Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 12 February 2023
NOTE: I wrote the original two-part series nearly five years ago now. This reprise has been prompted by a conversation with a colleague who’s only understanding of Climate Change or Global Warming has been gleaned from NPR/CNN/PBS and Main Stream Media. I thought to update this essay to see if I would have the same opinions today as I did five years ago. Updated text will be in this lighter blue color. Changed or added images will be clearly labelled.
Note: Please read Part 1 before reading this — this is a continuation of that essay (a rather long continuation….the reprise version is long too, 4000 words but has a lot of graphs)
The last point I made in Part 1 of this essay was this:
The IPCC in their synthesis report for policy makers says that human emissions of greenhouse gases [“atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide”] and “other anthropogenic drivers,” are “extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
The IPCC AR6 Summary for Policy Makers uses this wording:
“It is very likely that well-mixed GHGs were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979…” AR6 SPM A.1.3
It is notable that they no longer say “dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century” but rather, as I stated many times in comments to the Reprise of Part 1, 20th century warming doesn’t really get going until 1978/79 or so – not 1950 as many still claim.
So far, I agree with all the facts [the facts being basically: Global Warming is happening and Human activity causes [some of] it.] but don’t agree with the assertion that CO2 and other anthropogenic emissions are “the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” — I agree neither with the attribution or the effect size.
Nor do I agree that “It is very likely that well-mixed GHGs were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979…” AR6 SPM A.1.3
Why? For the simple reason that real scientific evidence for this view is very weak. The IPCC in AR5 SPM offers only this:
“The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.” — AR5 SPM 1.1
The new IPCC AR6 now states instead: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.” And GHG emission are no longer singled out – but rather reduced to a claim of: ”human influence”. Human influence includes land uses changes such as agriculture, road construction, and deforestation, Urban Heat Island, all anthropogenic emissions and pollutants and various anthropogenic Particulate Matter.
That’s the sum total of the evidence, though the IPCC AR5 is hundreds of pages in four booklets, they are just additional verbiage on these basic points.
Readers will have heard the line “multiple lines of evidence” attached to the attribution of anthropogenic causes. However, that phrase is used only once in AR5 SPM as “Multiple lines of evidence indicate a strong, consistent, almost linear relationship between cumulative CO2 emissions and projected global temperature change to the year 2100….” I’m sure I don’t need to point out that there is never ever evidence about the future…..They do not claim in the Summary for Policy Makers that there are multiple lines of evidence for the attribution statement that apply to the past-to-present.
AR6 SPM, however, uses the phrase nine times, such as “Physical climate information at global, regional and local scales is developed from multiple lines of evidence, including observational products, climate model outputs and tailored diagnostics.”
That it has warmed is not in question, we covered this in Part 1. As for sea level, not yet touched on, we will look first at typical visuals offered, one from the IPCC AR5 SPM and then turn to the well-accepted Grinstead et al. 2009 paper: “Reconstructing sea level from paleo and projected temperatures 200 to 2100AD” which serves up the visual depiction on the left, IPCC on the right:
On the left is from Grinstead 2009 starting in 1850, and on the left, from the IPCC’s AR5, incongruously starting abruptly in 1900 (I have not modified that image — that is how it is printed).
However, sea level does not begin is inexorable rise 1850-1900, the beginning of the Modern Industrial Era as depicted in so many of the sea level graphs like those offered above. To see this we need to take a closer, deeper look at the data available in the literature:
Ignoring the projections of future sea level rise, let’s just look to see when sea levels started rising in these two “Modelled past sea level” reconstructions. The “Thick black line: reconstructed GSL [Global Sea Level] (Jevrejeva et al., 2006) extended to 1700 using Amsterdam sea level (van Veen, 1945).” All three data sets agree: Jones and Mann (2004), Moberg et al. (2005) and Jevrejeva et al. 2006. Sea level bottoms out at the depth of the Little Ice Age around 1650-1700 and begins a rise that continues to the present. PSMSL Reconsructions page has plenty of data sources.
That sea level has risen is not in question. The primary factor of both Temperature and Sea Level is that they have both been rising much longer than the IPCC’s posited cause — rising greenhouse gases — has existed. Let me put both temperature and sea level side-by-side:
Loehle’s temperature reconstruction on the left, a segment from Moberg’s 2005 sea level reconstruction from Grinstead 2009, and from the IPCC’s AR5, Chapter 13 on the right. Sea level bottoms out at a millennial low around 1650-1800. That’s 200-300 years of temperature and sea level rise — neither starts in 1850, 1880, 1890, or 1900.
So far, I have freely agreed that the Earth’s climate has warmed, that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen, and that sea level has risen. I will even let the Consensus have “the oceans have warmed” — even though I have extreme doubts that we have any real idea of the past temperatures of “the oceans”.
[ We have some clue about the skin temperature of the seas [more correctly: sea surface skin temperature (SSTskin)] from satellite data and a tiny bit of data about the rest from free floating ARGO buoys — but nothing anywhere near enough to estimate the average temperature of the oceans or any changes to that average — in my opinion, that claim is not scientifically supportable at this time.]
Five years later on, the fleet of ARGO buoys has increased and collect more data about the present. There has been no improvement in data sets about past ocean temperatures — at any depth or at the surface — graphs and estimates claiming to show century long records are worse than mere guesses. Here’s an example claiming to have data on ocean temperatures back to 1880:
These two graphs are new to this essay. Note that the shape of the “ocean temperature” graph looks suspiciously close to the GISTEMP graph for 2015, especially before about 1930-40 or so.
I don’t have any expertise on snow cover levels, glaciers, Arctic or Antarctic ice. But here is what Rutger’s Snow Lab has to say about Northern Hemisphere snow cover since 1967 (satellite era):
Surprisingly, Northern Hemisphere snow cover is increasing in the Fall and Winter seasons and decreasing only in the Spring, with the last couple of Springs being about normal. There seems to be more variation in the Fall and Spring seasons, with Winters being less variable.
Updated Rutgers Snow Lab graphs show that things have not changed much. The layout is different than above, reading left to right – fall, winter, spring. Fall snow extent is UP, Winter snow extent is UP, Spring snow extent is DOWN.
This image is new.
Why Northern Hemisphere snow cover? Most of the planet’s snow is in the Northern Hemisphere with the majority of the rest being in Antarctica: [Arctic ice cap not represented.]
Glaciers, extent and growth/shrinkage of, is even more controversial than the rest of climate change — and I am happy to leave that others. Glacier growth is not primarily driven by temperature, but rather by precipitation at the high end of a glacier: “A glacier is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight; it forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation (melting and sublimation) over many years, often centuries.” So, even if glaciers are generally shrinking (some are shrinking and some are growing), it has no particular bearing on warming. Regionally, changes in glacier size and movement can be considered due to changes in regional climate, changes in precipitation being the main factor.
As for Antarctica? Again, too much controversy to say. On 10 July 2017, a NASA study done in 2015 by Jay Zwally was published online in the Journal of Glaciology and was highlighted in this press release: “NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses”, It says “A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.” Scientific American beat the original study to press by four days, running a rebuttal on 6 July 2017, written by Shannon Hall, a news report, not a scientific study. Just in case anyone might misconstrue the purpose of the article, they subtly titled it “What to Believe in Antarctica’s Great Ice Debate”. Four days before the original study is published — now that is what I call Rapid Response!
The controversy about Antarctic Ice Mass has not subsided. Zwally et al. re-did their study in 2021 and found that Antarctic Ice Mass had stopped growing but had settled in to a cyclic small gain-and-loss pattern. Below, with a new graph in this essay, you can compare the NASA consensus view (left) , with the NASA Zwally et al. view (right):
It is important to understand that Antarctica is understood consist of 24,380,000 gigatonnes — one gigaton is equivalent to one billion metric tons — the “massive” ice loss in the left-hand NASA graph is 0.00062% or six ten-thousandths of a percent of the total. Zwally find a loss trend of 12 Gt per year, or 0.000049% more than an order of magnitude less, which can rightly be read as “almost nothing”.
There is no doubt about Artic sea ice extent — it has been declining:
The left graph shows the last eight years against 1979-2017 mean — the right graph shows those same eight years (plus 2018) as daily values. The red trace with + marks is 2018 through July.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center offers this:
So, it is obvious (from satellite data) that Winter NH Sea Ice Extent is down about ½ million miles2 (roughly a million km2) and Summer Extent is down, on average, about a million mi2. Changes in Arctic sea ice conditions can affect weather and climate elsewhere. These graphs start in 1976 or so because that is the start of the satellite era.
Again, as with almost all climate issues, there is a controversy. Arctic Sea Ice has been declining — sorry for the lack of originality here — 300 years. Many historical records show that there was a similar decline in the 1930s.
Polyak et al., 2010 shows this controversy in action:
In the Nordic Seas we see in the black boxes low sea ice extents which last just two or three years in the mid-1600s and mid-1700s, and, as expected, in the very warm 1920-1940 period, as per Macias-Fauria et al., 2009 (black trace). The red trace is Arctic max sea ice per Kinnard et al., 2008 which shows the effect of Nordic ice on overall Arctic ice with a dip in the same 1920-1940 period.
Polyakov et al. “The discrepancy between the two records in the early 20th century corresponds to an increase in the Atlantic inflow to the Nordic Seas,” which I would translate as “Nordic sea ice was low during the 1920-1940 period due to a change in Atlantic circulation.” Previous historic low extents in the 1600s and 1700s are not associated with known warm periods. Using Nordic Sea Ice as a proxy (the Danes have kept very good records, being responsible for Iceland and Greenland and points north), we see that Arctic Sea Ice decline can reasonably be said to start in the early 1700s or the late-1700s — definitely not the late 1800s — not 1850-1880-1890 — not the beginning of the Industrial Era.
Arctic Sea Ice has only been tracked with any scientific accuracy since the beginning of the satellite era, like many other global metrics.
But, still, no denial here, Artic Sea Ice is at historic lows, having reached a high point at the depth of the Little Ice Age and falling since then coincident with subsequent warming.
The situation with Sea Ice worldwide also has not changed much. The latest long-term graphs from NSIDC data: (new graph)
Note that the scale on the upper pair of graphs is different than the lower (Antarctic sea ice) graph. The only thing that is NEW in this data is that with a few more years added on (up to date – 2023) there is a shift in 2016 which is visible on the combined graphs (to the right of the added brown vertical line).
Or from NANSEN just for the Arctic:
In Part 1 and the above, I have agreed with all the posited physical facts and the evidence presented by the IPCC for its global warming/climate change position.
There remains one issue that has yet to be addressed, as we can’t assess the IPCC’s position without it.
Is CO2a greenhouse gas? Can, and does, increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other anthropogenic greenhouse gases cause warming?
Of course it is and of course it can and of course it may have.
