By Kenneth Haapala, President
The Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
July 28, 2021 (slightly edited)
“It is one thing to impose drastic measures and harsh economic penalties when an environmental problem is clear-cut and severe. It is quite another to do so when the environmental problem is largely hypothetical and not substantiated by careful observations. This is definitely the case with global warming.” – Frederick Seitz, 17th president of the United States National Academy of Sciences
This paper addresses the scientific integrity involved in the fear that human additions to atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause significant global warming. To comprehend how carbon dioxide influences the globe’s temperatures one must comprehend the greenhouse effect, how different greenhouse gases influence the loss of heat to space, how different greenhouse gases influence the effectiveness of other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and how increasing the greenhouse effect influences climate. Further, to comprehend how human emissions of greenhouse gases affect climate requires separating the greenhouse effect from other human impacts on climate such as urbanization. Also, it requires separating human impacts from natural climate change including changing ocean circulation and changing solar influences which we do not fully understand.
This brief paper is divided into six basic sections: One, the importance of the scientific method for understanding the physical world; Two, the changing climate; Three, the importance of the greenhouse effect, including carbon dioxide, for life on this planet; Four, problems with global climate models used to predict dire consequences from increasing greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide; Five, modern physical evidence supporting an alternative analysis of the greenhouse effect; and Six, a suggested policy for going forward with steps the nation needs to take.
Section 1, The Scientific Method: The scientific method is a process of eliminating error in thinking and concepts by constantly subjecting concepts to rigorous testing using all available physical evidence that is appropriate. As physical evidence changes, the concepts must be changed accordingly. The 20th century began without theories of relativity or quantum mechanics, which upset classical physics, and belief that continents did not move. Today, we make use of these concepts and are experiencing constant change in communications, electronics, and similar technologies. Who knows what new developments may bring?
With dramatic change in our knowledge of the physical world, including science and science-based technology, such as nuclear weapons, scientists acquired political influence and responsibility. There should be no issue as to the rigorous application of the scientific method, particularly by scientists employed or sponsored by the US government, who are responsible to the American public. Political beliefs need to be set aside. As Steven Koonin (the Chief Scientist of the Department of Energy under the Obama Administration), who is familiar with complex mathematical physics, mathematical modeling, and the IPCC process, wrote:
“Philip Handler, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, identified the problem in a 1980 editorial that resonates eerily four decades later:
‘With scientists’ unique role comes a special responsibility. We’re the only people who can bring objective science to the discussion, and that is our overriding ethical obligation. Like judges, we’re obligated to put personal feelings aside as we do our job. When we fail to do this, we usurp the public’s right to make informed choices and undermine their confidence in the entire scientific enterprise. There’s nothing at all wrong with scientists as activists, but activism masquerading as The Science is pernicious.’” [Endnote (EN) # 1, p 10, Introduction]
Since the 1970s there has been a dramatic increase in evidence (data) on the greenhouse effect and how increasing greenhouse gases influence the earth’s atmosphere, thus the climate. It is incumbent on government scientists and government sponsored scientists to apply the scientific method and incorporate these new data (evidence) in their reports, so they do not mislead the American public.
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Section 2, The Changing Climate: Atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen is noted for his work in dynamic meteorology, atmospheric tides, ozone photochemistry, quasi-biennial oscillation, and the Iris hypothesis. Lindzen described the generally accepted view of the earth’s climate system as circulation of two fluids (atmosphere and oceans) interacting with each other and the uneven land, made turbulent by the rotation of the globe – exposing the fluids and the land to uneven heating by the sun. (The energy flow from the sun to the earth varies as well.) The entire system involves fluid dynamics which is not fully understood. As such,
“The fact that these circulations carry heat to and from the surface means that the surface itself is never in equilibrium with space. There is never an exact balance between incoming heat from the sun and outgoing radiation generated by the Earth. This is because heat is always being stored in (and released from) the oceans. Therefore, surface temperature is always varying somewhat.” [Punctuation slightly changed.] [EN 2]
After discussing the substantial energy transfers from the phase changes of water, Lindzen brings up the greenhouse effect and states:
“…that the two most important greenhouse substances by far are water vapor and clouds. Clouds are also important reflectors of sunlight.
“The unit for describing energy flows is watts per square meter. The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and reemission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds and other features, and such changes are common….” [Boldface are italics in the original.]
Lindzen concludes the section by discussing “unforced” natural variation that may take 1,000s of years to appear. Thus, climate change involves two parts of physics for which we have no comprehensive theories established by physical evidence: 1) fluid dynamics and 2) the greenhouse effect.
