables into three groups.
- Categories of Variables
- First order variables: these cause variations in the measurement of interest which are greater than 10%. If the measurement of interest is instantaneous downwelling radiation (LW + SW), this would include say day/night solar variation, or the formation of tropical cumulus fields.
- Second order variables: these cause variations in the measurement of interest which are between 1% and 10%. If the measurement of interest is instantaneous downwelling radiation (LW + SW), this would include say nighttime clouds.
- Third order variables: these cause variations in the measurement of interest which are less than 1%. If the measurement of interest is long-term changes in downwelling radiation (LW + SW), this would include say incremental changes in CO2.
In general, I’ve found that third-order variables can be ignored in all but the most detailed of analyses …
TL;DR Version? They claim far greater accuracy and far smaller uncertainty than they can demonstrate.
Here on the hill, I spent most of my day cleaning up and fixing up my old Peavey Classic amplifier, using windex, a dish scrubby sponge, a wire wheel on my grinder to clean the rust off the corner protectors, and Rustoleum Wipe-New to restore the black finish … and then using the amp to do further damage to my eardrums and the general peace of the house.
I’d been wondering why it was hissing so badly, and then duh, I found out that somewhere along the line the ground prong on the plug had broken off. So I cut off and replaced the plug, and it’s good as new.
Keep the music flowing, dear friends. …
w.
Technical Note: I describe the method I use to determine “Effective N” in a post called “A Way To Calculate Effective N“. It turns out that I had independently discovered a method previously found by the brilliant Greek hydrologist Demetris Koutsoyiannis, whose work is always worth reading.
My Usual Note: To avoid the misunderstandings that bedevil the intarwebs, when you comment please quote the exact words you are discussing. This allows us all to understand just who and what you are referring to.
Dear Mr. Eschenbach:
Being neither a physicist, meteorologist, or mathematician, nor having been educated in any of the hard sciences whatsoever, might you be able to explain to me — in words of one or two syllables — what all this means for the planet?
Are we all doomed to be fried in no more than 12 years, as the idiot progressives insist, or is the climate simply acting as Earth’s climate has acted through its entire existence, Ice Ages and all?
Thanks for helping out this English major!! 🙂
It’s merely a little bit of noise in the signal. It’s like expecting all daily temperatures in June, say, to be the same then coming across one or two that are half a degree higher. It means nothing for all practical purposes.
There is no climate emergency until our next cooling cycle: https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/
If I may:
No
Yes
1204530_medium_101251.jpg
The IPCC claim in their first report 1990, that CO2 is a dangerous greenhouse gas because it absorbs and emits IR @ 15µm. The implication being that 15μm radiation from CO2 is causing the Earth’s atmosphere to dangerously warm up.
According to Wien’s displacement law 15µm has corresponding temperature of -80° C. The troposphere, that’s the part of the atmosphere that we live in, is defined by molecules with a temperature of -60° C and above. Emissions of IR @ 15µm from CO2, cannot heat any molecules in the troposphere.
I’m sorry, I’m beginning to equate NASA with other 4-letter words — like DUMB. Is there an end to climate alarmism and junk science? Years ago they used to burn witches to stop glaciers from advancing. Today we burn fossil fuels to make tarps to keep glaciers from retreating …
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZEjayJb9XTY
NASA has been directed to look downward and study our planet with the political goal of convincing the cooling population that they are warming and it’s all their fault.
Which in the long term will do them immeasurable damage to their reputation.
The rocket scientists there must be feeling pretty itchy.
They also used to do this:
Glaciers covered in Holy Water to slow advancing
https://youtu.be/BqMqmXnWwVU?t=128
Now, if they could convince Pope Francis to place The Shroud of Turin up there, that would really be something!!! And he just might be persuaded, as it would put the Church back on TOP, in a material way, as the spearhead of the CAGW movement.
Think of the headlines and the clicks that would generate!
(Even I would be a daily webcam viewer of the something like that!)
The Pope just cut salaries at the Vatican. I don’t think he will be doing much of anything. He is probably hiding in his room, with double tasters checking his food for poison.
https://www.dw.com/en/pope-francis-orders-vatican-salaries-slashed-to-save-jobs/a-56980217
What about the CEO, ie the Poop, does he take a pay cut as well ?
Is that for the pay offs?
Hi Willis, good article but is the paper Kramer2021 or Kragen2021? You seem to use both in there and I’m assuming there aren’t 2 referenced papers?
Kramer. Fixed, thanks.
w.
Willis: I suspect you meant to write “exciting” rather than “exiting”.
Thanks, fixed. I hate typos.
w.
I dislike making typos… but not as much as I detest those whose only contribution to a conversation is to point out typos.
Wills,
In your title, should be “ones” without apostrophe. Geoff S
There’s a “persisitence” that detracts a tiny bit from perfection…
Thanks to the others who pointed out the typos, all fixed. I had to look up the rule for “ones” vs “one’s”, viz:
“Ones” is also the possessive form of “one” when “one” is used as a pronoun. There is no apostrophe, similar to “his”. Example: One should mind ones own business.
“One’s” is a contraction of “one” and “is”, or “one” and “has”.
Examples: One’s less than two. One’s been less then two forever.