Some readers will find this admission offensive, but again there is no reason to deny the physical facts — the Australians explain it like this:
“Greenhouse effect
The greenhouse effect is a natural process that warms the Earth’s surface. When the Sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, some of it is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases.
Greenhouse gases include water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and some artificial chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
The absorbed energy warms the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth. This process maintains the Earth’s temperature at around 33 degrees Celsius warmer than it would otherwise be, allowing life on Earth to exist.”
Why would anyone deny that? It is simply a fact of chemical and energy physics.
I acknowledge that the name “Greenhouse Effect” is a misnomer — Alistair B. Fraser, Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University gives a thorough explanation as to why and how it is a misnomer on his Bad Greehouse page and has a very interesting discussion at Bad Greenhouse FAQ.
The mis-naming of the effect doesn’t change its reality and doesn’t change the absorption of outgoing energy by water vapor, CO2 and the other greenhouse gases. Because energy is absorbed by these gases, the atmospheric temperature is raised. The atmosphere radiates energy, like all physical material, based on its temperature. Some of that radiated energy is absorbed by the Earth itself, the oceans, the plants, the animals — well, everything that it touches. That’s how the system works. It is not correct to say that everything that absorbs this radiation of energy from the atmosphere “heats up”. It is correct to say that it has absorbed energy.
But many insist that we are talking about heat — that is not physically correct — we are really speaking about the conservation of energy. Energy absorb[ed] by the Earth as a “system” takes many forms. Plants absorb energy from the Sun and thorough chemical processing store it as chemical energy in sugars and as chemical energy stored in the tissues of the plant itself. Water molecules absorb energy from the sun and atmosphere and store it as kinetic and potential energy in the water vapor moved higher into the atmosphere which we experience as the energy of water high in the atmosphere falling to Earth: hydroelectric power is derived from that stored energy, flash floods and mudslides are caused by the release of this potential energy. Through life processes, energy is both stored and used by all animals (and humans) to keep their bodies warm and perform work (both internal and external). And, as we are all aware, fossil fuels are fuels because they are that energy stored over geological time spans.
There are recent studies that post that not all ”fossil” fuels were created by live forms (plants etc).
My point in all the above is that not all energy retained in the Earth system is retain as heat measurable by thermometers. The general consensus view sweeps all this energy storing into the statement “the missing heat goes into the oceans”. The energy is not missing, it is being stored in myriad ways. How much energy stored in what forms? We have no idea really. We did recently find out that photosynthesis has increased by >30% due to atmospheric CO2 enhancement — which means >30% more energy being converted by plants
There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth about this, I’m sure. Some will point to the experiments that “prove” that the atmosphere is radiating more energy back to Earth than some time earlier — this is not in question. Yes, of course they do. That is the physical science of so-called “greenhouse gases” and this phenomena is responsible for the Earth being a livable planet.
So what is left?
Now, I have accepted the two basic premises of the Global Warming movement — the two points on which the so-called “97% agree” (so count me among them). I have accepted the lines of evidence that the IPCC offers in support of their hypothesis: “The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.” I have even agreed that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that it is at an historic high.
Why am I still a skeptic?
I am still a skeptic because all of those things, freely accepted more-or-less as claimed, do not add up to anything even near a “proof” of the IPCC hypothesis:
CO2 and other anthropogenic emissions are “the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
Note: The IPCC no longer makes that claim in that way. IPCC AR6 now uses: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred” and “It is very likely that well-mixed GHGs were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979…”
I would even go as far as to say that the evidence offered up by the IPCC, in their hundreds of pages of painstakingly reviewed and re-reviewed reports does nothing more than present a case for the possibility that the hypothesis could be true.
The IPCC and the Climate Science community have, so far, failed to rule out the CO2 driven global warming hypothesis — nothing more. They have, however, shown in their historical reconstructions that the main bodies of evidence their hypothesis relies on — surface air temperature, sea level rise, snow and ice cover — all started changing long before CO2 concentrations could possibly had any appreciable effect.
It is an accepted tenet of modern science that an Effect cannot precede its Cause. So here I find myself accepting the major offered data as more-or-less valid (close enough for my purposes) and the evidences offered as more-or-less true, yet I find that proposed CO2-driven Global Warming Hypothesis, in order to be true, would require retrocausality, or, in other words, that the Effects have preceded the Cause.
I am a firm proponent of the idea that time flows in one direction only and that the arrow of cause always points forward (past-to-present, present-to-future). That leaves me forced to reject the CO2-driven Global Warming Hypothesis as generally presented.
I am not the first to notice this, of course. The IPCC has thus been forced to alter its original hypothesis and modify it to read that CO2 and other anthropogenic emissions are “the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
And now, again in AR6, they have been forced to modify it to read: “It is very likely that well-mixed GHGs were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979…”.
That means that CO2 as a driver of climate only became dominate over Factor X since 1950.
More correctly now, well-mixed GHGs became the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979, dominate over the unknown Factor X that drove the many ups and downs since 1880.
“Factor X?” you may ask. Yes, Factor X is just a place-marker for whatever was causing Global Temperature to rise since the mid-1600s, Global Sea Level to rise since 1650-1700, Arctic Sea Ice to start declining in either the early 1700s, or in 1800 (your choice, either could be supported by the data).
If this sounds fanciful to you, then your critical thinking skills are working properly. There is simply no evidence whatever that the unknown Factor X was responsible for 250 years of rising temperature, rising seas, and declining Arctic ice — only to be superseded by CO2-driven Global Warming in 1950. [now, 1979]
The IPCC Consensus view is that Factor X is “natural variability” — which can be translated into “things that change the climate that we do not recognize as causative and/or do not understand”. The IPCC modified CO2-driven Global Warming Hypothesis thus depends on unknown/not-understood climate forcings (lumped into a basket called “natural variability”) which are then overshadowed by CO2 induced warming (the effect size of which is still unknown and controversial).
As for me and mine, we will wait in the bleachers for evidence to be produced that supports such as hypothesis — something stronger than that offered by so many CAGW apologists in the form “well, what else could it be?”
and more recently “because…”
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ODDLY ENOUGH: Ollilia (2018) “Challenging the scientific basis of the Paris climate agreement” [ .pdf here ] also uses a Factor X as “The variable labeled “Factor X” is also depicted in Figure 7; it is the difference between the measured 11 years average temperature and the warming effects of CO2, water and ENSO events. Factor X is needed to explain the observed warming. It is a combination of natural forces like the activity changes of the sun.” Not the same as my use above, but amusing. Fig 7 is:
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Author’s Comment:
Please, try and stay on topic and discuss this essay — it is certainly broad enough to satisfy most readers. Oh, and please, pretty please, Don’t Feed The Trolls — like feral cats, feeding just encourages them to breed there under the bridge and become real pests.
I hope that I have not trounced your favorite talking points — remember, this is just my view of a very complex, very young and immature science field. I am patiently waiting for it to grow up.
And I am still waiting….reading the comments to the Reprise of Part 1 will show just how unmoving the consensus can be – it has not not grown up at all.
While I am perfectly willing to explain my viewpoint — I do not argue with others.
If speaking to me, please begin you comment with “Kip…” and I’ll be sure to see it. I do read every single comment that appear under all of the essays I write, but in the wild west world of blog comment threads, it is often difficult to figure out who is speaking to who about exactly what. Leading your comments with the name of the person you are speaking to makes this easier for all.
Keep the conversation collegial and try to understand the other person’s point before replying.
Thanks for contributing.
And, thanks for reading.
# # # # #
I made a bet with a UC colleague that Arctic sea ice would not disappear by 2030 and based on all the science itwas more likely to show a rebounding trend. We bet a bottle of wine likewse his “only understanding of Climate Change or Global Warming has been gleaned from NPR/CNN/PBS and Main Stream Media.
When we met again a year later, he was a little nervous about the bet saying ” he never knew Arctic sea ice was affected by warm intruding Atlantic Currents.” Mainstream media has truly duped the public into believing only CO2 has any consequence, effectively turning even a good physicist into a brain-dead climate crisis advocate.
ippc predict mid century. Id bet with you, but wed both be dead before 0 ice in sept
because thats what the science says
Science doesn’t say anything because science doesn’t have a mouth. Some scientists, however, have a mouth too big.
There will not be an Arctic sea-ice free this interglacial, nor next glacial. That pretty much covers the next 70,000 years. I am willing to bet on that 😉
you realize you are literalizing a metaphor
thats a mental disease
science can speak without a mouth
truth can also speak
notice that you avoided the argument
ipcc says mid century.
argue with the facts dont quibble over expressions
ever hear the expression
Res ipsa loquitor
You can speak, and say nothing, better than Kamala “the word salad queen” Harris.
The IPCC has no facts to back up that prediction. Do you have any, Mr. Mosher?
Oh, and where did you get the idea that literalizing a metaphor is a mental disease? Are you a budding Lewandowski? You are certainly a English Major that refuses to write using English language norms.
Well, then picture what “science said” in the past:
and you will understand how silly is your claim that science says summer Arctic sea ice will be gone before the end of the century.
–It is generally believed that the ignorance of some scientists leads them to support without evidence that summer Arctic sea ice will be gone before the end of the century.– That is a more correct way of expressing it and adds the necessary amount of uncertainty to those wild claims.
The bigger the claims, the bigger the scientist’s mouth, and the bigger his unrecognized ignorance. Scientists are humans, with all their faults, and bullshitting is one of them.
Everything that follows “scientists say” will be believed by a leftist Climate Howler Global Whiner.
I have made up climate factoids for 20 years for my leftist friends, always following “Scientists say”. and not one leftist has ever challenged my fake claim because I made CO2 sound like a satanic gas.
Conservative friends are not gullible.
Mosher ==> Arctic Sea Ice Volume is uptrending the last decade or so…see graph in a comment here somewhere, despite extend still dropping.
Never know about the future, but it is very unlikely that even Artic Summer Sea Ice will ever hit zero.
PS: I plan to still be around in 2045…might not quite make the mid-century mark though.
PPS: Even The Science cannot speak the truth about the future. It may “predict” but we’ve seen how well that has gone.
Arctic Sea Ice Volume is uptrending the last decade or so…see graph in a comment here somewhere, despite extend still dropping.
note this doesnt address my claim
ipcc predicts 0 extent mid century
you want to talk about volume because you cant respond to the truth i uttered
im nice enough to call you Kip
please have some manners
“Never know about the future, but it is very unlikely that even Artic Summer Sea Ice will ever hit zero.”
that would be a point if september were in the summer, duh
read please Kip
PS: I plan to still be around in 2045…might not quite make the mid-century mark though.
predicting?
i find it highly unlikely you will be around in 2145.
“PPS: Even The Science cannot speak the truth about the future. It may “predict” but we’ve seen how well that has gone.”
well The science predicts the sun will come up tommorow see how well that goes
you know i offer classes in logic and
A. first you predicted you will make it to 2045
B then you questioned sciences ability to predict the future
dio you just say random shit
Ai say zero ice in september mid century
B you say you doubt Summer ice will be zero
well summer ice maybe 2100
Please do not drink alcohol before commenting.
