By Andy May
This discussion took place in the comments to Mallen Baker’s post of the discussion between Tom Nelson and Baker on Climate the Movie: The Cold Truth. The full discussion can be viewed here. My review of the movie can be read here, and an annotated bibliography for the movie can be seen here.
The following discussion is between a physicist who refers to himself as “chrisa.4937” or “Chris A.” and me. I found it interesting because we were able to dig a little deeper into the actual physics of the climate system as opposed to way the physics is programmed into the climate models, often called “GCMs” in the discussion. Don’t worry, there are no equations, the discussion is readable. I have edited the full discussion for brevity, spelling, and grammar.
@andymay52
Mallen,
This video shows you do not understand the scientific method. A proposal, such as “humans cause climate change,” is set up to be falsified in science. Then examples are found that falsify the statement, that is the scientific process. Tom provided examples; his movie provided examples. You can’t dismiss them out of hand, the scientific method requires that each bit of contrary evidence be explained or the whole hypothesis is rejected. Providing an alternative hypothesis is not required. You are just one of many alarmists I’ve observed who try to shift the burden of proof to those who are not convinced that “humans cause climate change.” That is unscientific in the extreme.
@chrisa.4937
More specific hypotheses:
a) CO2 slows down the heat loss of the surface of earth to space.
b) A rise of CO2 concentration does magnify the effect of a) measurably.
c) The rise of CO2 concentration is caused by humanity.
Please note that the hypothesis you suggested is not scientific.
@andymay52
@chrisa.4937 Your points are based on CO2 laboratory measurements. In the real world, we must rely on climate models to determine if the human enhanced greenhouse effect is a problem or will be a problem. Yet even the IPCC admits the models are wrong:
“Hence, we assess with medium confidence that CMIP5 and CMIP6 models continue to overestimate observed warming in the upper tropical troposphere over the 1979–2014 period by at least 0.1°C per decade, in part because of an overestimate of the tropical SST trend pattern over this period.“ (AR6 WGI, page 444).
The above quote just touches on the problems, even more serious is that the models get all the ocean oscillations (AMO, PDO, NAO, AO, etc., see Eade, 2022) wrong. Not to mention the pattern of ocean warming in the Pacific (IPCC AR6, page 990).
@chrisa.4937
@andymay52 You seem to think my statement has something to do with models. It is about the most basic physics, far below the level of modelling. We are far far away from discussing models. We are on the level of “Are the laws of thermodynamics valid?“
@andymay52
@chrisa.4937 On come on! I’m a petrophysicist and I can assure you that there is nothing in basic physics or thermodynamics that says that adding CO2 to the atmosphere is dangerous. You can’t even show that adding CO2 will cause warming, although I will admit that in my humble opinion, I think adding CO2 will probably cause some warming, but it is likely small and benign. The only way you can show it might be a problem in the future is via climate models, and even the IPCC admits they are wrong and predict too much warming based on comparisons to observations (AR6 WGI, page 444).
@chrisa.4937
@andymay52 I‘m a physicist myself and am baffled by the claims you make here: Of course nothing in physics ever says something is „dangerous“, for this is not a scientific category at all. Science doesn‘t say it is „dangerous“ to pee on a high voltage line. It says „urine is an excellent conductor“.
But the most stunning statement is this: “You can’t even show that adding CO2 will cause warming[…]“ You cannot even show that, it is an essential consequence of the laws of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics (which explain the radiation activity of CO2). CO2 with its radiative properties slows down the export of energy from surface to space while heating by the sun is held constant. In such a setup physics gives no way that adding more CO2 will not accumulate additional energy in the system.
And NO, this is not shown via models, but on a far more basic level via hypothesis and experiment. The predictions made by basic physics and quantified by Schwarzschild‘s equation were and are tested since the early 1980s and found to be correct ever since. Models are setup ON those findings, not predicting those findings without testing them. The literature documenting this literally takes metres of bookshelves in scientific libraries. The physics of it is in standard textbooks schooling students since decades. And now you come casually claiming this to be not there? Baffling, as I said.
@andymay52
@chrisa.4937 The point I made was that while CO2 can be shown to absorb some wavelengths in a laboratory and warm as a result, the Holocene record shows that CO2 and temperature do not correlate (Liu, et al., 2014) and (Kaufman & Broadman, 2023). The instrumental record shows that temperatures fell from 1944 to 1978 while CO2 went up (see Figure 7 here).
Second, Schwarzschild‘s equation is a vast oversimplification of the atmosphere; it does not include the effect of changing TPW [water vapor] and clouds. Both change independently of temperature, as I’ve previously shown (see here and here).
As Feynman said, if your beautiful model doesn’t match observations, it is wrong.
@andymay52
@chrisa.4937 OK, to your points, quoted below:
“a) CO2 slows down the heat loss of the surface of earth to space.
b) A rise of CO2 concentration does magnify the effect of a) measurably.
c) The rise of CO2 concentration is caused by humanity.”
Comments
a) Not true everywhere, in polar winters the atmosphere is warmer than the surface, so additional CO2 cools the surface. This is important because the polar winters are major heat sinks, especially the North Pole.
b) Measurements do not support this, for example the Holocene Temperature Conundrum (Liu, 2014) and 1944-1978. Kaufman, 2023 tries to explain away the Holocene Temperature Conundrum, but fails and his paper is inconclusive. Data shows that CO2 is a very minor factor in global warming, other factors “overshadow” it as Kaufman, 2023 admits.
c) This is true.
@chrisa.4937
@andymay52 You are the first to answer my points. Thx. However, I disagree for more than one reason: You are right that a) is not true everywhere every time. But it is true for the whole globe at all times. Otherwise, the laws of thermodynamics would be broken. You cannot fill a system with energy at speed c, have it export energy at speed c – x (which is true for the surface, where x is the deceleration of radiative energy export due to radiative active gases in the atmosphere) and end up with no higher steady state temperature. This is forbidden by thermodynamics.
To b): Your answer refers to historical measurements scrutinized for correlations. This is in no way a test for the hypothesis. To test the hypothesis, you must measure IR spectra from the ground and from high above simultaneously – which was done for decades and is done still. Millionfold in the meantime. I highly recommend A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation by Grant W. Petty
@andymay52
@chrisa.4937 WRT (a) well over half of the total radiation Earth receives is in the tropics, yet tropical temperatures hardly change over time. Global warming (or the silly name “climate change” if you prefer) occurs at the poles. The South Pole, like the tropics, is hardly changing, so we are talking about the North Pole at this point in geological history.
Long term Northern Hemisphere weather is a function of meridional transport, the transfer of energy from the tropics to the North Pole, where it is radiated to space due to the small greenhouse effect at the North Pole, especially in winter. The speed of that transport controls the rate of warming or cooling of Earth in this time.
You are trying to treat the Earth as a black body, it isn’t. It is a very active gray body. The atmosphere and the oceans contain more thermal energy than Venus‘ surface, but our surface has a much larger heat capacity. Again, you are oversimplifying the climate system and how it warms and cools.
As for (b), if you are saying that we have no way to tell what the impact of CO2 is on climate, I agree. There is more evidence that it is small than large, however. The IPCC AR6 conclusion that all the warming since 1750 is due to CO2 and other GHGs has no support whatever.
@andymay52
@chrisa.4937 I might add that while it is true that when more energy is leaving Earth’s atmosphere than entering it, the globe cools, and vice versa, to say that is all that matters with respect to “climate change” is wrong. Further we cannot measure incoming versus outgoing radiation accurately enough to know whether net radiation is increasing or decreasing, or (more importantly) where it is increasing or decreasing. Check the problems discussed in Loeb, et al., 2022.
@chrisa.4937
@andymay52 You are moving the goalposts. My initial three points were pointing to the energy balance sheet of earth. How energy is moved around within the system does not affect the average numbers of in vs. out in W/m2.
And as for b): No, I‘m not saying we have no way of telling the impact of CO2 on climate. In fact, we have a very sound way of telling the impact of CO2 on global warming, which is highly relevant for overall climate. And this way is given by basic physics, not historical data. This basic physics was researched for more than a century and was and is very well measured and documented in thousands of papers and standard textbooks. Please note that the early predicted consequences of the rise of CO2 have been measured nearly spot on, e. g. the cooling of the stratosphere, which gave the noble prize to Manabe recently.
