Essay by Eric Worrall
Following a rousing introduction by Dr. Peter Ridd, Dr Will (Don’t call me a climate scientist) Happer presented a dazzling speech, in which he explained in simple terms why CO2 claims don’t make sense.
Will Happer spoke about his work creating reference stars – he pioneered the concept. Light from stars crosses the universe to finally land in our telescopes, only to be mangled by the last few miles of its journey through our atmosphere. Will’s brilliant idea was to use lasers to create a reference light source at the top of our atmosphere, which can be used to untangle the damage the atmosphere does to the incoming light signal.
Dr. Will Happer is a guy who understands atmospheric physics so well, he was able to confidently predict, just from theory, that it would be possible to artificially create an entirely new atmospheric state, which would help Astronomers use adaptive optics to correct defects in their photos.
To appreciate Will Happer’s genius, it is important to note that the reference star is not the laser beam itself, Happer is not just randomly shining a laser into the sky. The laser causes a small patch of a layer of the atmosphere to glow, just like a bright star. Will Happer figured out how to make that happen, by delivering the right laser frequency and intensity to trigger a predictable glow.
I think from this you can reasonably conclude that Happer is someone who seriously understands the atmosphere and radiation physics at a level few others can approach – key concepts for analysing the Greenhouse Effect.
One of Happer’s most powerful slides was this one, which shows the insignificant impact of doubling CO2 on the level of outgoing radiation.
Take your time looking at the image above, because it took me a few seconds to get it the first time I saw this type of diagram. What the slide is showing is how atmospheric gasses affect thermal radiation escaping the Earth. The blue line is what radiation would be emitted by the Earth at its current temperature if Earth had no atmosphere. The Jagged line underneath the blue line shows the effect of atmospheric gasses partially blocking outgoing radiation at specific frequencies – the greenhouse effect. The reference to the area in the text, is because the area under the curves shows the total amount of energy escaping into space.
If you look carefully, you’ll see two lines sitting almost on top of each other, a dark brown line and a red line. You can’t really see most of the red line, because the red and dark brown lines are intermingled, they almost sit on top of each other. The brown line is how much radiation is trapped by current CO2 levels (around 400ppm). The almost identical red line is how much radiation would be trapped if CO2 levels were raised to 800ppm.
So what is the impact of raising CO2 to 800ppm, over today’s value of approx. 400ppm?
The impact of doubling CO2 from 400ppm to 800ppm, according to basic physics, is 0.71C of warming.
How can anyone possibly still think the CO2 greenhouse effect is a problem, after seeing this diagram and calculation?
The reality is almost all the radiation which CO2 can trap, is already being trapped. Adding more CO2 has almost no impact on outgoing atmospheric radiation.
So how do alarmist climate scientists turn this trivial nothing into a global climate panic? How do they turn 0.7C of warming into 3C, 4C, 12C, whatever the latest panic figure is?
According to Dr. Will Happer, they achieve this by adding unphysical, hypothetical positive feedbacks, which amplify the almost non-existent impact of adding additional CO2 to the atmosphere. But there is no proof significant positive feedbacks which amplify the minuscule CO2 effect actually exist.
The rest of Dr. Will Happer’s presentation was just as powerful.
If only we could photocopy this guy, and get him into all the classrooms of the world, the climate panic would disappear overnight. Which is probably why the left worked so hard to cancel him, when Dr. Happer was given a climate science oversight position under President Trump, and served a year on the America First team.
We’d all love to know what Dr. Happer could have achieved, had he received a little extra time. Let’s hope Dr. Will Happer finds a letter from the White House in his mailbox in early 2024.
A huge thankyou to the Institute of Public Affairs for making the Will Happer speeches happen. And a big shoutout to Raj and Vijay, who over a few beers before the event entertained me with some interesting insights into the murky political games being played in the Aussie state of Victoria and elsewhere, details of which have somehow slipped beneath the radar of Australia’s mainstream media.
Correction (EW): h/t MarkW – 400ppm to 800ppm, not 400C to 800C!
Update (EW): h/t GC – There is no proof significant positive feedbacks which amplify the minuscule CO2 effect actually exist. But Will Happer went further than this, he spent a bit of time discussing why there is significant evidence such feedbacks don’t exist – namely the observed stability of the global climate over geological timescales. Large feedbacks are not compatible with stability.
Update (EW): For more background read Explaining The Physics Of Carbon Dioxide – Will Happer’s Tour Down Under written by Jennifer Marohasy.
The sin of modern science is that so many scientists have lacked the courage to stand up and call out global warming as junk science.
This is the big problem with government run science.
The loudest advocates get themselves into positions of power, where they can control everyone’s budget/grants. They then proceed to punish anyone who disagrees with them by cutting their funding.
Anyone who speaks out against the cabal had better be prepared to start looking for a new career.
it is the end result of almost every movement. they normally begin with good people and good intentions but are eventually commandeered by zealots, power seekers and grifters
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy
I read about something Frank Herbert said decades ago to the effect that power is an attractor for persons on a certain pathological type.
That’s what we are now seeing with ‘climate science’ which has been cross bred with ‘science communications’ such that not only do researchers have to publish, publish, publish but they must also be go to media talking heads not to mention be active on (anti) ‘social media’.
It seems to me this is the influence of the cult of managerialism that so infests academia, large corporations, consultancies, banking institutions as well as many parts of the public service where the ability to obfuscate, duck and weave and peddle a simplistic, made for media ‘message’ is the only KPI in town.
A fundamental problem for all human institutions is that those who desire power over others always gravitate to positions of power. This needs to be recognized and have systems in place that eliminate sociopaths from positions of power.
Our founding fathers tried to address this by creating a government of competing power centers. Congress, the Courts and the Executive were designed to be in competition for power. The tendency of any government to grow over all, was supposed to be balanced by having the Senate represent the interests of the state governments.
Any growth in federal power inevitably comes at the expense of state power. The expectation was that the Senate would prevent that from happening.
After the election of senators was changed to a popular vote, the inevitable happened, and the size and reach of the federal government has exploded.
Yeah, well…
And their lack of courage has caused their profession to be besmirched by charlatans and frauds.
Yes. Instead of standing up and re-taking the scientific societies, they quit.
Unless, of course, there is an opportunity for a ‘pile-on’ without accountability.
A lovely graphic explanation of the blocking of outgoing radiation by CO2.
I would love to see what the 300 ppm graph would look like. It might explain some of the warming OR it might also be tucked up with the 400 ppm line. If it is, then WHAT has caused the warming as reported?
Anyone know where we can get the 300 ppm graph and add it to the conversation?
I read somewhere that something like 90% of the radiation that CO2 is capable of capturing is captured by the time CO2 concentrations reach something like 25 to 50 ppm.
Each doubling of CO2 past that point only captures half of what is left.
Doubling from 280 to 560 ppm without feedbacks is said to warm the air by 1.1 or 1.2 degrees C.
But it’s a log function, so most of that should have happened since 1850, although we’ve only reached around 420 ppm.
Net negative feedbacks are possible, but observation based estimates are around 1.6 to 1.7 C. GIGO models center on 3.0 or more.
“observation based estimates are around 1.6 to 1.7 C”
Based on invalid IPCC assumptions. Molecular physicists calculations range from 0.5C to Happer’s 0.71C for a doubling.
Thats more like the real numbers, but of course the interference of water vapour in negative feedback is still discounted, by the IPCC and other who should know better.
In reality ETS is likely below 0.5C under current CO2 levels, and definitely not threatening for the future.
Reality might be that CO2 is a negligible variable in climate because natural variation dwarfs its tiny forcing.
The 0.71 C is for doubling from 400 to 800 ppm, without feedbacks. CO2 level around AD 1850 was 280 or 285 ppm.
There are many other things going on in the coupled interacting systems of atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere than just radiation effects. The king of them all is the response of these systems to induced changes to one (or more) of the physico-chemical components of the system (T, P, V chemical composition,
enthalpy of water in its three states, and other biological activities, etc, etc.)
Let’s look at what happens with the change of just one component in these interconnected systems. If the atmosphere is heated (delta T) by whatever means, all the other components react in such a way as to resist a change in temperature. The volume (V) of the atmosphere (and even the oceans and solid earth) expands which is a cooling effect. Ice melts inhibiting warming, plant/tree growth and expansion of its coverage occurs and photosynthesis is an endothermic (cooling process), tropical ocean surfaces increase evap (a cooling process) and the increased generation of thunderstorms (a heat engine using up heat for fuel), and clouds that reflect solar insolation back into space…..
This real “Temperature Control Knob” is the Le Chatelier Principle, discovered by an 18th century French Chemist of that name. Seemingly, this powerful law is little known to physicists (with the notable exception of Will Happer) and not known at all by “Team Climate Scientists”. The mystery is why haven’t chemists spear-headed a confrontation with Crisis Climate boffins,
Gary
Thank you for mentioning photosynthesis. By my primitive calculation, the energy absorbed and converted to biomass is ~60 Watts per sq m. An increase of 5% in biomass growth rate would counter the IPCC’s 3W/m2 per doubling. NASA satellite imagery shows an increase in 30% since 1980, 6 times the claimed effect of doubling CO2. It is hard to find a “crisis” anywhere.
Crispin in Kampala
Thank you Crispin for your reply. Somehow old LCP – the real Control Knob of Temperatures and everything else doesn’t attract much comment from even sceptics on WUWT.
BTW, a simple way to get a first estimate of how much heat energy has been sequestered by new trees is to take the Google count of 3 trillion trees on earth, multiply by 35% to get additional trees of the “expansion”, times the average size (weight) of new trees (average would be 17.5 years old) – their are tables of the % carbon of different trees (avg ~70% carbon). The sequestered mass of carbon if burned would give off the heat of about 120% of that weight of anthracite coal. This would be an underestimation because other elements of the tree and the efficiency of the chem of photosynthesis uses up added heat. Now, add the fattening of existing tree stock (Harvard experimental forest an others.) Now add plankton and other biological growth …..
Gary Le Chatlier’s principle is about systems at chemical equilibrium. If a single variable is perturbed, the system modifies itself to restore the equilibrium state.
The new equilibrium state will be different from the original state. All of this occurs in an otherwise closed system.
The terrestrial climate is not a closed system. It is in a stable but far from equilibrium state. The whole climate is driven by the flux of incoming solar energy. The climate absorbs that flux and returns much of it to space. Some incoming energy is stored in photosynthesis.
As a far-from equilibrium dissipative (quasi)stable state, the climate has many degrees of freedom and can adjust to perturbations so as to maintain its state. The climate is very good at dumping off energy.
