# An Electronic Analog to Climate Feedback

Guest post by Joe H. Born,

Here we simulate a “test rig” for illustrating the difference between Christopher Monckton’s approach to projecting equilibrium climate sensitivity (“ECS”) and what he says climatology’s approach is.  (ECS is the change in equilibrium surface temperature that doubling carbon-dioxide concentration would cause, and we use climatology as Lord Monckton does to refer to proponents of high ECS values.)  We will see that failure to employ standard feedback theory is not the cause of the high ECS values we see bruited about.

In a series of WUWT head posts that began with in March 19, 2018, and have continued through May 8, 2021, Christopher Monckton has been describing his theory that climatology makes the “grave error” of basing equilibrium-climate-sensitivity (“ECS”) calculations on perturbations rather than entire quantities. The theory in question had been adumbrated at 39:17 et seq. in a March 23, 2017, video billed as a mathematical proof that ECS is low.  He has expended thousands of words on describing his approach, but a concise summary is what his August 15, 2018, WUWT post on the subject called “the end of the global warming scam in a single slide.”

The following plot illustrates that slide:

The $R_1$ and $R_2$ values in that slide are what the equilibrium temperatures that 1850’s and 2011’s carbon-dioxide concentrations would cause without feedback.  Or, rather, they’re what Lord Monckton tells us that climatology believes those values would be.  $E_1$ and $E_2$ are what those equilibrium temperatures supposedly would be with feedback.

Lord Monckton claims to have identified a “grave error” in climatology’s approach to inferring ECS (“$\Delta E_2$”) from those four values and the without-feedback equilibrium-temperature change $\Delta R_2$ that doubling carbon-dioxide concentration would cause.  Climatology’s error, he says, is that instead of entire quantities it uses “perturbations” $\Delta E_1=E_2-E_1$ and $\Delta R_1=R_2-R_1$, making the calculation $\Delta E_2=\Delta R_2\times\Delta E_1/\Delta R_1$.  Climatology’s result is the ordinate of the above plot’s green cross.

But according to Lord Monckton that’s not the right approach.  The proper approach according to Lord Monckton is dictated by standard feedback theory and infers ECS from “entire” values $E_1$ and $R_1$: $\Delta E_2=\Delta R_2\times E_1/R_1$.  Standard feedback theory, he says, would result in the red cross’s ordinate.

The reader will recognize the green cross as the result of standard extrapolation, which assumes little change in the curve’s slope.  But Lord Monckton seems to believe that the feedback theory used in electronic-circuit design requires the abrupt slope change required to obtain the red cross.

We use the circuit below to test that proposition:

Without the feedback path in which the box at the bottom is disposed the circuit would be a linear amplifier, and, since we’re going to assume that R1 through R4 are all 1-kΩ resistors, its gain would be unity.  Without the feedback path, that is, the output voltage Vout would equal the input voltage Vin.  So Vin corresponds to Lord Monckton’s no-feedback values R, while Vout represents its with-feedback values E.

Note that the feedback path’s input is the entire output Voutvalue.  As Lord Monckton put it, that is, “such feedbacks as may subsist . . . at any given moment . . . perforce respond to the entire reference signal then obtaining, and not merely to some arbitrarily-selected fraction thereof.”  What we’ll see is that projecting from perturbations instead of entire values nonetheless yields a better estimate.

We could in principle use any nonlinear electronic component for the feedback element, but for the sake of expository convenience we’ll assume that the feedback component we’ve chosen conducts no current when the voltage $V_\mathrm{f}$ across it is negative and that its current $I_\mathrm{f}$ increases with positive voltage in accordance with $I_\mathrm{f}=KV_\mathrm{f}^a$.  Here $K$ and $a$ are parameters so chosen as to make the relationships between the overall circuit’s output and input numerically match the pre-industrial and current relationships between the with- and without-feedback temperatures in Lord Monckton’s numerical example.  Such relationships can be approximated by, e.g., a diode-resistor ladder:

The feedback element’s VI curve is as follows:

That feedback curve gives the overall circuit the following relationship of input to output:

In a June 22, 2018, video, Lord Monckton contended that a government laboratory’s electronic “test rig” has shown that Lord Monckton’s theory “checks out,” i.e., that the ECS calculation should be based on entire quantities instead of perturbations.  Before we use the “single slide” values in this circuit to show that they shouldn’t, we’ll apply a larger no-feedback change to it to show where Lord Monckton gets his extrapolation slope:

As the red dashed line illustrates, his use of entire quantities rather than perturbations means that his extrapolation line passes through the origin.  The green dashed line represents using perturbations instead and therefore does not pass through the origin.  This fact seems to be Lord Monckton’s basis for contending that climatology assumes the absence of a feedback response the sun’s radiation.

Now we’ll take a close-up view of the smaller, “single slide” change:

We see that the green cross, which represents what Lord Monckton tells us is climatology’s approach, projects the circuit’s output much better than his approach does.  This is true even though “such feedbacks as may subsist” in our circuit “at any given moment . . . perforce respond to the entire reference signal then obtaining, and not merely to some arbitrarily-selected fraction thereof.”  So nothing about feedback theory requires us to abandon ordinary extrapolation.

This isn’t to say that climatology is right.  It’s just that climatology’s error isn’t what Lord Monckton imagines.

Note from Anthony: Personally I believe BOTH arguments to be wrong, for a couple of reasons. But I’ve allowed this post strictly for the purpose of debate.

1. The atmosphere has a chaotic component, with both long and short periods. Linear and nonlinear circuits can’t come close to modeling the atmosphere without having a noise component. It’s just as over-simplistic as the claims by some that we can model any planetary temperature from gravity and atmospheric lapse-rate.

2. Electronic circuits have additional non-linearity built in. For example, operational amplifiers themselves are non-linear internally. They vary their gain with ambient temperature as well as induced temperature from operation. Resistors often have tolerances of 5-10% from their assigned value (in the example above, 1Kohm +/- 10% = 900-1100 ohms) which unless you use special resistors that are high tolerance and temperature stable can’t really represent true linear response in the first place.

3. Seasonal and diurnal variation in Earth’s atmosphere, combined with weather, create a situation where trying to model the Earth’s temperature with an electronic circuit a fools errand. Just look at the variance on Dr. Roy Spencer’s recent graph of the lower troposphere. Looks like a resistor blew out in March and April 2021, doesn’t it?

On a smaller scale, the USA looks even more highly varied in March.

I simply don’t believe ANY simple electronic circuit is capable of accurately modeling atmospheric behavior. Hell, even uber-complex climate models can’t get it right.

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Stephen Wilde
May 11, 2021 10:09 pm

I can’t see any reason for the dig at atmospheric lapse rates in a gravitational field. The infinite variability of the negative lapse rate response in three dimensions
to any type of forcing is a pretty convincing
method of maintaining system stability whatever destabilising influences are thrown at it.

Mike McMillan
May 11, 2021 11:19 pm

It’s just as over-simplistic as the claims by some that we can model any planetary temperature from gravity and atmospheric lapse-rate.

Who, specifically, ever claimed that?

MarkW
May 12, 2021 6:51 am

Pretty much everyone who proclaims that there is no such thing as a greenhouse affect.

Ron
May 12, 2021 7:24 pm

It would be more precise to say that the greenhouse effect is suggested to be misinterpreted from the atmospheric mass effect.

Right observation, wrong explanation.

Interestingly, that theory would implicate a few things because then convection and collision would be more important than radiation:

• decreasing diurnal temperature amplitude with increasing atmospheric mass independent from rotation speed.
• increased temperature amplitude between equator and poles with decreasing atmospheric mass.

One could check if these predictions hold true and draw conclusions – or not.

bonbon
May 12, 2021 2:38 am

In 1917 a paper by Einstein : On the Quantum Theory of Radiation :
https://inspirehep.net/literature/858448

So Einstein in 1917 showed the flaw in using classical radiation theory, which seems to lead to endless radiation arguments. Is it possible today, almost a century later people still have trouble with photon momentum?

Tom Abbott
May 12, 2021 3:00 am

Thanks for that, bonbon.

bonbon
May 12, 2021 3:14 am

It turned up in 2 other blogs – h/t to those who spotted it.

May 13, 2021 7:22 am

Clearly radiation cannot be absorbed without some transfer of momentum, because of conservation laws. If you add energy to a molecule it is inescapable that you have also added momentun.

And it is also inescapable that radiation and conduction are very similar. Only that radiation can act at a distance, while conduction acts locally.

bonbon
May 14, 2021 4:44 am

Superconduction, with paired electrons behaving like photons, with interference and all, is used today. Non local effects are key.
Einstein’s insight it to notice the thermal distribution regardless of gas composition or spectra.

May 11, 2021 10:16 pm

This is a rather lengthy way of seeing Lord M’s grave error. It is simply this. Feedback gives a ratio by which changes in the output vary with changes in the input. A necessary consequence is that if there is no change in input, there is no change in output.

But Lord M wants to count in the input the emission temperature, which is, was and always will be. So the output (warming) will depend on that in proportion. But it breaks the rule that unchanging input gives unchanging output. Instead, even if no input changes, emission temperature feedback will provide endless warming. And where does that lead?

Or, he might say, emission temperature is also part of the response. But that makes nonsense of the idea of response. How can an unchanging quantity sensibly be regarded as a response to itself?

Last edited 1 year ago by Nick Stokes
May 11, 2021 10:29 pm

Whether you realize it or not Nick, you just argued for ECS = 0.0 K with feedbacks.

May 11, 2021 10:51 pm

In fact his error is in the notion of gain, regardless of feedback. To take another electronic example, which could have been any active device, I showed this circuit in a previous post

It is an NPN transistor in grounded emitter configuration. I have conventionally not shown the bias arrangements, which determine the steady state, but there is a steady input current sufficient to set Vout to about half the supply voltage, say 10V (from 20). The input voltage V is a property of silicon NPN, about 0.6V. Here I assume R0=0 and omit Rf.

Lord M’s argument is that you should say the gain is total output voltage (10-α*dV) divided by input (0.6+dV). In this expression, α is the conventional gain, and dV the change in input, and so Lord M gain is about 16.7 for small dV. That is nothing like the normal notion of gain, which is negative.

Ben Vorlich
May 12, 2021 2:42 am

Nick
Are all feedbacks invariable when combined? Your circuit doesn’t show a variable element. The truth is both inputs and feedbacks are variable. None of the electronic circuits reflect the true situation for climate. Nor do the take into the injection of random short lived modifiers like volcanic eruptions.

The climate has multiple variable inputs and multiple variable feedbacks and random non-repeating inputs. A circuit with a single transistor isn’t worth the effort you’ve taken in explainib=ing your thoughts.
You lot can’t decide what the historical temperatures were, every updated version adjusts past temperatures*, you don’t have an agreed value for climate sensitivity, nor do you know what all the inputs and feedbacks are far less there values.

*Every time there’s a new best ever version its never explained why the last best ever wasn’t in reality. Every time credibility goes down.

May 12, 2021 3:06 am

Ben,
Lord M’s error is at the basic level of defining gain, and so of course extends to gain with feedback. I’m just showing how it goes wrong in a simple configuration without feedback.

Indeed the circuits don’t reflect the true situation for climate. That is why they are not used by climate scientists. But some people here seem to like them.

May 12, 2021 9:55 pm

Mr Stokes continues to talk utter nonsense, and, I fear, wilful, mendacious nonsense. We have made no error. The emission temperature of 255 K would itself drive a substantial feedback response even in the absence of greenhouse gases at the outset. That feedback response is in the form of evaporation in the first instance. Therefore, climatology, in making predictions of future warming consistent with its error in miscounting the large feedback response to the Sun’s warmth as though it were part of the actually minuscule feedback response to direct warming by greenhouse gases, is exaggerating the system-gain factor and hence equilibrium sensitivities fourfold, the feedback fraction tenfold and the unit feedback response 30-fold.

Mr Stokes seeks to maintain that “the circuits don’t reflect the true situation for climate”. However, as he well knows, the long-established and definitively-demonstrated laws of control theory are of universal application to feedback-moderated dynamical systems. Therefore, if in a simple electronic circuit the input signal is shown to engender a feedback response even in the absence of any perturbation, in the climate the input signal – emission temperature – will engender a feedback response even in the absence of any direct warming by noncondensing greenhouse gases.

Therefore, climatology errs by assuming – incorrectly – that all feedback response is attributable to the 8 K direct warming by noncondensing greenhouse gases and that no feedback response is attributable to the 255 K emission temperature caused by the fact – like it or not – that the Sun is shining.

Bellman
May 13, 2021 8:32 am

We have made no error. The emission temperature of 255 K would itself drive a substantial feedback response even in the absence of greenhouse gases at the outset.

Could you say if this assertion is based on the idea that the “definitively-demonstrated laws of control theory are of universal application”, or is it based on the understanding of how the earths atmosphere will behave at 255K?

Would this argument change if the initial reference temperature was different, say 225K, or 100K?

May 13, 2021 10:17 am

The actual emission temperature is more like 271-274 K (Lindzen 1994, 2020), because clahmatawlagy had forgotten there are clouds in the sky, which would not be there at emission temperature. The feedback processes present in the climate in 1850 responded both to the 271 K emission temperature and to the 8 K directly-forced warming by preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases. Of the 8 K total preindustrial feedback response, nearly all was feedback response to emission temperature.

Bellman
May 13, 2021 1:37 pm

All fascinating I’m sure, but doesn’t answer either of my questions. What is the basis for the claim that 255K would drive a substantial feedback response, and would it also apply for temperatures below 255K?

May 13, 2021 9:53 pm

Whether Bellman likes it or not, the Sun is shining and the emission temperature is 271 K. If he wants to waste his time speculating on what the Earth would be like without the sunshine, he is not going to waste mine. He had better get used to the fact that the Sun is shining and that, therefore, in accordance with long-proven control theory, it engenders a substantial feedback response.

Bellman
May 14, 2021 3:40 am

You were the one saying an Earth at 255 K would have a substantial feedback response. Now you say you cannot speculate on such an Earth. If Control Theory ISA universal law surely it would apply for all temperatures.

I’m not sure what you mean by an Earth where the sun isn’t shining. I would assume a world at 255 K would require a shining sun.

May 14, 2021 9:49 am

Bellman, as usual, shifts his ground. I had told him I was not prepared to speculate about temperatures less than 255 K, because – though Bellman does not understand even the simplest of truths where they interfere with the Party Line that he is so handsomely paid to shill for – the Sun is shining and no lesser temperature than 255 K would obtain unless the Sun was not shining. In practice, as I have pointed out, the emission temperature would be more like 271 K than 255 K.

Bellman
May 14, 2021 3:32 pm

You did not tell me you were not going to speculate about temperatures less than 255 K, you said you wouldn’t speculate on “what the Earth would be like without the sunshine”. Sorry if I interpreted that as referring to the 255 K world. You use the line about the sun shining so often, it’s lost all meaning to me. I would assume that if the sun was not shining the temperature of the earth would be closer to 0 K than 255 K.

So are you going to answer the first question or not? On what do you base the claim that an Earth at 255 K would “drive a substantial feedback response”?

I’m interested about this, becasue you correctly surmise below I know next to nothing about Control Theory or electrical circuitry. But I’m skeptical about how likely it is that a theory relating to electrical feedback would work in the same way when examining something like climate feedbacks. This is why I feel it’s useful to examine, as a thought experiment, what an earth like planet would behave, under Control Theory, at temperatures less than the 255 K magic threshold. This doesn’t require imagining the sun stops shining, just that it’s a little less hot, or the Earth is further away.

It seems to me that if Control Theory really is a “definitively-demonstrated laws … of universal application”, then it should be universally applicable to a world when the sun is shining a little less.

Jim Gorman
May 14, 2021 6:04 pm

It is kind of useless to speculate on this. This is a model and as such, specifying initial and boundary conditions is entirely proper.

You are obviously trying to begin a straw man where, at 255, the earth would be totally frozen. Since 255 is an average for the entire earth, it isn’t unreasonable to postulate that at various tropical locations or nearby to hot springs that water vapor could occur. If, as green house adherents postulate, positive feedback occurs, then both temp and water vapor would grow and could establish an equilibrium temp of 273+. This is all speculation so entirely worthless.

If you’re not familiar with electronics and feedback, then read and learn.

May 14, 2021 11:16 pm

Mr Gorman is right and the increasingly desperate Bellman wrong. Throughout the tropics, at the subsolar point – even assuming the entire Earth was an iceball at the outset, with albedo 0.7, and even if there were no greenhouse gases in the air at the outset- the temperature would be well above freezing.

Bellman does not understand that, since the minimum plausible emission temperature is the 255 K imagined by official climatology on the self-contradictory assumption that there would already be water vapor and hence clouds in the air in a no-greenhouse-gas world, any temperature below 255 K would imply that the Sun is not shining.