You can start by reading his original paper to gain more insight in the physics used for calculating warming ( Manabe & Wetherald 1967 ). This would be a good start for it looks like you have gotten the entire concept of the GHE wrong. To make it clear: GHE has little to do with the radiation budget at the surface but is about the radiation budget up in the atmosphere, where the LWR at the frequencies of CO2 can leave to space without further absorption. I do not find this concept being reflected in your comments, to be honest.
@andymay52
@chrisa.4937 I don’t think we are communicating well, this statement from your comment is clearly incorrect:
“How energy is moved around within the system does not affect the average numbers of in vs. out in W/m2.”
The GHE is huge in the tropics, it is negative in the polar winter. If you move thermal energy from the tropics to the North Pole quickly the increase in energy out is huge, if not it is small.
The energy-in over the same timeframe stays almost exactly the same. Your assumption that moving energy around the planet has no effect is the largest and most obvious mistake of modern climatology.
I’ve already read Manabe’s 1967 paper. While solar changes are small, the changes in GHE around the Earth are huge and variable and the climate model predictions of them do not match reality. Another problem, cloud cover changes, as a function of hemispheric weather. This also changes the GHE dramatically, and again the models do not match observed cloud cover. Most definitely, how energy is moved in the system DOES affect the average numbers.
@chrisa.4937
@andymay52 The average number (in power/area) is a requirement given by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. This law clearly states, that the earth as a whole will always seek the very state in which power(in) = power(out), where power(in) is the income of solar radiation and power(out) is the radiation that earth sends into space. Given that the geometry of Earth does not significantly change, this simply means the power/area output of earth is a value that you cannot change by moving heat around within the atmosphere / on the surface – otherwise you would break the 2nd law.
Your statement reads as if you imply the opposite to be true. In this case there is nothing to discuss, because I won‘t discuss under the premise that the 2nd law doesn‘t hold. What you might have meant instead is the fact that the power of radiative emission of the surface depends on the temperature distribution on this surface. That is correct, but on the other hand known to every climatologist and taken into account by the field.
@andymay52
@chrisa.4937 The second law of thermodynamics is fine. The problem is your application of it to Earth’s climate system. Because the Earth is not a black body where (energy-in) – (energy-out) is always the same, we must account for energy residence time in the system, a quantity that varies significantly. Related to this, is the constantly changing albedo due to constantly changing cloud cover, but that is a separate issue. Clouds change as the climate system changes, which is why it is related.
Energy residence time is a function of the global circulation system. We don’t understand what drives the global circulation system, but we can observe the changes in the ocean oscillations, the jet streams, the movements of the ITCZ, and in atmospheric circulation patterns (see Wyatt and Curry, 2013, “Role for Eurasian Arctic …” and related papers).
It is important to understand that the critical ocean oscillations (AMO, PDO, NAO, AO, ENSO, etc.) were all discovered after the CO2 driven GCMs were invented and their basic assumption that CO2 drives climate change was locked in. Because the critical oscillations cannot be reproduced by the GCMs, they are critically flawed. For a discussion of the problems see Eade, et al., 2022, “Quantifying the rarity of extreme multi-decadal…”).
Sometimes it is more interesting to see the critical issues debated, rather than reading the dry academic material. Climate The Movie sure has sparked some interesting discussions. I leave it to the reader to decide whether Chris or I are correct.
It’s kind of like arguing with a teenager.
A teenager wearing headphones.
Indeed so. Chrisa sticks to the point, and makes a consistent argument. Andy is all over the place.
I rest my case.
Chrisa’s points are AGW mantra.. not science.
But Nick knows that . !
Mr. Stokes believes you can average temperatures–which violates thermodynamics. When Christa says “X” violates thermodynamics, what is being violated? These climate alarmists are like what James Carville says about Trump, “It’s like throwing spaghetti against the wall–nothing sticks!” Christa needs some remedial thermodynamics training.
I didn’t say anything about averaging temperatures, nor did chrisa. His argument is simply that in the long term, flow out has to equal flow in, and if the resistance to outflow increases, the temperature has to rise to get the flow through. Averaging temperature is actually a good way of quantifying that, but it isn’t part of the argument.
Averaging temperatures is the problem.
Yep.
It’s like averaging the pressures in your 4 tires –
you get an answer of 45 psi, which conforms to the manufacturer’s recommendation, but in fact your 4 readings were 20, 60, 30, 70 psi.
And that’s a BIG real-world problem.
Nick and Jim,
As chrisa says, the 2nd law just means that the temperature of a body tries to seek an equilibrium, which is true, and this law drives Earth’s climate and weather.
But Earth is not a black body and due to Earth’s oceans, it has a huge heat capacity. Further, it has an axial tilt, an eccentric orbit, mobile clouds, seasons, day and night. So, the 2nd law cannot keep up with the continual changes, it is always out of equilibrium, and the atmosphere is constantly changing, on both long- and short-time frames. Thus we get our weather and climate change.
The energy-in and energy-out probably never match precisely, working with black body physics is only an approximation. The Earth simply is not a black body. It might more closely approximate it if the oceans disappeared, but then it would not be Earth.
Some people think that, on a yearly average, energy-in and energy-out probably match because yearly average global surface temperature doesn’t change much, but I doubt it is all that close. Maybe if you cherry-picked a very bland year and could measure it really accurately throughout that year it would be really close, but that’s it. Our measurements of energy-in and energy-out are so poor that we may never know.
ChrisA seems not to understand that an increase in incoming radiation may well cause a corresponding increase in outgoing radiation, nullifying the warming.
And if it’s somewhat warmer, so what? For most people – it’s better. Only a lunatic would think it’s “an emergency”.
Outside of the Tropics everybody works and lives in heated buildings because of how cold it often is.
Yet Andy is correct. Nobody knows how the climate system handles its energy. What Chrisa says is correct “in theory,” but in reality, things don’t work that way. The Earth is the warmest when it is farthest from the Sun and receiving less energy, and coldest when closer to the Sun. Nobody knows the effect of doubling CO₂ because feedbacks cannot be measured and our understanding of natural climate change is pathetic.
Taking refuge in a few simple equations and physics effects that don’t directly extrapolate to something as complex as the climate system doesn’t cut it.
“The Earth is the warmest when it is farthest from the Sun and receiving less energy, and coldest when closer to the Sun.”
Wow, I didn’t know that. Why is that?
It is not entirely clear. But the differences in albedo and surface temperature due to the Southern Hemisphere being mostly ocean and the Northern Hemisphere being mostly land, plus the SH directing energy to the NH due to ocean transport in the Atlantic, appear to be involved.
I’m not Javier but I will hazard a guess (and guessing can always be hazardous). Hopefully Javier or someone more knowledgeable can clarify if I’m wrong.
The earth is farthest from the sun in the northern hemisphere summer (SH winter). Most of the earth’s landmass (continents) are in the NH so heat up fairly rapidly, while the SH oceans give off heat. The earth is closest to the sun in the NH winter (SH summer) so NH landmasses cool relatively quickly and the southern oceans absorb heat and warm relatively slowly. Am I close?
I suspect clouds have a lot to do with it.
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all.
Both Sides Now
J. Mitchell 1967
The Earth somehow maintains an odd symmetry in albedo between the two hemispheres. Clouds seem to be the way this symmetry is achieved. The atmosphere provides 86% of the albedo in the NH and 90% in the SH.
As I wrote with more words, you are right. At pedigree the planet is colder and at apogee. WHERE and WHEN solar energy arrives matters. The global heat redistribution machine is not perfectly set up to maintain a stable global temperature eve through one year. How much of a “bug” in the program of interacting variables would it take to increase the global temperatures enough to …. end the Little Ice Age (let alone cause current warming)?
Sticking to points is no evidence of being right.
But when the HYPOTHETICAL effect of CO2 is all they have, all they can do is drone on about it like a broken record.
Implicit in EVERY idiotic argument like that of ChisA makes is the assumption “all other things held equal.”
Which they have never been, are not, and will never be.
Along with the telling nonsense about how it’s “not about past data,” because look I have a pretty hypothesis.
In other words, ignore what actual observations of the real world tell you if it disagrees with what you THINK you “KNOW.”
Another mental midget of science who thinks his head will be carved into stone as one of the group of people he thinks the world will be looking up to, when in reality in the future those that think like he does will become examples of how NOT to do science the same way the Penn Central became an example of how NOT to run a business.