And “paranoid guy”, I hate typos so I have no problem if the only thing a commenter says is to point out a typo. Not a problem on my planet. My motto is, “Perfect is good enough”.
Regards to all,
w.
Willis,
Avoidance of error in communication is really quite important in science. I once failed an exam because I confused ‘Inulin’ and ‘Insulin’. The careful scientist should have a mental program operating in the background to do routine checks. Too much science, as you know, suffers from use of ‘near enough is good enough’.
The careful chemist who slips up can cause confusion in the simplest of tasks. Merely taking the elements with two-letter abbreviations commencing with ‘P’ gives us this list
Pt Platinum
Pu Plutonium
Pd Palladium
Po Polonium
Pr Praseodymium
Pm Promethium
Pa Protactinium
Confuse one with the other through even a single typo and your words can not only lose intended meaning – they can become misleading. Bad enough for a gal to mix up Platinum with Palladium in her jewels, let alone for the nuclear chemist to confuse Plutonium with Polonium.
I shall go to my grave worrying about the misplaced apostrophe. It is so easy for writers to get it right, yet so hard for some popular automatic spell checkers to avoid wrong.
That said, your essay above was spot on, emphasising a theme that has been a hobby horse of mine for decades, namely, the value of proper, accurate analysis of error and uncertainty. Thank you.
Geoff S
The man that invented predictive text has died. May he rust in piss.
re: budget
Silly little humans. They seem to be concentrating on a few linear parameters WHEN radiative (energy from a black body) flux is proportional to T^4 (T, or temperature, to the fourth power) …
Good luck with getting that temperature ‘up’ much at all.
My understanding is the the path length of IR from co2 is about 200 meters at sea level.(Could you confirm) In reality it is less because of any overlap with the absorption spectrum of water. The down welling IR increase caused by co2 is very minor. The only thing that counts in the energy balance is the temperature/emission level at the emission layers.(Chapman layer). Convection as set by the lapse rates dominates heat flow upward. The only real thing that will change the lapse rate is an increase in total atmospheric pressure. That is what we should be watching, total atmospheric pressue.
While downwelling IR is one way to think about the greenhouse effect, it leads to a lot of misunderstandings. In balance, incoming heating SWR equals cooling outbound LWR. Molecules like CO2, and more importantly H2O, retard the outbound LWR. It is the resulting absence of sufficient cooling that causes the warming, not downwelling IR per se. That is just one of the physical symptoms of retardation.
Willis,
Listen to your Uncle Rud. He says the same thing I do, you contradict me but agree with him. OK….
Michael, this is why I ask people to quote the exact words you are discussing. I have no idea where or when I “contradicted” you.
I agree with Rud that GHGs slow the warming, and thus leave the world warmer than if they weren’t there.
The mechanism by which they slow the warming is by returning around half of the energy which they absorb back to the surface. This is the “downwelling LW radiation” discussed above.
Regards,
w.
Willis.
Here’s some man made down welling radiation.
“VLF signals are transmitted from ground stations at huge powers to communicate with submarines deep in the ocean. While these waves are intended for communications below the surface, they also extend out beyond our atmosphere, shrouding Earth in a VLF bubble. This bubble is even seen by spacecraft high above Earth’s surface, such as NASA’s Van Allen Probes, which study electrons and ions in the near-Earth environment.”
Van Allen Probes Spot Man-Made Barrier Shrouding Earth | NASA
Do FM radio waves cause skin cancer? Or only UVB…
I agree completely. The GHE really is just a resistance to outbound LWIR. So why did this study focus on an increase in downwelling LWIR?
LWIR energy that returns to the surface is reradiated almost immediately. It is just another temporary pause in its outbound path. It is a part of the overall resistance equation and not something special.
Turns out that when all the energy available is already being absorbed, adding more absorbers/emitters (aka GHGs) will increase BOTH the downwelling and outbound LWIR. The overall effect is no change.
The only way to warm this system of absorber/emitter pairs is to find more energy to slow down on its outward path. That was not done in this paper which is purely mathematical onanism.
First, this paper focuses on an increase in downwelling LWIR because that’s how we measure the “resistance to outbound LWIR” that you mention.
Next, once the LWIR energy hits the surface, it is converted to heat, and is indistinguishable from any other heat in the ground. Therefore, we cannot say it is “reradiated almost immediately”.
Next, adding more GHGs will increase the downwelling and decrease the outbound LWIR. As a result, the surface will warm until the outbound LWIR equals the incoming SW from the sun.
w.
How can LWIR heat anything? Compared to solar SWIR (near IR) it has nearly no energy due to its low frequency. Not all W/m² intensity are created equal. Eg: 300 W/m² near IR at noon can heat your car hood enough to fry an egg. 300 W/m² W/m² LWIR at midnight can not.
Let me rephrase this: Regardless of day or night… downwelling LWIR avg at 333 W/m² is weak lily-livered irradiance. Why is it called “thermal radiation”? It is not hot or even warm. It emanates from a very cold atm to a generally warmer surface and ocean.
Except in cases of transparent gas thermals like O2 and N2, which have practically zero radiation at atmospheric temperatures. Mix in some H2O or CO2 and you greatly increase the COOLING, radiation to space. Which is how you get cloud growth. And clouds radiate >50% to space, based on simple geometry.