Looking out of the window, however, I observe that the Sun is shining. On past observation, I infer that it shines every day. Since it is shining, its warmth – even if per impossibile the emission temperature, with no greenhouse gases in the air at the outset, were as little as 255 K – would engender a large feedback response.

Even if the Sun were not capable, on its own, of melting enough ice to drive a substantial feedback response, once the 8 K direct warming by preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases arose the temperature would be high enough to start the feedback processes now in operation – chiefly the water vapor feedback.

Climatology makes the mistake of assuming – on no evidence – that the Earth would be almost entirely feedback-free at emission temperature, that the direct warming by noncondensing greenhouse gases was what turned on the feedbacks, and that, therefore, all or nearly all the total preindustrial feedback response of 24 K was attributable to the noncondensing greenhouse gases. This error is explicitly stated in Lacis et al. (2010) and in several similar papers.

However, a moment’s thought, rather than a lifetime’s prejudice, would lead Bellman to realize that the feedback processes could not have commenced without the emission temperature, that, therefore, the temperature that finally started feedback processes was chiefly attributable to the Sun, and that, therefore, the Sun was – as it still is – the chief cause of temperature feedback.

The present head posting, by another true-believer who appears to have some sort of petty vendetta that has led him to make obviously false attempts to suggest that the distinguished climatologists and control theorists on our team would make the silly mistake of imagining that the unit feedback response is invariant with temperature, ignored the plain statement in a head posting by me a few days ago to the effect that replacing climatology’s system-gain factor 32 / 8 = 4 with the corrected (255 + 32) / (255 + 8) < 1.1 assumes invariance of unit feedback response ad interim, but that by a separate method the system-gain factor today had been found to be about the same, and that additional tests had demonstrated the impossibility of system-gain factors much in excess of 1.1.

That is the main point. And that is why we have no time for speculation on what might happen below 255 K emission temperature, for that would imply a world in which the Sun was not shining as it is today.

Bellman
May 16, 2021 2:49 pm

Such a long response whilst still avoiding answering either of my questions.

My concern is that you are claiming the “laws of control theory” are universal, yet are unwilling to apply these “laws” to hypothetical situations, such as a cooler sun. I assume this is because it would lead to a nonsensical conclusion, thus proving by contradiction, that they are not universal. So instead we get this nonsense that

(I’m pretty sure there’s nothing actually wrong with control theory, but that this is simply an abuse of it. What little I’ve read on the subject suggests that CT is applicable to different systems, but the “laws” will be different. A feedback loop can be defined by any arbitrary function, and there’s no reason to suppose a climate feedback will behave the same way as a simple electrical circuit.)

Bellman does not understand that, … any temperature below 255 K would imply that the Sun is not shining.

I don’t understand it because it’s patent nonsense. If you could explain how a world could exist at 254 K without a shining sun I’d be most interested. Maybe you mean that it’s not possible given the current real world sun for Earth to be less than 255 K, but that’s not what you are saying. More importantly, it’s irrelevant to my Gedankenexperiment. If your interpretation of the Laws of Control Theory cannot cope with a hypothetical situation they are not universal.

However, a moment’s thought, rather than a lifetime’s prejudice, would lead Bellman to realize that the feedback processes could not have commenced without the emission temperature, that, therefore, the temperature that finally started feedback processes was chiefly attributable to the Sun, and that, therefore, the Sun was – as it still is – the chief cause of temperature feedback.

That’s really torturing the logic. Just because something couldn’t exist without an initial condition does not mean that something was “chiefly attributable” to that initial condition.

If I fill a bath up to the brim, then pour a bucket of water into the bath, the resulting overflow couldn’t have happened without the bath being initially full. But it would be a mistake to assume that the full bath chiefly caused the overflow, or had any effect on the amount of overflow. If I tried to calculate how much water would fall onto the floor if I added a second bucket of water by arguing that the first bucket was only a small fraction of the the water initially in the bath, and therefore only contributed a similar fraction of the overflow, I’m not going to get the correct answer.

Jim Gorman
May 17, 2021 6:26 am

Your model is not the same as what is being discussed. Your bucket is not feedback, it is additional input. IOW, it is not dependent on the design of the system, including a feedback function.

Bellman
May 17, 2021 8:38 am

It wasn’t intended to be a model of the atmosphere, just a counterexample to Monckton’s non sequitur.

May 17, 2021 6:32 am

As to whether “the laws of control theory” are universal, my answer would always have been yes, but in this context I view them generally as the equations that describe feedback, which climate of course exhibits.

Incidentally, you may be amused to note that Lord Monckton has been a relatively recent convert to this view. In a 2015 paper called “Why Models Run Hot: Results from an Irreducibly Simple Climate Model” he instead criticized such equations’ use in climate.

For example, his co-author Matt Briggs said at http://wmbriggs.com/post/15095/, “The Bode system-gain equation models mutual amplification of feedbacks in electronic circuits, but, when complex models erroneously apply it to the climate on the IPCC’s false assumption of strongly net amplifying feedbacks, it greatly over-predicts global warming. It is the wrong equation.”

At https://www.climatedepot.com/2015/01/25/monckton-fires-back-point-by-point-rebuttal-at-warmist-critics-of-new-peer-reviewed-study-shoddy-rent-a-quote-scientists/ Lord Monckton said of the “simple model” paper, “We said the models were wrong because they were using a rogue equation borrowed from electronic circuitry and bolted on to the climate, where it does not fit. That equation, and that alone, leads the modelers erroneously to triple the small and harmless 1 Cº global warming we should expect from a doubling of CO2 in the air.”

That view seems to have resulted from his failure to understand what his paper’s Fig. 5 actually says about the behavior of electronic circuits. In the text accompanying Figs. 12 and 13 of my post at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/12/reflections-on-monckton-et-al-s-transience-fraction/ I tried to explain his error. But then as now he merely told anyone who’d listen how mendacious he thought I was.  (I’ve since explained that plot’s hyperbola in more-technical terms in connection with Fig. 12 of the post at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/16/remystifying-feedback/.)

But in 2017 he did a 180° reversal. At 39:30 into the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebokc6z82cg he said: “The mathematics of feedback in all dynamical systems including the climate comes from electronic circuitry.” He proceeded to discuss what he refers to as the “Bode equation,” but, characteristically, he misinterpreted Bode’s work.
I must admit in retrospect that his misinterpretation was somewhat understandable; Dr. Bode’s work leaves unsaid some things that wouldn’t have been apparent without understanding the Bode lectures’ technological milieu. Rather than allow himself to be instructed by several on this site who know this stuff, though, Lord Monckton cast aspersions.

So here we are.

Bellman
May 15, 2021 5:32 am

Not sure how I’m beginning a straw man when I’m quoting Lord Monckton verbatim. If I’m misinterpreting him, he could simply explain how, rather than trying to change the subject and throwing up the usual boring ad hominems.

Speaking of straw men, I’ve never said that 255 K would be totally frozen, or that it wasn’t an average. Lord Monckton’s equations on the other hand are entirely based on the average temperature. It’s my contention that you cannot use these very simple models to establish feedback response, based on the assumption of a linear response, whilst ignoring all the real world complexity of the physical system. Pointing out that the global average is not a universal temperature just adds to the problems with such a model.

But to your point about hot springs. You are still missing the point I made in comments below. It is not a question of whether any water vapor is produced – even if the world was entirely ice there would still be water vapor caused by the sun hitting the ice. The issue is how much water vapor stays in the atmosphere, which very much depends on the temperature.

Phaedo
May 12, 2021 5:00 am

Nick,
Fascinating insight. Would you clarify what you mean by ‘the normal notion of gain, which is negative.’

May 12, 2021 8:58 am

In this arrangement, a rise in input (base) voltage produces a drop in output (collector) voltage. It amplifies with inversion.

Carlo, Monte
May 12, 2021 7:03 am

I have conventionally not shown the bias arrangements, which determine the steady state

This is incorrect—the purpose of the bias network in a transistor circuit is to establish the operating point, hopefully in a region that is linear.

May 12, 2021 7:34 am

Nick,

There’s no possible model that conforms to Bode’s linear feedback amplifier analysis and that represents anything close to how the climate behaves. There are 3 fatal flaws in how feedback analysis was applied that makes this statement unambiguously and undeniably true. If you understand the least bit about feedback analysis, these errors should be obvious.

1) Absolute linearity is required, that is, dO/dI = O/I for all O and I. The climate O is a delta T and I is a delta W/m^2 which are not even approximately linear, but the output T is proportional to the input W/m^2 raised to the forth power per the immutable Stefan-Boltzmann LAW.

2) An implicit power supply is required to provide ALL output power. The output power of the climate feedback model comes from the input forcing and not an implicit power supply necessitating COE between the input and output. COE between the input and output is explicitly ignored by Bode’s model owing to the assumption of an implicit power supply.

3) Schlesinger incorrectly considered that the dimensionless fraction of output returned to the input was the feedback factor, which is this dimensionless fraction times the open loop gain, thus assuming unit open loop gain in one place and an arbitrary open loop gain G converting W/m^2 into degrees K in another. This was the primary error that made it seem like the input and output could have different dimensions, which they can not. This happened because Schlesinger assumed that the DIMENSIONLESS fraction of output returned to the input can have reciprocal dimensions of a G with arbitrary dimensions. Even an amplifier with voltage in and current out can’t be modeled with Bode’s feedback analysis until the output current is passed through a resistor to generate an output voltage.

Last edited 1 year ago by co2isnotevil
May 12, 2021 8:06 am

“There’s no possible model that conforms to Bode’s linear feedback amplifier analysis”
Joe Born is talking about Lord M’s model here. Take it up with Lord M.

Do you think the non-varying component (DC) of input/output voltage should be included in the ratio that defines voltage gain? Or only the varying (AC) component? This can be answered without dwelling on the sins of Schlesinger.

May 12, 2021 9:13 am

Nick,

I have taken this up with him and he agrees to the sins of Schlesinger. It just seems that he wants to be consistent with the ‘consensus’ climate science vernacular which implicitly assumes that feedback is relevant. BTW, it’s these sins that were caonnized as ‘settled’ way back in AR1 that makes you incorrectly believe that amplification by positive feedback has a legitimate place in climate science. The 3 errors I outlined are self consistent and provides this false support, but each is equally wrong on its own. Self cancelling errors are the source of significant confirmation bias.

The DC operating point has no bearing on the AC gain and it’s often set by different ratios. But what we are talking about here is Bode’s linear feedback amplifier model which was incorrectly applied to the climate. The climate has no internal power supply thus has no DC operating point. Bode’s feedback analysis already assumes that the amplifier is biased into its linear operating range.

You can’t consider the average not accounted for by the incremental analysis as the DC operating point because this average input power not accounted for by the incremental analysis is completely consumed maintaining the average temperature which is also not accounted for by the incremental analysis. There’s simply no extra energy available to offset any further increase in the surface emissions (temperature) beyond which any other W/m^2 from the Sun or any other source can do. This demonstrable average is 1.62 W/m^2 of BB surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing, i.e. a closed loop gain of 1.62 which from an open loop gain of 1 would require about 38% positive feedback if the climate was a linear feedback amplifier, which it is not since the apparent gain originates as a consquence of delay, not gain.

May 12, 2021 10:02 pm

In response to CO2isnotevil, we do not consider that feedback response is relevant to climate. We demonstrate that it is so small that, without significant error, it can be ignored in deriving equilibrium sensitivities to the small perturbations of emission temperature that are caused by our returning to the atmosphere some of the greenhouse gases that were there before.

Furthermore, like it or not, the long-established and definitively-demonstrated laws of control theory are of universal application in feedback-moderated dynamical systems. Therefore, if in an electronic circuit that comprises an input signal, a feedback block and an output signal the feedback block is shown to modify the input signal, then in the climate the feedback processes will also modify the input signal, which is emission temperature. And, since the input signal – at 255 K – is about 30 times the 8 K direct warming by noncondensing greenhouse gases, the feedback response to emission temperature will be substantially greater than the feedback response to direct greenhouse-gas warming. Not necessarily 30 times greater, but substantially greater.

May 13, 2021 7:47 am

Christopher,

I didn’t say that you considered the feedback response relevant, just that your work is presented using the vernacular of the fake consensus that considers it is.

The only point I would make is that the language used to describe climate science is horribly broken.

For example, per Bode, only solar and geothermal energy qualify as forcing. The influence of changing the system, for example, doubling CO2 concentrations, can only be modeled as EQUIVALENT to some change in actual forcing while keeping the system constant. The 3.7 W/m^2 of ‘forcing’ claimed to arise from CO2 means that the final temperature will be the same if either CO2 is doubled or the solar input increases by 3.7 W/m^2.

Another example is the definition of sensitivity. In climate science, sensitivity is conflated with the closed loop gain. Per Bode, the sensitivity is not the gain, but is another DIMENSIONLESS ratio qualifying the percentage change in gain as the result of a percentage change in the value of some component in the system.

An even more disturbing example is the presumption that W/m^2 of fake forcing from different sources can have dramatically different influences on the surface temperature. The units of work are Joules and a Watt is 1 Joule per second. A W/m^2 of actual or equivalent forcing by definition must have the same influence on the final result. It would be far more proper to add uncertainy in the amount of equivalent forcing per effect, not in the amount of effect those W/m^2 will have, They don’t do this because the effects of incremental solar forcing are easy to measure and far too small to serve the needs of the alarmists as it would require doubling CO2 to be equivalent to more than 12 W/m^2 of incremental solar energy which is obviously absurd.

Carlo, Monte
May 13, 2021 7:55 am

I still find the term “forcing” extremely odd and unnatural, and the units of W/m2/K are even stranger.

If CO2 is not the control knob, then the modelers have nothing, plus its W/m2/K must be zero.

May 13, 2021 10:22 am

In response to CO2isnotevil, we have made it repeatedly clear that we accept everything in climatology (sed solum ad argumentum) except what we can prove to be false.

The simplest way to deal with the open-loop gain factor in Bode is simply to take the gain block out of the feedback loop and input not only emission temperature but also the directly-forced warming by greenhouse gases to the summative input node in the feedback loop. Then the only gain factor one need concern oneself with is the closed-loop system-gain factor, which is then simply the ratio of the output to the input.

May 25, 2021 7:28 am

Except that the concept of feedback has no meaning without an open loop gain. The basic problem is that you can’t take a fraction of a temperature output and add it to an input of W/m^2. The dimensions simply don’t work! This is why both the open loop gian and the closed loop gain must be dimensionless constants, no exception.

Carlo, Monte
May 12, 2021 7:59 am

There is nothing magical about an operational amplifier:

The plus and minus inputs have very high impedance, so that the current into them is effectively zero.

The open-loop gain of the amplifier is very high, 10^6 or better, so that in closed-loop mode the voltage across the plus and minus inputs is effectively zero.

Throwing in a single transistor amplifier is just obfuscation, the op amp designers have done all the hard work for you using dozens of transistors.

May 12, 2021 10:11 am

What is magical about the modern op amp is that it’s arbitrarily close to the ideal gain block assumed by Bode’s linear feedback amplifier analysis; moreover, it’s often even assumed to have infinite open loop gain which simplifies the closed loop gain equation to g = -1/f, such that 10% negative feedback would produce a closed loop gain of 10 while any amount of positive feedback will cause oscillations.

You hit the nail on the head about the COE violation with the impedance argument. The input is not consumed to produce the output as in the climate, but is measured to determine how much output to provide from its implicit power supply.

Carlo, Monte
May 12, 2021 11:50 am

Well-stated. And a real schematic would show the power supply terminals.

It is possible to construct op amps with vacuum tubes (valves across the pond), but the maintenance would be not-fun. The modern integrated MOSFET op amps are amazing devices, with 40+ years of engineering behind them.

James Beaver
May 12, 2021 7:34 pm

The concept of “gain” in electronic feedback circuits is agnostic with respect to the sign of the gain, which can be positive or negative. Electrical engineers tend to be pretty good at math.

May 12, 2021 9:46 pm

Mr Stokes continues to sow confusion, and I have some reason to suspect that he is doing so deliberately and dishonestly. He knows perfectly well that if a dynamical system has an input, a feedback block and an output, the ratio of the output to the input is the system-gain factor. The system-gain factor may be less than 1, for an output smaller than the input, 1 for an output equal to the input, and greater than 1 for an output exceeding the input. The simple point that he is doing his worst to obfuscate is that any feedback processes that subsist in a dynamical system – for the laws of control theory are of universal application in all feedback-moderated dynamical systems – will modify not only small perturbations of a large input signal but also the large input signal itself. Like it or not, the Sun is shining – and would be shining even if there were no greenhouse gases in the air at the outset. Therefore, the total feedback response of about 24 K in the climate is not – as is at present imagined – attributable solely to the direct warming by greenhouse gases, but to the emission temperature driven by the Sun.