There is no evidence of that… It is a AGW-cultist meme.
Having radiative properties would just as likely speed up radiative transfer.
There is some evidence, by adding CO2 to a dry air in a lab. A similar effect was obtain by adding water vapor. I am unaware of any measurement of an effect of adding both together.
A lab jar is not remotely a resemblance to the atmosphere.
It shows radiative absorption, a known property… nothing more.
It says absolutely nothing about what this does in the atmosphere, which is controlled by the gas laws.
While the gas laws hold within the atmosphere, I believe their effect is meaningless given the chaotic nature of the atmosphere. Not the make-up of the atmosphere, but the chaotic nature of where any given parcel or particle of air will be at any given moment, such things are governed only by the rules of chaos.
And yet, balloon data shows an absolute linear relationship, (R²=0.9996) between energy and molecular density.
That is how “in control” the gas laws are.
Correct. Our climate system is not a test tube.
bnice2000 & Curious George,
One of the things that most people forget (or “climate scientists conveniently ignore) is that, to the extent that CO2 causes warming, the effect is logarithmic not linear. This means that it will have the largest effect at lower concentrations and less and less effect as the concentrations increase. arguments like Mr. Physicist above may not state directly but generally imply that CO2 is bad and will keep getting worser and worser as concentrations increase, which is effectively a linear argument.
Just to put or keep things in perspective. assuming that the baseline CO2 concentration was around 280 ppm in what, 1860, and is currently around 415 in 2024 that means we’re only 74% of the way to even the first doubling (560 ppm) in 164 years. The sun will explode before we ever get to a second doubling.
Heat transfer books address this combination of water vapor/CO2 problem. Mine has various graphs and charts indicating the temperatures, pressures, and emissivity of each and combination.
Yes but a closed container of a fixed size under lab conditions IS NOT the same thing as the Earth’s atmosphere, whose size is not fixed and which is open to the near vacuum of space – AND which is subject to feedbacks that in total are negative, offsetting feedbacks.
So while the lab experiments may tell us something about changing ‘greenhouse gases’ IN ISOLATION, they tell us nothing about REAL WORLD effects of doing so in the Earth’s atmosphere.
You realize I suppose that you are disagreeing with Andy May as much as with the arrogant Chris A.
How can something that intercepts outgoing infrared even momentarily do anything but delay the eventual escape of that IR to space? You’re in effect claiming that there might be a shorter distance between two points than a straight line.
You take an unscientific approach attempting to deny a hypothesis by simply making assertions.
Ok .. but what period of time is the radiation slowed.
If you increase the size of a pipe, does the amount of water flowing decrease?
The period of time is greater than zero. It is physically impossible for it to be less than zero. Therefore there is some delay which requires some accumulation/retention of heat. But only if nothing else reduces the amount of solar energy reaching the surface. The climate is a dynamic chaotic system.
Again with the non sequiturs… delaying outbound IR doesn’t in any way increase the size of a pipe. It is analogous to constricting the pipe. A radiatively active gas doesn’t produce energy out of nothing which you’re implying by saying it could as likely increase energy outflow. It can only absorb energy in the right wavelengths of light and then since that interaction must take some amount of time, there must be some non-zero delay. The least possible delay is zero if there is no capture of a photon.
…and is irrelevant given the canceling affects of emergent phenomena such as thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and etc. (actually, everything after thunderstorms are just various names for the intensity of thunderstorms, but you get my drift).
Yes it MAY be irrelevant IF emergent phenomena do in fact cancel it out, but we aren’t justified in simply asserting that.
I asked,, “Ok .. but what period of time is the radiation slowed.”
You gave what is essentially a non-answer… just an assumption
Are you training to be a “climate scientist” ?
“some accumulation/retention of heat”
Where is your evidence for this ?
Einstein provides an equation for computing the time in one of his photoelectric papers. I think it is Einstein, 1917, “The Quantum Theory of Radiation,” but don’t hold me to that. Perhaps his equation A, on page 4 under the section heading “Emission”? See here, page 170:
The Old Quantum Theory: The Commonwealth and International Library: Selected … – D. Ter Haar – Google Books
What the hell does Einstein know and who is he to disagree with bnice 😝
Oh come on, bnice, you’re acting a lot like a generative AI, pumping out nonsense text. It’s not an assumption, it’s a logical conclusion.
How can I train to be a climate scientist? I’m an old white heterosexual male. I’m not even mildly intrigued by the idea of identifying as a unicorn.
I’ve had enough distraction for now. We can have another friendly argument another time.
If there are more CO2 molecules, there is more chance of radiative transfer.
Like copper in a wire…. the thicker the wire, the more energy transfer.
It is just another conduit for movement of energy.
Exactly arse-backwards thinking, mate. The more GHG to interfere with timely escape of infrared photons, the longer the delay in cooling.
But how do you know rising CO2 means “more GHG?”
By ASSUMING, once again, “all other things held equal.” A state that has never existed and never will.
Maybe adding CO2 leads to a bit more precipitation which removes some of an even more significant GHG, water vapor, from the mix.
Or maybe cloud cover increases, thereby reflecting away some of the incoming solar energy that would otherwise reach the oceans, which would reduce the energy that there IS to be “radiated” to begin with.
Basically we don’t have enough information of sufficient quality over sufficient time to say what all of the feedbacks are, so making the simplistic “more CO2 = more GHG = more ‘retention of heat” argument is just hypothetical bullshit.
But OBSERVATIONS of the Earth’s climate history show us NO EVIDENCE that atmospheric CO2 has EVER been the “driver” of the Earth’s temperature. On the contrary, there are multiple observations that show us atmospheric CO2 IS NOT the driver of the Earth’s temperature.
Observations Trump theory.
It’s clear that you don’t take time to read my comments in context NotSci.
First of all, I have said many times in many different ways that the enhancement of the greenhouse effect may not necessarily lead to warming because the climate is a dynamic chaotic system with many competing factors.
There’s a difference between saying that “AGW is not science” and “the GHE is not science”. I heartily agree with the former, but not the latter. Just because we see warming, it doesn’t mean that we caused it. It doesn’t prove anthropogenic global warming.
The greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon and that is supported by observation. The enhancement of its natural effect with human emissions is a matter of logical proof, but its significance cannot be demonstrated without observational data. If CO2 is a greenhouse gas (GHG) then adding more of it does add GHG to the atmosphere. How I know that is by pure logic. What I can only guess at from observations is how significant it is.
As you said (and again, as I have said many times), there may be many other competing factors that mask the GHE. CO2 is not a master control knob.
Also very relevant I think, is the other thing that I say very frequently. There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY! The limited warming we have seen is beneficial, whatever its cause.
And finally, CO2 does follow temperature. We do have that observation from paleoclimatology as you said. It’s true that a generally warmer world leads to higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. That is true, but it is also true that many decades of emitting more CO2 from fossil fuel combustion than nature is able to sequester has made it possible for us to force CO2 to rise above the level that it would naturally have under current temperature circumstances.
It is not sound science to claim that rising CO2 is mostly due to warmer temperatures. It is provably due mostly to fossil fuel emissions. How much IF ANY warming is the result of that higher CO2 is the part that is not clear. Whatever portion it is, the amount of warming doesn’t support the idea that it is dangerous.
You’re being a little hard on Bnice. I modeled this a few years ago. I had an argument with an activist, and he said I should use 100 layers. So I went one better–I modeled the atmosphere with an infinite number of layers. Each infinitesimal layer had two exits for the absorbed photon–only up or down. And the IR window of 10% for the entire atmosphere expanded to nearly 100% for each layer. If you follow the KT97 version, the upward-downward radiation is 40-60. That is 60% goes down–it’s because of the density of layers near the surface.
So a specific photon will be absorbed multiple number of times on its journey to space. The idea of a delay is really a longer path for a specific photon that gets absorbed and readmitted multiple times.
Guestimates, maybe a couple of nanoseconds ? ! WOW !!
For me the issue is as Andy says: “we must account for energy residence time in the system”. Adding “a couple of nanoseconds” to a photon’s escape cycle in NO WAY equates to the originating photon’s residence within the oceans/seas/etc. That residence can be multiples of days/years/centuries.
That residence and the transfers within the various media is what drives CLIMATE (and all its definitions).