Devils, here’s the source of downwelling IR by altitude.
w.
I love it, Willis points out To do that, we’d need to measure every single variable that either adds to or removes energy from the atmosphere. followed by 17 bullet points.
And that reminded me of the revision to Dr. Trenberth’s famous heat
budget diagram because the first one balanced, and if the planet were
going to warm up it needed to be unbalanced and so the revision.
And Lo and Behold WattsUpWithThat posts a link to that very issue (-:
I might as well blow my own horn LINK Yes, Trenberth changed his
Heat Budget Diagram so that it showed 0.9 Wm²
About 50% of the time it’s twice as bad as we predicted.
Yeah, the 17 bullets is why I’m bookmarking this post/thread. Thank you Willis.
I think, in fact, I’m pretty sure that it has to be more, possibly many, many more and will work on adding to the list for future reference.
Here’s the link that was supposed to be.
Aside from those 17 there is the unpredictability of volcanos.
Just one, Mount Tambora, resulted in “The Year Without a Summer”.
“Just one, Mount Tambora, resulted in “The Year Without a Summer”.”
Maybe, maybe not. It seems unclear.
What Jeff said. See my post, Missing The Missing Summer.
w.
Glad to see the Climate is on a budget, It would be nice to get the Fed. Gov. to to do the same. Wishful thinking. LOL.
Yes, taking the study at face value, the energy budget is out of wack by about 0.3%. The US FY2021 budget was 4.829 trillion. If it had the same variance, that would be about $15.6 billion in deficit. We could hold a bake sale and call it a day!
The government has realized that no budget is needed, as long as the supply of fine rag paper holds out.
And ink. They need lots and lots of ink.
NIce attempt at humor but you do know, do you not, that most of the created “money” exists only in computer bits, never in any physical form?
Nice takedown, WE.
Yet another compelling demonstration that ‘climate scientists’ know very little about even basic statistics. They are deficient. Long term persistence is a well known and long ago ‘solved’ effective N problem taught in graduate level econometrics, because there is a LOT of it in economic time series.
Mann demonstrated the deficiency with his hockey stick prinicpal centered components ‘unique’ analysis, which was shown by Steve McIntyre to always produce a hockey stick from red noise (red=>long term persistence, aka some degree of autocorrelation, whereas white noise is random).
Dessler showed the deficiency in his 2010 paper finding positive cloud feedback by regressing clear sky on all sky TOA IR—with an r^2 of 0.02 meaning no statistical relationship at all.
It been proven math is hard, and NASA in the last 40 years have proved they are not very good at it! After NASA stand for Need Another Seven Astronauts. Both Shuttle disasters were preventable but NASA math abilities were lacking. First one you don’t fly a space vehicle outside it design capabilities. Second one even light weight foam at high speeds pack a fatal wallop. The foam problem was due to NASA not using Freon base foam, they knew the non Freon foam was a problem and flew with it anyway.
They didn’t want to fly a repair kit, and were unwilling to try a provisional repair using onboard materials after the severity of the problem was known. They had nothing to lose by trying a patch made from spare insulation, etc. onboard.
It is even worse.
Basic physics…
Force and Acceleration.
This:
”
“Observational evidence of increasing global radiative forcing”
can not be true outside the premise of evidence as;
CO2 atmospheric concentration variation AND
thermal atmospheric variation AND
cryosphere (ice) variation and sea level variation,
showing clearly
Acceleration.
No variation in Forcing, or a given Forcing, outside the premise of acceleration.
No observational evidence of acceleration in the given parameters,
no variation of RF,
or as NASA calls it, “global radiative forcing”.
cheers
“math is hard” – and racist. Down with math! We are seeing the birth of a truly progressive science.
CG, perhaps you meant nonscience. Nonscience=nonsense.
No, “science” by Papal decree — or some equivalent thereof.
The first Space Shuttle disaster involved the discontinuation of the use of asbestos insulation in the O-rings for the solid fuel boosters. Why did they do that? Why, to save the schoolchildren of course…
Umm … nope.
Myth #5: Environmental ban led to weaker sealant
A favorite of the Internet, this myth states that a major factor in the disaster was that NASA had been ordered by regulatory agencies to abandon a working pressure sealant because it contained too much asbestos, and use a weaker replacement. But the replacement of the seal was unrelated to the disaster — and occurred prior to any environmental ban.
Even the original putty had persistent sealing problems, and after it was replaced by another putty that also contained asbestos, the higher level of breaches was connected not to the putty itself, but to a new test procedure being used. “We discovered that it was this leak check which was a likely cause of the dangerous bubbles in the putty that I had heard about,” wrote physicist Richard Feynman, a member of the Challenger investigation board.
And the bubble effect was unconnected with the actual seal violation that would ultimately doom Challenger and its crew. The cause was an inadequate low-temperature performance of the O-ring seal itself, which had not been replaced.
Call me crazy, but I believe Feynman
w.
“The cause was an inadequate low-temperature performance of the O-ring seal itself, which had not been replaced.”
Yes, it was freezing outside when they launched. The engineers did not want to launch at these cold temperatures but were overruled by the bureaucrats.
What the engineers feared, happened.