May 12, 2021 10:48 pm

“Therefore, the total feedback response of about 24 K in the climate is not – as is at present imagined – attributable solely to the direct warming by greenhouse gases…”
This is all such nonsense. No scientist in this situation attempts to attribute some number of degrees to a particular gas. The only person who might have imagined that is Lord M. You can’t make any use of such an attribution. You can attribute for a prescribed perturbation, but not as a breakdown of a state.

Suppose you have a traffic jam (of cars only). 20% of the cars are red, 30% white. Does that mean that red cars are responsible for 20% of the jam? So if you took them away, would there only be 80% as much jam? No, there might well be none at all. Does that mean then that red cars are responsible for 100% of the jam? But if you took away the white cars, the jam would also probably disappear too. So are they 100% responsible?

The same applies to the GHE. It is irrelevant what might happen if you took out all the CO2, or all the H2O. That hasn’t happened and isn’t going to happen. What is relevant is what happens if we make a perturbation to the present state. And the result will be proportional to the perturbation, not on notions of how the present state may have come to be.

Last edited 1 year ago by Nick Stokes
May 13, 2021 4:24 am

Mr Stokes continues to be wrong. Let us take in tiny steps. First, consider the position at emission temperature, with no greenhouse gases in the air at the outset. Would there be a feedback response to emission temperature? Two answers are credible: 1) No, because the whole planet would be an iceball), and 2) Yes, because even if the whole planet were an iceball the temperature at the subsolar point would be 15 degrees above freezing, whereupon evaporation, convection and cloud formation would engender feedback processes.

Next, add the preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases. In situation 1) the direct warming caused by the presence of those gases is enough to melt the tropical ice so that feedback processes begin to operate. That is why climatology foolishly imagines that CO2 is the climate-control knob. However, a moment’s thought will show that without the 255 K emission temperature the 8 K direct warming by preindustrial greenhouse gases would not, on its own, have been enough to melt the ice.

Therefore, the total preindustrial feedback response of about 24 K is attributable both to the 255 K emission temperature and to the 8 K direct warming by preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases.

Suppose ad interim that unit feedback response is invariant with temperature. Then the contribution of the 255 K emission temperature to total preindustrial feedback response will be about 30 times the contribution of the 8 K direct warming by noncondensing greenhouse gases to that feedback response. In that event – at this stage explicitly assuming invariance of unit feedback response with temperature – the preindustrial system-gain factor would not be the 32 / 8, or 4, imagined by Lacis et al. et hoc genus omne, but (255 + 32) / (255 + 8), or less than 1.1, implying ECS of about 1.1 K. Since the energy-balance method – an entirely distinct method – applied to the industrial era – an entirely distinct era – using the latest climatological data for that era shows ECS to be about 1.1 K, our earlier ad-interim assumption of invariance or near-invariance of unit feedback response with temperature appears not unreasonable.

But let us now suppose, again ad interim, that in the preindustrial era from 255 K to 287 K the unit feedback response increased with temperature. Well, it then becomes a simple matter of calculation to see what ECS one would expect given various rates of growth in unit feedback response with temperature. Even if one assumes that emission temperature is as little as 255 K (which, of course, foolishly assumes that there are clouds in the air, tripling the albedo that would actually obtain at emission temperature), an ECS of 3 K would imply a unit feedback response to greenhouse gas warming that is 50 times the unit feedback response to emission temperature. There is no plausible physical mechanism that could account for so absurdly large a unit-feedback-response factor.

Provided that one knows emission temperature, temperature in 1850 and the warming directly forced by the preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases, it is actually possible to calculate the apportionment between the contributions of emission temperature and of the noncondensing greenhouse gases to total feedback response. That calculation indicates that there is indeed very little variance of unit feedback response with temperature.

Therefore, it is not appropriate to ignore the contribution of emission temperature to feedback response. It is large: and, since the total greenhouse effect has a fixed value, the contribution of greenhouse-gas warming to total feedback response is necessarily small. Therefore, ECS is not of order 4 K but of order 1 K, ending the climate emergency.

May 13, 2021 9:13 am

“Therefore, the total preindustrial feedback response of about 24 K is attributable both to the 255 K emission temperature…”

“But let us now suppose, again ad interim, that in the preindustrial era from 255 K to 287 K the unit feedback response increased with temperature.”

This is just off the planet nonsense. There is no pre-industrial feedback response of 24K. No such thing ever happened. The Earth has never in fact been at 255K.

In calculating the gain response, whether with feedback or not, to a perturbation, the starting point is the status quo ante. The gain is a property of that state, not the perturbation (as with Lord M). It does not depend on the history of prior states, and certainly not on a wildly imagined non-history.

Jim Gorman
May 13, 2021 9:54 am

To get the system you are describing, you must have an AC coupled amplifier at the input and output. You’re going to have to decipher some natural phenomena that can act as a capacitor to do so. Otherwise what you have is a DC coupled amplifier and initial conditions are determined by the initial state of the total input. You can’t ignore the forcing from the sun unless you have a way to show how it is blocked from the gain.

May 13, 2021 9:58 pm

Mr Gorman is right. Previously Mr Stokes has attempted to confuse the issue by suggesting that in an electronic circuit one can build in a differencer so that the feedback block acts only on the perturbation and not also on the input signal. When I pointed out that no such differencer subsists in the climate, he fell silent.

Stokes is not acting as an honest broker. He is determined to try to confuse readers, as the author of the present head posting is, and Anthony has in the past said he suspects that Stokes is paid to disrupt these threads.

May 13, 2021 10:31 am

Mr Stokes’ quarrel is with official clahmatawlagy, not with me. Lacis et al. (2010) make it quite clear that there is a total greenhouse effect of 33 K, of which a quarter is directly-forced warming by noncondensing greenhouse gases and the other three-quarters is feedback response thereto. If Mr Stokes wishes to disagree with this and dozens of other papers making the same point, then he should address himself to the authors of those papers.

He is not, frankly, an expert on feedback in dynamical systems, but our professor of control theory is. The emission temperature of 255 K may be derived via the Stefan-Boltzmann equation; the 8 K directly-forced warming by preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases may be derived from the formulae in IPCC (2007) or from several published papers; the 287 K equilibrium global mean surface temperature in.1850 may be looked up in the HadCRUT record; from these values it follows that 24 K of the 287 K temperature in 1850 is unaccounted for. In fact, that 24 K is attributed by climatology to feedback response.

Elementary control theory, which Mr Stokes should perhaps study a little before digging himself in any further, makes it quite clear that there is a feedback response to the input signal as well as to any subsequent perturbation. In climate, the input signal is emission temperature; the perturbation is directly-forced greenhouse-gas warming.

In a dynamical system such as the climate, dominated by the Sun, it is necessary to take explicit account of the feedback response to the solar-driven emission temperature. Sorry, but that’s how it is.

lee
May 11, 2021 10:59 pm

In reality the feedback is set zero at no change in input.

Last edited 1 year ago by lee
May 11, 2021 11:18 pm

The feedback is a modifying factor on the gain. The gain is a property of the amplifier, regardless of the input (if within bounds, including 0).

May 12, 2021 10:06 pm

One of the reasons why we built test rigs was so as to demonstrate that feedback modifies not only perturbations of the input signal (those perturbations are represented by the gain block in a Black/Bode feedback amplifier) but also the input signal itself. In climate, the input signal is about 30 times larger than the perturbation: therefore, the feedback response to the input signal – emission temperature – will be substantially greater than the feedback response to direct warming by noncondensing greenhouse gases.

Steve Richards
May 11, 2021 11:07 pm

“But it breaks the rule that unchanging input gives unchanging output.”
If you added “of course , all of the input voltage is used to develop the output voltage” you would be more correct.
To assume an opamp only respond to a change in input voltage while ignoring the quiescent voltage is patent nonsense.

May 11, 2021 11:12 pm

The question is, how do you compute the gain. Do you include the quiescent voltage? No.

May 12, 2021 7:46 am

The gain equation is trivial to derive. If G is the DIMENSIONLESS open loop gain, f is the DIMENSIONLESS fracition of the output returned to the input and g is the DIMENSIONLESS closed loop gain, they are related as follows:

1/G = 1/g + f
or
g = (1/G – f)^-1

Note that this next equation is what Schlesinger’s incorrectly derived with the error of assuming that f*G was equal to a dimensionless f.

g = (1 – f)^-1

which assumes G = 1 and not some arbitrary dimensional gain that converts W/m^2 into degrees K, incrementally or otherwise.

The bottom line is that Bode’s linear feedback analysis can not be applied to a system with a highly non linear open loop gain that ostensibly converts W/m^2 into degrees.

Steve Richards
May 12, 2021 8:01 am

Herein lies the problem. You have gain or sensitivity and you have quescient condition. Both matter. I agree that gain of an op amp is delta vout / delta vin but, without knowledge of the input voltage you cannot calculate the output voltage or temp
Is this an admission that vo over vi is the correct answer and monkton us wrong, no. In the climate world, it is clearly the case that you need all of the input to calculate all of the output.

May 13, 2021 10:32 am

The Sun is hardly “quiescent”: it is the source of most of the temperature in the climate system. It is also the instigator of most of the feedback response in the climate system.

John Larson
May 15, 2021 4:49 pm

The Sun is hardly “quiescent” “.
This statement seems to me (a virtual ignoramus when it comes to electronic systems) to be very important, though I find it difficult to express exactly why . .
I find the notion of “forcing” as it is used in “climate science” to be misleading, since to me it seems the Earth is in a constant state of “forcing” already.
Simply put, as I understand it: the planet is always “trying” to cool down (owing to the extreme coldness of the surrounding space/entropy), but is being relentlessly “forced” against this relentless tendency by the Sun . . Which results in a “balanced” state, but not a properly put “unforced” state, it seems to me.

An analogy might (it seems to me) be drawn to the resistance to continued movement experienced by a vehicle at constant speed. The air resistance is “balanced” by the engine’s power output, as well as it’s “rolling resistance”. But, the first (at any appreciable speed) is far more substantial than the second, and increases radically with speed, while rolling resistance increases much less).
Hence, all else being equal, reducing rolling resistance would increase speed . . But it would be very misleading for a tire company to tout it’s lower rolling resistance tires as a “control knob” like solution to getting better mileage, rather than just a modest improvement.
And far more so, to speak of needing to be careful to compensate for this modest improvement, lest the car attain unsafe speeds due to some sort of runaway feedback effect owing to this relatively small “forcing” of the previously balanced state of affairs.

To my (relatively feeble ; ) mind, it seems to me you are trying to correct a somewhat similar misleading treatment of the “forcing” effect a small increase in GHGs will actually have on temps/climate, owing to the much smaller (and diminishing rather than accelerating increase) effect, that plant food gas can bring to bear on our relentlessly solar “forced” state of habitably warm conditions.

May 11, 2021 11:08 pm

Here is a modified circuit, removing irrelevant resistors and showing the bias resistor.

The question is, should the gain be the whole of Vout divided by the whole of Vin? Or just the ratio of increments. Universal EE says it is the latter (and negative).

lee
May 11, 2021 11:27 pm

“Universal EE says it is the latter (and negative).” And others say different.

May 11, 2021 11:41 pm

I chose a transistor rather than an op-amp, because the latter has internal circuitry to ensure the quiescent voltage is zero. The transistor does not, so then it is a real question, as it is for climate.

lee
May 12, 2021 12:00 am

Now all you have to do is validate the quiescent state for the climate.;)

May 12, 2021 7:54 am

The bias on a transistor amplifier serves one and only one purpose which is to bias the transistor into a region of operation where it can LINEARLY amplify an input into an output. There is no quiescent bias on the climate which linearizes the relationship between W/m^2 and degrees K; moreover, and any kind of bias has no bearing on feedback analysis.

May 12, 2021 9:46 am

Nick,

A modern op amp is arbitrarily close to the ideal amplifier Bode assumes in his analysis that was incorrectly applied to the climate.

I think I understand where you are getting confused. The DC gain and the DC operating point are not the same thing. Bode’s idealized amplifier has a DC gain equal to its AC gain. Back in the day, DC amplifiers were hard to realize and amplifiers typically had a DC gain of 0 and above some frequency ware linear for a range of frequencies as well as a range of inputs. None the less, when AC signals vary within the operating frequency range, the gain is constant for all values on either side of the relative zero defined by the operating point. That is, if a sine wave input is 0.1 and the output is 0.2, when the sine wave input increase to 1, the output must be 2.

The climate system has the same apparent AC and DC gain of 1.62 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of solar input. If you wanted to model the climate as an amplifier, the gain as a function of output would need to correspond to the highly no linear Stefan-Boltzmann Law.

Jim Gorman
May 12, 2021 6:48 am

You need to take some electronics training other than wiki. You are showing the most basic transistor circuit and are missing important details. First, the Rbias resistor is used to put the operating point on a linear portion of the characteristics curve. This method is not used because the bias point moves around based upon the input signal thereby making the output non-linear. Two, this configuration is an inverting amplifier. That is, as the input increases, the output goes lower. You won’t get warming this way. Three, this diagram illustrates part of the problem with using Bode feedback. Where does the power (20v) come from? It can’t be the sun because that is the input.

Using “feedback” is indicative of the problem with climate science. People don’t understand how it works. In order to do it properly, the radiation from the sun and GHG’s need to be “summed” at the input so that the total can change based on an increase in GHG energy. Yet this requires the “power” for the amplifier to be derived from something else.

To be honest what is claimed for the greenhouse effect only requires a simple summing circuit. As “back radiation” is increased the sum increases. Yet you still have the power problem about where the additional energy originates.

Steve Richards
May 12, 2021 8:06 am

Nick, I hope you know that vin, is going to be between approx 0.6v and 0.7v to start turning on you silicon transistor. Worse, bipolar transistors are current operated devices.
You really need to use opamps.

May 12, 2021 9:01 am

Nick, I hope you know that vin, is going to be between approx 0.6v and 0.7v “
Yes, I said that here.

Stephen Wilde
May 12, 2021 12:04 am

Christopher is actually pointing out that it is the AGW radiative theory that proposes a breach of the rule that unchanging input gives unchanging output.
It is suggested by that theory that input from space stays the same but the surface temperature gets higher due to back radiation which means the output from the surface must increase despite lack of any increase in overall input.
Thus endless warming as Nick admits.
In reality, changes in lapse rate slopes occur which lead to adjustments in convection which keep the surface temperature stable despite back radiation and any breach is thereby avoided.

May 12, 2021 12:27 am

The point is that GHGs change the amplifier. They increase the impedance of the IR exit pathway.

Derg
May 12, 2021 2:55 am

Only the exit pathway but not the input 😉

Magical is that CO2….simply magical.

May 12, 2021 3:09 am

Yes. That is the GHE. There is a big frequency difference between inflow and exit. Gas absorptivity is mainly in narrow frequency bands.

Derg
May 12, 2021 3:22 am

Simply magical;)

Jim Gorman
May 12, 2021 7:05 am

What does that have to do with the green house theory other than reducing the “amount of back radiation” at any given time. You still need to explain how the back radiation feedback works.

May 12, 2021 10:53 am

“Gas absorptivity is mainly in narrow frequency bands.”

Except that more than half of the surface energy absorbed by the atmosphere is absorbed by the liquid and solid water in clouds which are broad band absorbers of IR photons. Note as well, that GHG’s between the surface and clouds have little effect on total absorption, as the clouds would be absorbing that same energy anyway.

Jim Gorman
May 12, 2021 7:02 am

Again, you misunderstand the electronics in your circuit. Inserting a series resistor in the output will decrease the power available to the load. The voltage across the collector to emitter, Vce, will still –> 0 as the input increases.

May 12, 2021 12:44 am

The input isn´t the surface emission temperature, it´s TSI. TSI is constant which is the reason for feedback being impossible. Positive feedback demands, as you point out, a change in input.

May 12, 2021 1:50 am

“The input isn´t the surface emission temperature, it´s TSI.”
Lord M says it is ET, predominantly. But TSI is not he input, but the power supply. You could say that the input is the varying downwelling IR.

May 12, 2021 10:20 am

As I said TSI is not the power supply, as it’s completely consumed maintaining the emissions corresponding to the average temperature which is also not accounted for by the incremental analysis. There are simply no spare Joules available to make the next W/m^2 of forcing any more powerful than any other W/m^2.

May 13, 2021 4:29 am

It is not right to say a priori that unit feedback response is necessarily invariant with temperature. However, our calculations by two separate methods – one for the preindustrial era and one for the industrial era – show that unit feedback response is in practice near-invariant with temperature and that (in this respect in agreement with climatology) such little variance as exists is in the negative direction.

May 13, 2021 4:27 am

The reason why temperature rather than radiative flux density is the input to the climate feedback loop is that feedbacks are denominated in Watts per square meter per Kelvin of the direct or reference temperature or temperature change that triggered the feedback response.

Carlo, Monte
May 12, 2021 6:39 am

Still no hockey stick.