60 up 40 down with multiple absorption and re-admission gives a complex calculation with the added variable that it’s not 60-40 at greater altitudes?
Multiple times is correct. According to the work of Dr. Heinz Hug the energy from the surface is absorbed within 10 meters. That means subsequent emissions will also be extremely short especially low in the atmosphere.
There is no Conservation of Photon Law like there is with energy. Near the surface, CO2 molecules that “absorb” IR in the various bands experience vibrations (kinetic energy), which are instantly shared through collisions with other gas molecules. Convection instantaneously moves vibrating molecules higher in the atmosphere.
N2 and O2 cannot be ignored. Photons collide with them as well as greenhouse gases.
Photons in this wavelength, near-infrared, don’t interact with nitrogen and oxygen. We can’t think of it as a collision because that is not what really happens, just like thinking electrons orbit the nucleus. Nitrogen and oxygen have no rotational or vibrational energy levels that are in the energy range of the photons, so they are not absorbed.
Correct Rich. The actual time the molecule keeps the absorbed energy before it re-emits it (assuming any is left) is determined by one of Einsteins photoelectric equations, but I’ve read that it is around a tenth of a second for CO2 at normal conditions. Long enough to warm the neighborhood.
A CO2 molecule is a million times more likely to pass on the energy it absorbs to another molecule via kinetic transfer than it is to reemit it. So, yeah, it will warm the neighborhood. The entire concept of immediate reemission is wrong and leads to confusion.
The correct view is the atmosphere absorbs energy in many ways. From conduction, radiation and condensation. The bulk atmosphere then moves energy in multiple ways. Radiation is one way but you can no longer distinguish how the energy was gained.
CO2 emission and reabsorption is just one of those many mechanisms. As you increase CO2 the time factor for any quanta of energy takes longer to reach space AND the amount of energy flowing through this mechanism increases. Both of these are log functions. As a result the NET energy flow is constant independent of the CO2 concentration.
Yes.
Richard,
A simple exercise in looking at the extreme case must convince you that net energy flow cannot be constant regardless of GHG concentration. On a version of earth with no water and no CO2, the surface would cool rapidly at sunset by longwave radiation directly to space. You don’t have to have a wild imagination to envision this. Just visit a desert.
Yes, I am assuming concentrations within reasonable values we could see. I don’t care about the extremes.
Wrong Rich. The counter effect of more energy flowing to space exactly counters the potential warming from additional delay.
I believe your belief is based on thinking the amount of energy flowing is constant and equal to the amount of energy being radiated from the surface. It’s not. It is based on the concentration of CO2.
Based on the amount of greenhouse gases, mainly water vapor, and clouds, not just CO2. Atmospheric circulation patterns also play a role.
I can’t really make sense of what you’re saying or what you think that I’m thinking, RM.
First of all, I do not believe that the observed surface warming we are experiencing is all from any one cause. Some comes from enhancing the natural greenhouse effect (GHE) with CO2 emissions, but some is likely caused by albedo changes allowing more absorption of insolation. Some is probably caused by advection pattern changes. (Meridional vs zonal flow coupled with weaker vs stronger local GHE). There are probably many other contributors warming and cooling the surface.
If the global average surface temperature anomaly is showing warming while insolation is staying about the same, then by the first law of thermodynamics (1LoT – conservation of energy), there must be LESS energy flowing out to space than is necessary to hold surface temperature constant, not more.
There is however measurably more CO2 so that is in contradiction with your idea that when there is more CO2 there is more outbound radiation.
The 1LoT is just expressed as a basic energy balance:
In – Out = Accumulation
rearranging:
Out = In – Accumulation
if Accumulation = 0 then
Out = In
(energy flowing to space must equal energy from the sun)
but if Accumulation > 0
(surface temperature rising), then
Out < In
Of course we should be looking at enthalpy, to encompass latent heat, rather than temperature, and insolation isn’t actually constant, and the surface gets some heat from below in the form of geothermal heat, and there’s also advected heat flows due to ocean currents, so we can nitpick around that considerably if we want.
BUT, basically if the surface is warming then there has to be less energy leaving to space than is coming in.
The effect that CO2 (any greenhouse gas) has is to make it take longer for energy to escape to space. If CO2 (or more likely H2O) didn’t intervene, the infrared photon would go straight out to space allowing the surface to cool.
More energy is caught up in the system, essentially bouncing back and forth before finally escaping. Because the net amount of radiation leaving the surface is reduced by any back radiation from the atmosphere, the surface cools less overnight. Because the sun continues to add heat to the surface during the day, but now starting from a warmer temperature, the effect is for the sun to warm the surface up to a new equilibrium point where by Stefan-Boltzmann the outgoing long wave radiation (OLR) increases to balance the energy coming from the sun.
Whether we’re assuming the simplistic all-warming-from-increased-CO2 concept of the alarmists or the more realistic nuanced concept of a winter gatekeeper, ultimately ALL energy leaving earth is by radiation.
As you have expressed correctly, much of the energy leaving the surface is by convection and some by conduction. Much of the radiation leaving the surface quickly gets absorbed by water vapor and some by other GHGs. Much of that gets transferred to non-GHGs by collisions and the heat is convected and advected. It all adds to the complication of the climate system. But near the top of the atmosphere eventually it all goes out by radiation.
Conduction is impossible because there is no mass in the vacuum of space. Likewise there can be no convection or advection without losing the earth’s atmosphere. Radiation is the only possible path.
When surface temperatures are stable, the energy reaching the surface from insolation must match the energy leaving the surface by all mechanisms, and must match the radiation leaving the top of atmosphere. So no, I am not assuming the energy leaving the planet is equal to surface radiation alone. It is equal to the combined radiation, convection, and conduction. That is required by 1LoT.
You assert that the radiation leaving earth by radiation (“the amount of energy flowing”) “is based on the concentration of CO2.”
There is no basis for that claim.
Comment says:”…some accumulation/retention of heat.”
No one has yet shown that this retention you speak of overcomes the increase in mass from the CO2 molecule.
Heating and CO2 in the interglacial period that we are in is good, not bad About 4.6 million people die from cold-related causes compared to about 500,000 that die from heat-related causes.
Yes, I agree. Did you think I thought otherwise?
This is the factor ignored by so many people including skeptics. When CO2 increases, there is an increased delay due to more reabsorption/reemission before reaching space. However, there is also an increase in the amount of energy flowing to space (wider pipe). Both of these effects are log based. They cancel out. The energy flow remains the same.
There is a warming effect however. It comes from additional absorption of energy at the edges of the 15 mm band. This is small and turns out to be balanced by the cooling effect of induced evaporation when CO2 levels have reached saturation of this band.
“edges of the 15 mm band”
Guessing you meant 15nm..
I’ve seen it abbr. both ways.
15nm is associated with very cold temperatures.
I think many people confuse “warming” and “slower cooling”. They are not the same thing.
Rich is correct here.
Think about the process. CO2 and all greenhouse gases (GHG) absorb IR coming from Earth’s surface. It holds the extra energy for a tenth of a second or so (see Pierrehumbert, 2011, Physics Today). This excites the molecule and before the molecule can emit the extra radiation, it has trillions of extra collisions with surrounding gas molecules warming them. The higher the altitude of the molecule, the fewer collisions and less warming. Lower in the atmosphere it has so many collisions there is no more energy left to emit after the holding period is up and all the extra energy is spent warming the neighborhood.
The question is not if GHGs warm the atmosphere, it is how much, when all feedbacks are included. There are many ways that the atmosphere can compensate for additional GHGs and perhaps even negate their influence all together.
In conclusion we know GHGs warm the air, but the net effect, after all weather processes are included, may be zero or close to it.
You are correct but incomplete. While one CO2 molecule may be absorbing energy, others are emitting energy. We know from Kirchhoff’s law of radiation that absorption is limited to emission.
As a result, and as I explained in another comment, the atmosphere is independent of the amount of CO2 molecules as it relates to the energy flow upwards to space.
The question does CO2 cause any warming.
Attached is a specific heat table. Using this table we can obtain a value for how much energy is needed to raise a mass of dry air 1C. According to people on this site and others CO2 adds 4-8 C or so of the 33 C of warming. It should be very easy to prove via this table that a gas mixture duplicating the dry air absent the CO2 would be 4-8 C colder given the same energy input and mass. Or use a normal dry air sample but don’t allow any infrared which is what claimed causes the warming.