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Section 3, The Greenhouse Effect: The greenhouse effect makes the earth inhabitable. Developing laboratory experiments starting in 1859, John Tyndall recognized that greenhouse gasses warm the atmosphere by slowing heat loss from the surface to space. This slowing of infrared energy to space makes the earth inhabitable, with the principal greenhouse gas being water vapor. Tyndall noted that the influence of some greenhouse gases is not proportional to their concentrations. [EN 3]
Decades of laboratory experiments show that carbon dioxide is an effective greenhouse gas only at extremely low concentrations. Its effectiveness is exhausted at less than one-half of the concentration it was when humans began using fossil fuels. Humans increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide is like adding a thin sheet on top of a thick quilt, it does little or nothing.
In the 1970s, with parts of the world undergoing economic development and carbon dioxide concentrations increasing, surface temperatures indicated the earth shifted from cooling to warming. The National Research Council formed an influential panel which asserted that even though laboratory experiments demonstrate that carbon dioxide has a modest effect on temperature, the slight warming caused by carbon dioxide – less than 3 percent of the total atmospheric warming effect – would be greatly amplified by increases in water vapor. This was a guess, without physical evidence. The guess managed to turn a modest 2-degree Fahrenheit (°F) maximum increase due to a doubling of carbon dioxide alone into a speculative 6 °F total increase. [EN 4]
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and many US scientific bodies have incorporated the guess into unstated assumptions. However, starting in 1979, the US developed a significant body of observations of the atmosphere using satellites. Forty years of measured atmospheric temperature trends, the only comprehensive global temperature dataset existing, confirm a century of laboratory experiments. The effect of increasing carbon dioxide is small, much less than natural variation. At the surface, it is difficult to separate the increase in the greenhouse effect from natural variation.
Further, the speculated amplification from increased water vapor cannot be found. For over 40 years the US has compiled data on the greenhouse effect itself, supporting the atmospheric temperature trends – increasing carbon dioxide will produce a modest warming. The current warming of the atmosphere is 0.25 °F per decade since January 1979, or about 1 °F since January 1979, or about 2.5 °F per century. It is in the middle of the lowest set of estimates of warming currently developed by the IPCC, which assumes little increase in carbon dioxide. This includes all greenhouse gases and natural variation. It is well within the range of natural historic warming. [EN 5]
Based on observations by NOAA at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, each year the maximum atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration occurs in May. Using May measurements grew from 339 parts per million in volume (ppm) in 1979 to 419 ppm in 2021. This is an increase of 80 ppm or 24%. Yet the increase in atmospheric temperatures from all sources was only 1°F. The most appropriate physical evidence does not support the fear that increasing carbon dioxide is causing dangerous warming. [EN 6]
For increasing carbon dioxide to cause surface warming, the atmosphere must warm at a greater rate than the surface, but the opposite is happening. The probable causes of surface warming are urbanization, changes in ocean circulations, and solar variations that we do not fully understand, not greenhouse gases. In general, those using surface data to claim dangerous warming ignore such changes. They use models which have never been validated (using physical evidence from the atmosphere) to speculate 30 to 80 years into the future.
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Section 4, Problems with Global Climate Models: n his book “Unsettled,” Steven Koonin identifies numerous deficiencies in the IPCC process that need to be addressed its finding are used for public policy. Among the more serious deficiencies Koonin discusses are:
A) a confusion in scale between Celsius and Kelvin when estimating the influence of doubling carbon dioxide resulting in significant error, and
B) IPCC models do not track the warming trend in the surface temperature record between 1910 and 1940.
Koonin also points out the complexity of the climate models, which divide the surface and the atmosphere into various hypothetical boxes called cells. Accurate measurements are needed for all the cells, but the measurements don’t exist. Further, the cells are so large that important weather events may be missed. Most important, the IPCC conclusions are political not scientific:
“And—a very key point—the IPCC’s ‘Summaries for Policymakers’ are heavily influenced, if not written, by governments that have interests in promoting particular policies. In short, there are many opportunities to corrupt the objectivity of the process and product.” [Boldface added]
A book by Japanese climatologist and former NASA researcher Mototaka Nakamura shows the deficiencies in Earth’s surface temperatures and considers them unreliable before 1980.