Mosher ==> I can’t answer you when you babble.
You teach logic classes? Your students should demand a refund of their tuition. Stumbling through your comment is a painful experience.
Science is a process. Like any process, it can be done well and it can be done poorly. It can also be used to deceive. To quote Feynman, science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. I have little faith in expert opinion as a guide to policy and even less in artificial ones.
In God we trust, all others bring data. Kip has done a masterful job of outlining the paucity of data in support of this cobbled together. ad hoc hypothesis that human emissions of CO2 and other gasses are a primary driver of climate.
Repeat deleted.
Mosher is still stinging from his discovery that he picked the wrong side. Every failed prediction is just adding to his irritation. All he has now are rationalizations.
“because thats what the science says”
Proof, if ever needed, that learning R does not a scientist make.
Speaking of wine, here comes the Global Whiner himself, Mr. Masher.
No, its what most CliSciFi climate modelers are paid to say. Real scientists look at the best historical data they can find and then try different experiments to see if they can gain insight into past patterns. Real scientists make tentative conclusions and don’t try to silence others’ scientific questioning of data, methods, models, conclusions & etc. by shouting Denier! Real scientists engage in scientific discussions/debate and don’t “cancel” others’ participation in ongoing scientific enquiry. FLeftists.
“I’d bet you but……….”
that is the softest pile of horsedung I have ever seen written.
“ippc predict mid century. Id bet with you, but wed both be dead”
Physically dead, I assume you meant?
You are already brain dead
Moderator bait
[I mean, there is, at least, a thin veneer of civility we try to maintain. -mod]
That sure doesn’t look like Steve Mosher’s writing. Did Steve ever register when it became necessary? That troll script is nothing like I ever saw from him.
JASchrumpf ==> I have shared your concern in the past, but I have checked this out before with the Moderator and he assures me that the comments come from Mosher’s real email address and the proper IP number.
Jim ==> Ah, yes….and CO2 only began to work in 1979….all the ups and even the downs before that were natural variability.
Natural causes of climate change died in 1975, according to the IPCC in 1995, when they declared all natural causes of climate change to be “noise”. After 4.5 billion years, natural causes were very old.
Natural causes made CO2 the boss just before they died in 1975.
It was in all the newspapers.
CO2 also causes every problem in the world, from cancer to warts, and the only cure is building more windmills and solar panels.
That’s what scientists say, and they are never wrong.
Never mind the 43 years of wrong CAGW predictions since the 1979 Charney Report. That only happened because a dog ate the papers. You can trust the new predictions of climate doom, because they have a new dog, who wears a muzzle (The dog, not the scientists).
Richard ==> RIP Natural Causes
Should have bet your house or retirement savings, or both.
I hope you win your bet .I have an acquaintance who is absolutely convinced that one meter of sea level rise is LOCKED in.
His brother is a university professor who has spent a lot of time in Antarctica studying the dry valleys . I don’t know whether this belief came from his brother .
Even if the world keeps warming the worst predictions are a 9 inch rise by 2100.
The present sea level rise around the New Zealand coast would be 6 inches in the next 100 years .
I bought a rowboat here in SE Michigan just in case i don’t get my ark built on time to avoid drowning from sea level rise.
The wine is no good because of climate change!
Hope he lives long enough to pay off with good wine, not three buck “chuck” from Trader Joes.
Did he know every long term climate prediction has been wrong for at least a century? You took advantage of him by knowing that.
Amazing that many leftists expect melting Arctic sea ice and think that would be bad news, often thinking it will raise sea level.
They also do not know Antarctica ice mass is not melting at all, which would have raised sea level. Which explains why relative sea level rise has been relatively steady since the late 1800s, when you ignore inaccurate absolute sea level rise “measurements” by satellites.
Melting ice in the Arctic could uncover previously hidden hydrocarbon deposits, The seals won’t mind. And polar bears are great swimmers.
“And polar bears are great swimmers”
I have a book about polar bears, ‘World of the Polar Bear’, by Fred Bruemmer, published in 1989. Lots of fantastic photos of the bears.
He notes, page 118, that a bear tagged in Spitsbergen in 1967 was shot a year later in southwest Greenland more than 2000 miles away.
Jim, I hope the bet was for a very, very, expensive bottle of wine. I’m hoping to enjoy a vicarious glass with you, fate permitting.
Kip, What are your views regarding the Happer & Wijngaarden paper concluding that CO2 and methane effects are nearing saturation and cant get much worse.
Happer and Wijngaarden would appear to be consistent with low values for doubling CO2, as with Lewis and Curry or Lindzen and Choi.
Not Kip, but I would sharpen your phrasing based on my understanding of their work. Methane is irrelevant since its absorption bands are completely overlain by water vapor absorption, which is much more prevalent. CO2 does not ever fully saturate because the ‘effective radiation level’ (ERL) rises with additional CO2. But as was shown by Callendar in 1938, it is logarithmic so attenuates significantly. And Callendar’s curve has an implicit ECS of 1.67, so no cause for alarm.
Rud ==> Even the best of minds have slightly different understandings.
But all of the best minds agree: “no cause for alarm.”
its flawed
Mosher ==> Somehow, I think Happer knows maybe a thousand times more than you do about energy transmission through atmospheres.
Every research study is “flawed” in some way — and particularly “flawed” when a “flaw” is a difference of opinion or “I don’t like the findings.”
Would you care to elaborate, or are you just here to opinion-bomb?
Oh wait, that was a foolish question on my part.
Denis ==> Well, you won’t find a better, brighter, more knowledgable ‘physics of radiation transfer through an atmosphere’ than Will Happer. What they say is “maybe half a degree or a degree more” as to effect size.
So if that is “can’t get much worse” [and in my opinion it is really “can’t get much better”], then I agree with them.
I can’t find anything like “half a degree” in their paper. What they do say is
“The surface warming increases significantly for the case of water feedback assuming fixed relative humidity. Our result of 2.3 K is within 0.1 K of values obtained by two other groups as well as a separate calculation where we used the Manabe water vapor profile given by (87). For the case of fixed relative humidity and a pseudoadiabatic lapse rate in the troposphere, we obtain a climate sensitivity of 2.2 K. The corresponding climate sensitivities determined by other groups differ by about 10% which can be expected using slightly differing temperature and water vapor profiles.”
IOW, they get the same result as other scientists.
Nick ==> Which paper are you referring to?
I refer to Happer recent discussion with others in various podcast etc.
In a dinner conversation, he mentioned the half to a whole degree as a generalized statement about expected future warming.
Kip,
The paper is here.
WUWT reviewed it here
They said many times that their results came out the same as earlier results. It’s very hard to get people to actually read the paper.
Happer may have forgotten what they found.
Nick ==> Climate sensitivity is not the same as expected increase of tropospheric temperatures going forward. The paper makes it very clear additional CO2 will have very little future effect on temperatures.
Nick, have you considered the modifier “assuming fixed relative humidity?”
A reasonable estimate for CO2
Methane effects are probably too small to measure
But we don’t need predictions
We have actual global warming from 1975 to 2015 — 40 years of experience.
Even if CO2 caused all of that warming (very unlikely), it was harmless at worst. Beneficial, in my opinion:
— Colder states and nations have warmer winters and less snow
— Greening of the planet
— Women wear smaller bikinis on the beach to beat the heat
What’s not to like about more CO2 and global warming?
Would you rather have global cooling?
Not me
Would you rather have less CO2?
Not my plants
“well, what else could it be?”
Both IPCC and NASA offer an alternative, about which they tend to forget..
“The potential effects of contrails on global climate were simulated with a GCM that introduced additional cirrus cover with the same optical properties as natural cirrus in air traffic regions with large fuel consumption (Ponater et al., 1996). The induced temperature change was more than 1 K at the Earth’s surface in Northern mid-latitudes for 5% additional cirrus cloud cover in the main traffic regions.”
https://archive.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/index.php?idp=40
“This result shows the increased cirrus coverage, attributable to air traffic, could account for nearly all of the warming observed over the United States for nearly 20 years starting in 1975.:”
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/releases/2004/04-140.html
E. Schaffer ==> Cirrus clouds are, of course, water vapor….and cloud cover affects lots of processes in regards to radiation through the atmosphere.
Have you seen any follow-up to those studies or statements?
More importantly, FROZEN water vapor. The fine ice crystals are transparent to incoming SR (sunlight) but opaque to outgoing IR. That is why cirrus warm, the essence of Lindzen’s adaptive iris hypothesis. (warmer means fewer, bigger Tstorms, which counterintuitively means less detainment so less cirrus so resulting cooling—adaptive iris). JC and I did back to back posts on this over at her place some years ago.
BUT globally much more cirrus is produced by Tstorm thunderhead (anvil) detrainment than by jet contrails. So I dunno if the contrails hypothesis actually stands up to observational scrutiny as a full explanation. It has to be a factor, for sure.
Wasn’t most of the NH warming from 1975 to 2015 at night (TMIN near dawn) rather than during the day (TMAX in late afternoon)?
Most air traffic is in daytime. For many airports, the busiest time of operation is during the workday (between 8 am and 5 pm). Crowds often begin tapering off around 6 pm with some of the least busy times being in the late evening. Most cargo flights are scheduled at night.
The follow up question might be, “What is the persistence of contrails in the atmosphere?” If they are a short-lived phenomenon, wouldn’t we expect their net effect to be cooling, as they primarily act as reflectors during the day and do not last long enough to capture and reradiate IR from the surface of the earth at night?
Cirrus clouds are neither water (but ice), nor vapor. Vapor is only the gaseous state of H2O. And this is an important distinction, because the radiative properties are obviously very different.
Well it is a long story. In short, a total cirrus coverage would produce a forcing of about 60W/m2! Even a moderate coverage with aviation induced cirrus, which we have, is easily enough to explain all the warming we see. And of course the warming pattern (starting in the 1970s, in the NH predominantly) perfectly fits aviation induced cirrus, but not GHG forcing.
E. Shaffer ==> ah — yes, of course, I only meant that cirrus clouds were H2O — in whatever form — and the Aviation Condensation Trails cirrus-like clouds will have whatever effect they will have. I have seen the Aviation causes Global warming hypothesis. Thanks for reminding us of it.
Interestingly, the sulfur content of jet fuel is down by more than an order of magnitude since the 1980’s as a consequence of motor fuel mandates and sulfur in marine fuel oils is diminishing more recently from direct mandates on its content.
Thus, atmospheric SO2 levels from these sources are declining, and one might expect this also to contribute to some warming.