Feynman apparently demonstrated the problem with the gaskets experimentally at the Congressional inquiry. Infuriated by the lies and evasions of some suit from Morton Thiokol, he took a sample of the rubber and dunked it in the ice-water in the jug on the table for a few seconds. The rubber snapped when he tried to bend it.
Deja vu, again. I remember when outlets didn’t have a receptacle for grounding plugs.
Scissor,
CalOSHA used to cut off plug ends that were missing grounds. My lucky worm-drive Skilsaw had a bent lower guard that would stick in the fully retracted position where I would leave it when doing lots of cutting like rafters or stair stringers. Luckily, I never got caught with it retracted or cut myself badly while doing so! Just about any time you read about some construction guy cutting off his hand, it’s safe to bet that he had his guard pinned with a nail or a screw to save a little time!
Yep, as an electrician, when OSHA was coming, the Forman would show up with cord caps, and the carpenters would show up with cords needing repair.
20 minutes later we were all LEGAL.
No one ever got hurt for lack of ground on the plug. All the 20 amp receptacles were GFCI, which don’t need the ground to work.
As long as GFI is properly grounded on 120v.
“Our planet is constantly trying to balance the flow of energy in and out of Earth’s system.”
I wonder where it finds the time with all of the other things it’s “trying” to do. I would think that nearly all of its bandwidth would be expended just in trying to keep spinning and finding its way around the sun. Holding on to its atmosphere, staying upright, not spilling its lakes and oceans and nurturing all of the little animals would seem quite exhausting as well.
We exist on an unimaginably exquisite rock that has stood the test of time.
A long time ago, plant life became so voracious it absorbed its basic building blocks from the atmosphere to the point of its own extinction. Humans have been returning those building blocks back to the atmosphere getting a two way benefit; one from stored energy and the other by marginally restoring plant productivity. Humans will eventually need to find an alternative to the fossil resource or face extinction.
Meanwhile the blue rock keeps spinning, precessing and orbiting around a sun in an immense galaxy just a spec in the universe.
My point exactly. But, what if it just stops trying? Suppose it wakes up one morning and decides not to get out of bed?
Many thanks once again Wills for revealing what’s going on “behind the curtain”.
From my (“I’m-too-old-for-this-shit”) perspective about the current climate carpetbagging pandemic, the main problem imho is this –
Your average working-age voter who gets most of their daily information from headline grabs on social media sees –
Direct Observations Confirm that Humans are Throwing Earth’s Energy Budget off Balance.
Then sees – “NASA” in the body of the text. So, case closed. Fact-check done! No need to read any further.
Now let’s say that your claims-demolishing article here is published immediately below the GISS ‘science-by-press-release’ article above.
Although clearly written and replete with facts, data, references and rational analysis, the incurious / low-info voters won’t read paragraph 1 or any further, because it requires a modicum of effort from them to concentrate, absorb and comprehend the information being presented.
So this is where we are today on this front in the battle for acceptance of rationality. We don’t even get space on the fields of battle to stage our armaments.
I sometimes think we’d be better off to start a religion called the “Mystical Earth Movement” or some such to get more exposure for rationality.
People flock to new religions, as long as they don’t involve a deity or personal conduct standards.
The language they use seems carefully designed.
E.g. the phrase “_trying_ to balance the flow of energy”. By using the word _trying_ there’s a suggestion it might not succeed. They follow it up with the claim that “human activities are throwing that off balance”, which suggests that we’re somehow thwarting nature’s pitiful attempts at trying to maintain this fragile balance.
These people can use whatever language they like I suppose, but they’re not fooling this old coot.
Weasel words! My apologies to any weasels that are offended by being likened to humans!
It’s always a delight to read your contributions, Willis. Your ability to illuminate complex problems with simple language and explanations is a gift. Please keep up the good work.
As usual, very clear and interesting refutation of an alarmist exercise in confirmation bias. That said I was struck by this sentence.
“This increase has been due to a combination of rising concentrations of well-mixed greenhouse gases and recent reductions in aerosol emissions.”
That got me to thinking: they don’t quantify how much of the change is due to GHGs vs aerosols. Clearly the reduction in aerosols is the result of better control technology along with switching from coal to gas in power production. So, what if someone demonstrates conclusively that it is the reduction in aerosol pollution that is primarily responsible? Would that mean that alarmist would switch to advocating for more aerosol pollution to stop catastrophic climate change? Or perhaps they’d discover that a couple of degrees of warming over a century wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“So, what if someone demonstrates conclusively that it is the reduction in aerosol pollution that is primarily responsible?”
Noone has ever demonstrated such a thing. There are lots of claims, but no evidence. Just like everything else to do with alarmist climate science.
Willis,
Another interesting read; but I am left with two questions.
Did you leave emergent phenomena out of the 17 bullet points because they don’t add or remove energy from the atmosphere; they just move it around?
Looks like beautiful mahogany on your guit-fiddle but I couldn’t discern the make. My old Guild (bought used in 1974) is an arched back with maple back and sides, while my Martin is the generic spruce top/mahogany construction. Isn’t that Peavey a little much for an acoustic?
Abolition, I left out emergent phenomena just to keep things simple, and also because the methods by which they remove energy from the surface and hasten its journey to space are covered in the list.