A quasi-global observation system has been operating only for 40 years or so since the advent of artificial satellite observation. Temperature data before then were collected over extremely small (with respect to the Earth’ s entire surface area) areas and, thus, have severe spatial bias. We have an inadequate amount of data to calculate the global mean surface temperature trend for the pre-satellite period. This severe spatial bias in reality casts a major uncertainty over the meaningfulness of “the global mean surface temperature trend” before 1980. [EN 7]
Nakamura also discusses efforts to discredit his views which failed. Unlike Koonin, who accepts global mean surface temperature trends before 1980, Nakamura states these trends are highly questionable. For example, for over 2,000 years changes in land use, such as draining wetlands, clearing forests, irrigation, urbanization, etc., have been recognized to change local climate temperatures. Nakamura states that global surface temperature trends are based on a few, highly localized measurements, and the entire record on which global climate models are based may be highly biased. Indeed, when comparing the results of global climate models to what is occurring in the atmosphere, where the greenhouse effect occurs, the models are highly biased in overestimating the warming effect of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Both authors express major difficulties in the approach used by the UN IPCC and US government in assessing the effect of greenhouse gases.
The atmospheric temperature effects of greenhouse gases are far less than what the models show. Christy, et al., compared four different satellite datasets, four different weather balloon datasets, and four sets of weather reanalyzes with the average of model simulations used in the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC. The researchers found the models grossly overestimate actual atmospheric temperature trends and that the disparity is increasing. Global climate models may be useful teaching tools, but they are not useful for government policy on greenhouse gases. [EN 8]
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Using the HITRAN database, AMO authorities W. A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer have estimated the influence of water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone, nitrous oxide, and methane in a cloud free atmosphere to increase global temperatures. Under current atmospheric conditions, increasing water vapor and carbon dioxide have a minimal effect on temperatures. At last, we have calculations that agree with measurements of what is occurring in the atmosphere. [EN 10]
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Section 6, Going Forward: Scientific integrity requires that the Biden Administration employ the most rigorous application of the scientific method.
Since there is no current physical evidence of dangerous global warming from greenhouse gases or their effects, and no physical evidence of a climate crisis, the administration should use atmospheric temperature trends and the MODTRAN and HITRAN databases to estimate the effects of increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Further, the government should continue to
- Monitor atmospheric temperatures as has been done for 40 years and
- Monitor outgoing electromagnetic radiation as being done by the CERES project.
Above all, the Biden Administration should inform the public that there is no current threat, and that it is using the best science possible to monitor the situation to assure that a threat is not developing.
Sincerely yours,
Kenneth Haapala, President
The Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
P.O Box 1126
Springfield, VA 22151,
Ken@SEPP.org, 703-978-6025
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1. Steven E. Koonin, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, BenBella Books, Inc, 2021 Kindle Edition,
2. Global Warming for the Two Cultures
By Richard Lindzen, GWPF, October 2018
3. Heat, a Mode of Motion
By John Tyndall, (p. 359, fifth edition, 1875)
https://www.amazon.com/Heat-Mode-Motion-Classic-Reprint/dp/1332792758 (later edition)
4. Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate
By Jule G. Charney, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chairman, et al. to the:
Climate Research Board, Assembly of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, National Research Council, National Academy of Science, 1979
5. UAH Global Temperature Update for June 2021: -0.01 deg. C
By Roy Spencer, His Blog, July 2, 2021
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2021/07/uah-global-temperature-update-for-june-2021-0-01-deg-c/
Link to: Global Temperature Report
Earth System Science Center, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, June 2021
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2021/07/uah-global-temperature-update-for-june-2021-0-01-deg-c/
6. NOAA, Global Monitoring Laboratory
Mauna Loa, Hawaii, Data Accessed July 26, 2021
7. Confessions of a climate scientist: The global warming hypothesis is an unproven hypothesis
By Motokaka Nakamura, Kindle Edition, October 2019
8. Examination of space-based bulk atmospheric temperatures used in climate research
By John R. Christy, Roy W. Spencer, William D. Braswell & Robert Junod, International Journal of Remote Sensing, March 8, 2018.
9, The HITRAN Database
By Iouli E. Gordon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Atomic and Molecular Physics Division, Accessed July 12, 2019
10. Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases
By W. A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics, posted June 4, 2020
Link to prepublication version: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.03098.pdf
11. Verification, Validation, and Predictive Capability in Computational Engineering and Physics
By William L. Oberkampf and Timothy G. Trucano, Sandia National Laboratories and Charles Hirsch, Department of Fluid Mechanics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Feb 2003
12. One More Mission, The Right Climate Stuff Team
From the article: “At the surface, it is difficult to separate the increase in the greenhouse effect from natural variation.”