If someone had adapted the equilibrium thermodynamics of Le Chatlier’s principle to the response of far-from equilibrium dissipative systems, then that would be your approach. But unmodified Le Chatlier’s principle would not apply to the climate.
if it’s any help, I’m a chemist and have gone head-to-head with CCbs. I’ve also rattled the cage of the board of the American Chemical Society, but their response has been silence.
Pat, thanks for a good definition of LCP. Normally, familiarity with LCP is in the tidiness of the laboratory. Certainly Le Châtelier himself had only the Laboratory in mind when he discovered the “principle”. But what are we doing in the laboratory? We’re studying and discovering the laws of nature and then we go outside and understand things happening around us and in the universe.
We understand evaporation and convective transfer upwards of heat and moisture quantitatively in buoyant water vapor-laden air from experimental work and sampling and top of atmosphere measurements. These phenomena and others you credit ARE some of the components I refer to when I talk about LCP.
The buffering of pH in the ocean that resists lowering of pH by carbonic acid addition works there and in the laboratory. The increase in CO² in the atmosphere increases its partial pressure which causes it to dissolve in the ocean and drives increased plant growth on the land thereby resisting its accumulation in the atmosphere. The ocean, too, takes this added CO2 and sequesters it in plankton growth, shells and even precipitation as calcium carbonate. If this isn’t LCP, we would have to invent another term for the same phenomenon outside the lab.
Two final things: a) the atmosphere and hydrosphere together as interactive systems and separately meet laboratory criteria for a closed system. i.e. an Erlenmeyer flask vs the Pacific Ocean. b) When we find a system that is frustratingly complex, we label it a chaotic system, something we will never adequately understand. Actually, with a top down look at climate, during the past 3 million years or so when the earth’s land masses reached their present distribution which established the present oceanic an atmospheric circulation geometry, we entered the undulating Ice Age we are now in and the gross features of climate are surprisingly predictable an in narrow range of a few degrees up or down from the average. It seems to me, the Milankovic orbital theory, solar changes and the dampening effect of LCP action are Principal Components of climate behavior, not so chaotic.
Over the last 50 years, the energy that the Earth receives from the Sun, Total Solar Irradiance, has been at its highest level of any time over the past 500 years.
‘Total Solar Irradiance during the Last Five Centuries
The Astrophysical Journal, 937:84, 2022 October 1
https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.10115
The Earth is still in a 2.56 million-year ice age named the Quaternary Glaciation, in a warmer interglacial period that alternates with cold glacial periods. The temperature of the Earth is just a few degrees warmer than at the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850. It is still very cold. Outside of the tropics, everybody has to have warm clothing and shoes, warm housing, warm transportation, and warm workplaces most of the months of the year.
The problem is, there is no “the warming”. Some places have warmed, some have cooled, some have remained relatively static. But, all we’re presented with are “global temperatures”, which give the grossly false impression of uniformity.
Willis has presented here the case that the Earth’s climatic conditions overall have been astonishingly stable for milenia, and continue to be so.
Makes you wonder why our current batch of “leaders” and their “science” enablers are pushing a proposition that climates are teetering on the edge of catastrophic breakdowns.
Civilization could really do with a global “The Emperor Has No Clothes” moment right now.
The actual BS of the whole warmunist movement is claiming that a few degrees difference in averages has any negative effect at all. The paleontologist record shows pretty large variations over time, and the Earth seems to have coped very well by itself.
Very true Jeff, we should be talking about regional climate effects that are closer to reality and more useful for meteorologists, as long as they are not using AGW flawed climate models like the BoM to generate their short-term climate predictions that regularly fail.
To create your own graph, go to https://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
Select locality 1976 U.S. standard atmosphere
Select 300 ppm CO2 The graph will show a blue line.
Save to background.
Select 400 ppm CO2 (or whatever you wish) The graph will show 300 ppm in reddish brown and 400 ppm in blue (mostly obscured.) Whatever blue is showing is the incremental effect.
Thanks. I just completed the exercise. The lines, (400ppm and 300ppm), lie basically on top of each other.
In other words, if the burning of carbon based fuels has raised the CO2 level from 300 to 400 ppm, (since before the industrial revolution to now), then the green house potential of the atmosphere has changed, resulting in a difference over the entire spectrum of an additional 1.22 W/m2. Hardly a big issue.
For reference, the difference from 300 to 500 ppm is also 1.22 W/m2. It looks like the changes are all in the rear view mirror.
“Hardly a big issue.” Agreed! From 300 to 500 ppm, I get a difference of 2.17 W/m^2. “Enter” must be pressed after keying in a new ppm value. In any case, the difference is very minor and disappears in the real atmosphere’s highly self-regulating dynamic operation. Please see my comment elsewhere here, linking to a youtube video I posted and explained, using images from one of NOAA’s geostationary satellites.
Also in the UChicago wrapper, the “offset” is the temperature you can enter for “new” surface temperature to see how much it increases (keeping radiation the same)…plus entering “offset” allows you to keep fixed relative humidity or absolute humidity (I use RH to allow for water vapor feedback.
Units are wrong.
Also the temperature is at least an order of magnitude too high. The only contribution CO2 makes that impacts temperature is to the atmospheric mass.
There needs to be a much better understanding of convective instability to grasp what controls Earth’s energy uptake. When you can answer why open ocean surface temperature cannot sustain more than 30C then you start to understand the energy balance.
Rick, you can tell Will Happer his radiation physics calculations are wrong if you’re feeling brave. Please send us the email conversation, I reckon everyone would like to read that interaction – especially if you win ;-).
He’s half right. “400C to 800C” should read “400ppm to 800ppm” in the caption for the picture with all the equations.
Oops, thanks 🙂
I am not saying they are wrong. My point is that they are irrelevant. Happer is only looking at OLR. What about the incoming sunlight and what is not being thermalised or reflected. No amount of radiation physics can explain why oceans regulate to 30C. It requires an appreciation of how clouds form as a result of convective potential. That requires an understanding of how a level of free convection forms and that has zero to do with radiation physics. Unless he understands convection and advection he has no idea about Earth’s energy balance.
Atmospheric_Convection.pdf
Yes. That’s the issue I understood your message to be raising.
My question about that issue is whether convection patterns affect the radiation patterns. Do convection and radiation have the same order of magnitude? Or can they safely be studied as though they are independent?
Convection and advection dominate atmospheric processes. And regulate both incoming and outgoing radiation.
Convective instability enables life to exist as we know it. It is the only reason Earth is not a snowball.
If there was no convective instability, there would be no clear sky. If convective instability could be stopped today, within a matter of months, the entire atmosphere would become saturated and cloud would persist 100% of the time to permanently darken the surface. The cloud would descend until the entire Earth was ice covered.
We currently get a glimpse of what would happen during convective storms where the ToA radiation balance can go to minus 80W/m^2. Cyclones appear tremendously bright when viewed from space. Also convective instability does not occur much below 15C so we see persistent cloud cover over oceans less than 15C. Apart from these two conditions, convective instability guarantees there will be periods of clear sky.
Image below is of a cyclone viewed from space. Not much sunlight gets through that cloud and it is still losing long wave to space.
Happer’s radiative physics is not even looking at the reflected EMR.
Unless anyone’s climate theory explains why oceans cannot sustain more than 30C, they are groping in the dark. Obviously none of the climate clowns want to know about this because the whole sham falls apart once that single fact becomes widely known.
Someone posted a very good graph not long ago, showing just how far out the climate models are on tropical ocean temperature.
The models have them continually warming.
… measurements have them going nowhere.
I thought I saved that graph, but can’t find it.
Chart 1 at this link shows the measured trend in the Nino34 region:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/14/climate-modelling-in-australia/
Thanks 🙂
It is rather obvious that clouds control the planet’s temperature by reflection of sunlight back to outer space. The reflection can be 100’s of watts on a given square meter you might want to consider, compared to a lowly 3 watts per doubling of CO2. Clouds form when moisture is wafted upwards to altitudes colder than the dewpoint of the air. This only requires reaching a relative humidity of 100%. Air with water vapor is lighter than air with less water vapor so get wafted upwards. Clouds cover 2/3 of the Earth’s surface. Earth is mostly a water planet, 70% ocean, 10% solid water, and a lot of rained-on land. The Clausius Clapeyron equation predicts 7% more water vapor in the air immediately above water that 1 degree C warmer…
Put it all together in your brain…
Convection does not dominate atmospheric processes. It is the pressure patterns both the highs and lows and the resultant frontal systems that cause most of our weather. Convection is a result of the temperature and pressure changes associated with those patterns and also the orographic lifting over rising land masses.
You can have atmospheric processes occurring over a wide area with no convection if there is not enough moisture in the air and this happens in summer in most countries. The reason you get clear skies is from the passage of high pressure systems which are predominately associated with good weather and convective instability is not an issue.
Doesn’t the SB relation show that radiation is controlled by temperature differences?
Aren’t temperature differences in the atmosphere controlled by the gravity and pressure based movement of air in the atmosphere?
@ur momisugly Forrest
They are independent but intertwined.
Radiation is a diabatic process.
Convection is an adiabatic process.
The only way that energy can be stored in the atmosphere is by the adiabatic process of convection.
Stephen Wilde and I finally figured this out in our paper here:
The Application of the Dynamic Atmosphere Energy Transport Climate Model (DAET) to Earth’s Semi-Opaque Troposphere
“…whether convection patterns affect the radiation patterns.” Yes. Please see my comment below with a link to NOAA GOES East Band 16 images. The planet’s variable emitter is amazing to watch from space. Tropical convection is a very strong driver of the dynamic motion. The longwave emitter is practically “off” at the top of tropical convective cells, preserving energy in the resulting circulation. Powerfully self-regulating.
Agreed. We all should be aware that there are many phenomenon and variables that affect air temperature on a regional basis and on variable time scales. It is the net effect of all these factors that determine “global average” temperature. We cannot possibly predict (or project) future temperatures without understanding and accounting for the effects of all significant variables.
Pretending that a prediction based on a single variable (i.e. CO2 concentration) is meaningful “when all other variables are constant” is just hand-waving nonsense. We don’t even know what all the other variables might be let alone how they might change in the future. Dr. Happer has clearly demonstrated that the effect of CO2 increases is quite small and that means that it is quite likely that climate changes over time are the result of many naturally varying factors that we do not understand and have no control over.
What causes the transitions between glacial and interglacial periods? Certainly something more significant than an increase or decline in CO2 concentration.
I don’t for a minute think that Happer’s radiation physics calculations are wrong. For atmospheric physics we can safely ignore conduction. Does he say anything about convection? If not who is the go to guy for that?
his analysis is based on what he understands – radiation physics.
The scope of the convective groups, in terms of current GCMs, is limited to convective storms. Convection is considered irrelevant to climate models at present. They just use parameters to form clouds. They have no cloud formation related to atmospheric physics. There are some so-called convection permitting weather models but still lack the vertical resolution to simulate where an LFC will form but have higher surface resolution so are better at rainfall intensity.