Q= Cp * m * dT
For the table to be accurate there would require separate columns for energy input including infrared and absent infrared.
Rich, when intercepted by a greenhouse gas, a IR ray momentarily bounces about warming the air molecules it hits and then, in an instant, reradiates an IR ray going up or down 50 – 50. It’s the down-going rays that add I bit to the surface temp if they strike land. If water, they increase evaporation a bit because the IR of interest is opaque to water and are immediately adsorbed by surface molecules leading to more evaporation.
Yet that is exactly what the CO2 GHE purports to do.
Chris’s statement essentially destroys the CO2 greenhouse conjecture.
This statement we know by observation to be simply flat-out wrong. It seems this physicist makes the mistake of far too many overeducated dunces, to assume that all problems can be reduced to a steady state, because that’s the only state their learned equations can solve. But let me repeat, this statement WRT any atmosphere is just flat out wrong, the atmosphere is not a steady state, and cannot be made to maintain a steady state no matter how much we wish it to be so. The models don’t handle clouds well at all, and the more clouds you have, the more glaring that error becomes. Exhibit A: thunderstorms… A thunderstorm is a heat engine, and a very efficient one, that transports heat from the surface and/or near the surface, to the top of atmosphere, or at least to the top of where clouds exist, where it can be efficiently and effectively radiated into space, cooling the system, and it does this as only a heat engine can do, by punching a hole right through the atmosphere regardless of its composition. See there, just a single thunderstorm has rendered the entire GHE argument entirely moot, because it doesn’t matter what is in that atmosphere, the thunderstorm simply by-passes it! If more cooling is needed, more thunderstorms form, still more is needed, the thunderstorms organize into a hurricane, that then transports heat not only through the atmosphere but also from the tropics poleward, to do more heat redistribution and keeping a lid on the tropical temperatures.
See, if your elegant model doesn’t work, your model is wrong. But in this case, even if his model works (under lab conditions), it’s rendered ineffective by simply by-passing it. No snark necessary.
Come to think of it, the “thing” (root cause analysis going on here) that GCMs have completely overlooked, is the phase change of moisture, within the atmosphere and on the surface. Clouds are naught but condensed moisture, and condensing moisture is a huge heat transfer. Thunderstorms arise because of an increase in heat in the atmosphere, and the part of the atmosphere with the greatest heat capacity is the moisture, thus thunderstorms form far more readily over open ocean than over deserts. The heat difference creates updrafts and downdrafts, moving the heat around in a thoroughly chaotic manner, some of that current transports moisture (and thus heat) to an altitude where the conditions are sufficient to create clouds, causing shading and reducing heat intake. Should that movement be insufficient to maintain the temperatures, the currents form into thunderstorms that are far more efficient at moving heat around. See, this old Earth has got this, you can call it Mother Nature, or God’s Handiwork, or just plain Good Luck, but it’s already under control, we don’t have to do a thing!
I agree strongly with your conclusion. There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY!
Afaik, the GCMs don’t ignore latent heat, but they do a shite job accounting for albedo effects of clouds.
That’s absurd. It’s like saying that a murder suspect could not have been guilty because they were thousands of miles from the scene of the crime, therefore murder doesn’t exist.
Chris A makes a wrong claim that meridional transport cannot affect the amount of energy lost overall from the earth. That says nothing about whether the GHE violates 2LoT.
You persist in believing that the GHE depends on heat flow from a cold body to a warmer one. It simply isn’t true. The GHE involves delayed cooling (i.e. delayed heat flow from a hotter body to a cooler body). The delay is caused by IR being intercepted by a greenhouse gas molecule. At no point is it claimed that the cold atmosphere heats the warmer surface. The surface is warmed by the sun which continues to add heat each day to the surface (heat transfer from a hot body to a cooler one).
Acknowledging that the GHE exists and that adding GH gases to the atmosphere enhances the GHE does not grant that the overall effect will be significant much less dangerous warming. How significant this is depends on many factors. Warming generates emergent phenomena such as the formation of cumulus clouds that increase the albedo, effectively reducing the amount of energy reaching the surface. Meridional flow moves moist warm air into the polar regions where low temperatures condense out the moisture leading to a weak GHE relative to the GHE if air flow remains zonal.
You don’t help the argument that there is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY by making unsupported assertions, especially assertions that are patently false.
“The GHE involves delayed cooling”
Where is the evidence?
You must have a number, a time, by how much it is delayed….. right ??
What percentage is delayed ??
Please explain without breaking SB laws how net radiation flux changes without any measured change in vertical temperature differential.
And without making unsupportable assertions.
Why ‘must’ I have a number, a time, by how much it is delayed? This a question of logic.
Either it is delayed by a non-zero amount, or there is no momentary absorption of a photon. We know from the lab that there is absorption of photons by CO2 or H2O molecules. A molecule doesn’t know whether it has a container around it or it is floating freely in the atmosphere. It does what it does under all circumstances. So it is pure logic that there is some delay, and irrelevant what its magnitude is. (It doesn’t mean that there must be warming because other factors may be in play at the same time. The question of how much delay there is would certainly be relevant to the significance of warming. As delay approaches zero the warming also approaches zero).
The Stefan Boltzman law doesn’t say anything about NET radiation flux. It defines how much radiation a body emits as a function of its temperature regardless of how much incoming radiation there might be. Two bodies at the same temperature have zero net heat transfer, but both emit the same radiation toward each other if they have the same emissivity.
I don’t know what you’re trying to say about ‘measured change in vertical temperature differential’.
Have you seen the experiment where Non GHG gases produce exactly the same result “in the lab”?
Can you explain how 0.04% of the atmosphere warms the 99.96% of the rest of the atmosphere, that is 1 molecule warming 250 other molecules, which by the way once warm according to the “Physics” cannot cool themselves.
So that 1 molecule now has to cool (radiate the energy) of those “other” 250 molecules.
It must be working very hard indeed.
If you’re referring to Anthony’s video here on WUWT, you’re misunderstanding both the meaning and his intent, Grumpy old boy. His video shows how Algore’s ‘experiment’ can’t be reproduced and was faked.
The proprietor of this fine website that you no doubt are contributing to support with an ad-free subscription (surely true?), accepts the hypothesis as (irrelevantly) do I, that certain gases such as water vapour and yes, its weak sister CO2, absorb infrared photons at certain wavelengths and then re-emit them in a random direction, thus delaying their escape to space. In simplified terms, delaying cooling of the surface at night.
It is not the 0.042% of the molecules in the atmosphere (aka 420 ppm CO2) that warm the atmosphere as you write. It is old Sol our valiant star what done it and primarily with the quantum assist of water vapour, not carbon dioxide.
Furthermore my dear Grump, this mechanism is now, has been, and will be (almost) forever occurring entirely naturally.
Without any CO2, apart from the result that there could be no plants, no fungi, no animals, I suppose no carbon-based life at all, the greenhouse effect would continue nonetheless. Water is the working fluid in our solar-powered heat engine/habitat called Earth.
The greenhouse effect is absolutely vital to our survival. The minor enhancement of the life-giving GHE by the burning of fossil fuels likely produces a slight and wholly beneficial additional warming, while certainly amping up plant productivity and thus our agriculture.
There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY! Deny the crisis not the accurate science!
The results of his experiment show that increased CO2 did not cause any warming.
Just because Anthony agrees with you about GHG does not invalidate the results of his experiment,
Of course not. Even Einstein agreeing doesn’t prove anything. I don’t know what methodological flaws might lead to that result where the warming cannot be detected.
You can’t seriously question the natural greenhouse effect? Yet logically you must reject it or assume that your experiment is flawed. Or maybe you’re saying water vapor is a GHG, but CO2 is not? How do you explain rapid cooling in a desert if not by the lack of water vapor?
Rich, the paper that supports your idea is Einstein, 1917, see comment above.
Chrisa seems dependent on his model of physics, and ignores evidence that model is inadequate. Feynman had it right, it does not matter how elegant the theory is, if it does not conform to reality, it is wrong.
A mechanical comment, with the obligatory mechanical Feynman saw. The model conforms to reality.
In what world?
LOL.. The models are so remote from reality as to be a complete joke.
Nick, the evidence that the model is wrong is called “weather.”