Nice revision, Kip. IMO several growing cracks in the AGW foundation can no longer be papered over. You touch on several. Here is my own list:
Rud, I agree with almost all you say – and particularly with [7]. But I am not at all sure about [6]. Both Net Zero and all EVs are possible. Its just that the collateral costs are very high. But that does not mean that governments will not press on regardless and pretty much reach the goals and pay the price.
In the UK, for instance, Paul Homewood links to a Telegraph story which covers the current Energy Sectretary’s plans to levy a tax on electricity to start up a hydrogen business. To make hydrogen.
This is completely irrational – there is no reason to tax electricity to do it, there’s no reason to do it, even if its made it will be basically unusable because of the need to upgrade appliances and pipework, and even if its made and used it will not lower UK emissions one iota – in fact, since hydrogen is expensively made from gas, it will increase them.
But this does not mean the government will not do it. And I think the same with EVs. Yes, it could be there will not be enough power, the recharge times alone will make them unusable for the current purposes for which ICE cars are used. It could be that this reduces the number of cars to 10% or 20% of current levels. But don’t assume this will deter the government at least of the UK.
It is the same with the move to wind and solar. No, it is not possible while conserving anything like present life-styles, and its especially not possible while moving to EVs and heat pumps. At least at present life-styles. And you may think this dooms it. Don’t be so sure. The mania is so strong and so universal in government and establishment circles that it may be done anyway.
What may happen is that the UK moves to wind and solar and also to Net Zero and all EVs regardless, and that the population is compelled to adapt. I am starting to think this is the most likely outcome. A lot fewer cars, a lot colder houses, a lot more bikes. Back not so much to the 1950s, more the 1920s. Buy a lot of sweaters. And hold on to those old tweed jackets. And get a decent bike. We are going to need them.
“But that does not mean that governments will not press on regardless and pretty much reach the goals and pay the price.”
Not when the peasants arise and come out with their pitch forks.
pitch forks against artillery?
Based on available data, which seems to be much better data than “climate’ data, the physical materials, let alone the required money, for following through on those governments mandates do not exist.
Torches and pitchforks are being replaced by body armor and AR15s. Average voters, however, will rebel long before violent action becomes necessary.
I don’t think either are physically possible independent of cost:
Michael Moore’s fat could be rendered and turned into fuel.
Nah, we’ll just use the whale oil from the Atlantic Right Whales killed by offshore industrial wind factories.
I agree with you on all these points.
But the UK political establishment seems fully capable of going ahead anyway. We think its impossible because the social and economic consequences will be so catastrophic.
They show increasing signs of thinking that people will just have to live with them.
Its not impossible in itself. Its impossible to do without making it a different country. But they don’t show any sign of being deterred by that.
I imagine there were people among the Xhosa in 1856 saying that it was impossible to slaughter the cattle because it would lead to mass starvation, no-one could do that. But it happened anyway.
Voters tend to notice when both their health (cold homes and a lack of food) and standards of living go to hell over time. The Leftist media’s studied indifference of energy poverty and falling standards of living will collapse at some point. Peoples’ rage will only grow as the feckless actions by their elite rulers becomes more apparent.
Vaclav Smil’s “How the World Really Works” says it all and should be required reading in every high school. If people on this Thread haven’t bought it yet, they should do so immedeatly.
The Finnish study was preceded by a study in 2017/18 on ‘Metal Demand for Renewable Electricity Generation in the Netherlands’ which concluded
“For five of the metals the required demand for renewable electricity production is significant; neodymium, terbium, indium, dysprosium and praseodymium”
“If the rest of the world would develop renewable electricity at a comparable pace with the Netherlands, a considerable shortage would arise”
“When other applications (such as EVs) are also taken into account the required amount of certain metals would further increase”
They also warned about increased reliance on China as a source for metals.
The Netherlands has a population of only 17.5m.
https://www.metabolic.nl/publications/metal-demand-for-renewable-electricity-generation-in-the-netherlands-pdf/
michel ==> There is almost no limit to the harmful mischief run-away governments can get up to. My favorite is the U.S. State of California, which continues to set the example of what NOT to do.
We should return California to mexico and demand a $15 million refund plus interest. California is so bad all of my leftist relatives moved out.
Richard ==> I moved out in 1971 — as soon as I turned 21.
Of course, Net Zero and only EVs for transport are possible. But, yes, it will be more like the 1920s. Only requires killing off a bit more than 62 million people (in the United Kingdom alone).
Rud ==> All quite true. For the goals of “ClimIntern” (International Climatism), the “China and India won’t play” is going to become “China and India and Africa won’t play”.
Kip, I omitted Africa only because I think in these time frames they will not have been able to sufficiently develop to matter like India and China:
Don’t worry, Rud, China will straighten out Africa once they take over. Buy stock in companies offering Mandarin language instructions.
Over 7 billion people won’t play Nut Zero. Only the US, Canada, UK, most of EU, Australia and New Zealand will play the Nut Zero game (and fail) — less than one billion people.
While you point 5, 6, and 7 may be true, they are irrelevant to the AGW hypothesis.
The AGW hypothesis is not very relevant to the CAGW scaremongering, which is AGW x2 to AGW x4
Rud,
Somewhat O/T
I am currently reading Vaclav Smil’s “How the world really works” published 2022.
He starts off going into great detail on energy used (down to litres of diesel per kg) and concludes that the pillars of modern society are plastic, steel, concrete and ammonia.
In there you get inklings that he has been at the CO2 CAGW koolaid jar.
Then he goes into various aspects of risk. And then into “Understanding the environment” – with a heavy dose of “CO2 Control Knob”. And invoking the Peking Pox problem as it looked up to 2022. But with leanings towards “it can’t be done” – so some rays of hope.
Heavy wading there if you are not in the CO2 school and your 7 points ought to have helped.
Then “Understanding the future” and early on there is on quantitative forecasts –
“And the third category (I have already described some of its recent energy and environmental specimens in the previous chapter) is that of quantitative fables: such forecasting exercises may teem with numbers, but the numbers are outcomes of layered (and often questionable) assumptions, and the processes traced by such computerised fairy tales will have very different real-world endings.”
Which reads like a recovery to the world as it is.
So I will continue reading and see how he ends up.
(My 2 cents worth)
“the pillars of modern society are plastic, steel, concrete and ammonia.”
Not oil and natural gas too?
The primary pillar of any society is knowledge.
About 80% of the ammonia produced by industry is used in agriculture as fertilizer. Ammonia is also used as a refrigerant gas, for purification of water supplies, and in the manufacture of plastics, explosives, textiles, pesticides, dyes and other chemicals.
Is RCP8.5 impossible or is it the climate model output based on RCP8.5 that is impossible. Isn’t RCP8.5 just a forecast of outputs (e.g. CO2, methane, etc)? It’s the results the models get from those outputs that would appear to be impossible. Small nit pick for sure but an important distinction.
Thanks Kip. I always read your posts and agree far more often than not. My own take follows.
I am a CAGW skeptic. I am not a denier. To be a denier one must reject as untrue an actual fact. There are only theories and speculation regarding the effects of anthropogenic CO2 increase. I have worked with many computer models and written a few of my own. Computer models are wonderful tools, but they are only useful when rigorously validated by experiment and/or observation. I would certainly not want to drive over a bridge or fly in an airplane designed using computer models that had not been properly validated. In my experience even relatively straight forward computer simulation software that has been thoroughly validated becomes suspect when applied beyond the range of input parameters used in validation. In my area of engineering interpolation is generally acceptable, but extrapolation is not. I am also skeptical of any claim that a stochastic system as complex and variable as climate can be modelled to a level of confidence that would allow isolation or projection of the effects of any single variable on future states. Weather models become almost useless when forecasts are extended out more than a week or so. I think the only valid projection one can make about what the climate will be like in 2100 is it will probably be either a bit warmer or cooler and dryer or wetter than it is depending on where you are. Other than that, it seems quite likely that the CO2 levels will be higher than they are now and plants will generally grow better. It seems highly probable that the climate in 50 or 100 years will be somewhat different than it is at the moment. That seems evident from the historical record that shows the climate has changed continuously from as far back as we can look.
The practice of true science requires skepticism and constant checking and rechecking of what we think is true. Only through experimentation, observation, measurement and replication can we gain confidence that our understanding of nature is correct. Being identified as a skeptic should be considered an acknowledgement of a scientist’s upholding the principals of the profession. Calling skeptics “deniers” is an insult thrown around by scientific illiterates and/or charlatans.
Rick C ==> Thanks for the support.
As for “Calling skeptics “deniers” is an insult thrown around by scientific illiterates and/or charlatans.”, only politicians and “politically motivated scientists” use the deniers label (and all their band-wagoning sycophants in the media (and all over the Wikis).
You just denied that CAGW exists, so you are a CAGW denier.
Welcome to Climate Realityland
Don’t deny being a CAGW denier !
Be proud
I agree with what you have written .
We have absolute proof that weather modes are useless when forecasts are extended more than a week .
Yesterday all hell broke loose because tropical cyclone Gabriel was tracking from the Coral sea heading for New Zealand .
The Met service has now downgraded the tropical cyclone to a weather event .
The real time rain radar is showing moderate rain with some wind over Auckland and the East coast .
The three day forecast rain radar is still showing torrential rain and gale force winds .
There are a lot of power outages in the north with trees falling on lines and some large waves but it is not a cyclone .
I am a skeptic and the weather that New Zealand is having is just that ,weather .
New Zealand has always had cyclones over the summer months from the Pacific and it is nothing to do with CO2.
The highest months rainfall recorded in Auckland was 420 mm in February 1869.
In 3 days in February 1958 379 mm fell in the Waikato region before any perceptible rise in CO2 levels.
The Met service got the down grade wrong .The storm hit the east coast of the North Island but here in the Waikato it is a nice sunny day.
A state of emergency has been mandated by Parliament for all of New Zealand this morning .
The news media is all over this laying the blame on rising levels of CO2.
Some scientists think that the eruption in Tonga injected millions of liters of water into the atmosphere and this cyclone and the one a month ago are the result .
Tropical cyclones are a regular occurrence over summer and into autumn in New Zealand as the tropical atmosphere heats up and the heat heads towards Antarctica where it is expelled to space .
We get the Pacific Islands maximum temperature on our weather report every night.
The islands very rarely get to 32 C and most are from 27C to 31C.
There is no sign of a temperature increase .The tropics have been shedding heat for millions of years to the north and the south .
“In my area of engineering interpolation is generally acceptable, but extrapolation is not.”
100%!
“The absorbed energy warms the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth. This process maintains the Earth’s temperature at around 33 degrees Celsius warmer than it would otherwise be, allowing life on Earth to exist.”
Why would anyone deny that?”
DOES THE ATMOSPHERIC GREENHOUSE EFFECT REALLY WARM EARTH’S SURFACE BY 33°C?