This link will give you the most thorough insight into the role of convection and advection with detailed observations backing up the analysis:
Atmospheric_Convection.pdf
Will Happer discussed convection and the cooling effect of CO2 and other GHG at the top of the atmosphere in his presentation, so I’m confident he understands this as well as anyone.
Did he explain why ocean surface cannot sustain more than 30C?
That has little to do with radiation physics. He would need to explain how convective instability occurs to know why oceans cannot sustain more than 30C.
Spots in world’s oceans now are hotter than 30 C. In the past, they’ve been a lot hotter, as during the mid-Cretaceous.
Yep, Persian Gulf gets very hot in Summer – but is still full of coral.
I wonder if this means coral can survive high temperatures? Hmmm.
No! All corals are doomed. Their ancestors which survived 36 degrees C were from outer space.
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-abstract/35/10/919/129719/Mid-Cretaceous-Albian-Santonian-sea-surface?redirectedFrom=fulltext
The higher surface temperature during the Cretaceous is further proof of the importance of convective instability in ocean surface temperature regulation. It occurred when the atmospheric mass was 10% higher than present:
http://www.bomwatch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Bomwatch-Willoughby-Main-article-FINAL.pdf
That same paper was published in four parts on WUWT.
Doubing of CO2 to 800ppm increases the mass by 0.04% – a long way short of 10% of the Cretaceous and the associated 3C increase in the regulated limit. That is the only influence CO2 has.
Persian Gulf and a few other near land-locked bodies of water will get above 30C for a month or so because the dry mid level air coming in from deserts prevents an LFC from forming. But they do not sustain 30C for a more than a few months.
Eric,
Some corals yes, but the Persian Gulf is predominantly a carbonate ramp environment.
(286) Virtual Field Trip to the Persian Gulf – Importing Lessons for US Subsurface Reservoirs – YouTube
Show me an ocean surface that sustains more than 30C over an annual cycle.
Do you mean annual average over 30 C.?
Red Sea, Arabian Sea south of Yemen and Persian Gulf are above that level for months, but I don’t know their average.
However in the Cretaceous and Eocene, yeah, for sure.
None of those locations listed sustain more than 30C over an annual cycle. They simply can’t. It is a physical impossible with the present atmospheric mass.
The Cretaceous period had higher atmospheric mass. Oxygen levels were up around 30% of the atmospheric mass. I provided this link above:
http://www.bomwatch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Bomwatch-Willoughby-Main-article-FINAL.pdf
And the attached section from pages 14/15.
Cretaceous ocean salinity was what value?
Cretaceous surface atmospheric pressure was what value?
Surface water temperature is also a variable of salinity.
Surface water temperature is also a variable of atmospheric pressure.
There are many confounding variables to consider.
But…thanks Willis
CO₂ cooling of the stratosphere is radiation physics.
“and advection”
ie, bulk air movement…
Anyone that thinks this is not a major player in energy movement in the atmosphere must live in a hermetically seal padded cell !
Not true. Conduction is one key reason why the 0.71 C of radiation warming disappears. Convection is another part of the big picture. They work together to produce an equal amount of cooling.
This doesn’t make Dr. Happer’s calculation wrong, just incomplete.
“This doesn’t make Dr. Happer’s calculation wrong, just incomplete.”
Yep, that is the best way of putting it.
Radiation is not the only energy transfer method in the atmosphere…
… not by a long shot !
Huggs measurements show CO2 warming is smaller.
Rick is correct.
Will Happer is ONLY looking at radiative transfers.
Convection, conduction, bulk air movements ALL act to balance up and move energy in the atmosphere.
Analysis of balloon data proves that the gas laws hold for all the atmosphere, with linear energy gradient vs molecular density.
‘There needs to be a much better understanding of convective instability to grasp what controls Earth’s energy uptake.’
I’m very certain that Happer and Wijngaarden understand convective instability, as shown in the folowing paper:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.00808
If you really want to criticize what you see as theoretical shortcomings in what was obviously meant to be a short / high level presentation, maybe you should address how your singular focus on 30C ocean surface temperatures and Milankovitch cycles can explain relatively shorter climate cycles, e.g., the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, etc.
The linked paper makes no mention of convective instability and how clouds regulate the thermalisation or reflection of solar EMR.
If Happer et al understood how convective potential is generated, they would not be banging on about “greenhouse gasses”.
The influence of clouds and their connection to surfacer temperature are orders of magnitude more significant than any delicate radiative balance. The cloud over a tropical storm reflects up to 80% of incoming solar EMR.
‘If Happer et al understood how convective potential is generated, they would not be banging on about “greenhouse gasses”.’
You obviously didn’t read the paper, since it explains how GHGs are a necessary condition for convective overturning.
But here’s the thing; there’s nothing in what you keep saying about ocean surface temperatures being limited to 30C that negates the alarmist view that increasing CO2 emissions will result in a ‘hot house’ Earth. In fact, such a condition existed in the Eocene, but as a careful analysis of the paleo has shown, it had nothing to do with CO2 or ‘atmospheric mass’ and everything to do with ocean circulation patterns as a result of plate tectonics.
In short, you should stop denigrating skeptics like Happer, who actually provide a scientific basis to reject the junk science of climate alarmism.
Actually convective potential for deep convection depends primarily on OLR emitted from atmospheric ice (cloud). Not radiative gases but a solid. All of Happer’s analysis is based on clear sky, which has limited application to anything happening in Earth’s climate system..
The 30C limit is a function of atmospheric mass and the properties of water vapour.
Rick, from what I have seen of his work, Happer is not claiming that his modeling of radiative heat transfer is the final word on climate sensitivity as a function of CO2 concentration. The data on IR properties of atmospheric gases is good enough to put an upper limit on temperature rise for CO2 going from 400ppm to 800ppm assuming a cloudless sky. His main point is that doubling the CO2 concentration has a relatively minor affect on IR radiation transport between the earth’s surface and space.
A flip side of Happer’s work may be along the lines of Willi Eschenbach’s analysis of CERES data, which suggests that feedback from other forms of heat transfer can very from very strongly negative to strongly positive. Based on the temperature record for the last million years, there’s something that puts a hard maximum limit on global average temperatures. My guess it is related to the 26C sea surface temperature needed to sustain hurricanes.
Happer may be putting an upper bound on the influence of CO2. I pointed out that his figure of 0.71C was grossly overstating the influence. The only influence is its contribution to atmospheric mass, which translates to an average of 0.031C.
Cloud formation and EMR reflection has orders of magnitude more influence than anyhing to do with CO2 influence on OLR.
Happer is caught up in the nonsense rather than looking at the evidence and seeking understanding. Willis at least is looking at the evidence but has never indicated an understanding of convective instability and cloud formation that dominates the energy balance.
‘Happer is caught up in the nonsense rather than looking at the evidence and seeking understanding. Willis at least is looking at the evidence but has never indicated an understanding of convective instability and cloud formation that dominates the energy balance.’
Yikes! Any other skeptics, e.g. Linzden, Vinos, etc.,you’d like to throw under the bus?
If they cannot explain the physics of the 30C sustainable limit on open ocean surface then they are groping in the dark.
If they are discussing “greenhouse gasses” then they are stuck in the same rut as the climate clowns. Simply waving away the physics of cloud formation and the 30% or so of solar EMR that does not make it into the climate system.
Take just a few minutes to think about why clear sky occurs. Earth is predominantly a surface water planet. It has had billions of years to reach an equilibrium between the surface water and the atmosphere so the atmosphere should be saturated but it is not. Equilibrium has only occurred a couple of times and the planet descended into a snowball. What prevents Earth from becoming a snowball now? The answer is not “greenhouse gasses”; rather convective instability. To understand Earth’s energy balance requires an understanding pf convective instability
Rick,
I think we’re talking past each other. Everyone, including Happer et al, knows that convection is a really big deal in the transport of energy from the surface and the lower atmosphere to the upper atmosphere. But absent GHGs, there is no convection and the atmosphere will eventually reach a isothermal state.
But I want to get back to your premise that ‘[i]f they cannot explain the physics of the 30C sustainable limit on open ocean surface then they are groping in the dark’. Specifically, why would that limit present the slightest obstacle to climate alarmism? In other words, why couldn’t an alarmist just say that increasing CO2 emissions will lead to higher GST because the extent of ocean surface that has reached 30C has increased with CO2?
The fact that oceans regulate to 30C is all the proof needed to point out that all climate models are wrong. They produce warming everywhere in response to CO2 increasing everywhere. And that is not happening. This was my last post on WUWT:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/14/climate-modelling-in-australia/
This is the basis of a formal grievance against the CSIRO AcCESS modelling team for making false claims about the usefulness of their modelling.
Any sceptic disputing the trend in surface temperature anomaly is wasting their time. The GST has been trending up for at least 400 years since the peak solar intensity started increasing in the NH. The preponderance of land in the NH means the average GST will increase because land responds faster to the increasing solar input than ocean. So SH is cooling slower than the NH is warming up.
The whole concept of “greenhouse gasses” is misplaced. Even the notion that “greenhouse gasses” are needed to create convective potential is wrong. Most convective potential for deep convection is created through OLR emission from ice crystals from 14km down to around 7km; observed as cirrus cloud. It only takes 1mm water equivalent of ice crystal to completely absorb all OLR. OLR emission from convecting columns over 30C warm pools is around 200W/m^2 so radiating temperature from ice around 240K. Convective instability at lower temperature does depend on radiative properties of water. BUT lets be precise and avoid this “greenhouse” nonsense.
Before coming back to me with silly arguments read what is linked here and dispute the detail:
Atmospheric_Convection.pdf
Greenhouse effect is nonsense. Even discussing it shows a lack of understanding of how energy is regulated into Earth’s climate system. That is the important element that is completely sidestepped by GHE proponents. 30% of incoming solar just waved away as inconsequential while there is endless debate over a single watt/m^2 here or there in OLR. Lets get the debate back to reality rather than debating nonsense. What is more important, the 340W/m^2 that the sun provides the planet to start with or some silly notion about changes in OLR due to trace amounts of CO2? Lets get into a proper debate rather than debating trivia.
When you understand why open oceans cannot sustain more than 30C, you start to understand why GHE is garbage.
Antone who thinks the sun is unimportant in Earth’s climate literally has no clue – that is the basis of all climate models. Silly, clueless trash produced by scientific gnats.
‘An[y]one who thinks the sun is unimportant in Earth’s climate literally has no clue – that is the basis of all climate models. Silly, clueless trash produced by scientific gnats.’