Andy, Your statement here can be made even stronger. Schwarzchild is only a transport equation and doesn’t satisfy the First Law because it ignores that an unevaluated portion of heat transfer is by convection and latent heat.
And this statement by your antagonist is strange.
The only requirement for the second law is that entropy can’t decrease or disappear, thus entropy in (from solar insolation) plus generated entropy within the atmosphere has to be exported as entropy out to maintain steady state.
I think chrisa often attributes to Second Law what is really First Law (conservation). But he’s right. Long term, average power in equals power out. With more GHG, the surface has to be warmer to get that power out.
Radiative transport as described by Schwarzschild is just part of the total transport, but it is an important part, and the one we are directly affecting.
Wrong.
Any slight increase in CO2 absorption is immediately transferred to the atmospheric window.
Thanks for posting this graph. I have been missing this part of the natural evaporative cooling mechanism caused by CO2 increases. In theory the increase in energy absorption at the edges of the 15 MM CO2 band are countered by increases in OLR elsewhere. This graph shows exactly where the OLR increase is occurring.
This supports Miskolczi’s papers and the ideas put forth by Dr. William Gray which have been denied by climate science for a couple of decades.
The increase in OLR has been observed. The hypothesis was that Co2 would decrease/delay OLR. So, the opposite seems true.By that i dont mean that Co2 causes the increase per se.
It further goes to show the self regulating climate system where one force is countered by another with minor fluctuations until a big factor forces it out of the parameters. It is still puzzling to me the creedence of thinking a small change in (human) Co2 could actually move the dial in any significant way. If that was the case the historical record would show it and it doesnt. I see it as mere mental acrobatics. The sheer amount of hoops the molecule has to jump through surely has showed its a kind of magic!
You keep posting this as though it refuted GHE theory.
In fact it does the opposite
It proves it….
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL103947
“Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities trap heat (radiative forcing) and cause global warming and climate change. Observing the global radiative forcing caused by well-mixed greenhouse gases has been elusive because of irregular, uncalibrated, or limited areal measurements. However, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua Satellite has recently provided the requisite data (2003–2021). These unprecedented observations provide measurements of Earth’s emitted thermal heat at fine-scale wavelengths, that is, the infrared spectrum, allowing us to pinpoint the effect of greenhouse gas concentration increases on Earth’s climate. We find large increases in the heat trapped by CO2, CH4, and N2O. Directly monitoring the heat impact of these gases is therefore now possible. In response to this forcing, we found that the planet warmed and emitted extra heat to space via the water vapor absorption sections and transparent sections of the infrared spectrum. Our study therefore provides a strong validation of the physical basis for climate change.”
Increasing atmospheric CO2 is reducing emission of LWIR in the15 micron range and the feedback of increased ASR is increasing outgoing LWIR in the shorter wavelengths (higher surface temps).
Because the Earth is warming.
“Any slight increase in CO2 absorption is immediately transferred to the atmospheric window”
Yes indeed – because the Earth’s temperature has risen (hint: it’s increasing in the shorter wavelengths – therefore emitted from the surface at a higher temperature).
Why did the Earth cool between 1940 and 1980?
The graph suggests that the Earth is warmer, and that CO2 is increasing, how does it say the warming is due to additional CO2? I don’t get that.
OLR does not diverge from the atmospheric temperature.
No energy is being “trapped”
Err, your other graph contradicts that statement.
No it doesn’t. The graph contradicts the idea that additional CO2 makes any difference with regard to temperature. It shows that OLR is varying as a simple function of temperature.
The original graph shows the same thing, but just with regard to additional capture by CO2, there is no connection to additional CO2 that I can see. No connection of temperature to additional CO2 is evident in either graph. Just increasing temperature and increasing CO2, which we already knew anyway.
From the paper’s abstract ….
”By conducting global line-by-line radiative transfer simulations with 2003–2021 meteorological conditions, we show that increases in CO2, CH4, and N2O concentrations caused an instantaneous radiative forcing and stratospheric cooling adjustment that decreased OLR. The climate response, comprising surface and atmospheric feedbacks to radiative forcings and unforced variability, increased OLR. The spectral trends predicted by our climate change experiments using our general circulation model identify three bedrock principles of the physics of climate change in the satellite record: an increasing greenhouse effect, stratospheric cooling, and surface-tropospheric warming.”
“It shows that OLR is varying as a simple function of temperature.”
No.
It (the multi-spectral,graph) shows OLR is varying as a complicated function of temperature.
Not “simple” at all.
Complicated due the absorption of LWIR by non-condensing GHGs.
Now you (as expected) may deny that the one is causing the other but the authors have incorporated the data in models and they have replicated that effect.
And in addition stratospheric cooling is replicated – another symptom of an increasing GHE.
But the models are clearly wrong according to AR6 and McKitrick and Christy.
I’m not denying that additional CO2 has an effect on both tropospheric and stratospheric temperature, in my opinion it probably has some effect. I’m just denying that it has been detected. It appears to be below the measurement threshold and thus is likely to be small.
Very good point and graph, thanks.
I am no physicist, not much of a mathematician either. So tell me what I misunderstand here. You and chrisa are saying that only “global” or “average” matters; that the distribution around the globe does not matter.
So a refrigerator has power going in, which ought to increase its average temperature … yet somehow the contents get colder. Please tell me why this is. Obviously I am missing something, whether English comprehension or basic physics.
Chrism is saying that global fluxes have to balance, in and out. That is elementary. If the outflow is hindered by GHG, it still has to get out. Temperartures have to rise to make that happen.
So you are saying that no energy is used on the Earth’s surface.
What a bizarre concept !
The outflow is NOT hindered by the so-called GHE.
Temperatures rise because of increase inflow .. since 1979 this has been mainly due to decreased cloud cover over the tropic.
Absorbed radiation continues to increase. Nothing to do with CO2.
A refrigerator is a “heat” pump. It transfers thermal energy from inside the refrigerator to outside the refrigerator. The power input drives the pump.
That’s nice. I knew that. What puzzles me is how it differs from their “global” “average” temperature when they claim distribution of temperatures is immaterial.
May as well call the poles heat pumps.
‘With more GHG, the surface has to be warmer to get that power out.’
Nick,
That’s the canonical narrative we’ve all been fed the past 30+ years, or so. How is that mechanism consistent with our observations of increasing OLR concurrent with reduced cloud cover?
“the past 30+ years”
It goes back at least to Arrhenius, 130 years ago. But obvious even before that – conservation of energy.
“our observations of increasing OLR concurrent”
It has been getting warmer
“reduced cloud cover?”
Reducing over land. Increasing over ocean.
Suddenly, averaging the earth’s thermal systems of land and water is not important anymore.
Technically it goes back further than even Tindall, Fourier in the 1820s as I’m sure you know.
Nice dodge – the 30+ years refers to how long we’ve been force fed climate alarmism. Re. the citation, aren’t you the least bit concerned by all the contortions the modelers need to go through to keep Alarmism alive in the face of contradictory observations?
Nick,
Very interesting paper (Liu, 2023) that you link to, thanks. I noticed a couple of points:
Both conclusions may contradict key assumptions in the climate models. Hmmm.
Could it be that the feedbacks to surface warming are not understood very well?
Nick,
I doubt that energy-in=energy-out precisely at any time scale, except by accident for a short time.
Now the hard part, prove me wrong. Keep in mind the accuracy of our measures of incoming and outgoing energy are very imprecise (Loeb, 2022).
My point? The idea that they must match in Earth’s real atmosphere is not a “Law,” it is an assumption.
This drives me nuts—the energy diagrams are calculated out to the hundredths of a W/m2, but the radiometric measurements are no better than the singles digit.
This is emblematic of Climate “Science” in general.
So let me understand this, @chrisa.4937 is saying that his three points A, B and C are the science proving CAGW? I don’t call that proper science and they don’t prove a damn thing. He is proving my view of climate science. They have nothing.
Good job Andy.
The basic physics of CO2 is discussed here: CO2 infrared absorption – Climate Auditor
The basic physics of CO2 says that CO2 does do what chrisa.4937 says.
Modelled radiative theory only.
There are several other ways energy moves in the atmosphere… which are completely ignored.
Does it take account of the most important means of energy transfer in the atmosphere, namely convection?