As to guitars, the one in the picture is a Taylor belonging to my gorgeous ex-fiancee. I just sold my Martin (1965 D-28 owned since it was new), got $3,800 for it … go figure. From memory, it cost $450 new in 1965. I found that when I wanted to play a steel string guitar I always grabbed the Taylor, so somewhat sadly, I let the Martin go to someone who will play it.
I also have a Gibson ES-225 hollow-body electric, which is what the Peavey is really for, although it also makes the Taylor sound wonderful. Plus a Goya gut-string classical that’s a lovely creature. Oh, and a Japanese knock-off of a Fender bass that also gets played through the Peavey.
w.
Sounds like a great mix!
I always wanted a Gibson 335; Bob Weir being my idol back in high school. I bought a Guild Starfire IV while in college, but that and a Tex-Mex Strat have sadly left me due to lack of attention.
Maybe I’ll get a Les Paul someday, but for playing and singing old time cowboy and Western songs the acoustics are all I need.
Keep pushing the emergent phenomena; between that and Jim Steele’s climate dynamics and cycles we’ve got any recent climate weirding pretty fully covered!
Willis, love your writing and analysis.
Thanks for linking to your gorgeous ex-fiancee. It’s the first time I looked at your links to her. Her smile made my day.
I, too, have a gorgeous ex-fiancé – with a similar smile.
All the best!
This is a Steven Goddard video, introducing a new method of determining Holocene temperatures at high northern latitudes.
Note that temperatures varied considerably, during the Roman warm period and the Little Ice Age, before any influence of extra CO2. The Holocene maximum high temps was caused by high axial obliquity, but this did not cause the Roman era warming.
Ergo, there are many aspects of the climate that remain unexplained by this so-called ‘settled science’.
R
Sorry, here is the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW16LGVPfIc
R
I just watched it- the scientist doesn’t explain how temperature is obtained from the ice. This method is probably well known to most of you but not to me. He makes it seem as if he just puts a thermometer down into the hole at different depths and gets a temperature to extreme accuracy. It can’t be that way. So, how is it done?
also, that web site is run by Tony Heller- I believe that’s his real name, not Steve Goddard, a name he used for some obscure reason I can’t recall- I’m a big fan of that site- I watched it for a long time before discovering this site
The ice core ‘temperature’ is inferred from water isotope ratios, especially d18O, but also ‘heavy’ deuterium water with light ‘normal’ d16O. The heavier the water molecule, the warmer it was for heavy water to be significantly present in the snow that originally fell. Since the lightest water (H2d16O) is preferentially evaporated cause needs less heat energy. The ratios are lab experiment determined by calibrated temperature seawater evaporative conditions. The ratios are ‘simple’ to sort using mass spec on the ice core samples. Well established reliable method for several decades.
OK, thanks- glad to know it’s good science. I’ll probably show that video to some of the alarmists here in Massachusetts where they are as common as fleas. :-}
Joseph
Fleas aren’t really all that common where I live. It must be something about Massachusetts that attracts fleas!
I just read many of the comments on that video on Tony Heller’s site. One person pointed out that the results are only for Greenland, so it can’t be useful for the entire planet. Just asking.
Tony posted Greenland. But there are lots of equivalent results for Antarctica ice cores at various resolutions. Greenland is high resolution simply because it snows there a lot each winter. antarctica, depends on the location. Antarctica is colder and so dryer.
I have had problems many times with this argument from Alarmists (“The MWP was a local phenomenon”).
Tony used the nom de guerre of Steve Goddard to avoid being burned at the stake as a climate heretic! He does great videos with music, and spends a lot of time and effort uncovering data that has been altered or “adjusted!”
.
This is a novel technique, not using the standard oxygen isotope method.
Yes, they actually measure temperatures in the borehole, to the nearest 1,000th of a degree. And they assume (have demonstrated) that the archaic temperatures are STILL represented in the layers of the core.
I presume this is because ice is a good insulator, so the temperature if each layers is not smeared and merged into the nexts. It would be nice to have a good explanation, of how those layer-temperatures can be maintained for 8,000 years.
Ralph
I’ll have to presume it’s good science- but it sounds impossible- that the temperature of a thin strata of ice would remain stable for long. It would be nice to see the proof of this principle. At least the method Rud Istvan mentioned sounds like solid science. But I like the results- now we just have to understand that it’s real. Or, is it April 1 yet? :-}
Thanks, Willis! I was hoping you’d work on this analysis.
I keep wondering if anyone has accounted for waste industrial heat? We burn fossil fuels to produce work, but waste almost all of the heat produced into the atmosphere. This seems to be non-trivial, but with the exception of some argument over a heat island effect, I’ve never heard of an attempt to measure the value of heat “pollution.”
Not Willis, but covered in several essays in my ebook Blowing Smoke. Short answer is ‘heat pollution’ is de minimus in the global energy budget, except when exhausting locally onto a temperature monitor (surface stations project).
UHI is not caused by heat pollution, but rather by urban surfaces that absorb and retain daytime heat from sunlight. Blacktop, concrete,…
In short, Earth is heated by sunlight, not volcanos or fossil fuel combustion. Earth is a really big place.