We are currently not able to separate the increase in the greenhouse effect from natural variation, so describing it as “difficult” is inaccurate in that it implies that this is being done, although difficult. It is not being done. Unless you consider a lot of guessing as distinguishing the difference.
Good comment, Tom. The “natural variation” is never mentioned by the CAGW crowd, and the pre-human activity natural variation is indicated by 50 meters higher and 150 meters lower sea level, due to H2O being in either liquid or solid state. Dust Bowl? Never mind.
I copied the remark for later use
I’ll re-use that quote:”At the surface, it is difficult to separate the increase in the greenhouse effect from natural variation.”
What makes it difficult to separate:
More seriously than a Really Serious Thing:
………………..What. Is. The. Difficulty. There………………….
edit to PS
Or especially and from the article, why do oceans have A Monopoly on storing and releasing heat?
compare specific heat of various materials
Thinking more about the report by Kenneth Haapala and the comment by Tom Abbott, I am fairly certain none of us has ever read a “scientific” CAGW article that includes the phrase “we need to understand natural variation in order to detect an anomaly signal in order to advance a scientific theory about Global Warming/climate change/etc”.
Trenberth described this truth as a travesty in “private” email communications.
Guessing, inferential logic, handmade tales, green deals, and brown matter to fill in the missing links.
Tom it is and has been done…
chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/http://static.berkeleyearth.org/pdf/annual-with-forcing.pdf
Your graphic just begs the question of CO2 forcing, Simon. And the 95% confidence intervals include no systematic measurement error.
Your graphic is physically meaningless. It’s no demonstration of anything except ignorance on your part and incompetence on theirs.
“Your graphic is physically meaningless. It’s no demonstration of anything except ignorance on your part and incompetence on theirs.”
I could find any number graphs that would lead to the same conclusion. None so blind….
Simon, “I could find any number graphs that would lead to the same conclusion.”
Exactly right, Simon. That would be every global air temperature graph produced by Berkeley Earth, HadCRU/UKMet or NASA GISS.
None of them include physically valid uncertainty bars. In their case, the problem is incompetence over ignorance.
You’ll find some physical validity here (pdf) and here.
None so blind, Simon, as the willfully ignorant.
Just such a crazy thing that those who actually study for years, then graduate and are employed in their fields relative to climate science are guzumpted by you an enthusiastic amateur. Who’d a thunk?.
Those who have a case, make it. Those who do not, derogate. The latter is you, Simon.
Einstein, on the other hand said, “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
It is fantasy. The thermal balance on Earth is controlled by temperature limited processes in the oceans.
Oceans water never gets cooler than 271K due to the formation of sea ice or warmer than 305K and the latter is fleeting. The annual maximum at any open water location is 303K.
Atmospheric water is both a cooling and warming agent that pivots about a water column of 45mm. More atmospheric water than 45mm results in cyclic cloudburst and increasing cloud persistence as the water approaches the limit of 70mm.
Below 45mm TPW the water is a surface warming agent as it reduces transmission of OLR more than it blocks sunlight.
So how can any addition of a trace gas alter the thermal balance when the phase changes of water at the surface and in the atmosphere regulate to physically constrained temperature.
The “Greenhouse Effect” exists only as an unphysical construct and is embodied in the fantasy that are climate models.
Bravo!
But is anyone in power actually listening?
No, they’re all in on the scam.
Their continuing livelihoods depend on being in step.
Back during the Seventies, climateers were screaming we were heading toward a new Ice Age. I don’t know what they’re yelling about now, we are making GREAT progress in protecting Earth against that Ice Age we were warned about.
From the article: “For over 40 years the US has compiled data on the greenhouse effect itself, supporting the atmospheric temperature trends – increasing carbon dioxide will produce a modest warming.”
There is no evidence that the last 40 years of warming was due to CO2 increases.
The same amount of warming, and the same high temperatures were reached in the 1910 to 1940 era as we have today, yet that era had much less CO2 in the atmosphere than is in the atmosphere today. This fact should support the claim that CO2 has little effect on the Earth’s temperatures.
