March 3rd, 2022 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
(Note: I apologize for not posting much in the last several months, as I have been dealing with family health issues. Hopefully, things will gradually be returning to normal soon. I also want to thank those who have stepped up and contributed to keeping this website going since Google has demonetized it…thank you!)
As I continue to see all of the crazy proclamations of how human-caused climate change is disrupting lives around the world (e.g., the Feb. 28 release of the IPCC report from Working Group 2, [Pielke Jr. analysis here]), I can’t help but return to the main reason why human causation for recent warming has not been convincingly established. I have discussed this before, but it is worth repeating.
As a preface, I will admit, given the lack of evidence to the contrary, I still provisionally side with the view that warming has been mostly human-caused (and this says nothing about whether the level of human-caused warming is in any way alarming).
But here’s why human causation is mostly a statement of faith…
ALL temperature change in any system is due to an imbalance between the rates of energy gain and energy lost. In the case of the climate system, it is believed the Earth each year absorbs a global average of about 240 Watts per sq. meter of solar energy, and emits about the same amount of infrared energy back to outer space.
If we are to believe the last ~15 years of Argo float measurements of the ocean (to 2000 m depth), there has been a slight warming equivalent to an imbalance of 1 Watt per sq. meter, suggesting a very slight imbalance in those energy flows.
One watt per sq. meter.
That tiny imbalance can be compared to the 5 to 10 Watt per sq. meter uncertainty in the ~240 Watt per sq. meter average flows in and out of the climate system. We do not know those flows that accurately. Our satellite measurement systems do not have that level of absolute accuracy.
Global energy balance diagrams you have seen have the numbers massaged based upon the assumption all of the imbalance is due to humans.
I repeat: NONE of the natural, global-average energy flows in the climate system are known to better than about 5-10 Watts per sq. meter…compared to the ocean warming-based imbalance of 1 Watt per sq. meter.
What this means is that recent warming could be mostly natural…and we would never know it.
But, climate scientists simply assume that the climate system has been in perfect, long-term harmonious balance, if not for humans. This is a pervasive, quasi-religious assumption of the Earth science community for as long as I can remember.
But this position is largely an anthropocentric statement of faith.
That doesn’t make it wrong. It’s just…uncertain.
Unfortunately, that uncertainty is never conveyed to the public or to policymakers.
The Null Hypothesis states that the warmup since the LIA, which has fluctuated wildly is primarily natural. Whatever man’s contribution to it has been, it is small, and entirely inconsequential. All else is mere hand-waving.
Even the Warmunists know this, having moved on to an even more outrageous claim: that our CO2, aka “carbon” is now causing “extreme weather”.
The more they lie…
Dr Spencer, humanity is feeding the oceans with sewage, with nitrate, phosphate and silica run-off from farming, we are smoothing the surface with oil spills, run-off and surfactants. The ecosystem must be changing and there is no reason that the albedo remains the same. See SeaWifs data for an out of date idea of how much light oil we are letting run to the sea.
Perhaps the data exists about how phytoplankton populations change when overfed — my bet is that the silica will benefit the oleaginous plankters most, and we should see massive blooms together with an anomalously large warming signal where the pollution is particularly heavy. See Lake Michigan, Superior, Tanganyika, and, the prime examples, the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Dying diatoms release lipids which are particularly effective.
More smooth, fewer waves, fewer CCNs, less evaporation. Etc.
I’ve seen a smooth from abeam Porto to a couple of hundred miles short of Madeira, thousands of square miles. Picture available of a little bit of it.
To check out this idea would cost a few million dollars. If surface pollution contributes to AGW then quantifying its effects could save much more — the more other things warm the planet the less urgent ids the pursuit of Net Zero.
JF
“given the lack of evidence to the contrary, I still provisionally side with the view that warming has been mostly human-caused”
That point of view is unworthy of a scientist. You ought to assume the null hypothesis.
As I see it, Roy thinks there is a ‘greenhouse gas effect‘ in which ONLY radiatively active gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapour warm the surface, on average, +33C above the temperature it would otherwise be.