Thanks, Rud, I will look it up. It does seem counterintuitive that at (WAG approx) 40 MJ/kg expended at the mean rate of billions of kg/day over the course of a couple centuries that the effect would be so much less than the marginal forcing that is described here. And seems contrary to experience where I can physically sense urban – suburban temperature differences, before dawn, during winter, with little exposed surface and following daytime overcast skies. Not many years ago, it was seemed commonly assumed that there was such a thing as a local industrial microclimate with demonstrable effects on weather, but perhaps that is now considered passe.
The Sun is so much bigger than anything humans do, so-called Waste Heat is negligible. As an engineer I object to the use of the phrase Waste Heat. Heat costs money, and as a rule we prefer not to waste it.
Thanks Willis – I presume from your analysis that the authors/publishers of the ‘study’ did NOT include you as one of the technical reviewers? Or perhaps they decided to not incorporate your comments on the issues raised??
That is well inside the margin of error of solar wind input that I calculated to be a total of 34w per square meter of silhouette at 4.9 protons and 330km/s. It is laughably bad to even try to present it.
“if a dataset has high long-term persistence, it acts like it has fewer observations than it actually has.”
Thanks, very enlightening, I did not see it in these terms.
CG, a minor qualification from a PhD level econometrician. ‘Acts like’ is with reference only to statistical certitude of, not trend. In probability theory based statistics, the more the tries the more certain a result—e.g. binomial theorem and law of large numbers. What autocorrelation does is reduce the ‘actual’ number of tries, thereby increasing uncertainty. The Hurst correction {effN=N^(2-2H)} corrects for the effective number of probabilistic mathematical ‘tries’.
BTW, aced both probability theory and econometrics at my U as an undergrad. So been there, done that. Know this stuff cold, apparently unlike most ‘climate scientists’
I have a question.
How does the absorption of energy by photosynthesis during the day and the release of heat during night-time respiration figure into this?
I seems to offset when and how much IR is released by photosynthetic/respiratory processes. As the planet is greening quite nicely, this should also be considered.
That is a good question to which ‘climate scientists’ do not have an answer. Consider three separate large parts.
As an adjunct to that question, why is the CO2 absorption band located right next to the radiation window? Seems an all knowing universe designer might have had other options or a reason.
The answer seems obvious. It was done intentionally for precisely the reason you mentioned. Life requires energy and water. By grabbing some extra energy from the radiation window, life is fueled by the energy required for enhanced convection, photosynthesis and other energy consuming processes.
Who says this is not the premier science blog? Not only do you learn new things all the time, but you find useful stuff. I’d never heard of Ruseoleum Wipe-New.
https://www.rustoleum.com/product-catalog/consumer-brands/wipe-new/recolor
I don’t know about the Rustoleum product you cite; but only an ignoramus would argue with your characterization of WUWT! Many days I learn as much from the comments as the posts, and find myself laughing frequently at the wit and humor on display in both!
Furthermore, had Kramer or NASA reviewers used the proper protocol for reporting a measurement, they would have cited 0.5 ± 0.1 instead of 0.53 ± 0.11 W/m2. They are implying that they measured the downwelling to an order of magnitude greater precision than is justified by the rules of the use of significant figures.
It isn’t a lot, but I think that it plays right into the bad habit of trying to exaggerate the situation in order to scare people.
Incidentally, Kopp (2011):
Therefore, Kramer is claiming a precision in the anthropogenically-induced increase in radiative forcing to be order of magnitude greater than what is accepted for the total solar irradiance. Additionally, the magnitude of the claimed increase is identical to the uncertainty in the total solar irradiance. That seems to me to be a very weak case for anthropogenic influence!
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2010GL045777
Averaging an intensive quality like solar radiation from a 12 hour period over a 24 hour period is as worthless and stupid as averaging testicles and tits over a whole population, where everybody has one tit and one bollock..
Its the very basic foundation of the radiative greenhouse effect con, a cold sun.
Everyone, on average, has a little less than one tit (mammary gland) and a little more than one bollock. More men then women being the reason. The ratio is apparently 63 men to 62 women. Really not even a rounding error, but rounding errors are the data on which the AGW folly is built. WUWT is a scientific site. We must maintain the integrity of the science.
Magnificent – I’ll remember that analogy!
Nicely done, Willis. Thank you. I had been hoping to see something from you on this. I think I will express NASA’s concluding imbalance as 530 +/- 110 milliwatts per square meter, to draw attention to how tiny this quantity is in the global scheme of things, and how little sense it makes to state it so precisely.
[[The paper, sadly paywalled, is entitled “Observational evidence of increasing global radiative forcing” by Kramer et al., hereinafter Kramer2021. It claims that from 2003 through 2018, human actions increased the downwelling longwave infrared radiation from the atmosphere by 0.53 ± 0.11 watts per square meter (W/m2).]]
When is this sick U.N. IPCC hoax going to die?
First, only the Sun heats the Earth’s surface. The atmosphere only cools it. It also acts as a blanket, slowing cooling, but it can never raise the surface temperature higher than the Sun did, any more than a real blanket can raise your body temperature higher than your metabolism did. This even applies to an Obama blanket with an IR-reflective surface.
Second, the IPCC picked the wrong getaway driver for their planned trillion-dollar heist. Atmospheric CO2’s only radiation absorption/emission wavelength of 15 microns has a Planck radiation temperature of -80C, colder than dry ice, which can’t melt an ice cube. CO2 allows all of Earth’s real surface radiation in the range of -50C to +50C to pass by untouched. Even if it returned 100% of the -80C radiation to the surface, it would have no effect because it couldn’t raise the temperature higher than -80C.