The standard method calculates the equivalent black-body temperature for Earth, by imagining that the solar irradiance is spread evenly over the whole sphere. Which gives a black-body temperature of 278.6K, and minus 30% albedo is 254.83K. An additional 33K of proposed greenhouse effect raises that to 287.83K, or 14.68°C
For the Moon with 11% albedo the figure is 270.6K, which is 73.3K higher than the real global mean surface temperature of the Moon, at 197.3K. So what’s gone wrong?
Calculating the Lunar surface temperature for the sunlit side only, and averaging that with the mean temperature of the dark side, gives a far more sensible value.
394*0.5^0.25 = 331.31K
minus 11% albedo
331.31*0.89^0.25 = 321.8
and averaged with a dark side mean temperature of 90K
(321.8+90)/2 = 205.9K
Note that the Lunar dark side temperature is dependent on the regolith heat capacity, which if higher would raise the dark side temperature but make little difference to maximum temperatures on the sunlit side.
Earth’s sunlit side (at any given time), is cooler than the sunlit surface of the Moon, mainly due to clouds and water vapour, but Earth’s global mean surface temperature is far higher than on the Moon, primarily because of the oceans keeping its dark side so warm. With a lesser contribution from longwave infrared from water vapour and clouds.
The standard model removes the night cycle, and falsely attributes all of the influence of heat capacity on mean global surface temperature to the atmospheric greenhouse effect, and treats heat capacity merely as zero sum thermal dampening.
Earth’s black-body temperature for the sunlit side only, after 30% albedo, 6% Rayleigh scattering, and 16% solar near infrared absorption by water vapour, is 12.5°C. As opposed to 48.65°C for the mean temperature of the Lunar sunlit side.
(There are additional losses on Earth from non-radiative surface cooling, and gains from poleward heat transport, and from longwave back radiation.)
The main greenhouse house type effect on Earth is in the oceans, convection sets in at night and sinking colder water gets replaced with warmer water from below, so that the surface barely cools at night. That is primarily why Earth’s global mean surface temperature is around 90°C warmer than the Lunar global mean surface temperature.
Ulric ==> And trying to warm up a bit more, so Earth can qualify as an “Earth-like Planet” with a Global Surface Average temperature of 15-16°.
Very nice article, Kip. And further to Ulric Lyon’s comment, above, I’m in the process of trying to get comfortable with the ~288K surface temperature assumption based on some course materials from Penn State (of all places). If you know of a better source, please let me know.
I don’t know if I’m getting into a circular argument here, but isn’t one able to calculate the Earth’s average surface temperature from measured average surface energy emissions using the Stephan-Boltzmann equations? Where the surface average temperature is 288K and the TOA emissions temperature is 255K?
Isn’t that’s the way one can calculate the surface temperature rise (ECS) given the IPCC’s assumed amplified forcing for 2XCO2? The calculation that shows IPCC ECS is wildly exaggerated? Or do I misremember the whole thing?
Dave,
I get the 255K, which one gets by simply equating LW_out (sigma*T^4) to SW absorbed (S*(1-albedo)/4) and solving for T, where T would be T_surface for a liquid / solid planet w/o a GHE, or ‘T_effective’, which apparently is someplace in the troposphere, if one is comfortable (I’m not, but Penn State Meteo Course 469 (PS) appears to be) applying S-B to a gaseous surface.
The problem for me is the 288K. I assume it’s modeled, since unlike S and albedo, above, it can’t be observed directly. But how is it modeled? The PS course material ‘linearizes’ T^4 in the above relation as A+B*T, probably to hide the implicit negative feedback of radiative cooling, then provides values of A and B that result in 288K. They also assume that these values can be ‘relaxed’ to model ice ages or the ‘early Cretaceous super greenhouse’, so not exactly my idea of robust.
PS then moves on to a one-layer (atmosphere) model that applies S-B to the ‘atmosphere’, introduces T_atmosphere, not to be confused with the prior model’s T_effective, and epsilon, which is a measure of IR absorption by the atmosphere, and like A and B above, is specified to equal 0.77 to arrive at 288K. In other words, the 288K appears to be a ‘given’ that various models are parameterized to achieve.
Not to say that the 288K isn’t reality, but for me there is way to much hand waving going on, which I think is what allows the IPCC and its alarmist supporters to get away with its ‘wildly exaggerated’ ECS estimates.
Got to be careful with those “measured average surface energy emission”. So many of these are quoted in watts/meter^2. Watts/m^2 is subject to the inverse square law. (W/m^2)/distance^2. As the distance from the source gets longer, w/m^2 is divided by the distance squared. It’s not always obvious that’s taken into consideration. 300w/m^2 at the earth’s surface becomes (300w/m^2)/(10000^2) at a height of 10000m above the earth. When someone tells you they are measuring 270w/m^2 leaving the atmosphere after 30w/m^2 is absorbed by CO2 I immediately question what they are telling me.
According to Planck the radiation from a black body is measured as (radiation per steradian). A steradian gets larger area-wise as distance increases in order to offset the distance. Think of a steradian as the area of the base of a cone extending from the radiating point. As the height of the cone gets longer the area of the base goes up.
The argument is basically unanswerable. It emerged in the comments to the last installment of this.
On one side of it you have Nick, who says that what happened and what caused it in the past is irrelevant. We have a correlation between increased CO2 ppm caused by human emissions and rising temperatures. Therefore this proves human emissions caused the temperature rise.
On the other side you have the facts as evidenced by Kip. There must be some other factor at work in temperature fluctuations than CO2 fluctuations, because temperatures rise (and also fall) without any correlated changes in CO2 ppm. And because temps started to rise long before CO2 started to rise.
I don’t see how its possible to argue with this. And Kip’s remarks on the question of where the heat is going are spot on. There are many places for the heat to go besides into rising temperatures.
The case to be answered would say, there is a heating effect from the CO2 which is superimposed on a warming trend from unknown other natural sources. And the CO2 does not in fact contribute to heating much or at all, because of the collateral changes it gives rise to which absorb its energy and mean that its not converted into warming.
I don’t know if that is right or wrong, but its the case to be answered.
About your paragraph, “The case to be answered…”
Yes, that is how the issue must be addressed. I try to put it this way, “Must we expect heat energy to be forced to accumulate on land and in the oceans as concentrations of non-condensing GHGs increase in the atmosphere?”
The static warming effect, which I do not dispute, cannot be the complete answer. Where will that energy end up in a dynamic system, as the atmosphere performs so powerfully as the compressible working fluid of its own heat engine operation? My view is that there is no way presently available to us to isolate the effect of CO2 or any other GHG for reliable attribution.
Michel ==> A very sensible synopsis….thank you.
Kip,
From your original series, you say, “There is no doubt about Artic sea ice extent — it has been declining:” but then you give side-by-side graphs of PIOMAS modeled values of Arctic ice volume, not “extent.” Not poking, just using this to highlight the reported volume numbers since 2018.
On this point, here is the latest graph of annual ice volume values from the same source.
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BannualVolumeTsCurrent.png
I note that the reported annual average ice volume in 2022 is greater than in 2011. So in the years since your earlier essay, this seems significant – i.e., a stronger indication that the loss of Arctic sea ice volume looks like it has bottomed out and may even be increasing.
Similarly, the table of monthly values from the same source shows all months of 2022 with higher ice volume than for the corresponding month in 2011. Same point. The numbers are in 1000’s of cubic kilometers.
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/PIOMAS.2sst.monthly.Current.v2.1.txt
David ==> Good Eye! An error carried over from the original series five years ago….I do follow up with a few graphs of NH sea ice extent.
The UW sea ice volume graph is terrific — I have saved it (and the link) for future use. It is a little surprising and the IPCC and other sea ice “experts” report losses in OLD thick ice as wellas extent — yet Sea Ice Volume has bee rising for more than a decade.
Kip, a great observation. My only quibble with both Arctic sea ice extent and volume is both metrics are a bit dicey—subject to remote sensing uncertainty. For extent, %coverage and summer surface melt water. For volume, average protrusion when the stuff is actually very ridged and jagged with no ‘average’ from a remote altitude sensing perspective. A pixel size problem.
But given consistent definitions and land masking mean the past couple of decades trends should be ok on ‘average’.
In essay Northwest Passage in ebook Blowing Smoke I gave qualitative observational evidence that there is a quasi 60 year (about) Arctic sea ice cycle. And the onset of satellite observation roughly coincided with a peak. The sat nadir was 2007-2012, about 30 years later. So the increases since just reflect quantitatively the qualitatively previously known cycle. I expect Arctic summer sea ice (extent and volume) will increase until about 2040. Quite embarrassing for Gore, Wadhams et. al.
Rud ==> Over our cruising years, we met a kid, Matt Rutherford, who had a madcap scheme to sail solo, non-stop around both North and South America. I helped him buy the navigation equipment necessary to take his Captain’s Course in the US Virgin Islands.
Much to our surprise, he actually did it years later, setting a Guiness World Record.
I deny that there is ANY proof that global warming is caused by man in any part, simply because there is no measure of the cause, extent, or outcome of natural causes that have and do cause climate change . Only until this is fully understood can it be said with certainty that man has influenced global climate. I realize that I speak from my training in historical and paleo geology and climatology, but I have not seen anything not within the variations of naturally caused climate change. Any AGW influence is hypothetical and unworthy of accepting without empirical proof
Go, Geologist, Go! And thanks, from another geologist, who says, also, there is no anthropogenic signal detectable against the noisy background of natural climate variation.
How do you know the natural causes of climate change are not just noise? The IPCC claimed that since 1995.
There are many causes of climate change. Climate change is the net result of all causes of climate change variables — local, regional and global.
It is impossible to know exactly what percentage of climate change was caused by each climate change variable. That does NOT mean there are no manmade causes of climate change.
Global Warming, now called Climate Change, is a divisive political issue, often science-free. It has been hijacked by politicians, environmental pressure groups, and other leftists. Earth’s climate is always changing. ‘Climate’ is defined as average weather over a 30-year or longer period. The difference between the annual average temperature, and its 30-year average, is the temperature anomaly. Temperature measurements are not evenly distributed over the globe, especially over the oceans, and at high latitudes. Questionable schemes are used to extrapolate ( aka “infill” ) sparse data to approximate global coverage. Filling in data is making up data.
The following variables are likely to influence Earth’s climate:
1) Earth’s orbital and orientation variations (aka planetary geometry)
2) Changes in ocean circulation
Including ENSO and others
3) Solar activity and irradiance,
including clouds, volcanic and manmade aerosols, plus possible effects of cosmic rays and extraterrestrial dust
4) Greenhouse gas emissions
5) Land use changes
(cities growing, logging, crop irrigation, etc.)
6) Unknown causes of variations of a complex, non-linear system
7) Unpredictable natural and manmade catastrophes
8) Climate measurement errors
(unintentional errors, or deliberate science fraud)
9) Interactions and feedbacks, involving two or more variables.