From the article: “Based on observations by NOAA at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, each year the maximum atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration occurs in May. Using May measurements grew from 339 parts per million in volume (ppm) in 1979 to 419 ppm in 2021. This is an increase of 80 ppm or 24%. Yet the increase in atmospheric temperatures from all sources was only 1°F. The most appropriate physical evidence does not support the fear that increasing carbon dioxide is causing dangerous warming. [EN 6]”
There is no evidence CO2 is causing any of this warming. Feedbacks may negate all of CO2 warming.
CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere increased steadily from the 1940’s to the 1980’s, yet the temperatures cooled by 2.0C during that period. If you just study that period of time, one would have to say CO2 caused no warming during that time, going by the logic used above.
Agreed. Reverse correlation pretty much rules out causation, and the 40s – 80s cooling in the face of rising CO2, along with repeated episodes of reverse correlation in the ice core reconstructions, should lead anyone capable of logical thought to conclude that CO2 doesn’t drive temperature, not even a little bit, once the feedbacks are taken into account.
According to a NOAA “scientist” I corresponded with in 1999, it was the aerosols wot dun it.
I would be hesitant to declare that cooling means CO2 doesn’t warm the atmosphere. To me, a better conclusion is that natural variation can be larger than the effects from CO2. This also applies when temperatures rise. In other words, natural variation can be a substantial cause of both cooling and warming. It is impossible to find GCM’s that break this down. To the modelers, there is only one reason for warming.
“I would be hesitant to declare that cooling means CO2 doesn’t warm the atmosphere. To me, a better conclusion is that natural variation can be larger than the effects from CO2.”
I agree with you, I do think CO2 causes initial warming, but what comes after that might be a negative feedback such as cloud formation that could neutralize the CO2 warmth. It was Mueller who said a two-percent increase in cloudiness would offset all CO2-caused warming.
If CO2 adds any net warmth to the atmosphere its hard to tell considering recent history. That’s all I’m saying.
From the article: “B) IPCC models do not track the warming trend in the surface temperature record between 1910 and 1940.”
The reason they ignore the Early Twentieth Century warming is because it destroys their Human-caused Climate Change narrative.
If it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today, and it was, then the alarmists cannot claim that the Earth is experiencing unprecedented warming because of CO2, because the Earth is *not* experiencing unprecedented warming.
So the alarmists use their computers to cool the 1930’s into insignificance, to prevent their CO2 theory from blowing up.
Every unmodified, regional surface temperature chart from around the world shows it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today.
The only temperature chart that does not show this is the bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick global “temperature” chart, which was created in a computer in order to promote the Human-caused Climate Change scam.
And that is what the alarmist go by, while completely ignoring the regional charts because the regional charts tell a completely different story, which is that CO2 is a minor player in the Earth’s atmosphere and we don’t need to regulate it or fear it.
hypothetical and not substantiated
In other words, imaginary…
Which (in the UK and EU) is where the tyranny of the precautionary principle kicks in. That shapes policymaking.
Lets hope the US is immune to that.
Let’s hope so, but the sad reality is it’s not, in particular if the Dimbulbcrats are in charge.
“Let’s hope the US is immune to that.”
Good luck with that thought, what we are up against is an administration that says that climate change is an existential threat: You Tube
U.S. voters balk when it comes to imposing a CO2 tax. I expect the same when it comes time for the Senate to vote on tax increases to fund the watermelon dreams.
I think there are about 17 Republicans poised to vote in favor of the $1.9 Trillion Infrastructure bill, a 2,700 page bill with “poison Democrat pills” strewn throughout it.
People whose U.S. Senators are among those 17 Republicans should let their Senators know what they think about helping the Democrats destroy the United States by voting for this “wolf in sheep’s clothing” bill.
We may have to vote 17 Republican U.S. Senators out of office next time and replace them with people who care about the people of the United States. A big job, but not impossible.
What’s Trump got to say about this? Trump is blasting the Republicans who are favoring this bill. These Senator’s constituents should be blistering their ears with their disapproval.
I would do the same to my U.S. Senators, but I don’t have to because they aren’t voting for this Democrat “Harmful to the Nation” Trick.
From the article: “A quasi-global observation system has been operating only for 40 years or so since the advent of artificial satellite observation. Temperature data before then were collected over extremely small (with respect to the Earth’ s entire surface area) areas and, thus, have severe spatial bias.”
Yes, but, the temperature data that was collected spans the entire globe and all of that temperature data, which was collected by human beings writing it down day after day, all show it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today.
You can’t discount temperature readings just because they don’t cover every square mile of the Earth’s surface. If all the temperature data, from around the world, shows the same temperature profile, then that *is* the temperature profile of the Earth, and that profile shows it was just as warm in the recent past as it is today and it shows CO2 is a minor player in determining the Earth’s temperature.