Take my free Climate Science 101 course and learn to laugh off all of the beehive of IPCC lies:
http://www.historyscoper.com/climatescience101.html
Willis,
Are the “whiskers” in Figure 3 in proportion to the partial graph shown? The left axis does not start at 0.
The whiskers are at the same scale as the graph.
w.
They are backing out their fractions of a few watts for use as “direct observations”…
How quaint.
It was such a success when trenberth and others did it with Earth’s energy budget.
Claim to be omniscient regarding knowing everything involved and their exact quantities to “back out”.
Then a little sleight of hand, sleight of mind to enable their legerdemain sleight of numbers…
Voila! A new number they can claim that man causes global warming.
Willis effectively dissects Kragen’s follies in detail and with it, NASA’s fraud.
Thank you, Willis!
So, the REALLY BIG question here is, why is a NASA study paywalled? Didn’t US taxpayers already pay for it?
Willis,
Thanks for another excellent presentation.
On your figure 2, Dr.Roy Spencer explains the position succinctly on the Earth’s energy budget in one of his recent books,”Global Warming Skepticism for busy people”-
“Many scientists claim the diagnosis of the cause of global warming is obvious and can be found in basic physical principles.If basic physical principles can explain all of the global-average warming, as the climate consensus claims, then how do we account for the following?
All of the accumulated warming of the climate system since the 1950s,including the deep oceans, was caused by a global energy imbalance of 1 part in 600; yet modern science does not know,with a precision approaching 1 part in 100 ANY of the natural inflows in and out of the climate system. It is simply assumed that the tiny energy imbalance – and thus warming-was caused by humans.”
Really excellent, Willis.
It is scientific insanity to suppose they know all those other variables to an accuracy that allows extraction of a 0.53 W/m^2 perturbation.
The 0.53 W/m^2 is also very convenient, because it’s exactly what one calculates from the average annual increase in forcing from CO2, over 2003-2018 = 15 years.
The annual average increase in forcing calculated from CO2 emissions is 0.035 W/m^2/yr. Times 15 = 0.53 W/m^2. Dead right on what the consensusistas would want to see. Imagine that.
Also problematic is that the TOA radiative balance isn’t known to better than ±4 W/m^2. And yet, somehow, they can detect a shift in radiative balance 7.6 times smaller than the uncertainty.
It must be that ol’ consensus modeler magic of taking the anomaly and having all the error just subtract away.
What’s the old saying, “Precise but not accurate”?
Perhaps we’ll know when we’ve reached the “correct” balance point when everyone stops whining. /s
Someone’s paywall does not work. I found it using the usual method. Google search for PDF + DOI number. The 2nd link.
You “calculated” the Hurst exponent. Which method did you use? R/S, DFA, Peridogram, aggregated variances, local Whittle, or wavelet analysis?
.
Are you aware all of these are estimators, and not hard calculations?
I’m aware of all of that, and if you’d actually read the post, you’d have seen that in the “Technical Note” at the bottom I specified the exact method I used, along with a link to my post describing the method used in detail.
Take a deep breath …
w.
“We have heuristic methods to estimate it, but they are just estimations based on experience, without theoretical underpinnings.”
…
The exponent is an “estimator.” You forgot to include the error bounds of said estimator.
..
Using heuristics in a statistical argument is like using tree rings.
This passage makes it sound like your application of the Hurst exponent is simply not useful for evaluating trends in the TOA IRF, since you would need to come at the problem with an understanding of the underlying physics, which we already have.
Nope. It means that we can’t say if the trends are statistically significant, or on the other hand if they are just another example of nature being naturally trendy.
w.
Their justification for using models: radiative kernels, will be that everything’s already a model anyway! For example, when we read a thermometer our optic system is already a kind of model. Make it an electronic thermometer and we have 3+ things in the way: the sensor, electronics and our optic system. Make it a satellite, and there are at least 4 models in the way of direct experience. In fact: there’s no direct experience! They think they’re clever when they use this kind of argument; ignorant that it goes all the way back, at least, to Plato’s shadows reflected on the cave wall. It’s another way to argue everyone has their ‘own truth’. It elides the fact that some models are validated and others not. It confuses their own activists, and it confuses the person who originates the idea. They are forever eliding and avoiding validation and falsification attempts. Where’s the validation of radiative kernels, oh, and the falsification criteria?
What is interesting about the results of this study is how well they agree with other observational studies of CO2 caused downwelling radiation: http://asl.umbc.edu/pub/chepplew/journals/nature14240_v519_Feldman_CO2.pdf
This paper: .53 ± .11 W/m2 per 16 years
Your link: .32 ± .10 W/m2 per 16 years
Also, this paper is all-sky, and your link is clear-sky only.
“How well they agree”?? They’re not even measuring the same thing.
In addition, neither paper includes the huge effects of autocorrelation, so their uncertainties are a joke.
w.
Autocorrelation is not at issue with spectral emissions of CO2. The agreement is really good considering that “all sky” has the nasty effect of H20 as a green house gas, so one would expect a slightly higher number.
…
And in fact they are both measuring downwelling IR.