To bed B
May 12, 2021 8:41 pm

<i>Feedback gives a ratio by which changes in the output vary with changes in the input</i>
At its simplest, feedback is dependent on output and when multiplied by the open loop gain (-&beta; Aol), gives the gain which is just a ratio of input to output. The open loop gain is independent of output so you can calculate it from the change in output with input because its a constant slope, when beta is 1, or get an estimate of -&beta; Aol. for that temperature.

From what I can gather, Monckton shows an A that is the same in 1850 as 2011 ie A=Aol. It is a straight line but not necessarily going through the origin.

The real issue is that water vapour will not amplify the warming (rather than 3 ppmv add to it) below 273K in a uniform world (rather than average T). and A is 1. A bit more complicated in a real world but in this theoretical world, you need to add enough CO2 until the temperature of the surface gets above 0 degree C before you get an amplification due to water vapour, not necessarily feed back, making it appear that there is a feedback.

Last edited 1 year ago by To bed B
May 12, 2021 9:38 pm

Mr Stokes knows perfectly well that he is talking utter nonsense. He knows perfectly well that any feedback processes that are present in a dynamical system – whether it be an electronic circuit or the climate – will necessarily modify not only any perturbation of the input signal but also the input signal itself. I know that he knows this, because in a previous thread, in his desperation to conceal climatology’s error, he said that it was possible to construct an electronic circuit with a differencer that would allow the feedback block to modify only the perturbation and not also the input signal. I replied then that there is no evidence that any such differencer subsists in the climate, to which he did not demur. I fear that he has sunk to outright dishonesty.

May 12, 2021 9:58 pm

“will necessarily modify not only any perturbation of the input signal but also the input signal itself”
Complete nonsense. The input signal is the perturbation. The existing state is not the signal. It cannot be.

Gain is a derivative of state variables, then expressed as a ratio of perturbations. It does not depend on the signal itself, as Lord M’s formulae do. And feedback creates a multiplier of the gain, which then operates on perturbations. It is also a property of the system, not the signal.

May 13, 2021 4:42 am

Perhaps it would help if Mr Stokes were to consult a Professor of Control Theory and some control engineers. Or perhaps he might care to read one of the many textbooks on the subject that are available. He will find, for instance, that on p. vii of Bode (1945) the input signal is described as the “signal input voltage”.

The principles of control theory, long established and definitively proven, are applicable to all feedback-moderated dynamical systems. In climate, the input signal is the emission temperature. To this one may add any subsequent perturbation, such as that by noncondensing greenhouse gases. It is that total signal that passes into the feedback loop. It is that total signal that the feedback processes modify. As our Professor of Control Theory aptly puts it, those processes cannot distinguish between the total signal and some arbitrarily-chosen fraction of it: to those processes, a Kelvin is a Kelvin, whatever its origin.

None of this requires that the unit feedback response be invariant with temperature. For it is possible for the feedback processes themselves to change with temperature. Therefore, additional tests must be performed to identify the maximum physically-plausible extent of any invariance of unit feedback response with temperature.

As to “gain”,one must first distinguish between open-loop gain and closed-loop gain. The simplest way to handle the former is to depart from Bode’s formulism by removing the perturbation from within the feedback loop and simply adding it to the input signal in the input line, so that their sum is passed to the summative input node. For any given feedback fraction, the output signal is the same either way. The ratio of the output signal to the sum of the input signal and any perturbation is then the system gain factor, all of it attributable to the feedback block.

May 13, 2021 7:08 am

emission temperature feedback will provide endless warming.
=======
Nope. It depends upon the sum of an infinite series converging or diverging. If the gain is less than log e, it will converge.

Hokey Schtick
May 11, 2021 10:19 pm

I’d like to offer feedback, but I can’t decide whether to base it on the whole article, or just the extra bit added on.

MAL
May 11, 2021 10:20 pm

Having worked with amplifiers based on op amps in the 70, take a amplifier a microphone and any room and try to predict when said circuit will go into positive feed back, good luck. Just you in the room and where you are at will change everything.

Ken Irwin
May 11, 2021 11:59 pm

There is no evidence to suggest that our atmosphere behaves like an electrical amplifier so the application of the Bode amplification formula is at best wishfully grasping at unrelated physics for some legitimacy and is perhaps at best only useful as a proximal in the lower range of values for f.

To base extremely expensive policy on such shoddy science is dangerous.

Positive feedback systems are inherently unstable and tend to avalanche uncontrollably. The most common example of this is an audio amplifier – bring the microphone too close to the speaker and you get the characteristic feedback “howl” – this in spite of the fact that all audio amplifiers have negative feedback to limit this. I once accidentally built positive feedback into an amplifier – it would do nothing but howl.

Note: An audio amplifier can amplify by many multiples as long as it is “open loop” – example: If you and your microphone stand miles away from the speakers you can amplify as much as you like – but the moment the amplified sound goes directly back into the microphone – at values higher than the original sound into the microphone – then the feedback avalanches. An audio amplifier is not the best example as it has phase shifting and negative feedback to suppress feedback avalanche howl.
An example of an open loop amplifier is the amplification of a radio signal – the amplification does not amplify the signal in the atmosphere – under these circumstances the Bode amplification factor can run to 50 to 1000 times amplification – but tend to instability at the higher end.

Our climate is a closed system – whatever feedbacks there are act directly on in. To put that in plain simple English, what the alarmists are claiming is that “heat in the atmosphere causes even more heat in the atmosphere etc. etc. etc.”

There is a further problem with using the Bode amplification model – the IPCC only applies it to the perturbations (just the variations as outlined above) and not the entire reference signal.
Now that is in fact how a Bode amplifier works in electrical circuits – a capacitor is used to filter out the perturbations (the alternating current is stripped from the underlying direct current voltage by feeding it through a capacitor “filter”) Not evident in any of the diagrams above.

Ah-Ha you say, the IPCC approach is correct ! Well for that to be so there has to be some sort of magical filter in the atmosphere that somehow filters out only those changes in temperature and “feed” them selectively to the CO2 “amplifier” – complete balderdash.

Again returning to our electrical amplifier analogue – if you remove the filter capacitor the entire amplifier will go FFFFIZZZZTTTT and blows a fuse as it immediately avalanches if the entire reference signal (voltage) is fed back.

Even small positive feedbacks tend to avalanche and any feedback greater than 1 in a closed system must absolutely do so – yet the IPCC have a feedback figure of 0.61 ±0.44 – for 99% confidence limits which is impossible – the models work with values up and down from this and this process produces a very strong hyperbolic upward bias to their modelling.

They do this by hiding it within a climate sensitivity calculation to make it less obvious –

1/(1-f)
designed to cloak an impossibility and provide a hyperbolic upward bias to their modelling. The fact that this is as plain as the nose on your face to anyone who understands thermodynamics and mathematics can only mean that it is a deliberate contrivance.

Example: with 50% feedback, then 1 becomes 1.5 which further amplifies to become 1.75 which becomes 1.875 and onwards to 2.0 (sum of halves) – each little bit of amplification is thus further amplified…..
At 80% feedback 1 becomes 1.8 becomes 2.44 becomes 2.952 and onwards to 5.0 (the sum of all multiplications)
At 90% this sums to 10 times multiplication overall.
At 95% this sums to 20 times multiplication overall.
At 97.5% this sums to 40 times multiplication overall.
At 98.75% this sums to 80 times multiplication overall.
At 99% this sums to 100 times multiplication overall.
At 99.9% this sums to 1000 times multiplication overall.

And so on – at 100% the overall multiplication becomes infinite – this is termed an “avalanche” in mathematics & electronics.

Some argue that values greater than 1 produce a negative feedback. Mathematically this is false – the equation is clearly bounded by f<1  as you cannot transit through a singularity (dividing by zero) to get to a higher value. The instant we hit f=1 the Universe would vaporise and it would therefore not be possible to transit from f<1 through f=1 to f>1  which should be self evident.
As mentioned earlier the Bode feedback equation for electronic amplifiers, which is the very foundation of the IPCC’s alarmism, is – for a closed system – bounded by 1.00 – a boundary conveniently – and contrary to the laws of physics – ignored completely by the IPCC.

At f=1 the feedback becomes infinite (a singularity) and the Earth vaporises in a blinding flash of energy – and the IPCC uses mathematics that suggest a 6.8% probability of this happening – do you need any further elucidation as to why this is utter nonsense ?

As Prof. Ross McKitrick put it “according to the IPCC there is a ≈1% chance that an additional ton of Carbon will cause the Earth to become hotter than the Sun’s core”

Think about that for a moment – any model that can produce such an outrageous result (he’s not joking – it can) is obviously wrong !
Prof. Ross McKitrick’s off the cuff remark is in fact remarkably “conservative” – if you work back through the statistics of the IPCC feedback f given as 0.61 ± 0.44 for 99% confidence.
99% confidence equates to ±1.68σ therefore 1σ = (0.44÷1.68) = 0.262 equals one standard deviation.
Now the singularity (divide by zero problem) occurs when f = 1 or (1-0.61) = 0.39 greater than average of 0.61.
Which is 0.39÷0.262 = 1.49σ – which from stats tables is 43.2% of the area above average 50% – leaving 6.8% probability that the singularity can occur.

Like I said – outrageous – the IPCC is saying there is a ±7% chance that we will detonate the entire universe !
(That is if you explore the equations further – they obviously don’t actually express it this way and would accuse me of deliberately misrepresenting their “science” but they chose to misrepresent the science – not me – I am merely showing you where that leads, to show that they are demonstrably wrong per impossibile if you follow their “proof” to its logical conclusion.)

“If you start an argument in a certain place and don’t go far enough, you can get any answer you want.” Richard Feynman

May 12, 2021 12:42 am

“a capacitor is used to filter out the perturbations”
I think you mean that it filters out the DC (quiescent) and passes the AC (perturbations). And it is large enough so that the AC performance is unaffected; in particular, the gain. But of course the DC voltages are radically changed. If you computed the gain from AC+DC, that would radically change too. But it doesn’t. It is wrong to include the DC voltage in the gain calculation.

Ken Irwin
May 12, 2021 1:04 am

Nick – bad wording on my part – only the AC component passes through the capacitor “filter” – I meant it passes on only the AC portion of the signal – I did not mean it actually removes it – but I can see how it might be read that way now.

May 12, 2021 3:46 am

For the billionth time, if run away warming is possible why hasn’t it happened before? Nick you never answer that question, why? I know why because you know this is all nonsense.

Frank from NoVA
May 12, 2021 4:52 pm

Thank you. We don’t need to argue the details of electrical feedback loops (as an old chemical engineer, I’m agnostic), we just need to point out that the climate on this blue marble of a planet has maintained a condition of remarkable stasis notwithstanding an least ~540M years of pertubations.

MarkW
May 12, 2021 6:54 am

Depends on whether the capacitor is in series or being used as a shunt to ground.

Carlo, Monte
May 12, 2021 7:11 am

Exactly, highpass or lowpass.

May 12, 2021 8:09 am

Ken Irwin is talking about how an amplifier works. If you shunt the signal to ground, it won’t work. It’s perfectly obvious which use he is talking about.

Jim Gorman
May 12, 2021 7:33 am

You continue to ignore the operating parameters. What you describe is that the operating point of the amplifier is set by bias resistors to where the output is 255. Then SOMETHING filters out the CO2 radiation from the output and selectively applies that to the input as a feedback.

The problem with this is that you need additional power to do the additional amplification. The sun is already at max when you use it for bias so that is not available. The bias sets the output to 255 so there is no additional power there either. Where does the power come from?

This is one reason thermodynamics says heat flows from hot to cold There isn’t sufficient power originating with the cold body to push the temperature up against the cooling gradient. It may change the rate of cooling i.e., the gradient’s slope, but it can’t move it from negative to positive.

Derg
May 12, 2021 3:02 am

+1,000 Ken

Rory Forbes
May 11, 2021 11:17 pm

I’ve watched while this question has been kicked back and forth, adding this, multiplying that while calculating some other thing, for over 40 years… everyone fully believing they have the correct formula to explain something that clearly hasn’t manifested itself at all. There has been postulation, conjecture, theorizing and educated guessing … notwithstanding open fraud, lots of lying, data tampering and grandiose hubris. I’m very impressed with their certainty; yet, looking at the entire thing as broadly as I am able; there remains only the natural variation of a planet with possibly thousands of buffers able to maintain remarkable stability over long periods of time.

My money is on Richard Feynman … “science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” (in climate more than any other science). Far too much time and resources have been wasted on a non issue.

Thomas Gasloli
May 12, 2021 6:40 am

Agree. One would think you would need to show the “climate” is sensitive to CO2 at all (which the Antarctic ice core data demonstrated is false) before you try calculating said sensitivity. But if the Gov is paying you to justify bad policy thinking is irrelevant.

Rory Forbes
May 12, 2021 10:33 am

It’s that old qualifier that keeps leveling the playing field … IF this, IF that. Hell, IF frogs could fly they would bump there ass so much.

philincalifornia
May 12, 2021 9:16 am

Yep, even the lukewarmest of lukewarmers are having as hard a time as the climate liars walking this one back. This thread is an absolute tour-de-force in the art of mental masturbation.

See, I can mental masturbate further than Lord Monckton.

…… and then there’s Nick.

Are we living in an extended dead parrot Monty Python sketch ??

Rory Forbes
May 12, 2021 10:39 am

Mr. Praline: ‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

…And I wanted to be a lumberjack, anyway!

May 12, 2021 8:37 pm

The Sun, the chief source of the Earth’s temperature, produces a large feedback response of its own, which must be (but is not) deducted from total feedback response to leave the small feedback response attributable to direct warming by noncondensing greenhouse gases, considerably reducing eventual warming by those gases and ending the “climate emergency”. I am sorry that “philincalifornia” finds this inconvenient truth unwelcome.

philincalifornia
May 12, 2021 9:06 pm

I think you might have missed my point. Sorry.

May 13, 2021 4:42 am

In order to miss a point, a point must first be made. And it wasn’t.

philincalifornia
May 13, 2021 7:41 am

The point you missed was that I was referring to the author of this post, not myself.

You both assume that this “thing” called ECS exists, when it is just another climate liar construct to extend the time to the day of reckoning, kinda like the stupid 1,000 year half-life of CO2 crap from Solomon and co-conspirators, which seems to have died the appropriate death (quietly).

Starting out with the premise that ECS exists is another conclusion based “Will it go round in circles” argument.

I appreciate everything you do, and your tenacity for reining in these climate criminals I find heroic (and I enjoyed your talk in Sacramento years ago), but let’s move on. The ECS to an El Nino has a lifetime of months, it’s not even arguable – you can eyeball the data. Need I go on ?

To summarize, instead of yielding to the climate liars and criminals by handing them the lifeline of lukewarmness to argue about (in my words, mental masturbate about) why don’t we/you all tell them they have nothing, nada, zilch. Let them argue from that baseline.

May 13, 2021 10:43 am

Philincalifornia is perhaps not well versed in artibus forensis. The most effective way to compel a truculent interlocutor to accept that he has erred is to accept everything he says, sed solum ad argumentum, except the one thing you can prove to be wrong. That minimizes his scope for disagreement, and, if he persists in tendentious disagreement once it becomes obvious to all that he is simply wrong on that one point, he loses the argument.

We are persisting in our efforts to get our substantial paper on climatology’s central error of physics published because – whether anyone likes it or not – the Sun is, repeat is, shining and therefore there would be a feedback response to the emission temperature even if there were no greenhouse gases in the air. Take away the feedback response to emission temperature from the total feedback response and there is very little temperature remaining that could be attributed to feedback response to greenhouse gases.

This is an extremely elementary error by climatology. It appears to be universal throughout climatology. Though one or two paid trolls here are trying to pooh-pooh our result, none has so far landed a blow. So we shall continue to argue our case on climatology’s own terms and on its own ground. And we shall prevail.

philincalifornia
May 13, 2021 2:28 pm

My first thought was that you must be addressing someone else accidentally, because I still have no idea what you’re on about, and I don’t have time to compel a truculent interlocutor to accept that he has erred. Forgive me if that’s the other way around.

If you’re having trouble getting a paper published, it surely is not due to any concept that I’ve posted on this thread.

I don’t know on what it is that you’re disagreeing with me, or if I’m disagreeing with you, but we can agree to disagree on whatever it is. What’s the Latin for that?

May 14, 2021 9:44 am

I regret that philincalifornia does not understand that the Sun is shining. But it is. Look out of the window during the daytime (the period when the Sun is shining). There it is, bright as a button.

bonbon
May 14, 2021 5:15 am

You probably know of Casca, who listened to Cicero’s speech before doing Cesar in, saying it was all Greek to me. Truculent troll indeed, that Casa!

Tim Spence
May 11, 2021 11:59 pm

To be fair to Chris Monckton, he isn’t saying he can predict climate, ecs, or anything with an Opamp circuit. He’s just using a simple circuit to demonstrate a possible error in feedback calculations.