I agree with that, but mainly because the amount of cloud error in the models swamps the assumed radiative ‘forcing’ of CO2 emissions, which means that the models can not make meaningful projections. I’m also skeptical of climate alarmism because none of the paleo analyses I’ve come across have provided any evidence that CO2 is the ‘control knob’ of surface temperature and/or climate.
So here’s my issue with your approach (from the conclusion to your paper):
‘The trends in peak solar intensity drive the trend in summer temperature. An increasing proportion of the NH oceans is reaching 30C and this trend will continue.’
First, this assumes that the Milankovitch cycle is the sole determinant of climate, which leaves the question of what caused the many shorter cycles that have occurred over the millennia. And second, there is absolutely nothing in your approach that would convince an alarmist that CO2 isn’t why ‘an increasing proportion of the NH oceans is reaching 30C’.
Thank you for taking the time to read the paper and provide feedback. I may change the wording slightly and make more clear I am talking about climate trends that have now been established up to hundreds of years.
I do not make any statement about orbit being the sole driver of climate but the trends in peak solar explains the trends now being observed.
It would be a brave soul to argue against the inevitability of the NH getting warmer and more NH ocean surface hitting the 30C limit. The snow is now only accumulating on Greenland and Iceland – still receding in Siberia. Think how much of the ocean surface must get to the 30C before the snowfall overtakes the snow melt across the larger NH land masses.
I see there is a lot of wasted effort arguing over temperature and temperature measurement. In fact when you think that the NH is just emerging from its lowest period of peak sunshine in 10,000 years and realise Chart 16 is heading for similar imbalance but tilted to the NH, you know there is a lot more warming to come.
So my prediction for 2023 – it is inevitable new snowfall records will be set by the end of 2023. No climate model jockey has predicted this.
I have no reason to question any of the data in your paper, but would definitely stress letting readers know upfront that your work and predictions are based on long-term solar mechanics and, therefore, can not be used to ‘explain’ short-term or extremely long-term climate phenomena.
In the meantime, the ‘climate model jockeys’, or more accurately the political and corporate forces that fund them and control the media, are in control of the narrative. This is why supporting skeptics like Happer, who can refute the junk science underpinning the narrative, is important.
I have a somewhat different view. I focus on the energy not trivia. I focus on the 340W/m^2 that the sun offers then look at why only so much of that gets thermalised. That is where the debate should focus rather than the trivia of CO2 absorption spectra.
I support scientific enquiry and take little notice of credentials. There is no god given right that credentialed persons make better observations than any other person. In fact they are often constrained by their education.
In fact, there is good evidence that the climate sensitivity is well below 1. We know that the sun’s luminosity changes by 0.3 watts per square meter over a period of 11 years. If we look at the earth’s energy imbalance, we see no cyclic behavior whatsoever. The downwelling short wave radiation is changing, but this does not elicit a change in the EEI. And if short wave radiation can’t change the EEI, then neither can the long wave radiation that comes from extra carbon dioxide. This is not a problem at all, at least according to the latest satellite information.
The IPA will be releasing a video of this lecture shortly
Absolutely, anyone see the link I’ll put it up.
“The reality is almost all the radiation which CO2 can trap, is already being trapped. Adding more CO2 has almost no impact on outgoing atmospheric radiation.”
That statement alone just about kills the CAGW alarmist narrative. And one does not have to be scientist to understand it. It is a secret that the alarmists desperately need to keep from being widely and generally known to all to keep their world from collapsing.
Question from this non-scientist: Does this explain why, in the paleoclimate ice core studies, CO2 is not driving temperature??
This and the negative feedback due to conduction and convection.
…… and why the climate models are garbage if they do not take this into consideration. Billions of tax $$$$ down the drain.
It’s not a secret, it’s been out there for years.
Alarmist’s don’t look for it because that would conform to the scientific method and they abandoned that for a political narrative decades ago.
Remember where all this began – The Club of Rome. An organisation seeking a means of controlling the earths human population.
If the NetZero cult continues and the controllers of it have their way, reliance on renewables will kill and impoverish billions of people.
It will, of course, be westernised nations which will suffer because the ‘global south’ aren’t interested in any of it.
We are doing this to ourselves, but Globalist obsessed western governments and the controlled MSM would have us all believe China and Russia are the bad guys. Western politicians have become so skilled at blaming each other, and sidestepping when another blames them, it’s routine for them to blame everyone else for problems they create for us.
All you need do is look at them honing their skills every day, in every western parliament to understand that their continued ‘bickering’ dilutes the ability to hold any one individual responsible for anything.
They have, over generations, whether by accident or design, developed a system to have carefully segmented groups of society attacking each other for our collective woes.
They have turned the term ‘activist’ into a dirty word, yet organisations like Greenpeace began with the best of intentions. The current Shellenberger documentary Thrown To The Wind about the damage the wind industry is potentially doing to marine life will be condemned as an ‘activist’ production and instantly dismissed by the scientifically illiterate climate obsessed. The term itself is manipulated and distorted to be used at will, in the same way ‘conspiracy theorist’, ‘racist’, ‘terf’, ‘climate denier’ are manipulated and distorted to instantly convey a negative stereotype.
We need to wake up and recognise that as individuals we let his happen to us. The politicians aren’t to blame, nor are Soros, Gates the WEF or anyone else, they are products of our society. We are to blame because we didn’t stop them.
HotScot,
In agreement with you for the most part. Perhaps it would be better to say that the CO2 issue here is something that the alarmists don’t want discussed for obvious reasons. As they told us when I was serving in the U.S. Navy, loose lips sink ships. It remains to be seen when the CAGW ship will finally sink.
“That statement alone just about kills the CAGW alarmist narrative. And one does not have to be scientist to understand it.”
I think so, too.
Tell John Kerry and Al Gore their human-caused climate change promotion has run out of gas.
Tell our politicians it is not necessary to destroy our economies trying to control CO2, because CO2 does not need to be controlled, and Dr. Happer shows why. CO2 is self-controlling.
“One of Happer’s most powerful slides was this one, which shows the insignificant impact of doubling CO2 on the level of outgoing radiation.”
Somebody is not understanding the issue here. The level of outgoing radiation has to balance incoming, in steady state, regardless of CO2. That plot is for a steady surface temperature of 15.5C. The point is that the steady OLR would not increase, but the surface temperature would increase, which would then move energy between bands. This graph is not useful for anything because of the steady temperature constraint.
\
As usual Nick, you are arguing against a point nobody is making.
There is no requirement in any of the equations for temperature to be held constant.
The discussion is about how much extra energy increasing levels of CO2 are capable of capturing.
The science says very little extra energy.
It’s worser than that, it is an attempt to obfuscate and derail the discussion.
A graph is presented, discussed, and much praised which holds surface temperature at 15.5C. What can be learned from that?
What can be learned? You want to change the subject?
That Earth’s climatic conditions are astonishingly stable.
They are if you define them to be.
They are because THEY ARE (per all the known observations ever made).
For a fraction of a second of geological time they ARE astonishingly stable.
And they have been before, for a fraction of a second of geological time, and will be some time in the future, for a fraction of a second of geological time.
What we know is, that astonishing stability didn’t last, it isn’t lasting, and it won’t last, one way or the other, irrespective of mans minuscule influence.
What has happened, what is happening, and what will happen, no matter what happens, is that man will adapt.
Climate mitigation is a fools errand.
Typical Nick, when he can’t explain something away, he makes it go away by changing the definitions.
The graph merely says that all three curves are calculated at the same surface temperature, in this case 15.5C.
In general, when comparing things, you want to hold everything constant, except the thing you are examining. The chart is displaying the absorption spectra of CO2 at three different concentrations. All three measurements were made at 15.5C.
Why do you want Dr. Happer to violate basic scientific principles?
As you should know, the temperature of a molecule can shift the absorption spectrum.
“The chart is displaying the absorption spectra of CO2 at three different concentrations. All three measurements were made at 15.5C.”
No, it isn’t. It says clearly what it is displaying
“Thermal radiation to space from Earth”
That sure wasn’t measured at 800 ppm. Nor at 0ppm.
It was calculated using established radiation physics.
You know…. that physics that the AGW scammers like to ignore.
You have no relevant argument against any of Happer’s speech or calculation.
As usual, you have nothing but petty attempts at distraction.
Alright, MarkW was a little careless in his choice of words. First, he says, “all three curves are calculated.” Then he says, “All three measurements were made at.” You chose not to point out the inconsistency, but to focus on the last statement only, in what appears to be an attempt to invalidate everything he said. You fail the test of being a ‘dispassionate observer.’ You don’t even qualify as being an objective observer. You repeatedly make attempts to discredit anything said here that doesn’t agree with your dogma. It is a shame because were it not for your obvious bias you could make contributions to the subject.
Word choice is really, really important
I’m guessing Nick doesn’t have a clue how the emission curve is generated.
All three curves are measuring how much of the energy being generated by the surface of the earth makes it to space.
All three absorption studies start with the same emissions curve, the one generated by a surface at 15.5C.
I’ve always considered you to be dense, Nick, but you are setting new standards today.
You can learn nothing Nick.. You are no longer capable of doing so. !
The only reason why the surface temperature is mentioned, is because that’s how the emission curve was calculated.
Nothing nefarious going on.
Do you think it is possible someone of Happer’s calibre checked the error due to the shift in blackbody temperature, and concluded it is insignificant? If there is only 0.71C of warming, you’re not talking a major change in the Planck curve.
I think it is funny how easily WUWT resorts to argument from authority, when in fact the vast bulk of scientific authority is against them. Even Nobel Prize winner Arrhenius in 1896 could work that one out.
That’s a circular argument. The plot in fact holds surface temperature at 15.5C for all levels of CO2.
It’s more like an argument from someone who isn’t paid to come to the “correct” conclusions.
What a circular argument from you. You criticize WUWT folks for resorting to argument from authority and then in the same sentence, that is exactly what you do!
You need to do better.
I’m pointing out where the weight of authority lies.
I’ll raise your waving-at-nothing index finger several hundred:
There is no climate emergency ***
Climate policy relies on inadequate models
Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools.
They do not only exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases, they also ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.
CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. ***
The undersigned (to the world climate declaration August 14, 2023):
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM ARGENTINA
1. Mauro Borsella, Environmental Consultant & Auditor
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM AUSTRALIA
1. Ian Plimer, Professor Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne; WCD Ambassador
2. Viv Forbes, Geologist with Special Interest in Climate, Founder of http://www.carbon-sense. com, Queensland, Australia; WCD Ambassador
***
134. Case Smit, Physicist, Expert in Environmental Protection, Co-Founder of the Galileo Movement
135. Edward Smith, Charted Chemist, member of the Royal Australian Institute of Chemistry (RACI), lifetime of experience in the Pharmaceutical industry
136. Lee Smith, University Lecturer in Spatial Technology, Responsible for State Government Precise Monitoring of Sea Level and International Sea Boundaries
***
166. Michael Wort, BSc Mining Geology, MSc Mineral Process Design, PhD Mineral Technology, Geologist interested in impact of high levels of atmospheric levels of CO2 as trigger for formation of limestone deposits
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM AUSTRIA
1. Dr. Gerhard Kirchner, Berg Ingenieur, Climate Realist
2. Dipl Ing, Dr rer techn Heribert Martinides, European Space Agency, retired
3. Rudolf Posch PhD, Retired Software Engineer of a Technical Multinational, Expert in Nonlinearities and Feedbacks
4. Dr. Eike Roth, retired physicist, author of several climate books, latest one in press: “Das große Klimarätsel: Woher kommt das viele CO2?”
***
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM BANGLADESH
1. Aftab Alam Khan PhD, Active Professor Geological Oceanography, BSMR Maritime University, Retired Professor of Geology and Geophysics of Dhaka University
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM BARBADOS
1. Fred Corbin, Director of CSW Engineering 2000 …
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM BELGIUM
1. Henri A. Masson, Professor Emeritus Dynamic System Analysis and Data Mining, University of Antwerp, French speaking Belgium; WCD Ambassador
2. Ferdinand Meeus, Retired Dr. Sc (Chemistry, photophysics, photochemistry), IPCC Expert Reviewer AR6; WCD Ambassador
***
8. Rudi Creemers, Eur. Ing. MSc Electronics-ICT, Network engineer/manager
9. Benjamin Damien, Docteur en Biologie et Entrepreneur en Biotechnologie
10. Ferdinand Engelbeen, Former Chemical Process Automation Engineer, Akzo Nobel Chemicals
***
17. Guy Janssen MSc Applied Sciences (civil engineer electromechanics), MSc Nuclear Engineering, Reactor Sciences, experienced conventional electric power expert
18. Raymond Koch, Retired Research Director at Lab. Plasma Physics, RMA Brussels and Fellow Lecturer at Umons
***
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM BRAZIL
1. Dr. Thiago Maia, Nuclear Physicist, PhD in Astrophysics; WCD Ambassador
***
20. Igor Vaz Maquieira, Biologist, Specialist in Environmental Management
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM BULGARIA
1. Ivan Daraktchiev MSc Applied Science (Electronics engineering, Chemistry, Physics), Independent Researcher
2. Fabrice Toussaint, lifetime of experience in the Geo-Energy Industry, expert in complex numerical modelling
***
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM CANADA
1. Dr. Patrick Moore, Ecologist, Chair CO2 Coalition, Co-Founder Greenpeace; WCD Ambassador
2. Reynald Du Berger, Retired Professor of Geophysics, Université du Québec a Chicoutimi, French Canada; WCD Ambassador
***
121. William van Wijngaarden, Professor of Physics, York University 122. Ken Wilson, Professional Engineer (retired)
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM CHILE
1. Douglas Pollock, Civil Industrial Engineer, University of Chile; WCD Ambassador
***
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM SOUTH KOREA
1. Dr. Seok Soon Park, Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Founder of the Climate Truth Forum; WCD Ambassador
***
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM SPAIN
1. Blanca PargaLanda PhD, Modelling Expert, specialist in Environmental Law; WCD Ambassador
***
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM UK
1. Christopher The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Peer of the Realm and Author of several reviewed papers on Climate; WCD Ambassador
2. Neils C. Arveschoug, Geophysicist, Private start-up Oil E&P Company
3. Nigel Banks PhD Geology, Petroleum Geologist
***
141. Valentina Zharkova, Professor of Mathematics and Astrophysics, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne
SCIENTISTS AND PROFESSIONALS FROM USA
1. Dr. John F. Clauser, Nobel Laureate Physicist; WCD Ambassador
2. Richard Lindzen, Emeritus Professor Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate, MIT; WCD Ambassador
***
307. William B. Walters, Guggenheim Fellow, Professor of Atmospheric, Nuclear and Environmental Chemistry, University of Maryland
308. James Wanliss, Professor of Physics, Presbyterian College
309. Steven E. Weismantel, Retired Engineer and Climate Researcher
***
(Source: https://clintel.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/WCD-version-081423.pdf )
LIES.. correct..
Faked consensus, never based on science and physics, just “feelings”
With Arrhenius?
LOL.
You’re pointing out nothing more than where the weight of subjective funding lies.
Lies? Is that what the authorities do?
Do you know how many things I learned in college because the professor “said so”? How many of those were proven either wrong or had missing assumptions that needed to be met. Now some of that may have been due to my ignorance, but not all were.
Your “weight” of authority is nothing more that an argument from authority. If you criticize others for that, then don’t be a hypocrite and do it yourself!
Nick is not making an argument from authority, he’s saying that you are happy to uncritically accept an argument from authority as long as the authority is saying something you want to hear.
Comments like, “Do you think it is possible someone of Happer’s calibre checked the error due to the shift in blackbody temperature, and concluded it is insignificant? If there is only 0.71C of warming, you’re not talking a major change in the Planck curve.” are pure, unadulturated arguments from authority. “Happer is right because he is highly credentialed.”
I love ad hominem attacks like yours.
There are uncredentialed posters, many anonymous but not all, on this site who I think have a handle on at least parts of the atmosphere. The fact that they agree with Dr. Harper bolsters his ideas.
You want to criticize, do so with facts, not personal attacks. You said “pure, unadulturated arguments from authority.”. Yet you show no facts refuting why the assertions are false. Just because they quote an authority doesn’t make it false.
My problem with you and Nick is that you criticize people for an argument from authority, then you turn around, sometimes in the same sentence, and immediately do the same.
I’ve addressed Happer’s argument elsewhere in the thread. All I’m pointing out here is that Nick’s point is accurate. The WUWT readership is quick to pooh pooh scientific expertise unless the expert seems to agree with them, and then the expert can’t be wrong because of their “caliber.” I’m not someone who has ever downplayed the usefulness of expertise as a metric for laypeople, so I’m not engaging in the same hypocrisy.
You don’t call that an argument from authority?
It is quite pointedly not an argument from authority, which takes the form of, “this statement is true because this authority says it is true.” What Nick is saying is that most of the authorities don’t even say the thing you’re saying the authority says is true is true. That is to say, the argument from authority WUWT readers are attempting lacks the endorsement of an authoritative plurality.
It’s as though you’re saying, “my dentist says not brushing doesn’t cause cavities and that is true because he is a high caliber expert,” and we’re saying, “there are 10,000 dentists saying the opposite so it is amusing that the only one whose authority you care about is the one telling you what you want to hear.”
Saying I’m right because the “weight of authority”, is so much different from declaring that I’m right because “this authority says it is true”.
You are almost as good at dissembling as Nick is.
He did not say he was right, reread the comment thread.
An interesting phenomenon I observe on WUWT is that the contrarian set is so all-fired eager to contradict anything anyone on the “other side” says that they launch into an objection without taking requisite time to actually comprehend what it is that is being said to them. Like an army of angry Quixotes forever pivoting to charge the nearest windmill. It seems to be the primary reason the discussions are so unproductive.
It lies with those scientists who are saying that CO2 is not a problem.
The so called consensus is established by first declaring that only those who agree that CO2 is a problem, can be called scientists.
Human authority, especially when backed by mainstream scientific thought, has a terrible reputation – like the race and gender science from not many decades ago. I won’t write examples.
There is no “scientific authority”…. only a FAKED consensus of ignorant fools.
It is nothing more than a mob clamouring for funding giveaways … the “free-stuff” mentality.
Swiftly followed by:
BTW, Arrhenius recanted his position in 1906. That’s my appeal to authority.
“Arrhenius recanted his position in 1906″
Lies.
Arrhenius basically knew nothing about the physics of the atmosphere.
He never did any experiments related to it.
Lots related to just radiation.
In his paper he makes the comment ” Now the temperature of the moon is nearly the same as that of the earth”
OOPS!
He was using full moon observations, and during lunar daytime at the moon‘s equator, the temperature can reach 120ºC
So basically everything after that error can be ignored.
Everything he said about CO2 was pure conjecture.
There is , in fact, no scientific evidence that CO2 has a warming effect on the atmosphere.
Such warming by CO2 has never been observed or measured anywhere.
Not only that, but when you get to Eq4 you have…
T⁴ = an equation that is dimensionless.
This is, of course, unphysical nonsense.
But it is what “climate scince” is built on. !
I remember people/fellow students (even an MIT prof), state that temperature is equal to the average kinetic energy. Those units don’t even match! Temperature units do not equal energy units. It’s also a mis-statement of an expression from the Kinetic Theory of gases.
“….but in 1906 Arrhenius amended his view of how increased carbon dioxide would affect climate. He thought the effect would be much less in terms of warming, and whatever warming ensued would be beneficial. He published a paper in German. It was never translated at the time or widely distributed, though many European scientists knew of it and read it.” (Friends of Science)
Don’t call me a liar, scumbag!
I said it was a lie. It may be a lie from FOS, but it is a lie. Refutation here. Mea culpa here.
He concocted a theory, recanted it, then reaffirmed it. He’s hardly a reliable source of anything.
And you’r reference is circular, both lead to the single post you made.
In it you include: “He then goes on to calculate that effect, just as he did in his earlier paper.”
In other words, he made a mistake, admitted it, then repeated the mistake.
You are so full of sh!t.
No wonder you are ritually humiliated on this site.
Paraphrasing Einstein, “Why 100 when only one would be sufficient?”
Eric did not show that he was right. He appealed to the authority of Dr Happer. If you are appealing to authority, better 100 than 1.
Nick has just made plaintive whinging and whining sounds.
Has not proved Happer is incorrect.
Happer is not per se doing something that is incorrect – he is just doing something that is of little use if the thing you want to understand is how much the climate will warm if you double CO2, but he’s implying that that’s what he’s doing.
But no one in this thread save Nick seems to actually comprehend what it is that Happer even did in the first place, so it seems almost impossible to have a productive discussion about it. Happer calculated the instantaneous change in forcing that would occur if you doubled the concentration of CO2. He then goes on to show how that forcing would change the temperature of a blackbody. That does not tell you how the surface temperature would change on a grey body surrounded by a gaseous atmosphere filled with water vapor.
Happer himself has in the past, in a paper, calculated the amount of temperature change that would occur on earth for a doubling of CO2, and he arrived at a figure of >2 degrees C. If you want to “debunk” Happer’s claim that CO2 will cause negligible warming, just read his own paper.
Not if those 100 are paid stooges and provable wrong… like you!
Those 100 are trite, petty and devoid of scientific authority.. like you.
You appealed to Arrhenius.
Squirming as usual Stokes.