Thanks, Roger.
First, they are both measuring downwelling IR. But one is measuring clear-sky in only two places, and the other is measuring all-sky global … hardly the same.
Next, autocorrelation definitely affects all time series statistics. It also affects the “SEM”, the standard error of the mean of any sequential series of measurements.
Finally, claiming two measurements agree “well” because “one would expect a slightly higher number” is about as far from science as one can get.
w.
Both measurements agree well, in fact they overlap at .42 w/m2/16y inside their error bounds.
Next, there is no physical way downwelling IR in 2010 affects it in 2011. If you disagree, please tell me where in quantum physics, a photon emitted in 2010 can impact a photon emitted in 2011. Using your heuristic estimator the Hurst exponent would be exactly equal to 0.5
You say: “Next, autocorrelation definitely affects all time series statistics.” This is false in the case of H=0.5
Lastly, your statement: ” It also affects the “SEM”, the standard error of the mean of any sequential series of measurements.”
..
This is also blatantly false. If I have a set of 1000 rulers, and use each one to measure the width of my left front tire, the SEM is unaffected by autocorrelation because H=0.5
Yes, if H=0.5, there is no autocorrelation … so gosh, if there is no autocorrelation nothing is affected by autocorrelation.
Also, if there is no sunshine, nothing is being affected by sunshine, and if there is no crime, nothing is affected by crime.
And if that is the level of your argument, you can have it with yourself. I’m not interested in the slightest in that kind of bullshit nitpicking.
w.
“that kind of bullshit nitpicking”
…
And that, Mr. Eschenbach is why you are incapable of submitting an acceptable paper to reputable journals. You are not interested in the nitpicking DETAILS that makes science what it is. More proof that your “amateur” status can’t be overcome.
Pity your inflated ego gets in the way when your errors in logic and methodology get pointed out. Playing fast and loose with the words “any” and “all” in logic is a serious problem you have. Not to mention that in addition to you being an amateur in science, you are a neophyte with respect to statistics.
If CP/M is a computer language, then so is Windows. Have you written any “Windows” programs?
Pass … I never wrestle with a pig. They enjoy it, and I just get dirty.
w.
Pass … I never wrestle with a pig. They enjoy it, and I just get dirty.
w.
Roger, your nonsensical claim was that autocorrelation makes no difference when there is no autocorrelation (H=0.5) … boy, that’s some profound science right there.
Regarding science journals, I have had 5 peer-reviewed studies published in scientific journals, including a peer-reviewed “Brief Communications Arising” in Nature magazine. They have garnered over 150 citations in other studies in the scientific journals.
And you?
Clearly, the editors and peer-reviewers of those journals, plus the hundreds of scientists who have cited my work, thought that I was a capable scientist whose work was worth publishing.
Call me crazy, but I’ll take their opinion over that of some random internet popup with some kind of personal animus towards me …
w.
Another humdinger Willis.
“Not only that, but to give an accurate result regarding human influence, the “radiation kernels” have to include all of the factors that go into the radiation balance. From Figure 2 above, we can see that these include the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the atmosphere (including the clouds), the sensible heat lost by the surface, the latent heat lost by the surface, and the longwave radiation emitted by the surface.”
You include a nice list of variables to which I suggest a Kernel to address the absorption and conversion of solar radiation into high energy chemical bonds by plant photosynthesis of polysaccharides and lignins that have no sensable heat value. I have never seen this addressed. Dependent variables would include human land use changes, irrigation, precipitation distribution changes and CO2 fertilizer effect.
Rock on.
I’d assume that normally this is a wash, with plants decaying as fast as they grow. But since there’s been “greening”, let me do a back-of-the-envelope calculation.
There’s maybe ~ 500 GT of plant matter. Oak has 15 KJ/kilo when burned, let’s call it a third of that for plants. The greening has been about 5% over 20 years. So the calcs look like this. First the total joules.
> 500e12*.05*5e6
[1] 1.25e+20
(The “[1]” indicates the first line of computer output from the calculation above.)
That times 5%, divided by the number of seconds per year, divided by 20 years, divided by land area in square metres, gives us watts per square metre …
> 500e12*.05*5e6/secsperyear/20/landaream
[1] 0.001389212
Not much …
w.
Hello:
At one point you conclude that…
“They are claiming that they can measure the human contribution to the nearest hundredth of a W/m2, which is far beyond either the accuracy of the instruments or the uncertainty of the measurements involved. ”
… but they do not claim to have that accuracy, there’s a sentence in the doc document “supporting information” that says:
“While CERES has well documented uncertainty in the magnitude of the TOA radiative flux measurements, our work to estimate the IRF is conducted in anomaly space, where uncertainty in absolute fluxes is irrelevant.”
So, again, they use “anomalies” and not real absolute values, so that they can deceive the readers.
Preposterous conclusions at best.
Hello again, dr Eshenback:
I forgot one link, possibly interesting, same authors:
https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/documents/STM/2020-09/14_CERESstm2020_Kramer.pdf
Great post Willis and a good lesson in autocorrelation.
“Certainty Laundering”
Take much uncertain data to make certain claims by intentionally misleading.
What is a must for this kind of “science” is observation data that is not so accurate, as it presents an opportunity to produce such papers as the one cited by W.