Stephen Wilde
May 12, 2021 12:10 am

Yes, and I have long pointed out that warming from back radiation leads to a continuous positive feedback loop which would cause the loss of an atmosphere unless there were an equal and opposite negative reaction somewhere else in the system.
The Dynamic Atmosphere Energy Transport model created by myself and Philip Mulholland resolves that issue.

Stephen Wilde
May 12, 2021 12:31 am

The reason why an electrical circuit is inappropriate is due to the fact that a resistor can only slow down an energy flow which results in a rise in IR emission and thus temperature.
For a planetary atmosphere to be maintained in equilibrium long term one additionally needs a process whereby the energy flow also needs to be speeded up as a response to an attempt at resistance which is a way of preventing the rise in temperature that would otherwise occur.
The fact is that if back radiation from ghgs tries to increase energy in the system then the rate of convection changes to offset it.
The purpose of the rate of convection is to arrange that energy gets returned back to a surface beneath descending air fast enough to be radiated back out to space from the surface to keep the system stable.
The sign of the convective response depends on the net effect of ghgs.
If they have a net warming effect then convection speeds up and if they have a net cooling effect then convection slows down.
Note that an atmosphere with100% radiative efficiency would cause convection to stop. The atmosphere would become isothermal with all energy out going from top of atmosphere as if the atmosphere were a solid.
For an atmosphere with zero radiative capability all energy goes out from the surface and convection would be at a maximum.

May 12, 2021 8:39 pm

Feedback theory is of universal application to feedback-moderated dynamical systems.

Alan Tomalty
May 12, 2021 1:54 am

And yet low hanging clouds at night make it warmer than without those clouds. This would seem to prove that back radiation exists. However Clouds are made of water vapour NOT CO2. The point being that any increase in water vapour in the atmosphere can only come from evaporation/transpiration. The air above a dry desert has to import the water vapour via wind. Wherever that wind came from, it was a result of pressure differences. Those pressure differences were NOT CAUSED by back radiation. For evaporation or evapotranspiration(inc. plants) to occur, it depends on water temperature, air temperature, air humidity and air velocity above the water surface. Most of the heat or energy required for the evaporation is taken from the water itself. To maintain the water temperature – heat must be supplied to the water. A hotter air temperature will increase evaporation but since oceans cover 71% of the earth’s surface, it is the temperature of the ocean which mainly decides evaporation. The oceans’ heat capacity is 1000 times the atmosphere. Most of the water that evaporates from the oceans (we will ignore sublimation) falls back as precipitation into those oceans. Only ~ 10% is transported to the land via winds. The point being that for GHG theory of runaway feedback(climate catastrophe) to work, you would need to eliminate convection and you would have to heat up the oceans a thousand fold. Ocean temperature measurements have demonstrated that maximum ocean temperatures in the tropics reach ~ 32C.After that clouds, thunderstorms and hurricanes operate to stabilize the temperature increase. So feedback has its limits and since CO2 has been 10x the present day amount in the atmosphere; millions of years ago, any fear of more CO2 in the atmosphere causing a catastrophe ; is a fear of ghosts.

Jim Gorman
May 12, 2021 7:39 am

What you describe is an action very much like inductors and capacitors. They are energy storage devices that can discharge the energy in a non-linear fashion. At one time they were described as having a “flywheel effect” in circuits. Think about latent heat in water vapor and even liquid water and how that is stored energy. Is that similar to inductance and capacitance?

JamesD
May 12, 2021 8:56 am

You get the feeling that the warminsts neglect heat capacity.

Alan Tomalty
May 12, 2021 11:23 am

Yup

Thomas
May 12, 2021 5:35 pm

Indeed they do. Temperature isn’t even a measurement of the energy content of the atmosphere. That would be enthalpy.

Alan, two points: Clouds are liquid water, not water vapor, and Roy Spencer says that greenhouse gases do cause convection, by cooling the upper atmosphere. I’m inclined to agree.

May 13, 2021 7:37 am

This would seem to prove that back radiation exists.
≠=======
The warmth felt from clouds at night is not back radiation. It is energy from the evaporation and condensation of water. Evaporation removes energy from the surface and condensation retrns this energy to warm the clouds.

May 12, 2021 3:05 am

I agree. But his reasoning was wrong, as the head post shows.

May 13, 2021 4:45 am

The head post fails even to admit that emission temperature engenders a feedback response. It is, therefore, entirely irrelevant to our argument about the influence of the Sun on temperature-feedback response, and in no way invalidates that argument: for it does not actually address it. It sets up an artful but useless straw man.

John Larson
May 11, 2021 11:59 pm

Thing is, I don’t believe Mr. Monckton was suggesting he was “modeling” the climate, but only trying to make a point about feedback from additional CO2 being “mishandled” in typical models. (and I could be wrong, no doubt).

As I understand it, he was essentially taking into account the diminishing additional effect that additional CO2 has on total “feedback”. (Eventually “flatlining”, not “skyrocketing”, as more and more is added).

May 13, 2021 4:50 am

In response to Mr Larson, we are saying that emission temperature is 30 times larger than the feedback response to direct warming by natural and anthropogenic greenhouse gases; that, therefore, very nearly all of the feedback response currently attributed to direct warming by noncondensing greenhouse gsaes is in fact attributable to emission temperature; and that, therefore, the final warming by greenhouse gases was and is and will be about a quarter of what climatology (which does not take explicit quantitative account of the feedback response to emission temperature) currently predicts.

May 12, 2021 12:11 am

I simply don’t believe ANY simple electronic circuit is capable of accurately modeling atmospheric behavior. Hell, even uber-complex climate models can’t get it right.

Actually I would say that a complex analogue computer would have a better chance than a digital one.

But I wouldnt bet the future of civilization on either…

Peta of Newark
May 12, 2021 1:57 am

Absolutely agree..

Any and all digital computers will always suffer from rounding errors.
Combine that with the fact that can never truly do parallel processing.
Basically, a digital computer hasn’t got a hope-in-hell and never will have.

An analogue computer ## possibly could take a sensible shot at the task.
They truly are parallel processors, can have nearly infinite resolution and work in real time.

## I’m minded of, I think, the UK Treasury once built analogue computer to model the country’s finances.To investigate tax rises, money printing, Gov spending whatever whatever.

As I recall it was similar to something I once ‘operated’ as part of Control Theory lessons at Leeds Uni, 40+ years ago.
Simply, it was a construction of variously sized glass water-tanks, arranged at different heights relative to each other and with pipes, taps/valves and variable speed pumps joining it all together.
Great fun to watch when you set it off, soooo much fun, intrigue & fascination to watch. Everything happened at once, soo much was going on in there.
But it all ‘condensed down’ to a single ‘output’ tank/flask – the contents of which could represent whatever you liked.
Money, temperature, energy content, your bank overdraft, number of girlfriends, motorway car crashes – anything you liked
And you recognise, the intrinsic resolution is down to one single water molecule.
What’s Avogadro’s Number – will that be 23 or 24 decimal places with just 17 grams of water in there.
What accuracy if you use The Pacific?

The one at the Treasury was apparently riotously successful, perhaps a little too much so and in any case, digital computers were just arriving.
So much cleaner, nicer and practical.
Also shiny, new, insanely expensive and thus, “Must Haves”

UK finances started going downhill from then onwards, apart from the valiant Mrs T who tried to arrest the decline, somewhat succeeded but unfortunately, even to her own regret, invented Climate Change

Last edited 1 year ago by Peta of Newark
TonyN
May 12, 2021 12:19 pm

Peta,

Those analogue computers of the economy were built by Air Trainers Ltd in Aylesbury, (a subsidiary of Link Trainers inc,) and the prototype was built using salvage stuff including pumps driven by windscreen wiper motors from a Lancaster Bomber. I knew one of the engineers on the project, and he told me that there were various taps and controls representing e.g. ‘indirect taxation’, ‘Bank rate’ and so on, where the idea was to adjust the economic controls to keep the water circulating round the system as fast as possible. However, as it was based on the Keynsian model, every run inevitably ended up in ‘inflation’,with the economy going literally down the tubes into a bucket on the floor.

He then said that it was no accident that the engineers chose pink for the dye!

May 12, 2021 6:10 pm

Yes that’s where I first used analog computers too although a little before your time, Peta. Useful for solving systems of differential equations then given the slow digital computers we had (university mainframe had memory of 24k). At about the same time Monckton became a reporter on the local paper in Leeds.

Jim Gorman
May 12, 2021 7:42 am

I’m impressed! The mention of analog computers takes me way back. I learned on those before being let loose on digital computers. I’ve often thought that if climate science would spend more time developing actual equations that analog computers would be helpful for modeling behavior.

May 13, 2021 4:57 am

Anthony Watts was unfortunately misled by the head posting into imagining – incorrectly – that the team of eminent researchers that I have the honor to lead were dim enough to think they could simulate the climate with a simple linear feedback amplifier. Unfortunately, the author of the head posting is unfamiliar with the normal rules of argument, and is prone to set up straw men by artfully mischaracterizing what we have said and then knocking down the mischaracterizations. This has misled people in the past, and continues to do so today.

We constructed our own circuit to demonstrate what actually did not need to be demonstrated – namely, that. even in the absence of any perturbation, such as a direct warming by noncondensing greenhouse gases whether natural or anthropogenic, the emission temperature would itself engender a large feedback response. A simple circuit is more than sufficient to establish this simple truth, which had hitherto entirely escaped the notice of climatology. In any event, that simple truth is inherent in the long-established, definitively-proven equations governing the feedback amplifier.

To put it simply, we used a simple circuit to confirm a simple truth that was already proven but was not known to climatologists.

Bright Red
May 12, 2021 12:53 am

Looks to me that in a non linear feedback system the small signal gain is a function of the current value of the large signal. So I guess if the large signal is actually varying how do you determine the small signal gain without fully understanding the large signal transfer function.

M. Gronemeyer
May 12, 2021 12:55 am

I think Christopher Monckton’s misjudgment is rather that he assumes a constant feedback factor for the water vapor over the temperature range of 0 – 287 K.

May 12, 2021 8:45 pm

Mr Gronemeyer is incorrect. For the Sun is shining: therefore, the interval of interest is between the emission temperature of 255 K and today’s temperature of 288 K. Even then, we do not assume invariance of unit feedback response with temperature: we demonstrate its near-invariance by assuming it ad interim for the preindustrial era, deriving ECS by an entirely distinct method for the industrial era and comparing the two, showing that in both instances unit feedback response is minuscule. We then assume ad interim that notwithstanding the mere evidence the unit feedback response varies strongly with temperature, and demonstrate that that assumption leads to a contradiction,

May 12, 2021 1:32 am

Tired: ECS = ~2.5K

Wired: ECS = <1.2K

Inspired: There is no such thing as ECS

philincalifornia
May 12, 2021 9:29 am

True indeed. Whoever came up with that climate lie should get the third longest jail sentence after Mann and Hansen. There is an ECS to ENSO and you can eyeball it on any UAH satellite lower troposphere plot and the equilibrium lasts for ……. months. So unless heat retained in the ocean is different when it comes from human emissions ….. it’s time for another big lie, and you can’t have polar ice, or polar bears. You must try harder.

philincalifornia
May 12, 2021 9:09 pm

BTW, I’ve already been misinterpreted up-thread by his lordship, so let me clarify that my must try harder comment was not directed at you. It was directed at the climate liars who are currently running out of canaries in coal mines. The whole scam has run out of gas.

May 14, 2021 9:42 am

To avoid being misinterpreted, write clearly.

Mark Pawelek
May 12, 2021 2:35 am

Theory: Positive feedback in climate models causes surface warming due to increased atmospheric humidity because water vapor is a greenhouse gas.
Reality: Evidence from where humidity increased (due to irrigation) shows surface cooling.

When arid areas of China were intensely irrigated the daytime temperature fell by over 6 °C, in comparison with adjacent, non-irrigated areas.

“The results show that irrigation cools daytime LST by 1.15 K, and cools nighttime LST by 0.13 K, on average, across irrigated areas in China.” … “In the arid climate zone, nearly all the irrigated areas show a lower daytime LST than the adjacent non-irrigated areas, leading to a strong ICE magnitude of greater than 6 K in the growing season. In the humid climate zone, the impact of irrigation on LST is generally negligible, with a magnitude around zero throughout the year.”

ICE = irrigation cooling effect
LST = land surface temperature
See: Qiquan Yang / Xin Huang / Qiuhong Tang; 2019; ‘Irrigation cooling effect
on land surface temperature across China based on satellite observations
Pdf: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337836655

Also. Irrigation study of Ganges plain: Ambika and Mishra 2020 Environ. Res. Lett. 15 124060

Graemethecat
May 12, 2021 3:34 am

Also well known is the cooling effect of trees. Transpiration of water by the trees into the air causes an measurable and real cooling.

Thomas
May 12, 2021 7:37 pm

True, but humidification is adiabatic so the total energy of the air doesn’t change when it is cooled by evaporation. It’s just that sensible heat was converted to latent heat, and latent heat can’t be read off a thermometer. Temperature is not a measure of the heat content of air. In other words, all those hundred-plus-year temperature records don’t tell us anything about whether or not an enhanced greenhouse effect is adding heat to the earth’s atmosphere.

Mark Pawelek
May 13, 2021 8:19 pm

There is an approximate 8 day time delay, From the loss of latent heat by the surface as potential energy (due to evaporation); it’s convection upwards, until about 8 days later water condenses, the latent heat (potential energy) is then released in the upper atmosphere as kinetic energy, and radiated away. The water falls back to the surface as precipitation.

TonyN
May 14, 2021 12:34 am

“all those hundred-plus-year temperature records don’t tell us anything about whether or not an enhanced greenhouse effect is adding heat to the earth’s atmosphere.”

But could the associated rainfall & barometric pressure records be of assistance?

May 12, 2021 3:00 am

Mr. Watts says my argument is wrong, but nothing in his disclaimer deals in any way with what my argument actually is. Three observations:

First, he’s arguing against things I didn’t say.  I’ve never said, for instance, that circuits can “come close to modeling the atmosphere.”  Nothing in my post says it’s setting forth the right way to arrive at ECS or to simulate climate. All it says is that Lord Monckton’s approach is the wrong one.

I depicted graphically the “single slide” that Lord Monckton used purportedly to prove mathematically that ECS is low, and I thereby showed that Lord Monckton’s approach boils down to bad extrapolation. If Mr. Watts thinks I didn’t, a clear statement of why would be appreciated.

Since Lord Monckton contended his theory “checked out” in an electronic “test rig,” moreover, I simulated one to show that it doesn’t. If Mr. Watts thinks I showed no such thing, I’d appreciate a clear explanation of that, too.

Second, what does the statement that “Electronic circuits have additional non-linearity built in” have to do with anything? What in my argument turns on whether electronics is linear? He may as relevantly have said the sun rises in the east. Again, I assumed a “test rig” for the sake of argument because Lord Monckton based his theory on one.  Of course electronic circuits have nonlinearities; very little that’s physical is perfectly nonlinear.

But I called the circuit without the nonlinear feedback element linear because it’s pretty close to linear if, as is typical, the op amps’ gains are high. That’s why R2 and R4 are there: to obtain nearly linear operation from non-linear amplifiers. This effect of negative feedback has been known since Harold Black’s invention. It’s what Hendrik Bode’s “Network Analysis and Feedback Amplifier Design” was about.

With all due respect, Mr. Watts seems to be throwing around a lot of random facts to make readers who don’t know electronics think he’s proved something by it. He hasn’t.

Third, this site has dedicated in the neighborhood of a dozen head posts to Lord Monckton’s theory. If Mr. Watts thinks (correctly) that Lord Monckton is wrong, it would have been more helpful if he’d provided a disclaimer back when Lord Monckton was mucking about in the San Francisco law suit. Instead, he allowed his more-gullible readers to be misled for three years.

May 12, 2021 3:54 am

Joe

You continue to make yourself look the fool. Your unending feud with Monckton is just ridiculous at this point. You should be grateful that Anthony gives you a forum, but instead you attack him as well, Anthony said he disagrees with both of you, yet you can’t let it go and you have to take it personally, you are acting like a child.

Mark Pawelek
May 12, 2021 4:24 am

This entire post annoys me. Don’t we have better ways to spend time than arguing over how many angels can dance on the end of resistor? OK, so we already wasted years of our lives seduced by Monckton’s arguments. Write it off. This is not a discussion of The Science. Write off greenhouse gas models entirely. Logically refuting them is pointless because someone else will refute your logic. The models are refuted time and again by facts; such as mass irrigation studies of India and China.

philincalifornia
May 12, 2021 9:31 am

Exactly. It’s a competition on who can mental masturbate the furthest about nothing.