Can you demonstrate that it is impossible for the surface temperature to be 15.5C at different levels of CO2? That might be a little difficult since we know that in the recent past the seasons had similar temperatures as today, yet the CO2 concentration was lower.
I agree with MarkW that it is standard procedure in scientific experiments to keep all variables constant, except the variable that one is trying to understands the effect of.
This wasn’t a scientific experiment. It was a calculation where he chose to specify constant temperature for the calculation.
SO WHAT !!
That is what you do… you don’t randomly change your temperature to do calculations.
That would be “climate science” type anti-science.
He compared the calculated absorption for CO2 at three different concentration levels.
In order to do this he used the same emissions curve for all three calculations.
In order to get the same emissions curve for all three calculations he used the same surface temperature.
If you would study something for understanding, you could have figured this out for yourself.
Instead, as you usually do, your only goal is to find something to criticize without trying to understand what it is that you are criticizing.
Tell you what, can you do this?
If you can confidently tell us you can do this with what you currently know about atmospheric physics and show us how to refute Dr. Happer, maybe you will have some basis for criticizing his work.
Don’t forget what you said in a later post about using an argument from authority. That means you can’t simply say that others believe his work is not credible.
If fact Happer has just trotted out the primitive black-body calculation. A black body strating at 288K subject to a 3.7 W/m2 forcing flux from doubling CO2 will warm 0.7C. That is schoolboy stuff. The Earth is not a black body.
You need to study this slide a little more carefully….
It is a snapshot.
What later happens after doubling CO2 (at 274 W/m²) is a warming of the surface and the blue curve will be at at higher leve (397 W/m²)
When Nick reviews a paper, he doesn’t try to understand it, instead he just looks for something he can criticize, even if his criticisms make no sense.
So long as he can generate noise, he is earning his paycheck.
Yet you cannot prove it to be incorrect.
You are just yapping . !
Is the primitive incorrect? Is e=mc^2 still used?
Show some math about why it is not usable.
From Wikipedia:
“”””Proof by assertion, sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion, is an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction and refutation.”””
“The Earth is not a black body.”
So it was incorrect of Kiehl and Trenberth to use black body calculations in their 1997 paper. Thanks for pointing that out.
The only reason why the temperature of the surface is given is to explain the emissions curve he is using.
The chart shows the absorption spectra for 3 different temperatures. There is nothing wrong with the chart. The only fault is your attempt to distract using irrelevancies.
Rats, when do we get edit back. I was thinking temperature because that’s the nonsense I was refuting, my first line should read 3 different concentrations, not temperatures.
Why?
It is where lack of thermodynamics training shows itself. Some of the sun’s energy is stored in the surface of the earth for release later in time. If one looks at the surface temps at depths a sine function appears until zenith. That doesn’t all get radiates away at once or even as it is received.
When was any radiation gradients shown here? If you don’t do temp gradients, you can’t claim to know what is going on.
Also, a lot of energy is used on the planet’s surface, eroding and moving “stuff” around.
Think about the energy needed to make the waves and create the ocean currents, and to move air around the in the atmosphere.
My question was a little more cryptic than that.
Nothing is perfect. There is, at the very least, always a margin of error.
To attest that outgoing and ingoing radiation balance each other on an imperfect plane surface such as earth is ludicrous. It may average out over time, but it’s never in perfect balance at any given moment other than by coincidence.
Science is an imperfect are. It’s more often wrong than right.
‘….planet surface’
Edit function……Please.
Exactly! That was my point too. The system is NOT in balance at a point in time. If the oceans warm even 0.01 degree, that is energy that is only released decades or centuries later. It causes an imbalance in absorbed and radiated energy!
What kind of troll would down vote a basic statement of science that is perfectly applicable to the point being discussed?
Nick is partially correct. The warming influence is not in a vacuum. There are other factors to consider. He wants them to be positive (warming) when in fact they are negative (cooling). That’s why all the radiation based warming disappears. Thanks Nick for bringing this up.
The increase in downwelling IR due to more CO2 molecules leads to increased evaporative cooling while conduction counteracts any warming influence from the IR. This essentially cools the surface while sending latent heat upwards in stronger convective currents.
The stronger convective currents lead to increased condensation as the water vapor is forced higher into the cold, upper atmosphere. The result is more/thicker clouds along with reduced high altitude water vapor. These are cooling effects high in the atmosphere. They cancel the potential warming from the increase in latent heat released by the water vapor.
This cooling effect is not due to warming. It is directly caused by increasing the number of CO2 molecules. Hence, both the radiation absorption and cooling influences are direct effects from increasing CO2. Neither one is a feedback.
The purpose of the chart that Nick is complaining about is to show the amount of energy that is being captured by CO2 at various concentrations.
What happens after that energy is captured is simply not relevant to the chart at hand.
That doesn’t change the fact that there are “other factors to consider”. Eric stated the chart showed:
No, it actually overstates the impact. That was my point.
Sorry, off topic here, but I was just looking for good scifi reads and found:
“Make Room! Make Room! is a 1966 science fiction novel written by Harry Harrison exploring the consequences of both unchecked population growth on society and the hoarding of resources by a wealthy minority.[1] It was originally serialized in Impulse magazine.
Set in a future August 1999, the novel explores trends in the proportion of world resources used by the United States and other countries compared to population growth, depicting a world where the global population is seven billion people, plagued with overcrowding, resource shortages and a crumbling infrastructure. The plot jumps from character to character, recounting the lives of people in various walks of life in New York City, population 35 million.
The novel was the basis of the 1973 science fiction movie Soylent Green, although the film changed much of the plot and theme and introduced cannibalism as a solution to feeding people.”
There’s a commenter here going by “Soylent Green is People” which I always thought was an Aldous Huxley reference. Oops. I’m going read Make Room! Make Room! to see what I missed – looks like the author may have been taken in my Malthusianism in general and Ehrlich in specific.
Cannibalism seems so inefficient relative to eating bugs. Eating bugs seems so inefficient relative to eating pizza. I mean… it’s a circle and it’s made of triangles. Pizza – duh – solves everything. Okay sorry to interrupt, back to regularly scheduled abusing politicians with childish speech writers and pointing out bad data in infographics.
I’ll look it up. More likely it was a parody? A “Bill the Galactic Hero” take on population bomb stories? Sad if Harry Harrison finally got taken in by it all.
About the only think in common between the book and the movie is the fact that the earth is claimed to be over crowded and that hunger is a problem.
I don’t think President Harris would ask Dr. Happer to join her administration early in 2024. I guess you meant early 2025?
ROFL :-). Kamala has almost as much trouble stringing coherent sentences together as Biden. At least Biden has the excuse he is senile.
Biden is three years younger than Happer.
Irrelevent. Do you have evidence that Happer is senile, or suffering from dementia?
But Happer retains full use of his mind.
Unlike Biden… or you. !
Senility doesn’t recognise age.
“Biden is three years younger than Happer.”
Brilliant….
But Biden never had much brains to start with… now ceased to function.
Happer still has all his mental faculties… and would run rings around any of the slef-style “climate scientists.
Simon, on the other hand, never developed any mental faculties.. !
Two days ago, Biden repeated the same story in the same press conference, word for word, just a few minutes apart.
Yesterday he gave a speech praising the Congressional Black Caucus, while addressing the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
How much longer before the 25th amendment has to be invoked?
It can’t be long. Biden is wandering around in a daze most of the time.
The Biden presidency is synonymous to the recorded announcements in a supermarket.
You know the voice coming over the p.a. system is not that of the real CEO of the supermarket, just that of a hired hand who says whatever those in charge tell the announcer to say at scheduled intervals.
No intelligence or expertise required.
That’s poor ol’ Joe in a nutshell.
Elder abuse if ever there was.
While your empathy is admirable, Mr., the lying, slandering, plagiarizing, self-dealing, narcissistic sociopath Joe Bribem doesn’t deserve your compassion.
Incandescently obtuse you mean, eh Simples?
Brilliantly irrelevant.
Why am I not surprised that you would stand up and clap for a statement that stupid?
Your implication about Happer is blatant ageism. That is a new low for you. Age is only a number. I’m older than Biden, and while I’ll admit to not being as quick as I once was, as you know very well, I don’t have trouble stringing together words. I can’t remember the last time I walked into a flag. Probably because it has never happened.
It was Eric who said Biden was senile. I just pointed out that he was 3 years younger than Happer.
And the implication was that Dr. Happer was senile too. You’re trying to deny your assertion. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Its what they do, Nick
Biden portrays deep-seated dementia and senility.
You portray derangement, and lack of any mental link to reality.
Will Happer portrays knowledge and experience.
Try not to be jealous. !
You can always count on Nick to double down on stupid.
If it is your position that age alone determines senility, then you are even more ignorant that you have given evidence of before.
Age of onset for senility can vary by decades, so Happer being three years older than Biden by no means disproves that Biden can be senile while Happer is not. I’ve seen people in their 90’s who show fewer signs of cognitive decline than Biden.
My dad was still sharp into his nineties–totally unlike Biden. Biden’s a complete mental wreck.
“ Biden’s a complete mental wreck.”
Bit like his opponent….
Stumbling over words, is NOT the same as dementia and senility.
But you wouldn’t know that, would you.
The signs of cognitive decline I was referring to are more than just “stumbling over words”. But you wouldn’t know that, would you…
Simon has taken on impossible tasks.
Defend Biden
Defend the Climate Crew.
The problem is that he lacks the mental acuity to realize just how far behind he has fallen.
Poor Simon, has to drag out his TDS at every opportunity.
Biden was a complete mental wreck decades ago.
Nick, who’s older, you or Happer? Whether you’re the youngest, the tweener, or the oldest, it just shows that age doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom or dementia. But there’s no fool like an old fool.
No dispute there Eric. My point was that Trump’s second inaugural will be in January 2025, not 2024.
If our luck continues on its current run, Dementia Joe will resign or shuffle of the mortal coil early in 2024 and then we’ll have the cackling horizontal Harris connected to the marionette strings. It would be hard to imagine her doing more damage than Bribem, but she surely won’t put out any word salad appointing Happer for any post in her administration.
If you’re seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s probably a train.
The impact of doubling CO2 from 400C to 800C, according to basic physics, is 0.71C of warming.
____________________________________________________________________
Who to believe?
IPCC AR4 Chapter 8 Page 631 (pdf page 43)
In the idealised situation that the climate response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 consisted of a uniform temperature change only, with no feedbacks operating (but allowing for the enhanced radiative cooling resulting from the temperature increase), the global warming from GCMs would be around 1.2°C (Hansen et al., 1984; Bony et al., 2006).
1.2° or 0.71° ?
I don’t know, or that it makes that much difference.
My money is on the guy who worked out how to make the atmosphere glow with a laser.