What evidence is there for this idea? What experiments and observations, done with modern equipment, demonstrate it? There’s no evidence at all for a greenhouse gas effect. There may be some evidence for an atmospheric warming effect, but that is an entirely different thing which depends on all gases in the atmosphere.
Not only that,
Since Obama, 2008, funding of physical climate sciences quadrupled to about $4 billion per year. But, despite getting nearly all the money, alarmists can’t do basic experiments / observations to show their previous greenhouse gas effect (GHGE)! That’s because the GHGE is insignificant, and the models they use to project it are scientific fraud. Good observations / experiments will falsify their models.
“the ocean warming-based imbalance of 1 Watt per sq. meter“
What kind of watts are causing the imbalance? Do they come from the sun or “back-radiation”. Mentioning radiative forcing without telling us what kind of radiation it is, ain’t scientific. Warmists must show warming due to back-radiation. That’s what their models project. Yet they mostly show fake warming caused by their own temperature data manipulations – AKA homogenization. Then, they attribute it to people.
The sheer amount of bad science they do and bad faith they show has convinced me they’re fraudsters.
That CO2 levels have risen is a matter of fact.
That the CO2 in question is of human origin is a matter of fact
That surface temperatures have risen is a matter of fact.
Science clearly shows a link between more CO2 and rising temperatures – inescapable basic physics.
We don’t need models to show us there has been climate change.
That some Co2 is of human origin is fact, nothing else. That surface temps have risen is immaterial. What link can you show ?
The climate in my region is still the same as it was in 1964 when I moved there,
That is a FACT!
The sad thing is that griff actually believes that if CO2 rises and temperatures increase, this proves that CO2 caused the increase.
Then again, griff believes, not thinks.
Science clearly shows a link between more CO2 and rising temperatures
The toss of a coin would be just as good. At any time and place on earth temperatures are either rising or falling on fractal timescales.
As we already saw in the 1970’s, still visible through all the airbrushing, if we happen to be in a cooling phase the “science” would firmly attribute that to us also.
Looks like we’re condemned to being responsible for all weather/climate from now on.
Yes it does, just not in the way you think it does on “climate” timescales (30 years or longer).
Thank you for mentioning the issue with the uncertainty of the numbers – IMO that is a huge problem with arguing that we know enough, based on models, to act in the drastic manner as suggested by e.g., the net zero concept. What I find equally disturbing is the argument that the collective precision of climate models is somehow an indication of their accuracy. As any decent scientist knows, the two are not the same.
And the Marxism underlying most climate catastrophists is so contradictory and disproven that it can only be accepted on faith.
Nobody has yet shown where my empirical approach is wrong, they just ignore evidence based approaches, perhaps because they can only think in models? Too real?
Here I go again.
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I simply take the natural proxy record and see how different the current rise from the LIA is from that of the MWP and RWP, both of which the IPCC denies in order to attribute all change to AGW.
It is immediately clear that there is no significant anomaly in this current warming as compared with the MWP and RWP, so nothing to attribute to humans/co2/eating bambi. 2 deg range, 0.7 deg pc rate, when on the move, up or down, and 1Ka period. Simples. They must be different in fact, as there are at least three dominant convolved frequencies so they will interfere variably.
I don’t deny some effect on the lapse rate from increased radiative scattering, but suggest it is in fact mostly negated by the natural control of the Roy Spencer global 2.6W/m^2 natural feedback of the planetary control system. The planet is closely controlled by the oceanic feedback, not an open loop system. Tipping points for small effects are obvious bunk, modellers’ delusions.
Not sure how you made the 2.6w/m^2 but John believes it, so I will. For others, it reflects the change in the 104W/m^2 of evaporative and convective cooling and the consequential 50W/m^2 low level cloud albedo. Simple, powerful. There are other effects. These two are the Daddies.
Better to prefer the observation of nature to the predictions of modellers?
Because observation is the test of theory, not vice versa.
Models are not proven, or provable, science. Arguing about them is like arguing about the reality of a fairy tale or a Hollywood movie. They are not real, so debate is pointless.
What do the observations say? Nothing to see here. QED. Kiss?