I must protest, largely because, wrong in one thing, wrong in all things, is pretty much a rule, and I would rather you kept to proven science. The source of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is unknown, but far more likely to be other than man-made than it can be manmade. WUWT once posted an article, or was it a series of articles, hypothesizing that Man’s contribution to the atmospheric CO2 is lost in the uncertainty around natural sources of CO2. Given that ice core data seems to indicate that a rise in atmospheric CO2 always follows a rise in temperature, I would say that holds true this time around as well, regardless of what Man has done or will do. And if any one wants to claim I’m wrong, bring data.
I think this is an issue with some evidence behind it. Analysis has concluded that the human addition to atmospheric CO2 concentration is actually too small to be detected. There seems to be too much evidence and logic behind this claim to dismiss it out of hand.
One paper concluding this was heavily discussed on Judith Curry’s blog in September of last year
https://judithcurry.com/2023/09/26/causality-and-climate/
where the main argument against the conclusion seemed to be the ratios of CO2 containing C12 and C13 in the atmosphere. This turns out to be an assumption based on work done much earlier on C14 from atomic testing, never actually tested for C12 vs C13.
Due to the arguments for human source CO2 based on this argument, the paper’s authors undertook an empirical study which seems to throughly demolish that argument. An easy to follow presentation of the ideas was provided here
https://rclutz.com/2024/03/20/humans-add-little-to-rising-co2-march-2024/
That paper itself is open access, available from many sites
Net Isotopic Signature of Atmospheric CO2 Sources and Sinks: No Change since the Little Ice Age by Demetris Koutsoyiannis
The measurements and arguments are not that difficult to follow but I am not qualified to have a real opinion of the physics and mathematics involved in obtaining the conclusions.
This last issue is off topic relative to the article under discussion but maybe someone can provide a link. I seem to have lost mine.
There was a very recent paper wherein a laboratory setup was used to measure IR absorption in two bands relevant to the CO2 saturation argument. It demonstrated that the level difference between the IR source and the IR measuring device increased rapidly as more CO2 as added to the IR transparent vessel between the two instruments. However, after concentrations had increased significantly, relative to actual atmospheric CO2 concentrations, absorption fell off sharply and became constant, independent of more CO2. This is, of course, independent of atmospheric dynamics but possibly not so off topic as it relates to some of the argument in this blog post.
I think Ferdinand Engelbeen pretty much proved that the lion’s share of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is from human emissions. See his post here:
Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 4). – Watts Up With That?
I am saddened to read that he has past. I enjoyed reading his stuff. Agree or not he was informative.
My mistake, Englebeen has not passed, I apologize, I misread an article.
So we have Engelbeen in support of man-made, and multiple other papers in support of mostly natural, including Ed Berry’s blog analysis that seems to indicate Engelbeen was incorrect. So what if we go with something like: The source(s) of the increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations cannot be determined. While we have some idea of natural sources, and we can be certain Human activity does produce additional CO2, there may be other natural sources that remain unknown, and the combined uncertainty of contributions from known natural sources overwhelm the known production from Human activity, thus we must conclude the source of the increase remains unknown, and is likely unknowable.
Koutsoyiannis’s conclusion is based on extensive analysis of empirical data. That is where any consideration of correct or incorrect needs to go. Unfortunately I don’t have the background to do so but would certainly be interested in the findings of anyone who can.
Other work that supports this point of view are by Salby, Harde, and Berry that show multiple physical analyses finding the recent CO2 rise is mostly natural. Ferdinand Engelbeen discussed his views extensively on Ed Berry’s blog but, in my opinion, never defeated Berry’s analysis. As Andy pointed out in his discussion of science this point needs to be falsified if CAGW is to remain as a viable hypothesis.
In the last 100 years, the output of the Sun that reaches the Earth has been at its highest level of any 100 years in the past 400 years, that is warming the oceans which can hold heat for centuries. That causes the oceans to release CO2 like a warmed soda pop bottle.
Andy is all over Chrisa, like a rash.
“But the most stunning statement (Andy’s) is this: “You can’t even show that adding CO2 will cause warming”
Andy, you are right about this but, correct me if I am wrong, it seems that neither of you are aware of the LeChâtelier Principle (LCP), which states that in a system of interacting components, e.i. T°, pressure, chemical compositions, biological components, enthalpies of solid, liquid, vapour of water, etc,, if you perturb one of these components, say add heat to the atmosphere, all of the other components react to resist the change, such that the final T° is notably less than you expected (from ceteris paribus models)
Let’s look at a couple of easy to understand examples. If you heat the atmosphere it expands, which is a cooling response! If you add CO2 to the atmosphere, over half is removed by land plants, and dissolution into sea water. In the sea, phytoplankton and shellfish use it to make their calcium carbonate hard parts! In more detail, the photosynthesis itself is endothermic (a cooling process). Meanwhile all the other components are in operation, removing the added heat and and CO2.
How can we us this?. Let’s say that using models constructed with “The Physics” are more or less correct as far as they go, but are ceteris paribus calculations (everything held constant except temperature). The average of some ~30 model forecasts made by IPCC in 1990 for the first decade of the new millennium turned out to be 300% too high compared to observations. This suggests that an LCP coefficient of 0.33 should have been multiplied in to finish the calculation!
I am amazed that physicists seem unaware of LCP, and horrors, many chemists think of LCP as a little thing to help forecast the direction a reaction is going to go! Astrophysicists like J Hansen don’t know about it. Maybe cosmology would get a shot on the arm if they familiarized themselves with LCP.
Richard Lindzen pointed it out..
I don’t disagree with Andy or ChrisA.
It seems to me more like they are talking past each other.
Neither discusses what I consider to be the final nail in the alarmist coffin. It is a nail that no IPCC report and no physicist that I’ve ever encountered disagrees with. That is that CO2’s effects are logarithmic. It is why we always see its effects quantified “per doubling”. That should have been the end of the alarmist argument before it even got started.
If we accept 280ppm as “pre-industrial” then it would require that we reach 560ppm to get to one doubling. Here’s the thing though. We’re at 430ppm. One doubling from 430 would be 860ppm. Is there enough fossil fuel on the planet to get to 860? Well probably. But at +2ppm per year that’s over two centuries from now.
So what exactly is wrong with 430ppm which is where we are now? We have the highest agricultural production in history and it is outpacing population growth which is also the highest in history. Longevity is the highest in history. Tropical cyclones are declining in strength and frequency. Deaths from severe weather at the lowest in history. Property damage from severe weather also at an all time low.
By every single measure of the human condition, we are better off now than ever before. Why would we want to go back to 280? That would be insane. 430 is clearly better. To get to one doubling from 430 will take over two centuries. We cannot adapt to an extra 3.7 w/m2 over two centuries? LOL.
Add to this that SB Law requires that while we might see some sort of average temperature increase per doubling (though I believe the system is heavily negatively damped so the change will probably be small but ignore that for now and go with the average) it is not spread evenly.
Just as ChrisA insists that the effects must be in concert with the 2nd Law, they must ALSO be in concert with SB Law. Cold regions must heat up more than warm regions. Cold nights must warm up more than warm days. High altitudes must warm up more than low altitudes. IOW, not only does every additional ppm of CO2 have less effect than the previous, the bulk of the warming occurs where it makes the least difference.
Most of the alarmist talking points that I see now revolve around “tipping points” and “climate collapse” and other nebulous things that aren’t supported by the data and cannot even be defined by the people who use them.
CO2 is logarithmic. They knew that at the Kyoto Accord. All the rest is just hyper-ventilating.
You are missing the big monster hiding in the cave. Of course everyone can see the terrible destruction already being wrought by human sins so far. Stop arguing and just look out your window. However, the real monster might emerge any time now as FF continues to burn and then all bets are off.
Was this a serious comment or did you miss a sarc tag?
Seemed clearly sarc to me.
Thank you for making a point I try to make periodically. Any GH effect of CO2 is logarithmic. You start with current concentrations and state that a doubling will take over two centuries. I like to point out that if we take your baseline pre-industrial concentration of 280 ppm we are at only about 76% of even the first doubling from “pre-industrial” at over 160 years. Fear and hysteria are caused by alarmists taking things out of context and hyperventilating. When put in context or provided a baseline or reference point it looks a lot less scary.