Include under land use changes: more crops of a denser nature, more trees with denser leaf coverage, more evapotranspiration from increased green area on the earth, more food – more animals, etc. And never forget UHI which affects the actual measurements.
Doud ==> Cause is a terrifically hard thing to prove….in almost all scientific fields. The best we can get is lots of supporting evidence. In CliSci, not much for the CO2 Hypothesis.
Kip → “Cause is a terrifically hard thing to prove…”
Which is why a predictively unique physical theory is so important.
Which warming oceans caused by atmospheric CO2 increases lacks entirely.
The claim is that more CO2 in the atmosphere inhibits Earth’s surface from cooling, which is not the same as claiming CO2 directly warms land and oceans.
As the earth warms it should radiate more according to Planck. Higher radiation levels means more cooling while the sun is not in the sky. You never see anyone accounting for this in the climate models.
In addition, the lower cooling would affect nighttime temps more than daytime temps. Higher nighttime temps are hardly a scare factor however.
The proof is the fact that GHG increases does affect atmospheric temperatures. How do I know that? Because many people like Dr. Happer show us it is so. It is only the amount of effect that is under dispute. I think the effects of the estimated approximately (less than?) 1% change in the Earth’s energy balance from Man’s GHG emissions are impossible to measure. So this is a pointless argument.
“I deny that there is ANY proof that global warming is caused by man in any part, simply because there is no measure of the cause, extent, or outcome of natural causes that have and do cause climate change”
Then you are fool !
— You deny lab spectroscopy that proves CO2 is a greenhouse gas?
— You deny that manmade CO2 emissions increased CO2 by +50% since 1850?
— You deny that UHI and land use changes from economic growth, logging, agriculture, crop irrigation can all affect climate?
— You deny air pollution affects the climate?
— You deny that haphazard MANMADE measurements, infilling, adjustments and re-adjustments may have caused a significant portion of the global warming claimed since 1880, either deliberately or inadvertently?
There was no accurate global average temperature in 1880, so whatever is claimed for 1880 is just a MANMADE wild guess, made by people who WANT to report lots of global warming.
Arbitrary MANMADE adjustments warmed the period from 1940 to 1975, which was originally reported significant global cooling in 1975, now claimed to be close to a flat trend.
The US in the 1930s used to be warmer than in 1998, but not anymore. MANMADE adjustments cooling the 1930s increased the rate of US warming.
I have to disagree with the initial assumption. Miskolczi 2014 shows human activity cannot cause any warming. It also answers the criticisms of his 2010 paper. Skeptics have the answer already and spend a monumental amount of time on unneeded efforts.
Absolutely correct. It hasn’t been superseded because that is impossible.
Richard M ==> The wonderful thing about WUWT is that all opinions and viewpoints are welcome — even mine!
RM, I dug deep into the Miscolski math back in the day. Found it flawed. There were several contemporaneous published critiques also finding it flawed, with more physics and math mojo than mine. Those still exist online if you look hard enough.
Pro tip. Ignore both Miscolski and Salby. Both very flawed and easily rebutted.
I’ve read the critiques. They are flawed. No idea how they convinced you of anything. The math in his papers looked good to me. If his paper is so easily rebutted, let’s see some detail.
Rud Istvan also thinks Willis Eschenbach never makes any fundamental errors. I think Miskolczi is much more likely to be correct than Rud, just from that observation alone 🙂
I’m not sure I would go so far as to say that human activity cannot cause any surface warming, especially if you include land use changes (forest cover, albedo, UHI, etc.) But adding a few dozen ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere is not going to result in any measurable changes, that’s for sure.
Bear in mind, the total radiative cooling (upward power, i.e. energy transfer) at the surface at night ranges from 0 to about 100 W/m^2 depending on the humidity. If CO2 absorbs the same wavelengths as water vapour, which it mostly does, but water vapour can range from 0 to a couple of percent of the mass of the air, while CO2 is 0.04%, then it follows by simple ratios that we are dealing with a maximum CO2 radiative absorption effect of around 1 W/m^2, of which most was already present before humans started emitting any of this gas via industrial means. Nobody has tried to measure this effect, that I have seen, probably because it is so small that it would be lost in the noise. Instead, they play with computer models and say “look at all these forcings we invented! We are so smart!”
“Absolutely correct. It hasn’t been superseded because that is impossible.”
Manmade CO2 emissions joined the list of the usual suspects for climate change roughly after WW2.
Obviously not an important variable from 1940 to 1975, when CO2 warming was more than offset by other climate change variables that caused global cooling.
Afte 1975, CO2 rising was likely to be one cause of the global warming from 1975 to 2015.
CO2 warming was again offset by other climate change variables in the 2015 to 2023 period.
” Miskolczi 2014 shows human activity cannot cause any warming.”
Then Miskolczi 2014 is wrong
Miskolczi’s 2014 is based on Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation and a natural feedback process that leads to no warming. He analyzed 60+ years of NOAA data and found no change in the opacity of the atmosphere (the greenhouse effect).
Dr WIlliam Gray actually described the process in a 2012 paper.
http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/gray2012.pdf
“Global rainfall increases typically cause an overall reduction of specific humidity (q) and relative humidity (RH) in the upper tropospheric levels of the broader scale surrounding convection subsidence regions. This leads to a net enhancement of radiation energy to space over the rainy areas and over broad areas of the globe. ”
Global data supports his statement. he just didn’t go far enough.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20ESRL%20AtmospericSpecificHumidity%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1948%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
Looks to me like you are wrong.
Looks like Gray was wrong too.
Strange response. It appears you will deny anything that goes against your preconceived opinion. The data clearly supports these scientists.
Richard Greene still believes the false NOAA reports of 300 W/m^2 of downwelling longwave infrared power at the surface at night 🙂
It is an accepted tenet of modern science that an Effect cannot precede its Cause. So here I find myself accepting the major offered data as more-or-less valid (close enough for my purposes) and the evidences offered as more-or-less true, yet I find that proposed CO2-driven Global Warming Hypothesis, in order to be true, would require retrocausality, or, in other words, that the Effects have preceded the Cause.
sparks cause fire and fire creates sparks so sparks are both a cause and effect.
of course effects can preceed causes,
debt can cause mre borrowing which causes inflation and inflation can cause debt to increase
so debt , the cause, both preceeds inflation and follows it.
it is NOT an accepted tenet of science. it is a asumption of pre scientific “metaphysics”
causes are never observed, see Hume, they are metaphysics.
Mosher ==> I seldom have read such nonsense from someone so well educated.
Of course all things are an effect of something….and the chicken and the egg have been arguing about that for a long time.
None the less, effects preceding their own causes is not a generally accepted proposition.
There are theoretical physicists that insist that the arrow of time flows both ways … but I don’t think so.
I don’t think that the atmospheric CO2 concentrations of the late 1900s caused the warming of the late 1700s. Sorry,
Mosher ==> I seldom have read such nonsense from someone so well educated.
You need a Mr. Masher gibberish decoder ring.
I’m selling then for $10 each.
Business is slow, so far.
night follows day and day follows night so of course night casue day and day causes night.
Steven, really! The spark that causes the fire must precede the fire. The fact that the fire gives rise to other sparks is irrelevant to that fact.
The debt which can cause an inflation precedes the inflation. The inflation may create different and greater debt too, but that is irrelevant to the fact that the earlier debt caused the inflation.
Yes, Hume was skeptical about causation. A brilliant philosopher but a dead end. If you find yourself invoking Hume on causation to defend the idea that a rise in temp can be caused by a rise in CO2 that comes after it….
Well, the advice given in ‘Three Men in a Boat’ comes to mind.
To be taken daily. A ten mile vigorous walk, a hot bath, followed by two pints of stout and a large beefsteak.
More support for the beefsteak
“I’ll have a side of ribeye with my striploin please. Medium”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2023/02/10/wheres-the-beef-2/
another ian ==> Hey, thanks for the link! I thought Small Dead Animals had ceased posting. I have written about meat many times. — not usually from the climate angle.
I probably agree with everything the author writes. Unfortunately, the demented typography made me give up reading very quickly, Black, blue, magenta; normal, bold, italic, big, medium, small text.
I have a vision disability.
I can not read with my right eye
My left eye is only 20/60 vision
And I could read the article in spite of that disability
except for the smaller charts
like the small Snow Lab charts.
I posted links to larger Snow Lab charts
for others to view.
So you are complaining too much.
And, while I’m into pedantry, you can have ‘waiting for approval’ or ‘awaiting approval’ but not ‘awaiting for approval’.
You can if you own the website.
Kip,
With some calculations I made for fun a long time ago in mind I was at once drawn to the
Statista graph about the warming of the oceans, in particular the conspicuous excursion of some 0.4C around 1945. What puzzles me is: where did the heat come from. To explain let me do a little calculation.
On average every square cm of the planet has over 2 kilometer of water on it. That is per sqcm 200 kilogram of water. That same average sqcm has 1kg air above it (1 bar). The specific heat of water is 4.2 KJ/kg, of air 1.0KJ/kg. Suppose the 0.4C excursion is of the upper 100 meter water only and that the total heat going into the system is unchanged; then the warming of the sea would have come from the atmospheric heat reservoir, lowering its temperature. To warm 10kg of water by 0.4C that atmosphere, the whole caboodle, would drop 0.4x10x4.2C = 17C. Nothing anywhere close has been reported at the time.
From this observation several questions arise about what possibly could account for the discreapancy: a) There must have been an extra input of heat at a level even the 8.5CMIP model can not even dream of, what was it?; b) the excursion as reported is due to a sampling problem, but then what worth is the dataset?; c) The temperature measurements are actually very shallow and relate only to the upper meter of the oceans, then again what worth is the dataset.
Perhaps someone has a good idea? Just a thought.
EZ, your calculations say the data must be bad.
Some years ago I did deep dive into SST and OHC. In the 1940’s there was only SST. And SST was strongly biased by trade routes because the main input at that time was engine room cooling water intake temperature. So the southern hemisphere oceans are grossly undersampled. And during the war years trade routes were severely disrupted. And ‘SST’ also depends on ship lading, which determines the intake depth below the sea surface. I concluded the SST data was not fit for climate purpose until ARGO. OHC data were even worse until ARGO. Which explains why the world decided to deploy ARGO. See my old guest post ‘ARGO—fit for purpose?’ for the interesting background.
Ed and Rud ==> There is no dependable, scientific-in-any-way data for OHC even now. For the past, before ten years ago, there was nothing worth even considering.
Now, ARGO has some data — maybe enough for a rough calculation, back of the envelope, for Sea Surface Temperature (where sea surface is top ten meters) and only that for the open ocean (near land, all bets are off).
The biggest mistake is using SST(skin) from satellites for anything other than a measure of the strength of insolation or upwellings or downwellings causing surface temp excursions.
How about UAH satellite data since 1979?