All the old temperature charts from around the world show the same temperature profile and should not be dismissed just because other areas of the world were not covered at that time.
Agree to an extent, but also agree that the temperature data, scientifically speaking, is crap in terms of measuring minuscule changes over time. The “adjustments” turn it from crap data into something that isn’t even data any more, it’s glorified guesswork.
When the measurement uncertainty is at least =/- 0.5 degrees C, it is somewhat difficult to accept that counting variations in intermediate results is indicative of anything much.
From the article: “Above all, the Biden Administration should inform the public that there is no current threat, and that it is using the best science possible to monitor the situation to assure that a threat is not developing.”
That’s not going to happen.
Comedian Bill Maher once said that Republicans used terrorism to appeal to people’s “lizard brain,” but meanwhile conveniently overlooks the fact that Democrats do the same thing – their boogeyman of choice is “climate change.”
The difference being, there are actually terrorists that do pose an actual threat; “climate change” as pimped by the Democrats (i.e., human-induced and catastophic unless we “do” what they demand) does not exist.
Global Warming did not bring down the Twin Towers.
Agreed. The government has been lying for 30 years, why would the stop now when they have the power to shove the green new deal down everyone’s throat.
COVID measures were a dry run to see just how gullible and compliant the majority of Americans were. They failed the test and now full steam ahead on dementia Joe’s railroad to economic collapse.
It looks like we might have to impeach Joe Biden in 2023.
His duty is to enforce U.S. laws and he is not doing it, to the great detriment of the people of the United States.
Hmmm…. I was thinking of getting a t-shirt or a sweatshirt printed with the following legend”
No CO2 = No plant life = lifeless planet
But while rational people might “get it”, the ecohippies won’t, so….
Pointing out the obvious in biology doesn’t seem to work on them.
Sara, It’s now in their social DNA. Ecohippies and their ilk will, no matter what, continue to scream…”FEAR the carbon!”
Well, see, you have to pity them because if we get into the “below normal” temperatures range indicated by Dr. W. Soon, they’re gonna have a real problem with food prices and heating outages and electric outages – you know, the stuff they just take for granted. Some of them really do think that electricity just comes out of a wall outlet, with no actual source ever crossing their minds.
Pity them. (That “thunk” you heard is me, falling off my chair, laughing.)
Lamarckianism is real science!
They don’t need your stinkin facts! Heretic! Burn the witch! 😇
You’re too cute for words!!!
Sara,
Would you wear a t-shirt saying
“100% CO2 = No oxygen = lifeless planet”
Ummmm….. CO2 is ONE molecule of CARBON plus TWO molecules of OXYGEN.
Ergo, “no oxygen” is — well, have you REALLY thought this through????
All the free oxygen (O2) in our atmosphere was at one time bound to carbon as carbon dioxide (CO2). The source of the O2 is CO2. Without CO2 and photosynthesis there would be no O2 to breathe.
IW, you’re a smart guy. You know this fact to be true. Your T-shirt is braindead and you know it.
What’s your drift, chum? You know that CO2 is the fundamental building block of all life. Yet you wish to scare people into fearing CO2 is some kind of poison, about to choke off all the O2, which you know is wildly false. Why? What’s in that dumb lie for you?
What motivates your trollishness? Are you paid? If so, your funder is getting squat for his money. Are you out for a laugh? Nobody is laughing. I don’t get you. Please clarify your motives.
Thank you for this excellent summation of where we are understanding climate change wise Dr. Haapala. Unfortunately there is a gang in charge of much of the developed world who wish to “smash capitalism” and ironically determined to spend as much of our money as possible to change the weather thus enriching many of their followers and achieving nothing beyond that.
I have been an active member of this community since before Copenhagen and it is depressing to realise just how little progress has been made in further understanding whether mankind has anything beyond a very minor role in the climate. It might be because the bulk of the contributions from “our” side are scientific while “theirs” are largely political.
They make bank while we simply try and add to what we know.
“…determined to spend as much of our money as possible to change the weather…”
OK, Keitho, since the atmosphere mostly obeys the laws of chaos, and pays no attention to what Hoomans want, please, I beg you, tell me just HOW these demented dodos are going to change the weather.
I mean, really, they can’t even do their own laundry or decide what to wear yesterday, so how can they change something over which they have control in the first place?