May 12, 2021 8:49 pm

Does Philincalifornia really deny that the Sun is capable of evaporating water?

philincalifornia
May 12, 2021 9:14 pm

I’m not sure what you’re on about sir. I did get a Ph.D. in Chemistry when I was 23 and have over 200 publications in peer-reviewed journals and over 70 issued U.S. patents. On the personal side, yes I do know what that hot ball up there in the sky can do. What does that have to do with CO2 levels above 280ppm.

May 13, 2021 10:07 pm

One does not require a PhD in chemistry or in any other subject to realize that the Sun is shining. Because the Sun is shining, it has the power to evaporate water.

Because the Sun can evaporate water, even if there were no greenhouse gases in the air the Sun would evaporate water. Therefore, a large fraction of the total feedback response in the climate system is attributable to the emission temperature that would prevail even if there were greenhouse gases in the air.

However, at present clahmatawlagy imagines that all of the feedback response in the climate is attributable solely to direct warming by noncondensing greenhouse gases.

Therefore, it imagines that the feedback response to any additional direct warming by such gases will be much larger than is scientifically tenable.

jmorpuss
May 12, 2021 6:34 pm

how many other things has science got wrong and not corrected. ????

When electricity was discovered scientists tried many experiments to find out which way the electricity was flowing around circuits. In those early days they found it was impossible to determine the direction of flow.
They knew there were two types of electric charge, positive (+) and negative (-), and they decided to say that electricity was a flow of positive charge from positive to negative. They knew this was a guess but a decision had to be made. Everything known at that time could also be explained if electricity was negative charge flowing the other way, from negative to positive.
The electron was discovered in 1897 and it was found to have a negative charge. The guess made in the early days of electricity was wrong! Electricity in almost all conductors is really the flow of electrons (negative charge) from negative to positive.

By the time the electron was discovered the idea of electricity flowing from positive to negative (conventional current) was firmly established. Luckily it is not a problem to think of electricity in this way because positive charge flowing forwards is equivalent to negative charge flowing backwards.

﻿

Electricity and the Electron | Electronics Club

May 12, 2021 8:48 pm

Does Mr Pawelek deny that the Sun, by way of emission temperature, causes a substantial feedback response of its own? Hint: the long-established and definitively-proven laws of control theory are of universal application in feedback-moderated dynamical systems.

Mark Pawelek
May 13, 2021 8:34 pm

This electronic circuit dispute is a dispute about climate models. The modeling discussion has no connection to science. No empirical validation nor falsification studies support it. The “feedback” is supposedly due to water vapor acting as a greenhouse gas, and warming the surface in a similar way to carbon dioxide. But it does not. In mass irrigation studies of India and China, an increase in water vapor links to surface cooling. The cooling is clearly due to evaporative cooling (latent heat of vaporization lost by the surface and locked away as potential energy due to change of state), and it’s cooling the surface in the “wrong direction”! It’s as if some people are modeling the effects of charge on a system but using positive, when they should be using negative. Real phenomenon are derived it from reality. Playing with numbers and writing models which are disconnected from reality is not science. It is anti-science. Also: when water evaporates the latent heat is locked away as potential energy, PE. This PE is released, about 8 days later, in the upper atmosphere, as KE, after WV has convected up and condensed out.

When all terms have been separated (e.g. latent heat converted to PE), and named them then I’ll accept it’s a scientific discussion. Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity has no scientific meaning.

May 13, 2021 10:13 pm

Mr Pawelek has not appreciated that our approach is to accept ad argumentum all of official clahmatawlagy except what we can demonstrate to be false. We can prove that the imagined feedback response to water vapor cannot possibly be anything like as large as climatology imagines, because it is the Sun that is the chief driver of feedback response, but climatology adds the large solar feedback response to, and miscounts it as though it were part of, the actually minuscule feedback response to emission temperature.

We thus use climatology’s own concepts, including that of equilibrium doubled-CO2 sensitivity, to demonstrate that, if such sensitivity exists, it is small enough not to be of concern. By accepting climatology ad argumentum we do not have to trouble ourselves with whether or not ECS actually exists: we are able to demonstrate, using climatology’s own concepts, that it is necessarily little more than a quarter of climatology’s value, ending the climate emergency.

Mark Pawelek
May 16, 2021 11:14 am

Mr Pawelek has not appreciated that our approach is to accept ad argumentum all of official clahmatawlagy except what we can demonstrate to be false

I knew that from your previous articles. My point is that models are not scientific concepts unless they are empirically validated, and falsifications are attempted. Arguing or debating model logic is pointless unless we can agree upon clear empirical validations and falsifications. We cannot. The self-styled climate consensus modelers do not even accept existing falsifications of their GHGE model. So we should treat them as fake scientists, not as legitimate scientists. They will reject any change to their version of model feedback. They are careerists. Doing fake science (modeling). Making a nice living scaring pre-teens out of their wits.

“Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig; es ist nicht einmal falsch!”

– Wolfgang Pauli

David Dibbell
May 12, 2021 3:45 am

From Anthony: “I simply don’t believe ANY simple electronic circuit is capable of accurately modeling atmospheric behavior.” Agree. I also expect that ultimately ECS will turn out to be indistinguishable from 0C from future observation. And still, it is no contradiction that I have appreciated Monckton of Brenchley’s treatment of the conceptual error about feedback promoted by the consensus view, on its own terms. He takes the fundamental expectation that CO2 must cause warming as a given and disputes the exaggerated claims which have resulted from misapplication of the concept of feedback. I have been a bit disappointed in his more recent updates that he does not begin forcefully with his “ad argumentum” disclaimer as in his earlier posts.

Back to Anthony’s view. Here is what the performance of a variable emitter/reflector element looks like from space at my spot on the planet. There is no single circuit which would represent this very well. Every spot on the planet will behave similarly, with some obvious differences from the equator to the poles, and between land and ocean, and varying with elevation.
?dl=0

May 12, 2021 8:55 pm

Mr Dibbell should be reassured that we continue to accept ad argumentum all of official clahmatawlagy except what we can prove to be in error. I am baffled that our kind host here should have believed for an instant that we imagined a simple linear feedback amplifier capable of modeling all the subtleties of the climate. The chief purpose of our experiment – which was not strictly necessary, for the laws of control theory are long proven, amply demonstrated and of universal application in feedback-moderated dynamical systems, such as electronic circuits or climate – was to confirm that where feedback processes subsist in a dynamical system they must necessary respond not only to perturbations of the input signal but also to that input signal itself. The emission temperature caused by the surely observable fact that the Sun is shining is the input signal. It generates a large feedback response. A simple electronic circuit is more than capable of demonstrating that simple point.

David Dibbell
May 13, 2021 4:30 am

Thank you for that reassurance. 🙂 Agreed that a simple circuit is useful for demonstration.

Jim Gorman
May 13, 2021 10:11 am

People need to understand that your purpose was to design an experiment to prove/disprove the hypothesis of feedback operation in the climate. It has admirably shown that the feedback response in a DC coupled amplifier must also include the emission signal.

May 13, 2021 10:46 am

Bingo, Jim. You have it in one. Either the emission temperature from the Sun can evaporate water or it can’t. We say it can. Climatology calculates its estimates of greenhouse-gas warming on the utterly bizarre assumption that it can’t. And that won’t do.

Bellman
May 14, 2021 3:45 am

Nobody is saying the sun cannot evaporate water. The question is how much of that water can be stored in the atmosphere at specific temperatures.

If a world at 255 K can only store a tiny fraction compared to a world at 285 K, then to me it seems obvious that you cannot attribute the bulk of the effects of that water vapour on the the first 255 K.

May 14, 2021 9:42 am

Bellman, who knows nothing of control theory, does not understand even the simplest feedback circuit. Even if it were true that at emission temperature the entire planet would be an iceball and that, therefore, there was no feedback at that time (and that is not true, as the most elementary of calculations using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation will demonstrate, if only he will make a little effort to find the truth rather than sniping childishly), and even if it were true that feedbacks could not occur at all until the additional 8 K of direct warming by preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases became available, the feedback response that would then arise would not have arisen without both the greenhouse gases and the emission temperature. But nearly all of it would be attributable to the emission temperature, to which such feedbacks as subsist in the climate must perforce respond, because emission temperature is about 30 times larger than the total directly-forced warming by noncondensing greenhouse gases.

Jim Gorman
May 14, 2021 11:26 am

Part of the problem is that too many people only deal in linear averages. Not many physical processes follow a nice and neat average except when ASSUMED to be ideal. A 255 deg radiation temp doesn’t mean everything and everywhere is at that temperature. it would only take small areas near the equator to begin creating water vapor and the process would increase.

Too many assume things like peak to peak voltage or temps can tell you an average. This without having a clue about duty cycles or waveform shape. Everything being dealt with are continuous functions that are non-linear with continuous varying feedbacks and interactions. Trying to derive anything from averages is a waste of time until time based equations can be created.

May 14, 2021 11:25 pm

Mr Gorman is correct. Of course there would be open water at the subsolar point, even if at the outset the emission temperature were as low as 255 K and even if the entire planet were at first an iceball with albedo as great as 0.7 (and even that would imply some snow cover, which would be absent at the outset). The Stefan-Boltzmann equation is all one needs:

[1363.5 (1 – 0.7) / 0.000000056704)]^0.25 = 291 K

That is 18 degrees above freezing.

Mr Gorman is also correct that climatology, in arriving at its 255 K global mean emission temperature, is failing to take into account Hoelder’s inequalities between integrals, which apply because the Stefan-Boltzmann equation is a fourth-power relation and not a linear relation. Climatology, therefore, is not only forgetting that the Sun is shining and that there are clouds in the sky: it is also treating the Earth as flat.

Tom
May 12, 2021 4:38 am

This discussion raises a question I have long had. If the climate feedbacks are independent of CO2, then we should be able to see their impact in the historic temperature record. If the feedbacks are sufficiently strong, then wouldn’t they tend to go towards their point of maximum effect and just stay there? Of course, I suppose the models could be used to easily demonstrate whether this happens or not;-)

David Dibbell
May 12, 2021 5:53 am

The recent updates to the climate models presumably include the most recent understanding of the identified feedbacks. Take a look at the paper linked here. Structure and Performance of GFDL’s CM4.0 Climate Model, Held et al 2019. Search “polynya” and “piControl” to see that the pre-industrial control case (i.e. no anthropogenic forcings) exhibits impressive excursions. To me, this demonstrates how unrealistic it is to expect perfectly flat climate trends in the “unforced” real world. As you suggest, the real planet is already experiencing the full effect of all of its own feedbacks as the seasons pass and the decade and century-scale records show longer-term trends in sea ice, temperatures, precipitation, etc. And yet it is more steady than this particular model.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019MS001829

Last edited 1 year ago by David Dibbell
May 13, 2021 10:15 pm

And the reason for the steadiness of the climate, which is near-perfectly thermostatic, is that the Sun provides overwhelmingly more energy to the system than the relatively tiny additional energy provided by returning CO2 to the atmosphere from which it came. It is the Sun that is the chief cause of feedback response.

David Dibbell
May 14, 2021 3:19 am

I would note, however, that CO2 supplies no energy of its own to the land-ocean-atmosphere system. It does have the ability to incrementally promote the initiation of convective motion in the atmosphere in response to surface heating.

fretslider
May 12, 2021 4:43 am

You can only model what you understand and if you do not fully understand what you are modelling you are going to get it wrong.

Why would an electronic circuit scenario be any different.

For my money the best circuit is the Marshall 100W Plexi. Blows your head off.

May 13, 2021 10:27 pm

When we asked a government laboratory to build a simple feedback amplifier circuit for us, we knew exactly what we were modelling. We were modelling the simple and long-proven equations of the linear feedback amplifier. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the feedback amplifier constructed by a government scientist was capable of demonstrating that, even in the absence of greenhouse gases in the air at the outset, there would be a substantial feedback response to the emission temperature caused by the fact that the Sun is shining.

We used a simple circuit to demonstrate a simple and already formally-proven point – a point, however, that had hitherto – as far as we can discover – wholly escaped the attention of climatologists, who imagined that that because the total greenhouse effect comprises 8 K direct warming by greenhouse gases (nearly all of it from preindustrial gases) and 24 K feedback response, all of the feedback response was triggered by the greenhouse gases, wherefore climatology expected, and tuned its models to predict, that each additional degree of direct warming by greenhouse gases would trigger 3 degrees’ feedback response, making 4 degrees’ eventual, equilibrium warming for every 1 degree of initial, direct warming: thus, 32 K total greenhouse effect divided by 8 K direct greenhouse-gas warming equals a system-gain factor 4.

But, the Sun is shining, so that the emission temperature even in the absence of any greenhouse gases at the outset would be 255 K. Therefore, as the long-established and definitively-demonstrated equations of feedback amplification show, the correct calculation of the system-gain factor is (255+32) / (255+8) < 1.1 (assuming, for simplicity, that unit feedback response with temperature is invariant).

Richard Saumarez
May 12, 2021 6:01 am

The idea that a global climate can be modelled in this way strikes me as extrordinarily naive. To be believable, one would have to demonstrate that the op-amp version is truly an “equivalent circuit” of a much more complex system.

May 13, 2021 5:07 am

Mr Saumarez should not rely on the various misrepresentations of our position that are artfully but mendaciously presented in the head posting. Of course we do not believe that all the ins and outs and ups and downs of the climate can be simulated by a single, simple feedback amplifier circuit. However, it was indeed possible to confirm a simple and already amply-proven point by building and operating such a circuit, and then by getting a government laboratory to do the same. The simple point is that, even in the total absence of greenhouse gases in the air at the outset, in the presence of feedback processes there is a feedback response that either amplifies or attenuates the input signal itself: i.e., that the feedback block modifies not only any perturbation of the input signal but also the input signal.

The government laboratory has confirmed that this is indeed the case – a matter which is in any event long, definitively and very simply proven by nothing more complicated than linear algebra. We also have the benefit of a professor of control theory on our team, and he says that to assume there is no feedback response to emission temperature, as climatology does, is to imagine that the Sun is incapable of evaporating water. This is a fundamental error by climatology, and no amount of obfuscation and wilful misrepresentation in the head posting – even if it fooled Anthony Watts – alters that fact.

Nick Schroeder
May 12, 2021 7:00 am

How much feedback does zero produce?

philincalifornia
May 12, 2021 9:34 am

A trillion dollar a year industry for useless people ??

Dave Fair
May 12, 2021 4:59 pm

We can visualize the atmosphere (primarily gaseous and including clouds) as being bounded at the top by space at TOA and at the bottom by the surface of the Earth. The atmosphere (including clouds) absorbs shortwave (SW) energy from the sun and longwave energy from the surface of the Earth (equivalent to a blackbody at about 288K) and sensible and latent heat also from the Earth’s surface. It emits longwave radiation (IR) up at TOA (equivalent to a blackbody at about 255K) and down to the surface of the Earth (‘back radiation’).

Within the margin of error, all of the measured energy going into the atmosphere is balanced by the measured energy going out. There is no energy being created; it is simply the greenhouse gas effect because the atmosphere is not a solid, has radiatively active gases and has a temperature gradient (lapse rate). Y’all can fill in the many details I’ve omitted.

JohnWho
May 12, 2021 7:00 am

The atmosphere has a chaotic component, with both long and short periods”

Worth repeating and not just in an ECS discussion.

Schrodinger's Cat
May 12, 2021 7:11 am

The models are wrong. That is a fact which any comparison with observation will confirm. That makes Lord Monckton’s attempt to make corrections irrelevant.

Consider a tank of water through which visible light can pass. Now add quantities of black ink which can absorb the light. Observations reveal that the greatest impact on transmitted light is achieved early in the process. Once the water is black, absorbance is total and transmission is zero, the addition of further quantities of ink make no difference at all.

Now consider the atmosphere, initially transparent to IR but with increasing quantities of greenhouse gases being added.

This is the simplest of spectroscopy experiments. It follows the Beer Lambert law. Climate scientists seem to invent their own science which appears to do everything to maximise the Greenhouse effect to the extent that the effect becomes amplified rather than diminished.

Steve Z
May 12, 2021 11:04 am

Schrodinger’s Cat nailed it!!!

If “global warming” is supposed to be due to greenhouse gases (including water vapor) absorbing IR radiation from the earth, then the amount of energy absorbed at a given wavelength is proportional to an absorbance coefficient (function of wavelength) and the concentration of greenhouse gas (in molecules / m3), according to the Beer-Lambert Law.