EZ, I have thought of an important correction which makes no difference to your conclusion. 71% of the Earth‘s surface is ocean. The rest is land. True, the estimated ocean depth is about 2km. So you need to multiply your water heat capacity factor by 0.71. (Air covers both, so no correction needed.) That means a loss of air temp (heat) 12C not 17C. You are still right by a lot. Just trying to remove any possible warmunist counter.
Regards
kip
That means that CO2 as a driver of climate only became dominate over Factor X since 1950.
More correctly now, well-mixed GHGs became the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979, dominate over the unknown Factor X that drove the many ups and downs since 1880.
wrong wrong wrong,
there are muliple factors that drive the climate at all times.
think of it as multiple factors that drive your bank account balance
not just one factor X!
likewise there are multiple factors that drive the climate
Sun, Aerosols, GHGs
there is no Single factor X that drove the wiggles from 1850 to 1979, but rather many small factors
your problem is that you exploit textual ambiguities and imprecision because you are too lazy to look at the math
Mosher ==> Gee, you are rambling again. So, now, disagreeing with your stance in response to Reprise Part 1, you now say “many small factors’ which is, of course, exactly what Factor X is: “Factor X is “natural variability” — which can be translated into “things that change the climate that we do not recognize as causative and/or do not understand”.
So, apparently, you missed that part of the definition of Factor X. That’s a big misunderstanding.
But I still don’t get how you can maintain that “after 1950 [now understood by the IPCC to be 1979] all the warming [some say “110 %”] is down to atmospheric GHG concentrations….and if “all” or “110%” or even if “most” — what then happened to the other “many small factors (which add up to Factor X) that caused all the other ups and downs?
And “What math might you be referring to?” — give us a link or two to the math that validates your viewpoint . I am very curious to see math that makes CO2 “110%” responsible for warming after 1950/1979.
The argument is basically that this time its different, but without giving any reason why the same thing that caused previous rises should not be operating still and causing the present one.
If you think this time its different, you have to show what it was the previous times, and why its stopped operating now.
Its different now because if it wasn’t the money would go away.
There are many more grammatical and typographical errors within a single Mr. Mosher comment than in all of WUWT posts for a single day. Nevertheless, the sentence below is somewhat problematic.
“My point in all the above is that not all energy retained in the Earth system is retain as heat measurable by thermometers.”
At the very least, “retain” should be “retained” but thermometers directly measure temperature, not heat. Of course, one can convert temperature to heat if mass, volume and composition are known.
Hi Kip,
I met John Maunder ,a New Zealander in 1990 who had lectured in several universities around the world as a climate scientist .
John attended as New Zealand’s representative to the first climate meeting in Austria and also to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro Brazil .
He came with his wife and stayed the night on my farm as I had asked him to be the guest speaker at our Rotary Club.
That was 33 years ago but his message was almost the same as yours, less 33 years of data.
He did go further back into history showing that the three climate optimums were all warmer than present since the end of the Ice Age.
Here in New Zealand cyclone Gabriel is making land fall in the North Island .
The news media is all over it , a commentator blaming it on a warmer atmosphere which will hold more water vapour but in the next sentence saying that we will also get more droughts .
Last month a down graded cyclone caused flooding in Auckland and the commentators all were saying it was unprecedented and all caused by climate change .
It was not unprecedented as back in 1958 more rain fell 100 miles south of Auckland over three days .A total of 379 millimeters was recorded which caused the Waipa river to flood the town of Otorohanga .
Hear is a record that still stands in Auckland .Wettest month ever recorded February 1869
420 mm,
Completely off topic John Maunder asked me to speak to a Rotary Club in Tauranga which I did on a topic that I write about here on WUWT . Methane from Farmed Livestock why it can never be a problem .
Graham ==> John Maunder is an old grey head of the climate scene in New Zealand — is/was an adviser to the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition
Dr John Maunder, of Tauranga, former president of the Commission for Climatology of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 22 years with the New Zealand Meteorological Service (including 5 years as Assistant Director). [ source ]
And, eGads!, those nutty Kiwis with their anti-methane madness!
Its very few green nuts that have gone over board on methane in NZ.
Unfortunately the UN and Greenpeace have pushed this nonsense and our socialist government want to be the first country in the world to tax farmers for their animals methane emissions .
The main reason the CO2 hypothesis is so popular among scientists is that it provides an explanation for the required changes in the energy budget at the top of the atmosphere to drive a change in the climate. With a few exceptions, the climate cannot change unless its energy content changes.
Since the 1960s scientists have framed the problem of climate change in such a way that it only admits one solution: changes in GHGs and aerosols.
And as Karl Popper acutely said: “Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”
Climate scientists have not understood climate change, and the evidence is that they are unable to explain why the Little Ice Age took place. The LIA is the previous intense climate change event. How can we fool ourselves into believing we understand climate change when we cannot explain the previous big climate change?
I have reframed the climate change problem in Popper’s terms with a theory that admits multiple solutions. GHGs are still one of them, but only a second-order factor. Climate changes mainly by altering the amount of heat transported to the poles in winter, heat that is expelled from the planet by radiative cooling. Now the LIA can be explained because solar activity is one of the modulators of meridional transport intensity, but not the only one.
Whether correct or not, this new theory is superior on purely theoretical grounds, as it not only explains what the old theory explains but also what it doesn’t.
Javier ==> And, welcome to the club of those who have advance alternate hypotheses that compete with the IPCC’s CO2 Hypothesis.
Today, IPCC Science is being represented here by Mosher…talk to him, see if he can make any sense when responding to you. (something he does not do when talking to me,)
“Climate changes mainly by altering the amount of heat transported to the poles in winter, “
Your theory is unnecessary as it came after my correct theory of climate change which already incorporated solar activity modulation of the Arctic via the tropics before you wrote your ‘story’.
Your theory does not explain how the energy of the climate system is changed to produce the observed climate change. The solar change in energy is just too small. This is a major shortcoming of most alternative theories and the reason they are disregarded without consideration.
From the post:”When the Sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, some of it is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases.”
According to this sentence NONE of the Sun’s energy reaches the surface. It is the Sun that warms the surface and the surface via conduction passes energy to molecules in contact with it.
My asphalt drive gets warm (hot) even in winter to the point of melting snow on sunny days in the 20’s F. The drive does not get warmed by GHG’s.
The photo demonstrates the power of GHG’s.
mkelly ==> Hmmmm….I could have worded that better. The re-radiated energy goes in all directions and some of that hits the Earth, of course, and some of the energy from the Sun, maybe the bulk of it, just powers right on through ’til it hits your driveway.
NICE photo — a frost shadow!
Some portion of Factor X is solar variability, a la Judith Curry.
PhilH ==> Yes, of course, and so many other things….even ,maybe the spinning of the Earth’s core, according to some theories put forth recently.
In fact, there are so many components mixed together, in a coupled non-linear chaotic system.
We will not be able to model such a system to predict future climates accurately.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t, in the short or mid-term, make some reasonable “if this then that” type statements about possible future weather/climate. “If the Southwest keeps getting drier….” these are, of curse, self-fulfilling.
“If the Sun puts out more energy, the Earth will receive more energy.’ Self-evident.
Thank you Kip! Indeed there’s no climate emergency. Those who promote it are delusional, manipulative, or both.
I would call Nut Zero a climate emergency, and a total waste of money.
“Polyak et al., 2010 shows this controversy in action:”
They don’t agree with you, though. From their abstract:
“The current reduction in Arctic ice cover started in the late 19th century, consistent with the rapidly warming climate, and became very pronounced over the last three decades. This ice loss appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years and unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities.“
Nick ==> You seem to have misunderstood my position on Arctic sea Ice, which is that it has been and still is declining.
As for Polyak et al, they do not even look at Arctic-wide sea ice before 1870…and so miss the earlier start of the arctic Sea Ice decline. The Nordic Sea Ice decline is what we see today — the Nordic Sea Ice is where the decline is occurring.
Maybe you missed that.
Polyak et al (with graph, including pre-1870) is the source you cite in claiming that sea ice has been declining for 300 years.
Nick ==. And that is exactly what the graph shows….their text statement is based on the RED line on the graph, which is their work. But they show the 300 year decline from the Nordic study. (there is no other observational study back to the 1700s.)
This doesn’t mean the explanation given by the IPCC-supported scientists is the correct one. There is a general lack of good evidence for the IPCC-backed hypothesis. The greenhouse effect of CO2 is weaker over the cryosphere, not stronger. Alternative explanations worthy of consideration are other byproducts of human development and growth unrelated to the greenhouse effect, like soot, black carbon, brown carbon, and other particles that greatly enhance ice melting. For the Arctic to melt more in winter it has to be down to more heat being brought from lower latitudes, as no heat is being produced there. So the cause has to be searched in heat transport, not greenhouse gases. And so on, so on…
Poor evidence and poor reasoning are the marks of poor scientific skills. A lot of scientists throw out half-thought hypotheses in the hope of being right and becoming memorable. When those half-baked hypotheses become fashionable we have a major scientific problem that delays progress for decades.
“For the Arctic to melt more in winter it has to be down to more heat being brought from lower latitudes.”
Over Arctic areas, temperature inversion is normal during the winter season. The temperature inversion is a reversal phenomenon in which the air temperature in the troposphere increases with the height. In the Arctic, the temperature inversion occurs particularly in the lower troposphere, which may have specific effects on climate processes.
The Arctic has an average winter temperature of -34° C (-30° F), and the Antarctic winter is about two times colder: −60° C (−76° F).
” like soot, black carbon, brown carbon, and other particles that greatly enhance ice melting.” (in the Arctic)
Unfortunately that can be blamed on burning coal and other hydrocarbon fuels.
Snow covers the soot, but then there is more soot the next day.
Obviously a cause of Arctic warming
But the Arctic warming is mainly in the winter, while soot is coming down on the snow and ice all year long.
Human or natural (wildfires) biomass burning is probably a much bigger source. Climate scientists will tell us next that fire wasn’t such a great invention after all and we would be better off without it.
Javier ==> Gee — I have maintained that we should quit “burning stuff” for heat and energy for quite sometime. My reasoning is that the “stuff” being burnt is too valuable to be wasted in that way. Burning trash however, and burying the ash, I think is a fine idea, reduces the bulk by 2/3 and we get some of the energy back out of it.
Of course, much of that trash is wasteful the second it is manufactured. Unnecessary plastic wrappings and packages. etc etc
Aussie gov: “and the rest is absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases.”
Kip → “Why would anyone deny that?”
I would, because it’s wrong.
The radiant energy is absorbed (by CO₂) and then lost by collisional decay. Right up to the stratosphere, 15 μ vibrationally excited CO₂ decays by collision, not re-radiation.
The energy lost to collision is then dispersed into the KE of the atmospheric gases and thereby becomes one with the overall black body radiation field. Then, it gets radiated away into space, but across all the TOA BB wavelengths.