Well in that case what do you think of his 2020 paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.03098.pdf) where he states in the conclusion:
“For the case of fixed absolute humidity, the surface warms by 1.4 K which agrees very well with other work as shown in Table 5. 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”
So Prof. Happer is in fact on record of saying that doubling CO2 levels will lead to 2.3K of warming.
“… Our result of 2.2 K is substantially lower than the value obtained by the pioneering work of Manabe and Wetherald [35] who obviously did not have access to the current line by line information. …”
Happer’s 0.71C is the amount of warming due to CO2 alone.
The study you quoted is a refinement of existing reconstructions, which involve all known feedbacks such as water vapour – but not massive magical feedbacks which can turn the 0.71C into a climate disaster.
Even the WV feedback is highly contentious, and could quite likely be a negative feedback that almost totally negates the tiny amount of “theoretical” radiative warming
The known feedbacks according to the paper by Dr. Happer show that doubling CO2 leads to more than 2 degrees of warming, i.e. beyond the generally accepted safe limit or at least that is what he thought in 2020. Now in front of a skeptical audience he appears to be denying his own work and instead
“According to Dr. Will Happer, they achieve this by adding unphysical, hypothetical positive feedbacks, which amplify the almost non-existent impact of adding additional CO2 to the atmosphere. But there is no proof significant positive feedbacks which amplify the minuscule CO2 effect actually exist.”
so is water vapour real enough to be considered in a scientific paper but unphysical and hypothetical when talking to a skeptical group? It would seem that Dr. Happer is willing to tailor his message to suit his audience which is hardly commendable behaviour in a scientist.
No, Happer is capable of doing revisiting his analysis and updating his understanding.
You should try that some time, Izzy, rather than sticking with your brain-washed anti-science mantra.
Do you have any evidence of WV feedback being positive?
Happer has realised there isn’t any. !
The fact that the greenhouse effect exists and warms the earth by 30 odd degrees shows that feedback due to water vapour is positive. It gets smaller as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases but there is no reason to believe that it would ever become negative.
The 30 odd degrees is based on black body calculations which Mr. Stokes implies is invalid concerning the Earth.
Based on erroneous nonsense.
You know that don’t you Izzy.. or are you still stuck in mantra-land !
Try to learn just a tiny amount about the effects of atmospheric mass…
… then you won’t appear so ignorant all the time.
“no reason to believe that it would ever become negative.”
Given the long term stability of the atmosphere, …
… there is no reason to believe that it would ever become positive..
So Izzy, in whatever world you infest, everything acts exactly the same in all circumstances?
More water vapor plus warmer temperatures means more convection.
More convection means energy is carried higher into the atmosphere where it is easier for that energy to escape to space.
More convection is a negative feedback.
More convection means more clouds. Clouds reflect sunlight back to space.
More clouds are a negative feedback.
More clouds also mean more rain, which removes water vapor from the air. More rain is also a negative feedback.
It’s pretty easy to figure out, except for those who don’t want to know.
“safe limit”?
What – you think we’re all going to spontaneously combust if we experience 17.5C instead of our current “goldilocks” setting of 15.5C ?
I’m starting to think that Kamala speaks more sense than you Izzy.
(and she probably doesn’t even know who The Compleat Angler was)
Izzy needs a “Safe” space. !
Even if it is only fake and imaginary.
Oh dear, poor petal !
The imaginary “safe limit” is calculated from the depths of the Little Ice Age.
According to them we only have a few hundredths of a degree to go before the safe limit is breached and we all start dying.
You do know that the so called “safe limit” was completely made up on the spot.
The safe limit is lower than temperatures seen during the Medieval, Roman, Egyptian and Minoan warm periods. It is way below temperatures seen during the Holocene Optimum.
Your are getting as bad as Nick in your desperation to find something to criticize. Your Happer quote is not saying that water vapor is unphysical, he’s saying that the claimed water vapor feedback is unphysical.
The “safe limit” used to be 1.5C, but we’ve already about reached that point with no world disaster visible, so the climate alarmists upped the number to 2.0C to tell their frightended followers that all is not lost if we just stay under 2.0C.
There’s no evidence a world disaster will occur if we hit 2.0C or 3.0C or higher. The world has been warmer in the past and humanity did just fine.
Not that I expect the temperatures to continue to climb. My expectation is that we will have a cooling period in the future, not a warming period. But even if we did warm, it’s not going to kill us.
Your own quote refutes your conclusion.
He states for when humidity is held constant.
You assume that he is also agreeing that a warmer world would mean more water in the atmosphere.
There is no science to support such a belief, in fact what science does exist points to a warmer atmosphere being able to shed water more efficiently.
Neither value threatens apocalypse without the supposed 3-4x positive feedback from water vapor/clouds. But the models, certainly running too hot, as the IOCC acknowledges, almost certainly are running too hot because of a combination of
1. The saturation of absorption effect re CO2 alone
2. The multiplier re feedbacks is way off, maybe even should be negative rather than positive.
Consider that we are in a warming period prior to CO2 rising, as the Earth comes out of the little ice age. A slightly negative feedback from clouds (and tropical thunderstorms a la Willis E’s essays) could be why we are seeing almost no CO2 signal in the Earth temps over and above the natural ongoing mild warming—-if any sugnal at all.
So Happer thinks climate sensitivity is 0.73°C per CO2 doubling, that is half the standard 1.3 °C no-feedback sensitivity.
Why?
correction: 0.71 °C, that is rougly the local Stefan-Boltzmann sensitivity for 3.7 W/m2 at 20 °C
See https://klimaathype.wordpress.com/2018/03/24/localised-instant-climate-sensitivity-for-2xco2/
Yes. Black body stuff. And that is all he has done.
Do you have any counter except a silly grunting noise ?
Simply because his calculation of sensitivity treats the earth as a blackbody without an atmosphere. Add in an atmosphere and Happer gets something about 2 degrees C (1.4 if not considering water vapor):
This is really important, it needs to be repeated over and over and over until people are sick of hearing it. A doubling of current CO2 levels can ONLY raise earth’s average global temperature .7 degrees Celsius. See it isn’t hard to communicate in easy to understand language. To have more Will Happers would be nice but we don’t need more. What we need is to get his message out to the regular guy. It’s a simple message, let’s get to it.
Will Happer himself has stated that doubling CO2 levels will lead to 2.3K of warming. Look at:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.03098.pdf where he says in the conclusion
“For the case of fixed absolute humidity, the surface warms by 1.4 K which agrees very well with other work as shown in Table 5. 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”
Is that including water feedback?
Hi Bob,
In the paper they calculate the warming assuming the same relative humidity as currently. So that is the water vapour feedback.
Which would be negative. !
Worrall already corrected him:
LINK
Thank you.
Here is Table 5 from Happer’s paper, which covers with and without feedback:
So , none of them at all realistic..
Thanks Nick !!
I see you are as desperate as Nick is, to push your nonsense.
Happer’s comment only applies to a situation where the amount of water in the atmosphere stays constant.
He has not agreed to the unphysical feedbacks assumed by the Climate Crew.
Since late June 2023, globally, temperatures have exceeded their warmest daily average record every single day.
Every. Single. Day.
No amount of rolling out of fossils, educated or otherwise, is going to fix that.
All that graph shows is that it is not caused by co2. Cheers!
It looks anomalous, allegedly that’s ‘every single day’ since 1981, to put into context only marginally warmer than the depths of the Little Ice Age that was the coldest the planet had been during the past 10,000 years.
You lie.
No amount of fossil fuel caused it, either.
And you are very much in the “uneducated” category !
“Climate Reanalyzer began in early 2012 as a platform for visualizing climate and weather forecast models.” (my emphasis)
“Tools include pages for generating custom maps, time series, and linear correlations from monthly climate reanalysis, gridded data, and climate models.” (my emphasis, again)
This Spring was also anomalous for the so-called Ozone Hole opening early. You just might want to wait a year or two and remind us about your concerns.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/05/record-global-temperatures-driven-by-hunga-tonga-volcanic-water-vapor-visualized/
It really is sad how you are unable to do even basic logic.
The fact that it has warmed, is not evidence that CO2 has to be the cause.
We are in a El Nino period, and that always warms the planet.
We have warmed about 1.5C from the bottom of the Little Ice Age, and at least 2/3rds of that warming came before CO2 started rising dramatically.
Why do you assume that whatever caused the earlier warming stopped dead in 1950?
“We’d all love to know what Dr. Happer could have achieved, had he received a little extra time. Let’s hope Dr. Will Happer finds a letter from the White House in his mailbox in early 2024.”
Unlikely, even in 2025. He quit in some indignation in Sept 2019. He was only 80 then.
Why not just stick to the argument at hand. Do you believe in a runaway greenhouse effect or don’t you?
Of course he does.
He WANTS it to happen.
Desperately seeking some self-validation.
Very sad really !
When did you quit from doing nothing worthwhile at CSIRO, Nick ?
You and Biden are both showing increased signs of dementia and senility.
Happer is not.
I didn’t note indignation in Happer’s departure. More like the indignation of his enemies.
You can’t expect Nick to make such fine distinctions.
“When William Happer realized this summer that his plan to question climate science had been shut down by the White House, he knew he’d stick to his promise: to serve exactly one year in President Donald Trump’s administration and then leave.”
A planned departure is indignation?
Go back to the planet you came from Stokes.
Planet cockroach !
“When William Happer realized this summer that his plan to question climate science had been shut down by the White House”
The Whitehouse is a political entity, not a scientific source of excellence.
Dimbo!
There goes Nick again with his insistence that being old is a disqualifying condition for a scientist.
Unless of course the scientist agrees with Nick.
In your “mind”, not wanting to work under Obama, means he would refuse to work under Trump?
From the article:
According to Dr. Will Happer, they achieve this by adding unphysical, hypothetical positive feedbacks, which amplify the almost non-existent impact of adding additional CO2 to the atmosphere. But there is no proof significant positive feedbacks which amplify the minuscule CO2 effect actually exist.
This is true, but it does not go far enough. There is evidence that indicates there are not significant positive feedbacks, including the sea level record in which the alleged impact of CO2 is invisible and the evidence regarding the limit of the overall feedback effect relative to total forcings (Monckton’s point). It is not just an absence of evidence of significant positive feedbacks. There is positive evidence that the feedbacks are either very small or negative.
Yes, Happer said this. I’ll amend.
My understanding of Happer’s position in the White House was that he was “Senior Director for Emerging Technologies”, which implies something more than climate oversight.
To me that’s interesting. It implies something of the respect that this man was being accorded, at least by the policy wonks who recommended him to Trump. (A WAG being that Trump never heard of him until somebody briefed him). Kudos for his appointment. I agree he needs to be cloned and sent out to teach. Why only one year?