If we consider a column of atmosphere with an area of 1 square meter, then IR radiation at a given wavelength is emitted from the earth’s surface (z = 0) at an intensity Io (in W/m2). If this radiation passes through a volume S dz (where S = 1 m2), then an amount of energy = I(z)AC dz is absorbed by the greenhouse gas, where

I(z) = intensity of radiation from below the volume element S dz
A = IR absorption coefficient, function of wavelength
C = concentration of greenhouse gas
dz = differential element of altitude

If a greenhouse gas molecule absorbs an IR photon and an electron is moved to a higher energy state, it can either re-emit a photon of the same energy in a random direction (about half of which will be emitted back toward the earth as “back radiation”, and the other half toward space), or the molecule can transmit its energy as kinetic energy to surrounding molecules (most of which are inert nitrogen and oxygen molecules) and thereby increase their temperature. Only the energy that is NOT re-emitted as a photon contributes to the warming of the atmosphere, so that “back radiation” cannot warm the atmosphere, only the surface of the Earth.

Any energy that is absorbed in the volume element is not transmitted above the volume element, which leads to the differential equation

dI(z)/dz = -AC*I(z) (Equation 1)

Setting I = Io at z = 0 results in

I(z) = Io [exp(-ACz) ] (Equation 2)

Equation 2 is only valid if C is assumed constant with altitude z, which is not really true, because the number of molecules of greenhouse gas per m3 depends on pressure and temperature, both of which decrease with altitude, so the actual solution to Equation 1 will depend on the lapse rate. However, Equation 2 is reasonably accurate over small changes in altitude, less than a few hundred meters.

If a fraction f of the IR energy absorbed is converted to kinetic energy, then an amount of energy fAC S dz I(z) = fAC S Io exp(-ACz) dz is used to warm the atmosphere in the volume element S dz, which would have a volume specific heat of MPCp/RT, where M = molecular weight of air, P = pressure, Cp = mass specific heat of air, T = absolute temperature, and R is the ideal gas constant.

An energy balance shows that

S dz (MPCp/RT) dT = fACIo exp(-ACz) S dz,

from which the increase in temperature due to IR absorption at an altitude z would be

dT (z) = (fRTAC / MPCp) Io exp(-ACz) (Equation 3)

This equation shows that the net change in temperature of the atmosphere due to greenhouse gases is more important at lower altitudes than at higher altitudes (there is no observed high-altitude “hot spot” as predicted by IPCC models).

If the concentration of CO2 was Co at the start of the industrial era, then the change in temperature can be calculated by substituting Co for C in Equation, which leads to

dTo (z) = (fRTA / MPCp)* Co * Io exp(-AzCo) (Equation 4)

If the CO2 concentration then increases to C’ = Co + dC later, the change in temperature due to the higher CO2 concentration is

dT’ (z) = (fRTA / MPCp)* C’ * Io exp(-AzC’) (Equation 5)

The net change in temperature due to the increase in CO2 concentrations from Co to C’ is obtained by subtracting Equation 4 from Equation 5, resulting in

dT’ – dTo = (fRTA*Io / MPCp) Co exp(-AzCo) [ (1 + dC/Co) exp(-Az*dC) – 1] (Eq. 6)

where dC = C’ – Co.

All terms before the bracketed terms represent the initial temperature change due to Co (Equation 4), so that the only variable terms in Equation 6 are in brackets. At low altitudes (or wavelengths with low absorption coefficients), the argument of the exponent is small, so that the exponential is almost unity, meaning that the temperature change would increase nearly linearly with CO2 concentration, although the absolute amount of energy would be small, since the (low) absorption coefficient appears in the pre-exponential coefficient.

At high altitudes (z), and/or with high absorption coefficients (A), the exponential term in brackets is extremely small, which could result in an actual decrease in temperature with increasing CO2 concentration. Suppose the CO2 concentration doubles, so that C’ = 2Co or dC = Co.

For a high altitude and/or absorption coefficient, for example if Az dC = ln(3), the term in brackets becomes -1/3, and doubling the CO2 concentration would DECREASE the temperature at that altitude (for IR radiation at that wavelength).

What this shows is that there is a limited amount of IR radiation available to be absorbed by greenhouse gases, and at high-absorption wavelengths, most of the available radiation was already absorbed in the pre-industrial era (or absorbed by water vapor), and very little additional radiation can be absorbed by increased CO2 concentrations. Increasing the CO2 concentration for the high-absorbing wavelengths just concentrates the temperature increase closer to the ground, but that would likely cause convection to carry the warmer air to higher altitudes, where it would mix with cooler air.

Also, it should be remembered that Equation 6 is an extremely simplified model at one wavelength, assuming zero change in pressure or temperature with altitude, and ignoring water vapor. In the real atmosphere, the concentration C of any greenhouse gas varies as MPY/RT (where Y is mole fraction of greenhouse gas), and pressure and temperature both decrease with altitude, but not proportionately. A more accurate model could be obtained by calculating C(z) in Equation 1 as a function of adiabatic lapse rate, then integrating to obtain a power-law expression for I(z) in Equation 2.

In order to obtain an actual temperature change, the revised Equation 2 would then have to be integrated over all IR-absorbing wavelengths, using the Planck function to calculate Io as a function of wavelength, and substituting the actual absorption spectrum for CO2 for A.

The model would also not be accurate unless IR absorption from water vapor was figured in, so that Equation 1 would have to be changed to

dI/dz = -I(z) (AcCc + AwCw)

where the subscripts c and w refer CO2 and water vapor, respectively, Cc and Cw are functions of altitude (lapse rate) and Ac and Aw are functions of wavelength.

It would be very difficult to construct an electronic circuit to model even Equation 6, which would result in linear amplification at low altitudes with a possible negative amplification at high altitudes. Trying to incorporate a power-law dependence of concentration on altitude (adiabatic lapse rate), the highly non-linear Planck function, and the highly variable IR absorption spectra of CO2 and water would make it nearly impossible to construct an electronic circuit to accurately model the temperature change of the atmosphere due to increasing CO2 concentrations.

Even such a model would not take into account evaporation of water from the oceans, and reflection of radiation by clouds.

But if somebody wanted to develop a more accurate climate model, the Beer-Lambert equation (1) would be a good place to start, and dump the old erroneus Arrhenius equation.

John Bahm
May 12, 2021 12:48 pm

I think there is a misconception of what is being modeled by the amplifier idea.
It is not the climate, but the models of the climate.
The models say that 2XCO2 forcing will cause a warming perturbation of 1.1C,
which climate feedbacks, will cause to become 3C of ECS warming.
This represents a blackbox feedback factor of 3/1.1=3.72.
The input perturbation warming(1.1C) times the feedback factor (2.72),
equals the ECS output (3C).
If we apply the same, to the observed temperatures, We can use the pre 1900
average as a zero, the 1950 temperature as the perturbation,
and the 2011 temperature (Less the 1950 to 2011 forcing warming, as the possible feedback.
For simplicity I will used the Wood For Trees,Raw Data, HadCrut4 global with a 120 month mean.
1900 to 1950 .29 C
1950 to 2011 .56C
1950 to 2011 forcing, per IPCC AR5 .531C
.56C – .531C = .029C,
The .29C plus the .029 Increased output, is .319C,
so .319/.29 = a feedback factor of 1.1.
For 2XCO2, if the forcing warming is 1.1C and the feedback factor is 1.1,
then 2XCO2 ECS would be 1.1C X 1.1 = 1.21C.
At least this is how the climate amplifier reacted to past warming perturbations.
The possible errors are that the entire delta,(.029C) may not be feedbacks, but may be from some yet to be qualified source of warming.

May 12, 2021 8:57 pm

Schroedinger’s Cat says the models are wrong. Assuming ad argumentum that they are wrong, there are some – not Schroedinger’s Cat – who are intrigued by the question why.

Kevin A
May 12, 2021 7:46 am

I have to agree with Anthony but does it matter? At 1,500ppm CO² the planet would green, plant eaters would roam the deserts and my steaks would be cheaper.

Last edited 1 year ago by Kevin A
May 13, 2021 5:13 am

Kevin A should not agree with Anthony, for Anthony was understandably misled by a gross misrepresentation of our position in the head posting. Of course the eminent team of researchers that I have the honor to convene does not believe, as Anthony was misled into think that we believe, that the entire climate, with all its ups and downs and ins and outs, can be successfully represented by a single, simple feedback amplifier circuit. We built our own circuit, and then, at the suggestion of one of our control engineers, got a government lab to build one too, to demonstrate the long-proven point – unknown to climatology – that it is not only any perturbation of an input signal but also the input signal itself that is modified by any feedback processes represented by the feedback fraction in the feedback block.

The results of our experiments and of those by the government laboratory cohere not only with each other but also with the elementary mathematics governing feedback amplifiers, which are long-established and definitively-proven. Anthony has, in effect, been misled into a position equivalent to repealing the laws of simple algebra.

May 13, 2021 10:34 pm

Kevin A should know that Anthony was misled by a mischaracterization of our conclusions on the part of the author of the head posting, who does not seem much interested in the objective truth and has sought to review a considerable body of research that he has not read.

We did not, as Anthony was led to imagine, invite a government laboratory to build us a simple linear feedback amplifier circuit to reproduce all the ins and outs and ups and downs of the climate. We built it to confirm the already long-established and definitively-proven equations governing the feedback amplifier. The specific point we wanted to confirm – which did not need confirming, but was news to climatologists – was that any feedbacks subsisting in a dynamical system will necessarily modify the input signal (in the climate, that is emission temperature) even if no perturbations of that signal (direct greenhouse-gas warming) subsist at the outset.

The government laboratory confirmed that simple point with its simple circuit, and also confirmed in writing that the conclusion we drew from that circuit was appropriate.

Therefore, if Anthony is right and we are wrong, then the proven equations governing feedback in dynamical systems are wrong. And they are not wrong. They are as definitively proven as the theorem of Pythagoras – and are actually not much more difficult to prove than it is.

Carlo, Monte
May 12, 2021 7:51 am

Why did you use two unity gain amplifiers? The second doesn’t change the output at all.

Why did you chose a current source for the feedback? The current gets split between R1 and R2.

Tsk Tsk
May 12, 2021 7:03 pm

Because otherwise he gets inversion. At least that was my first thought.

Carlo, Monte
May 12, 2021 9:16 pm

I think you are correct, he can’t wire his current source feedback to the positive input.

May 13, 2021 2:06 am

Both of your other respondents are correct.

In Fig. 12 of my post at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/12/reflections-on-monckton-et-al-s-transience-fraction/ I depicted positive feedback with only a single amplifier, and some readers found the resultant inversion confusing. By using a second amplifier to re-invert I had hoped to avoid confusion here.

So you’re right that the second amplifier isn’t necessary; in real life I probably wouldn’t have used one.

H. D. Hoese
May 12, 2021 8:03 am

I find this ‘electric circuit’ concept discussion fascinating because it was applied to ecosystems by H. T. Odum, sometime father of ‘ecological engineering.’ If you guys think the climate is complicated try an ecosystem integrated with climate controls, multivariate statistics here we come. I worked a year on a project for Odum, learned a lot as also his dissertation was on the biogeochemistry of strontium. He started a useful controversy

Restorers are finding out it ain’t so simple, and as suggested below may be more analog, maybe confusing amperage with voltage. Useful idea, carried way to far.

David Stone CEng
May 13, 2021 1:23 am

This really is a storm in a tea cup. Almost all the discussion and critism of the Monckton model is because none of you have realised that this is a model, not the atmosphere itself. The “power” point is meaningless, does the digital computer model also take zero power?

Analogue models as above have many useful characteristics, and are often used to model difficult and complex systems, particularly those with otherwise insoluble differential equations, in real time. A single transistor type amplifier is not relevant, the model of a feedback system requires the amplifier (not itself involved in the result in any way) to have infinite gain (or nearly so) so that the only controls on output are the surrounding components. It must also be completely linear when under feedback control, and certainly have no points of clipping or inflexion in the output range used in the model.

Lord Monckton has simply tried to estimate the ECS using the model, and finds that it is much lower than many of the modellers believe and use. It is not the fault of the model that you don’t like the result, it is the underlying assumptions made. Therefore the first point of consideration should be a thermodynamics textbook, where you will find that the basis of all the warming claims from “back radiation” are and must be false, as they are a “one directional” process and processes must be symetric. You will also find that energy transfer from a cold surface to a hot one is also not possible, if it were we could easily obtain infinite energy from the environment, with no fuel usage!

The ECS range Lord Monckton has suggested is low, and is much lower than any of the “thermal runaway” models, all of which are shown to be false by Earth History. Why is it not possible for any of the nay sayers to analyse the facts properly, before publishing easily proven rubbish?

The heat transfer question is the one to ask “Greens”, why do we need fuels at all if cold to hot thermal transfer works? It does not!

The Dark Lord
May 12, 2021 8:29 am

wow just reading the title tells me someone is spending alot of ink to “model” the climate with something that is not fit for purpose … I sure every word is true and I’m just as sure a waste of time …

JamesD
May 12, 2021 9:03 am

Lord Monckton is digging into the “models” and sifting out how they came up with their ridiculous warming predictions. He’s not trying to present an alternate model.

May 12, 2021 8:59 pm

JamesD is right. We are merely pointing out that the Sun is shining and that, therefore, the large emission-temperature feedback response must be – but is not – deducted from total feedback response to leave the very small greenhouse-gas feedback response.

May 12, 2021 10:17 am

I think that Chris Monckton is trying to encapsulate a certain non linearity: Its all very well to do partial differentials but in the grand scheme of things the size of a partial can be affected by the magnitude of the thing of which it is a derivative.

In climate terms, we know that radiated energy is a fourth power of absolute temperature: so the derivative of how much radiative losses vary with temperature changes, varies with temperature!

In similar vein the absorption of energy by greenhouse gasses varies as the log of gas concentration.

You cannot use the partial derivatives obtained at current CO₂ and temperture and extraploate them as constants…

..any more than the gain of a transistor is constant over a wide variation of voltages and currents.

The problem is that climate scientists are not mathematicians, engieers or physicists, They are essentially failures at hard science, looking to make a career out of mediocrity. I mean, really, Michael Mann is actually THICK.

And as for Greta Thunberg…

May 12, 2021 9:03 pm

Mr Smith is right that we do not assume invariance of unit feedback response with temperature. We assume ad interim that it is invariant in the preindustrial era; we then derive the unit feedback response for the industrial era using different data by a distinct method; we find the two unit feedback responses to be a) very small and b) near-identical; and then we assume ad interim that unit feedback response varies considerably with temperature, and find that the latter assumption leads to a material contradiction.

lgl
May 12, 2021 10:26 am
Last edited 1 year ago by lgl
May 13, 2021 2:10 am

As I stated upthread, I used your simpler alternative before, at Fig. 12 of https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/12/reflections-on-monckton-et-al-s-transience-fraction/, but some readers found the resultant inversion confusing.

May 13, 2021 2:25 am

lgl’s circuit inputs to the +ve in terminal rather than the -ve, so it doesn’t invert.

lgl
May 13, 2021 5:08 am

Thanks, and I hope both you and Nick agree using energy is the correct approach because it is meaningless talking about feedback fraction of a temperature and amplifying a temperature. Especially when using 255K as an input when it actually is a result, an output.

May 13, 2021 5:23 am

Indeed I do, although I have perhaps justifiably been criticized for not emphasizing that enough. I provided deeper and more-mathematical treatment at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/16/remystifying-feedback/, where I did most of the math in the forcing-to-temperature domain.

lgl
May 13, 2021 6:19 am

Oh – while reading that 5 times looking for an answer, I would appreciate your ‘judgement’ on the following.
Using the numbers from my pdf.
CO2 to 800 ppm -> ‘raw’ energy to the surface is 200+3.7=203.7 which is amplified to 407.4 (400 initially). -> temperature increase at the surface ~1.4 K
My problem is, this is from the ‘live’ system so fast WV feedback is included, and still just 1.4? Where am I derailing?

May 13, 2021 8:16 am

My apologies; I glanced too quickly at your PDF and saw what I expected: positive feedback. I now see that instead you provided negative feedback only, which limits gain to R_B / (R_A + R_B). Perhaps R_A is voltage-dependent to provide some positive feedback, but that’s just speculation. So my last answer was inapposite, and I’m afraid I can’t answer your last question, because I don’t understand the analogs.

What you call “feedback fraction” isn’t the same quantity Lord Monckton uses that term for. He tends to use it for what the pros I’ve discussed this stuff with call loop gain, which doesn’t mean much in your circuit but would technically be a large negative number.

Your analogs are neither what most folks usually use nor what Lord Monckton (and, for the sake of argument above, I) use. Usually V_in would correspond to forcing, W/m^2, but V_out would global-average surface temperature, i.e., kelvins, and the feedback at your inverting input port would correspond to additional forcing. Your analogs are different, and you seem to be asking me where water vapor is in your circuit. I’m guessing the R_A variation would reflect it somehow, although you use too many acronyms to make out exactly what you’re doing.

Sorry.

lgl
May 13, 2021 9:58 am

I feared that. My setup it too basic for your advanced brain.
It is a positiv feedback loop where the feedback fraction B is determined by R_A/(R_A+R_B) and Gain=1/(1-B) and I’m using energy throughout because that’s how the physics is. The surface warms and radiates energy, not temperature, so no need to convert to temperature and back to energy.