To coin a phrase, it’s not the weather that counts it’s who counts (or reports) the weather. “Hottest year ever!!!” when it’s by 2/100ths of a degree?
“Humans increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide is like adding a thin sheet on top of a thick quilt, it does little or nothing.”
Aww.. the direct CO2-Effect is well understood and amount to about 1°C global warming for a doubling from 280 to 560ppm in the atmosphere.
Now you can (and do) argue, that there is little evidence for those strong positive feedbacks the models use and also that we might not ever reach 560ppm, but it is more that nothing. It seems to me that it amounts to about half the warming we saw in the last 150 years
(that is of course before any feedback, in a different thread someone mentioned the possibility of strong negative feedbacks to an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, which seems likely…. given that we did not see a runaway effect in the past, there must be negative feedbacks)
Burning ALL the fossils fuels available will not get us to 560ppm, sadly; as food crops like around 1000ppm.
Actual Backradiation measurements show the effect of CO2 is reduced when surrounded by water vapor in the actual atmosphere.
Winter (W/m2)
H2O About 120
CO2. About. 30
Summer
H2O. Around 200-220
CO2. 10
note that even in Winter the H2O was 4x the CO2.
in summer the H2O value roughly doubled, and the CO2 went DOWN when surrounded by more water vapor.
These reading were taken in 2005 or 2006 near Toronto, Canada.
cant find the link, but authors were Evans and Pulcring (? I think?) with University of Toronto. Again from memory.
Assuming no negative feedbacks, emphasis on assuming.
Good luck with this, or any administration doing what it should do. Government in general and the Democrat dynamic especially, only exists in force when crisis is enhanced or fabricated in its entirety. The best crisis is one for which the claim alone is its own evidence and no refutation is possible since the danger is far removed in time and any observation can be invoked to reinforce it.
O/T as far as climate science is concerned… but indicative of how they go about their business – a lot of information ..
It is quite long – but I would say it will repay the time.
The involvement of federal science in the coronavirus mess. Quite a few names in there beyond the familiar ones that obviously want to stay obscure…
https://archive.ph/jB90e
If you cannot set your biases to the side and actually use the scientific method, then you are NOT a scientist. I really wish we would stop referring to media-philic alarmists as scientists.
I keep thinking it is only a matter of time before the average people realize they are being mislead, but the alarmists are so good at spinning the truth, fabricating (or just corrupting) the data, and inventing new fears to play upon. I have definitely underestimated the cunning of these charlatans.
I don’t think it is that they are so good at spinning the truth, it’s just that they don’t have any competition for the Public Ear.
The Megaphone of Society, the News Media, constantly hypes the crisis atmosphere around CO2 because it helps the Left gain political power. This is all most people hear.
There is no Megaphone to offset the climate change distortions.
Scientific integrity requires that the Biden Administration employ the most rigorous application of the scientific method
Not a chance in hell of the ‘follow the science’ crowd doing that.
Thank you for an excellent summary, one of the best I’ve read yet. One thing that was not mentioned here or elsewhere is the lack of a link of current extreme weather events and the global temperature trends at the time of the event. I have seen several statements about recent events of the last month or so. But these events occurred during an extended global cool phase, and often where local temperatures have been depressed.. Take the recent floods in Germany following a very cool European spring and early summer. Rapidly changing temperatures cause destructive weather for the most part, not slowly rising averages. Reports of CC causing the recent rash of extreme weather events is just opportunism run amok.
It’s not only about the questions you do ask but the ones they choose not to ask-
Evidence suggests timeline of COVID outbreak ‘much earlier’ than thought (msn.com)
Which means the Chicoms knew for certain that the Wuhan virus was very infectious and fatal, long before January 2020, when they were still claiming the virus could not be transmitted human-to-human. They were flat-out lying to the world. And they deliberately allowed the virus to escape China and infect the world by insisting that there be no travel restrictions on China.
What the heck is “federal scientific integrity”? Isn’t that something similar to “unobtainium” . . . you know, something that can be talked about but is not know to currently exist anywhere in the universe 😉
I do understand, however, that it may have existed in the long-ago past.
Oh, the disparity, the incongruity, the diversity, inequity, and exclusion, and unsustainable ethical fluidity.
If I have leaned anything over the last 69 yrs the first thing I want to know about any new paper is “who funded it?”
Anything touch by fedgov is instantly suspect.