Thank you Eric!
In the first figure, see the gap between the red line (800ppm) and dark brown (400 ppm) at about wavenumber 752? The radiance in that part of the spectrum is detected in Band 16 of the NOAA GOES East imager. The diagram, of course, shows a “static” case of assumed atmospheric condition.
We can “watch” from space on Band 16 to see why Dr. Happer’s view is that any fear about the climate system response to CO2 emissions is unjustified.
More here on Youtube. It is a very short time lapse video of GOES East Band 16 images.
https://youtu.be/Yarzo13_TSE
From the details posted at the Youtube link:
Are emissions of non-condensing greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as CO2 a risk to the climate system? Watch from space to see whether the concept of a radiative heat “trap” explains the observed result.
This time-lapse video captures 7 recent days of hourly images generated by NOAA from high resolution full-disk radiance data from the GOES East geostationary satellite for Band 16.
NOAA calls this the CO2 Longwave IR (infrared) band. It is centered at a wavelength of 13.3 microns, at the edge of the “atmospheric window” part of the infrared spectrum. The “brightness temperature” color scale for visualization is such that the radiance at 50C on the scale (red) is 13 times the radiance at -90C (white.) It is in this narrow band of wavelengths that a significant part of the claimed static warming effect of incremental CO2 concentrations is computed.
So what? The emitter output is obviously not that of a passive radiative insulating layer. The motion of the atmosphere is a response to absorbed energy and to the rotation of the planet. These dynamics change everything about where to expect the energy involved in the static warming effect (i.e. the GHG “forcing”) experienced at the surface to end up. The formation and dissipation of clouds dominates the overall result, and the overturning circulations at local, regional, and global scale produce highly variable emitter outputs over time and location. It is all strongly self-regulating as the motion delivers just enough absorbed energy from the surface to high altitude and from the tropics to the poles to be more easily emitted to space as longwave radiation.
The atmosphere is the authentic model of its own performance as an emitter and as a controller of longwave emission from the surface. What do we see and learn from watching it perform? The visualization helps us grasp that heat energy cannot be made to accumulate on land and in the oceans to harmful effect by what increasing concentrations of non-condensing GHGs do in the atmosphere. And for whatever warming has been experienced and measured down here, the minor effect of increasing GHGs cannot be isolated for reliable attribution.
So as I see it, is there risk of harmful warming from GHGs? No. We can see from space that it doesn’t work that way.
[Edit 8-23-2023 The color scale NOAA uses to convert “brightness temperature” for the visualization is given here.
Brightness temperature itself is computed by NOAA from the radiance data, using an equation and coefficients from the user manual for the imager. The radiance at 50C “brightness temperature” (red) is 13 times the radiance at -90C (white.) Radiance is the strength of the flow of energy being emitted from the planet and sensed at the satellite in this band.]
Why is the jagged 277 W/m² curve is not a jagged 240 W/m² curve? 240 W/m² is what the surface gets from the Sun.
The graph depicts what happens incrementally beginning with a “transparent atmosphere”, i.e. no clouds. So it is not attempting to show the average condition.
Without clouds it should be 340 W/m²
No. It uses an assumed surface temperature of 15.5C to depict the resulting emission to space. It is not attempting to represent a global average condition of solar absorption.
Still don’t understand. 277 W/m² is not 15.5C. Space must have 240 W/m² not 277 W/m² as the surface gets only 240 W/m²
How I see it: surface sends out 394 W/m² (15.5C). From that atmosphere gets 117 W/m², earth/oceans get 37 W/m², space gets 240 W/m².
“How I see it: surface sends out 394 W/m² (15.5C).” Correct, apparently using the assumption of emissivity=1.0 for this graph.
The difficulty you are having is that you are expecting this graph should represent average global conditions of solar absorption and longwave emission. It is not intended to do that. It is just an assumed case to make a point. And to make that point most clearly, clouds must be ignored so as to depict the clear-sky emission spectrum and the specific incremental effects of CO2 concentration.
Trump was a putz for not allowing the red team blue team debate to happen. The brainwashed need to discover they are being lied to.
I agree with the first three words……
Everyone makes mistakes.
You, on the other hand, have never got anything correct.
“I agree with the first three words……”
The first three words are: “Trump was a.” You know, an indefinite article counts as a word. I guess you can’t count either.
“Trump was a”
Counting / numbers not your forte, Simon?
TDS is not a good look.
My understanding, Trump’s advisors convinced him Happer’s presence was jeopardising the rest of his America first agenda. I think letting Happer go was a mistake, but nobody gets it right all the time.
Caving in to his advisors was weak. He rarely listened to them. Why did he on this issue? He had a chance to validate his position and increase his credibility.
That’s funny, most of his opponents accuse him of not listening, of being an autocrat.
Trump picked advisors he trusted, and sadly made a few bad choices. But that’s Washington, lots of people wearing false masks.
I’m guessing Trump’s advisors suggested the huge sh*tstorm Happer was kicking up in academia was a distraction from real issues. I think this is a mistake, because I believe academic dishonesty, or at least academic delusion, is the keystone of the gigantic fraud being perpetrated on the people. But maybe it was too late by the time Trump realised this.
“I’m guessing Trump’s advisors suggested the huge sh*tstorm Happer was kicking up in academia was a distraction from real issues”
That’s what I have heard.
I would say that as far as I know, there is no detailed account of what went on with making this decision on Happer. I think everyone is guessing, and applying their particular bias to the situation.
Part of the problem with Trump is that he doesn’t like to be upstaged.
I know this is a common problem with politicians, but with Trump it is worse than usual.
Thanks for this post Eric, great to read that Dr. Harper is still active. The fact that a Physicist with expertise in radiation physics was not a useful resource in the government demonstrates to me that the “climate” issue is purely political. My belief is that “climate” has become a religion to millions of first world people around the world. The challenge is to enlighten people and break them from the grip of this religion but this won’t happen through math and Physics. The battle will have to be won through the cult of personality and politics. Perhaps the UAW strike and the issues surrounding it will be the first shot across the bow of the climate religion in the US?
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why the comparison is made, when discussing the effect of GHG’s, it is always a comparison between an atmosphere with GHG’s and the Earth with no atmosphere at all.
“The blue line is what radiation would be emitted by the Earth at its current temperature if Earth had no atmosphere.”
So what? We are looking at the effect of GHG’s in the atmosphere, not the effect of having no atmosphere.
What matters is how warm the air would be 2 m above the ground (for example) with and without GHG’s. This is a very different comparison. The “effect of GHG’s” is properly made when the math and values are related the presence or absence of GHG’s and their concentrations. The useful information is the presence of an atmosphere+GHG’s v.s. atmosphere. Showing us something v.s. “nothing at all” is relevant how, exactly?
The reason I point this out is that where there no GHG’s far more of the incoming energy would penetrate the atmosphere and reach the surface (essentially all of it) and the surface would be heated thereby (how much, depends on the albedo). The result of the hot surface is that the atmosphere would be heated by convection and conduction (but not radiation). When there is no atmosphere obviously this doesn’t happen so the comparison is irrelevant.
So there are three cases, not two. The “effect of GHG’s” is what happens or doesn’t in an atmosphere.
So if the surface is heated by a lot more incoming radiation (approximately double), what happens to the atmosphere? It gets heated by the surface, of course, and thermals of hot air would rise. And how does it cool? Well, up there, it can’t, save by adiabatic pressure drop. The idea that the air would be as cold as the surface of the moon (avg -18 C), which is comparison the IPCC makes, is nonsense. Radiative absorption at the surface, convection and conduction do not stop because there is no GHG.
The average temperature of the atmosphere at any altitude would be far higher than 15.5 C if there were no GHG’s. The reason is: high input and almost no method of output (except cooling against the surface at night).
The article shows that there is almost no temperature rise if CO2 were to be doubled. It does not show that there is an inverse square reduction in forcing if CO2 tended to zero, because that is not what happens. At some point there is an inflection and the temperature would rise. Just as they warm, GHG’s also cool (by radiation).
Technically it should be without non-condensing GHG’s (CO2). If water remained, there would be even less of a change.
The purpose of the article is to show how little will change if CO2 concentrations go from 400ppm to 800ppm, everything else is outside the scope of the article.
Nature’s two energy stores, atmosphere and the Solid (mostly oceans) loses energy all the time, but the lost energy is replaced by fresh energy from the Sun with help from the GHGs.
The surface emits 394 W/m², but only 240 W/m² ends in space, thus 154 W/m² warms the Earth. 117 W/m² warms the atmosphere, 37 W/m² warms the Solid.
The famous curve deals with the atmosphere. The jagged 277 W/m² curve is composed from the Suns 240 W/m² to the surface + the 37 W/m² from the Solid.
The 117 W/m² would be 120 W/m² if CO2 suddenly doubled, but the 37 W/m² would as well go higher (with the same percentage), thus 37.9 W/m² – 3.9 W/m² all together.
After a while (Le Chatelier Principle) the surface will be so warm that it (again) can press 240 W/m² out to space, then emitting 397.9 W/m2, precisely 0.71°C warmer.
BB,
I was wondering about the 277 W/m^2 curve in Happer’s graph. I get the 394 W/m^2 from surface vs. the 240 W/m^2 ASR (= to OLR at equilibrium), so would expect a net GHE (long-wave) of ~154 W/m^2. Can you provide some background or a reference re. why / how the 154 W/m^2 is apportioned 117 W/m^2 and 37 W/m^2 between the atmosphere and the surface? Thanks!
Absolutely brilliant and so simple, well sorta simple.
The first figure contains a graph that you try to explain but you mostly fail because it’s a fake. I tracked down the source for that graph:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2005GL025114
That study did not focus on CO2 but the entire atmosphere. CO2 is not even mentioned. Calibration was based on the results from Christianson & Pearl (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/97JE00637) where they state:
– Radiation at the center of the CO2 band arises mainly from the lower stratosphere; near 650 and 700 cm−1 from near the tropopause; and further into the band wings from the troposphere and surface.
So, what we’re seeing as the peak is the emission from the stratosphere while the wings of the dip represent the near surface of the Earth. As we know, the concentration of WV in the atmosphere drops with elevation.
The FIRST project measures troposphere emissions in the far IR (10-100um) and the paper above is the one where the FIRST instrument is compared to results from the AQUA satellite. Note that there are gaps in the resulting graph. Note too that the graph is not labelled with the names of gases. What you’ve provided is a doctored image that has been making it’s way around. And besides that, the gaps which have been filled in and labelled “CH4” is a band at which H2O has strong absorption while CH4 is weak. The data from ~7um> is signal noise resulting from the instrument not being designed for that range.
The summary on page one of the paper that you cite, makes it quite clear that they are studying the atmosphere … of Mars.
Epic fail.