May 13, 2021 10:06 am

No, the reason why temperature typically gets into the loop is that evaporation responds to temperature, and the resultant water vapor and clouds are what provide the feedback forcing.

lgl
May 13, 2021 11:30 am

Fine, we need temperature to calculate the different energy components, but in a positive feedback loop we want to know how large fraction of the output is fed back to the input, and then we have to look at energy because feedback fraction of temperature is physically meaningless.

May 14, 2021 12:56 am

I agree with your point about not adding temperatures, and your circuit may be apt, but I can’t see it because I’m still not sure what your analogs are.

For example, I could see it if the signals at your inverting and non-inverting input ports were outgoing and incoming radiation and the output voltage were the surface radiation. That’s not what you’re doing, of course, but exactly what you are doing isn’t clear to me. You write in acronyms that don’t tell me precisely what quantities each of your signals are supposed to represent.

lgl
May 14, 2021 1:53 am

?
200 watts insolation is absorbed by the surface. The surface warms and emits LW. The greenhouse effect (GHE) induces a feedback, represented by RA and RB. (RA and RB is just a voltage divider to set the feedback fraction. You could make that circuit as complex as you like) In this example half of the LW is returned to the surface, resulting in a closed loop gain of 2 and 400 watts LW from the surface. Can’t get more basic imo.

I still don’t understand why Monckton keeps writing things like “the input signal as well as the perturbation is modified by the feedback block”. In a basic positive feedback circuit, which he also keeps referring to, the input does not change. The input is actually the insolation, not emission temperature. The feedback fraction is what changes when CO2 concentration changes.

May 14, 2021 5:05 am

Thanks for sharing, but, frankly, I’m still having trouble.

The model’s purpose is to study the climate response to a carbon-dioxide-concentration increase, so at least part of the non-inverting input port’s signal needs to be some carbon-dioxide-dependent radiation component. (I can’t say “forcing,” because my understanding is that you want your analogs all to be surface rather than top-of-the-atmosphere quantities.) From your last criticism of Lord Monckton’s exposition, it appears that this isn’t the way you look at it.

If I look upon the non-inverting input port’s signal as, say, net shortwave radiation plus that CO2-related component, then your circuit forces the (water-vapor-effect?) feedback signal at the inverting port to equal that sum. I can’t see how that describes the climate.

As I see it, all you’re doing is amplifying the input signal with a gain of 2. Simple, yes, but I’m not sure it models what we want.  So obviously I’m missing something.

Still, there are only so many hours in a day, so I won’t trouble you for a further explanation.

lgl
May 14, 2021 6:35 am

“As I see it, all you’re doing is amplifying the input signal with a gain of 2”
Yes, and that’s all the GHE is doing. If GHE increases then feedback fraction and thereby gain and surface temperature increase.

May 13, 2021 10:51 am

Mr Born is more familiar with climatology than he is with control theory. If he imagines that temperature feedbacks (the clue is in the name) ought not to be denominated in Watts per square meter per Kelvin of the temperature or warming that triggered them, then he should address his concerns not to me but to IPCC, which will rightly pay him not the slightest attention.

May 12, 2021 12:51 pm

Nick Stokes says –
” Feedback gives a ratio by which changes in the output vary with changes in the input. A necessary consequence is that if there is no change in input, there is no change in output.

But Lord M wants to count in the input the emission temperature, which is, was and always will be. So the output (warming) will depend on that in proportion. But it breaks the rule that unchanging input gives unchanging output. Instead, even if no input changes, emission temperature feedback will provide endless warming. And where does that lead? ”

I think that first statement is technically correct – I have rarely seen Nick get this sort of stuff wrong – but I think he, and many others, including perhaps the author here, are attacking a straw man. That’s not what Lord M is saying. If it looks like he is, it is because he takes as a starting point the assumptions of the modellers, explicit and implicit.

Let me put my understanding as simply as I can –
The water vapour feedback is already there, and operating, in the absence of non-condensing greenhouse gases. The perturbation due to increased CO2 only changes – increases by a small amount – the perturbation that already exists in its absence. Water vapour varies temporally and spatially quite dramatically, whether CO2 is there or not (example, tropical convective cooling cycle). Therefore any calculation of feedback due to a change in CO2 concentration should assume a change to an already existing perturbation, and not a new perturbation. Even more basically, regard temperature change itself as the perturbation, since that is the medium through which CO2 has effect. The input is just one thing – temperature. Not CO2, not WV. Just temperature.

In the real world, that’s self-evident.

Isn’t it?

May 12, 2021 5:12 pm

“Therefore any calculation of feedback due to a change in CO2 concentration should assume a change to an already existing perturbation, and not a new perturbation.”
What is the difference? Every state has a history. The point is that you calculate a gain as the result of a prescribed perturbation to a prescribed state, however it came about.

The input is whatever was initially perturbed.

May 12, 2021 9:11 pm

Mr Stokes knows perfectly well that the input signal as well as the perturbation is modified by the feedback block, and he knows perfectly well that control theory is of universal application to feedback-moderated dynamical systems. Mendacity, therefore, ought to be beneath him.

May 12, 2021 9:09 pm

Mothcatcher is correct at all points. Mr Stokes is – as so often – wrong. And this time I have the impression that he knows he is wrong. The total greenhouse effect of 33 K comprises a) directly-forced warming of about 8 K from natural and 1 K from preindustrial greenhouse gases and b) a total feedback response of about 24 K. Of that 24 K, nearly all is attributable to the 255 K emission temperature, and very little is attributable to the 9 K direct warming from natural and anthropogenic greenhouse gases. But climatology attributes all of the 24 K feedback response to the greenhouse gases, thereby overstating equilibrium warming fourfold, the fraction of warming attributable to feedback tenfold and the unit feedback response 30-fold.

May 13, 2021 2:42 am

Mothcatcher is (mostly) correct except to assume that I, too, don’t believe that there would be feedback to the sun.

On that point I’ve always agreed with Lord Monckton and disagreed with, e.g., Roy Spencer. However, I think in most cases the disagreement is semantic rather than substantive. Specifically, I’m sure that Dr. Spenser agrees that the phenomenon that Lord Monckton and I call feedback to the sun exists; Dr. Spencer just doesn’t call it feedback. He restricts his use of the term to what I would call a change or disturbance of the feedback.

While I disagree with many aspects of Lord Monckton’s theory, I accept most of it in the head post for the sake of argument. I merely show by that first graph that his theory as summarized in his “end of the global warming scam in a single slide” boils down to bad extrapolation. And I show by the circuit that feedback theory doesn’t justify his bad extrapolation.

As to Mr. Stokes, relevance so infrequently coincides in his comments with intelligibilty that my practice is usually to skip them. I made an exception here because the head post is mine, but he lived down to my expectations.

May 13, 2021 5:37 am

Mr Born, in order to try to attack our position, takes out of context a slide from a 3-year-old presentation. At least he has now conceded explicitly that the emission temperature derived from the surely observable fact that the Sun is shining will itself engender a feedback response. Since the emission temperature is 30 times larger than the direct warming by natural and anthropogenic greenhouse gases, most of the feedback response currently allocated to greenhouse gases is actually attributable to the Sun. Therefore, final or equilibrium warming by greenhouse gases will be smaller than climatology currently admits, because climatology adds the emission-temperature feedback response to, and miscounts it as though it were part of, the feedback response to direct warming by noncondensing greenhosue gases.

Nothing in that description requires any assumption that the unit feedback response will be invariant with temperature. We begin by assuming ad interim that in the preindustrial era it is, and then we use an entirely distinct and well-established method, the energy-balance method, on entirely distinct data for an entirely distinct period, the industrial era, to derive a midrange estimate of the industrial-era unit feedback response. The two unit feedback responses are very small, and very close to one another, and they suggest that, if anything, unit feedback response is actually getting smaller with temperature – which is precisely what official climatology assumes. This comparison of the two unit responses suggests that there may not after all be much variance of unit feedback response with temperature.

Then we assume, again ad interim, that the unit feedback responses to emission temperature and to direct greenhouse-gas warming are different. It is then a simple calculation – which no one in official climatology seems to have bothered to attempt before – to show that to justify a midrange ECS of 3 degrees the unit feedback response to greenhouse gases would have to be 50 times the unit feedback response to emission temperature. There is no plausible physical reason for so large and rapid a growth in unit feedback response in what is a near-perfectly thermostatic system.

But we don’t stop there. We then actually calculate the apportionment between the feedback responses to emission temperature and to the preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases, using various assumptions of the rate of variance in unit feedback response with temperature.

Very nearly all of this research has not been published, for the good and sufficient reason that it has been under peer review at a leading journal for six months. If there were anything as obviously wrong with it as Mr Born would like us to imagine, the paper would have been thrown straight out at the beginning.

Mr Born has, therefore, attempted – not for the first time – not only mendaciously to mischaracterize our research, misleading Anthony Watts into thinking us half-witted, but also to attempt to review a very considerable body of research that he has not even seen. Anyone genuinely interested in the objective scientific truth would not misbehave as grossly or as dishonestly as that.

May 14, 2021 1:42 am

Now Lord Monckton objects that I’ve taken his slide above “out of context.” Well, let’s consider the context.

In 2018 WUWT ran a Lord Monckton post about his theory. It contained a long objection-and-response-style description, at the end of which he summed it up with that slide, presenting it thus: “Here’s the end of the global warming scam in a single slide. The tumult and the shouting dies: The captains and the kings depart … Lo, all their pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.”

That slide encapsulated two videos and six previous WUWT posts on his theory, in the first of which he had described the theory as the product of research that had been going on for eighteen months.

That’s the context. The slide wasn’t some throwaway. It was his triumphant summary of all that had gone before. It was “the end of the global warming scam in a single slide.”

Except that it was wrong.

That slide showed how he said Hendrik Bode and control-systems theory dictated that ECS (“ΔE_2”) be calculated from pre-industrial and current temperature values E_1 and E_2, the values R_1 and R_2 that those temperatures would have taken without feedback, and the temperature change ΔR_2 that doubling CO2 concentration would cause without feedback.

As any high-school analytic-geometry student would be able to verify, the two black dots and the red cross on the first plot above represent that slide’s quantities graphically, the vertical distance ΔE_2 between the red cross and the lower black dot being the ECS value Lord Monckton said the “Bode equation” required.  The student could also see that the method thereby illustrated boils down to bad extrapolation.

And what Lord Monckton called climatology’s “startling error of physics” is represented by the green cross. That “startling error” is what high-school kids all over the world would recognize instead as proper linear extrapolation.

Now that the plot above lays out for all to see that Lord Monckton is the one who made the startling error, he dismisses what he then called “the end of the global warming scam in a single slide” as being three years old.

Why does its age matter? What happened in the past three years to change things?

Did they repeal what Lord Monckton calls the “Bode equation”?  If he no longer stands by his “end of the global warming scam in a single slide,” when did he discover his mistake? At what point did he tell his gushing fanboys they’d been misled?

Lord Monckton should have admitted his error a long time ago. It’s not as though no one had pointed it out. Many had, including me at, for instance, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/03/reporting-the-fraudulent-practices-behind-global-warming-science/#comment-2715071.&nbsp;

Lord Monckton’s past behavior has shown him to be a dishonest interlocutor, so I won’t take the time to correct the rest of his comment. But the fact that he could make so fundamental and clear an error in high-school math but persist in refusing to admit it after it’s repeatedly been pointed out to him tells you all about him you need to know.

May 14, 2021 9:34 am

Mr Born is, as usual, incorrect and his tone is malicious. His post here was a response to a posting by me a few days back. However, he could not fault that posting, so he decided to try to fault a slide from a three-year-old posting instead.

He has known, ever since I pointed out the large error in his earlier whigmaleerie posting, that we are right about the fact that the Sun is shining and that, therefore, it generates a substantial feedback response, which accordingly diminishes the greenhouse-gas feedback response.

He had not realized that his extrapolation voodoo implies a unit feedback response to greenhouse-gas warming that exceeds the unit feedback response to emission temperature by two orders of magnitude.

Even though he knew from my posting of a few days back that we derive the unit feedback response in two distinct ways and find that it varies very little, he was so childishly desperate to find fault where none existed that he ignored that context deliberately and with the characteristic mendacity of the Born Liar.

Still, his nasty style has shown many here that he is acting in the worst of bad faith, and shows no interest in the objective truth.

May 14, 2021 12:24 pm

Note how Lord Monckton has ducked my questions about what had changed to make his slide from three years ago inapplicable. It’s obvious why he won’t admit the error in that slide I pointed out above.  Contrary to what he claims, I have no trouble similarly finding fault with his most-recent post (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/09/why-models-cant-predict-temperature-a-history-of-failure/), because that post’s fourth, “feedback loop” diagram makes the exact same error I pointed out above: basing extrapolation on average rather than local slope.

If you go to that diagram’s lower left, you’ll see that it presents (255+8+24)/(255+8) as the “corrected” extrapolation slope. But that value is the average slope, whereas standard extrapolation would use local slope.  As my last two plots above demonstrate, the local slope, whose use Lord Monckton denounces as a “startling error of physics,” does a much better job. In contending otherwise, Lord Monckton has for over three years been making an obvious error in high-school math.

Again, there’s no point in attempting a reasoned discussion with him, so I’ll probably ignore any further falsehoods he perpetrates in this thread. But here’s a tip: assume as a default position that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I became acquainted with control-systems theory when he was still a schoolboy, and I can assure you that he has been misrepresenting it for years now.

If those suspiciously unnamed controls-system theorists whose authority he invokes believe anything like what he says they do, they’re third-raters at best.  Why doesn’t he let them and their credentials come out from behind the curtain? I’d be happy to take them on.

May 14, 2021 2:49 pm

Mr Born is incapable of understanding the characteristics of a system overwhelmingly dominated by a large input signal and the feedback response thereto. Nor does he grasp his central error, which is to ignore the fact that in such a system the ratios of unit feedback responses provide useful constraints on system variance.

He treats the climate as an abstraction. We do not.

Worse, he continues to attempt to comment on research he has not seen – research that has been with a journal for peer review for six months. If there had been so obvious and so glaring an error in our research as that which he longs for, the paper would have been thrown back, but it has not been.

He has based his posting not on my own recent posting but on a three-year-old slide that indicates ECS is of order 1 K. Our continuing research confirms that result – and the near-invariance of unit feedback response with temperature – by several independent methods, most of which we have not published because they are under peer review.

PaulH
May 12, 2021 1:40 pm

Looks like a resistor blew out in March and April 2021, doesn’t it?

The old radio operators would tune their transmitters for maximum smoke. 😉

dk_
May 12, 2021 3:24 pm

“I simply don’t believe ANY simple electronic circuit is capable of accurately modeling atmospheric behavior.”

I think I understand the attempt as a metaphor, and I’ve seen better engineers than I make the analogy work in whatever it is that we call real life. But mixing digital electronic logic with logical reasoning is full of pitfalls. I think the author uses electronic/physics calculations to prove that his own circuit doesn’t look like Monckton’s description, without realizing that Monckton is stating that the metaphor is false. Electronic models of feeback aren’t applicable to climate modeling. The author proves what I understand to be Monckton’s point.

More at my own level of understanding is that positive feedback causes a system to cycle or amplify signal out of control, and negative feedback can be used to control output. Neither can be described precisely without an exact and thorough understanding of most of the overall system. Metaphors drawn outside of the system from inside the well understood system are most likely to fail because the systems are different. Climate seems to me a poorly understood, quite complex, and complicated system, that exhibits behaviors that are also poorly understood. I can’t get to understanding climate from electronic circuitry metaphors. I also can’t get an understanding of the climate system based on positive feedback from out-of-context calculations of esoteric properties of a trace element.

I can understand that a model test rig might be another software driven computer model, and not a bench device.

But I am just an retired obsolete specialist engineer, a specialist technision of retired equipment, an aspirational curmudgeon, a carbon demonology apostate, and a climate change infidel, what do I know?

Last edited 1 year ago by dk_
May 12, 2021 3:52 pm

“without realizing that Monckton is stating that the metaphor is false. Electronic models of feedback aren’t applicable to climate modeling.”
So who claims the metaphor is true? It seems to be the ultimate straw man. It doesn’t come from climate scientists; it has nothing to do with the way GCMs work.

It was Lord M who actually built a circuit, claiming that it disproved something or other.

dk_
May 12, 2021 8:32 pm

I really thought that the test rig in Monckton’s description was shorthand for a simulated software climate model, and not circuitry. I stipulate that my impression is incorrect.

On the other hand, neither test rig circuit causes an output that reproduces the actual measured temperature data curve, so I still believe that Born proves Monckton’s point. The feedback formulation in climate modeling is based on a misapplication of principles that describe real electronic feedback, and have nothing to do with the climate.

Curmudgeonly yours,
dk_