I saw a preview of the current “thinking” way back in 1984. There were some local homeowners who were trying to make Wyoming look like Kentucky by watering their county property heavily from wells. The wells were surging, running dry. Naturally these people blamed their neighbors for using too much water. It was a preposterous claim as there was no way the drawdown cones could possibly intersect. Nonetheless the dispute got the state engineers notice, who began thinking about a ban on new drilling in the county. I am sure they also thought about making a water district where they would have power to set limits on usage, but I don’t recall for sure.
At the big public meeting the state engineer showed a plot of their “modeling”, using a USGS program that they didn’t understand the uncertainties of (yes, Pat Frank, this same issue shows up time and again) and then showed the only three groundwater level monitors of pertinence to the issue, all of which amazing showed groundwater level rising, not falling. I pointed out that the data were in direct opposition to their claims, and perhaps a better approach would be to forego the moritorium and do a bit better observational work. No, the engineer’s office had decided on a strategy, and nothing was going to change their minds. It was my first brush personally with bureacratic/authoritarian thinking.
The actual problem was the unusually impermeable local rock below these homeowners’ properties. The over-waterers were causing their own deep drawdown cones and uncovering their submersible pumps. Local driller knew about this problem, and all testified at the meeting — no matter, people with direct experience and contrary data are of no interest.
In every bureaucracy once the higherups articulated a preference all reason went out the window. We don’t need no steeekin’ facts.
The handling of the Chinese Disease proves there is no integrity in any department of the Federal Government, nor is there any integrity in any employee, elected,appointed or hired anywhere in the United States Government. They are all self-serving enemies of the people of America and the entire human race. The climate hoax is simply a part&parcel of their lack of integrity. Or morals.
Fear outweighs integrity. Fear of losing the wages and benefits which Federal employees enjoy restrains lower levels. I am confident that the upper levels operate just like organized crime. There is a lack if ethic accompanied by immorality at the upper levels and most have committted some felony to gain their status. Fear of exposure keeps them in fear.
One other thing. I truly believe the fear of their socialite wives keep many men in line.
Fear versus facts. That is how the political left operates.
“Further, the speculated amplification from increased water vapor cannot be found”
That may be because it doesn’t exist:
(Data generated from HITRAN using MERRA2 atmospheric composition 2020/01/08)
In Section 4… “A) a confusion in scale between Celsius and Kelvin when estimating the influence of doubling carbon dioxide resulting in significant error, and…
There was no explanation for this statement so now I am curious. I had always thought that any temperature expressed in any scale would be equal, such a 0C is the same as 32F. Why does Kelvin introduce significant error?
Could someone with knowledge on this further elaborate?
But 0 C is not 0 F. Mislabeling temperature scales will lead to “confusion” followed by “error.”
The size of degree C and K are indeed the same. However in making engineering and physics calculations always use K. ( for instance in the Stephan-Boltzmann).
the other implication being if something goes from 10 to 20 C, it looks like it doubled, but on the K scale it went from 273+10=283, versus 273+20=293. Which is an increase of roughly 3.5% (293/283).
so any energy calculation derived from temperature would change proportionally to the values in K. Possibly linearly, possibly T^4.
T^4 is a really big error when dealing with radiation. 0C^4 = 0. Meanwhile 0C = 273K and 273^4 is considerably different.
Habitable?
G’Day Mr.,
Habitable?
The old question was for a tanker truck loaded with gasoline. Should the signs read “Inflammable” or “Flammable”?
Then again, it’s easier to say ‘uninhabitable’ than ‘unhabitable’. I guess common usage wins again. (My ‘milk’ language was Australian ‘English’.)
Section 4, Problems with Global Climate Models: They have no predictive value.
You left that bit out, Ken.
Nicely done.
I am not alone in believing historic temperature records prior to 1980 are completely worthless.
I vehemently disagree. Almost by definition an “activist” can’t be trusted to be impartial. A scientist can have political views but that’s far from being an activist!
The original government “scientists” were the educated clergy of the monarchies when less than 10% of the peasants could read. These “scientists” provided the science of the king’s right to rule by divine providence. In this fashion they got to share in the plunder of the peasants and the crown avoided the messy sue of the sword convincing them to give up their freedom and property voluntarily. Government science today is little different.
Why do you call such people “scientists”?
Science, in the modern sense of the word, was initiated and developed by Christian intellectuals . . and the same went on to dominated the endeavor right on into to fairly recent times (about two thirds of all Nobel prizes for Physics, Chemistry and Medicine were awarded to scientists who self identified as Christians, for instance.) . .
So, I suspect you might be getting things a bit mixed up . .