There isn’t any evidence at all that our CO₂ emissions have contributed diddly to warm the climate. Supposing otherwise is just that: supposition. Observationally unsupported. Theoretically invisible. Presently indistinguishable from zero.
That last is the only scientifically justifiable position. Science: many are called, but few have the courage of their convictions.
Pat ==> I’m sorry that the use of that bit of man-on-the-street language has offended your scientific sensibilities.
That said, even Will Happer allows that GHGs contribute to some warming. And obviously, overall the atmosphere and its GHGs do warm the Earth above what would be without an atmosphere.
Kip → even Will has no evidence that our CO₂ emissions have caused any warming. Nothing of the climate is outside of natural variability. The effect of CO₂ emissions has been indistinguishable from zero.
Except for global greening.
No physical theory of climate = no basis for suppositions. Model resolution is about 1000-fold too coarse to reveal the effect of the annual average 0.035 W/m² increase in forcing from our industrial emissions.
The geological record provides no evidence of CO₂ as a driver of air temperature.
Science is counter-intuitive. It may be that the hydrological cycle increases or decreases in rate, with [CO₂]_atm, so that the net effect of CO₂ (a 👹 𝔾H𝔾 👹 ! Oh no!!) emissions on sensible heat is undetectable. No one knows. I see no other fully rational position than that: no one knows.
And mildly affirmative, but scientifically insupportable, suppositions in an atmosphere of political frenzy are dangerous. Like affirming conformity during a persecution of heretics. It concedes to believers, ground that should be contested.
“The effect of CO₂ emissions has been indistinguishable from zero.”
That pure speculation contradicts everything learned about CO2 with lab infrared spectroscopy, with and without water vapor.
You do not have the knowledge to claim that CO2 in the atmosphere acts completely differently than CO2 acts in a laboratory.
Where’s your evidence, Richard?
Radiation physics is not a valid theory of climate.
And you have no knowledge of the state of my knowledge.
I read your comment. That’s all I need to know.
You claim CO2 effects measured accurately in a lab have no relationship to CO2 effects in the atmosphere. That is claptrap.
Wrong and wrong, Richard.
Dick quoted Frank:”“The effect of CO₂ emissions has been indistinguishable from zero.”
if you wish measured experiments that show CO2 emissivity is “indistinguishable” from zero. Here is one done by three folks over three decades.
If CO2 caused warming by intercepting IR there would need to be two columns in this specific heat table for dry air or CO2. One for with and one for without infrared.
Pat ==> There are so many tenable alternate theories, viewpoints and understandings that CliSci can be dizzying. Even those of us that agree on the big things don’t agree on the details.
Kip → you put your finger on the problem. We need a unique theory.
Absent that and given the abhorrent politics, demagogues spin plausibilities and conpire to wreck lives, livelihoods, and, ultimately, freedom itself.
Nevertheless, radiation physics shows that collisional decay of CO₂* is orders of magnitude faster than radiative decay, throughout the troposphere.
The absorbed 15μ radiation is not radiated away as 15μ radiation. Were it so, there’d be no 15μ hole in the BB radiation band seen from space.
Your essays are great and greatly appreciated, Kip.
Pat ==> And I, of course, appreciate your appreciation.
I make excuses for myself — I am not a scientist, I have no degree whatever (even though I spent almost 6 years at University — Pre-Med then Religious Studies — all in the late sixties hippy madness). I did news journalism as a hobby at Uni and picked it back up late in life as a freelance science/health journalist.
So, when I make mistakes, I can laugh at them and let them slide — trying to do better next time.
On my overall view of CliSci (expressed in this essay and it’s Part 1) my attitude is: “I could be wrong there, but I don’t think so.” (h/t Randy Newman)
“I am not a scientist”,
There is no logical reason to say that. You think and write like a scientist should think and write. That’s all that counts. Not having college degrees up the wazoo (scientific term).
You are reasonable and do not make wild guess predictions of climate doom coming in the future. Or lame jokes, like me:
We’re all going to die in a few decades from CO2, anyway, so I wanted to get this in writing first. CAGW already killed my dog. I bought a rowboat and am also building an ark now, hoping to survive sea level rise in Michigan. Our winters are warmer with less snow than in the 1970s, so we are obviously doomed. We have suitcases packed and are ready to flee to Alaska.
Kip → it doesn’t take a degree to make a scientist. It only takes a way of thinking. Your essays have always shown that way in action.
Pat ==> Thank you — we live in a world very focused on “official qualification” and not always (not often) based on merit.
Some of you have both….
‘We need a unique theory.’
That could take a while. In the meantime, I’m grateful for those who can scientifically demonstrate that today’s climate alarmism is unjustified.
Pat, thank you for commenting here. “Observationally unsupported. Theoretically invisible. Presently indistinguishable from zero.” Yes. Your 2019 paper showed this formally, and it is amazing to me that so many can wish away the insurmountable problems with attribution to GHGs. Here at WUWT I keep commenting with this link. It supports the same points visually. Observations from NOAA GOES East Band 16 in relatively high resolution show how completely unrealistic it is to make any claim by computation about the effect on longwave emission to space from increased concentrations of CO2.
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk_band.php?sat=G16&band=16&length=12
And for those interested in the numbers involved, the radiance at 30C on the brightness temperature scale (yellow) is 10 times the radiance at -90C (white.) It is a huge array of highly variable emitters, and the motion helps us see it all as highly self-regulating.
Thanks, David. As a scientist, like you, I’m scared to be anything but modest in the face of ignorance.
Your posted image is stunning.
Kip, you always need to reference what the climate alarmist call climate change by what they are really saying. CAGW Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. Everyone believes the climate changes, everyone believes it gets warmer or cooler, everyone believes it gets wetter or drier, everyone believes glaciers advance and retreat. None of these things are proof of anything. In every instance that an alarmist or low information person mentions climate change or global warming we all must say you mean CAGW don’t you. We can not accept their terms and definitions, make them say CAGW. All of the changes you have mentioned are almost certainly natural, man can only make small changes.
Bob ==> Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming has morphed into something else….the IPCC AR6 does not even reference excessive warming….they now say “It is very likely that well-mixed GHGs were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979…” AR6 SPM A.1.3 ” Tropospheric warming is what UAH measures…it is not Global Average Surface Temperature.
Kip, I am sure you are right but that is my point. They are moving the goal goal posts. Worse than that they aren’t even studying what the IPCC was created for.
I was expecting another short article and then Hansen threw in all his ammunition including the kitchen sink. This is a masterpiece article and will be the first one I recommend on my recommended climate science and energy article reading list tomorrow: Honest Climate Science and Energy
Good work except the Rutgers Snow Lab Charts are too small for me to read.
Larger charts are at these four links (not all the same charts):
Rutgers University Climate Lab :: Global Snow Lab
Rutgers University Climate Lab :: Global Snow Lab
Rutgers University Climate Lab :: Global Snow Lab
Rutgers University Climate Lab :: Global Snow Lab
Monday New York Times Headline:
“Climate denier Kip Hansen denies being a climate denier”
Richard ==> I was just going to add the links but you beat me to it. I usually do…probably a link to Rutgers in there somewhere….I haven’t made it into the Times since Andy Revkin moved on.
Here’s the big picture:
Make your choice:
Greenhouse Earth or Icehouse Earth?
Greenhouse and icehouse Earth – Wikipedia
If in an ice age during an Icehouse Earth:
In an interglacial, or not in an interglacial?
If in an interglacial:
Having a warming trend, or having a cooling trend?
If in an interglacial warming trend:
Enjoying the wonderful climate, or being a Climate Howler Global Whiner, annoying everyone else?
We are lucky to be alive with today’s great climate, compared with most of Earth’s climate history. And no dinosaurs to chase us too.
Thanks Kip, as an early riser these days I read WUWT with my first morning coffee. Your sound balanced view, is an echo of my own position on Climate Change.
It is interesting to note the changing words and phrasing the IPCC is adopting now. They are having to get over their earlier flawed position, i.e. that CO2 is the cause of all changes in climate?.
Clearly they have also been invaded by the Woke movement’s position, i.e. modern agriculture is bad and must cease.
Now the impact of mankind in all its activities, is highlighted by the IPCC as the villain destroying the planet reflecting the lobbying activities of the Green Woke advocates/activists.
“First they came for our energy”… etc.
Now they come for our food.
I am amazed that scientists and intelligent people in general, don’t ask more basic/fundamental questions, when presented with the contrived ‘AGW’ hysteria and fear mongering given them by ‘experts’ via the MSM.
Let us hope we can bring critical thinking back into vogue. The way this century is unfolding it is needed now more than ever.
Keep up the good work.
Rod ==> I’m happy to have the opportunity and the freedom to publish my thoughts on the topic without being censored. I might be wrong now, but I don’t think so.
The rates of warming up to the present since 1950 and since 1978 aren’t strikingly different, according to GISS. +0.15 (+/- 0.02) C/dec since 1950, versus +0.19 (+/- 0.03) C/dec since 1978. Both statistically significant warming trends.
The global cooling from 1940 to 1975, as reported in 1975, has been revised away.
From the article: “Nor do I agree that “It is very likely that well-mixed GHGs were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979…” AR6 SPM A.1.3
Why? For the simple reason that real scientific evidence for this view is very weak.”
There is no evidence presented here. None.
From the article: “The IPCC in AR5 SPM offers only this:
“The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.” — AR5 SPM 1.1”
That’s not evidence of anything other than the atmosphere and oceans have warmed and sea level has risen. This is not the first time this has occurred and all of the other times it occurred in the past had no connection to human-derived CO2. And there’s no evidence of a CO2 connection today, either.
From the article: “The new IPCC AR6 now states instead: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.” And GHG emission are no longer singled out – but rather reduced to a claim of: ”human influence”. Human influence includes land uses changes such as agriculture, road construction, and deforestation, Urban Heat Island, all anthropogenic emissions and pollutants and various anthropogenic Particulate Matter.”
it’s all Handwaving. Not a shred of evidence in there. It’s just speculation, assumptions and a lot of wild, unsubstantiated claims. This is Not evidence. And it’s not the scientific method.
From the article: “That’s the sum total of the evidence, though the IPCC AR5 is hundreds of pages in four booklets, they are just additional verbiage on these basic points.”
The sum total of evidence equals zero. There is one claim after another about CO2 and the Earth’s weather and the above is all the climate change alarmists can offer: Scary verbiage.
A competent judge would throw the whole case out of court for lack of evidence.
“Nor do I agree that “It is very likely that well-mixed GHGs were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979…” AR6 SPM A.1.3″
IPCC treats all natural causes of climate change post 1975 as “noise” so they can blame warming on manmade CO2 — that’s what they do in every report:
We assume past global warming was manmade and dangerous, so we predict future global warming will be manmade and dangerous.
Perfect circular reasoning, that they claim is science, but is actually claptrap.