Just to be a little pedantic, the warming effect of CO2 is linear at very low levels and becomes logarithmic at maybe 50-100 ppm. After this point, the cooling effect of CO2 (also logarithmic) matches the warming effect and the net effect is insignificant.
I realize that this cooling effect has not gotten much press including at WUWT. CO2 increases lead to increases in evaporation at the surface. This enhances convection and rainfall as discussed here.
“Global rainfall increases typically cause an overall reduction of specific humidity (q) and relative humidity (RH) in the upper tropospheric levels of the broader scale surrounding convection subsidence regions. This leads to a net enhancement of radiation energy to space over the rainy areas and over broad areas of the globe.”
https://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/gray2012.pdf
Great paper, thanks for the link.
Warming is good, cooling is bad for humans in an ice age and the Earth is in a 2+ million-year ice age with 90 percent of the freshwater locked up in glaciers and ice caps. It is in a cold interglacial period that alternates with very cold glacial periods.
Excellent. No one among alarmist scientists ever includes this in their remarks.They know it but it is taboo to mention it. They prefer to give their feedback formula in an equation because their target audience is is the large majority who are innumerate. The big audience would actually understand your words and simple arithmetic.
The “feedback” is made large enough (multiplied by 3.7) to be able to produce a scary number – otherwise it’s a tiny effect. The large number hasn’t created the expected tropical tropospheric hotspot so they should trim this multiplier down considerably but to do that the problem disappears.
I’ve given a further compelling reason to trim the multiplier down in my comments: the LeChâtelier Principle above:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/05/25/climate-the-movie-a-debate/#comment-3916113
LOL!!! There are no tipping points. If there were any tipping points this Earth would have tipped millions of years ago, and neither you nor I would/could be sitting here discussing this. We are, so there aren’t.
Very good points and I agree, except I think Chris and I knew what the other was saying.
He wanted to stick to the physics of radiation transfer and I wanted him to consider the real world, including convection and ocean oscillations. It is a very old alarmist/denier debate. The denier (me) wants to see evidence that global warming is man-made and dangerous, and the alarmist wants to say the “physics” or the “science” says we are all going to die from climate change. If so, who is dying from it today? I don’t see any of that.
The climate modelers live in a fantasy world of their own making.
That is why i was disappointed in this discussion. I was hoping for some real climate science pushback against you, Andy. It is like everytime you come up against alarmists they try and push some generalisations down yr throat assuming you never heard about them. Like ‘the aspects of Co2 are clear’ or ‘the energy balance means such and such’. No, i want particulars. I was/am waiting for some particular factors i am yet unfamiliar with to point to the ‘overwhelming evidence’ of climate change or anything to do w Co2.
“That is why i was disappointed in this discussion.”
Exactly, me too. AGW or the lack thereof only exists in the real world. That’s why it starts with the “A”. Andy, could you not just have set him straight by repeating his infantile formula as it exists on planet earth:
c = c – x
When x = 0, c = c
Late to the party here as I was having a little chat with Simon yesterday on another thread, but I have read the 100+ comments above and there are many people discussing the greenhouse effect in general, i.e. missing the point that AGW’s baseline starts at 280ppm CO2.
(and yes I do know that x isn’t likely to be exactly zero, although it could be. It could even be slightly negative).
Oooopsie, had a struggle with that and no tabs for formatting
c > c – x
What annoys me is their constant dismissal of observations and their clinging with a death grip to their hypothetical effect which doesn’t have any empirical support.
Except you are not the “denier,” Andy. ChrisA is. A denier of climate history and NATURAL climate change.
It’s really puzzling. She talks about the Schwarzschild equations wrt radiation from CO2, but seems not to have read the Wijngaarden & Happer paper, where it is clearly stated the GHGs water and CO2 are completely saturated. There will be little additional absorption with increasing CO2. As mentioned, cloud cover variations alone can more than compensate for any increase in CO2 by changing local absorbtion vs reflection of solar radiation. There’s also convective mechanisms at work producing local cooling in the tropics. Earth is a dynamic heat engine which also produces work, and not just a passive black body.
Heat engines all produce considerable heat as they operate. Therefore there is little reason based solely on the existence of the heat engines to say that they don’t simply add to the problem, if the problem exists to begin with. As far as I can tell, the belief that pushing heat higher in the atmosphere will lead to faster cooling, while seeming to have some merit, is unproven speculation.
While Wijngaarden & Happer’s work is available on-line, no journal has risked the terrible shame of publishing any of it. Therefore it does not exist in the sciencephere. However, relevant to my factoids in an earlier comment, there seems to be evidence that CO2 atmospheric concentration, and whatever effects might have, may be completely irrelevant to anything humans do.
I hope people really interested in this post will get this far down-thread (including chrisa). Seems like the concluding remarks start at davidmhoffer’s post.
Negative temperature anomalies in Argentina reach up to -17 degrees C. Low temperatures also prevail over the South Pacific and Atlantic.
I think Andy should have insisted upon how the meridional transport is important. 2 small (caricatural) examples:
The meridional transport increases the average world temperature by more than 100°C !
Of course, this ins not the only contributor to the earth energy equilibrium, clouds and changes in albedo are important also !
I’m no physicist, but…
If the Earth were a featureless homogeneous sphere receiving radiation from the sun from all directions, then I reckon Chris A. would be right. But it isn’t. Given the effects of clouds, the massive heat sink that is the ocean, and the fact that the sun only radiates toward half the planet at a time, and that at an incline, the scenario is somewhat more complex.
Yes, the 2nd law of thermodynamics must still hold, however the energy-in and energy-out only have to balance right at the end of the system’s lifespan – it doesn’t need to balance at each and every point in time. Imagine a rod of metal attached to a heating element. The amount of power applied to the heating element follows a random walk. You wouldn’t expect much heat to radiate from the metal rod in the first second. At the end of an hour, if the rod has enough thermal energy, it will radiate heat regardless of whether the heating element is powered or not.
The argument being made, in the context of the metal rod, is that we’re adding another slice of metal to the end of the rod – something that will increase the heat capacity of the system. But the overall change in the amount of heat absorbed and radiated would probably not be measurable.
I may add a few points that might be of interest :
When humans decreased the amount of CO2 they released by 6 percent at the start of the pandemic in 2020 the increases in CO2 at Mauna Loa kept going up at the same rate.
I think the increased solar energy that the Earth has received over the past 100 years has been warming the oceans causing them to release more CO2.
I used to watch Baker’s videos. He’s very annoying. He and Tony Heller had some “back and forth” a few years ago. I also watch some of this recent discussion with Tom Nelson. I was impressed with Tom’s patience.
“I was impressed with Tom’s patience.”
Yes, he does a great job in that respect.
I also like the way he doesn’t waste time with long introductions and other BS. He’ll say “today we have …..”. Then right away the guess introduces himself and gets to the point. Some of the discussions are a bit slow going but overall, they’re very good. Tom lets the guest do most of the talking and asks good questions. His channel is vastly under rated. I wish he had a million subscribers.
And he called the science in the Climate, the movie film as ‘rubbish’. Imagine that, the likes of Happer and Lindzen. On top of that he then called himself ‘reasonable’ which many of his followers agree with. Only someone highly biased and ignorant would dare to say that to somebody’s face, which he did. Didnt take that back either afterwards..The gall.
The “basic physics” argument from the radiative absorption and emission properties of CO2 has been unsound all along because it ignores the effects of motion, overturning circulation, and the formation and dissipation of clouds on the longwave emitter output. But we can “watch” from space to grasp that the static “warming” effect does not determine the dynamic result. This is best appreciated using the Band 16 visualizations from the geostationary satellites.
Important background about Band 16 for proper interpretation.
Radiance vs “Brightness Temperature”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qy4QnSkaJZeLIeC4R7-600ZuctPEUwaz/view?usp=sharing
The significance of Band 16 to the computed incremental static warming effect of 2XCO2.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/175qnVngPPfZJKUPUH13u6t5wolTBl0qi/view?usp=sharing
7-day time lapse of Band 16 visualizations from GOES East for the full disk of the planet. In my opinion, this is one of the best ways to counter the “basic physics” line of misdirected persuasion.
https://youtu.be/Yarzo13_TSE
Bottom line:
Considering what we can all “see” from space in one of the most relevant parts of the infrared spectrum, there is no good reason to think that incremental CO2 will end up forcing heat energy to accumulate on land and in the oceans – certainly not to any harmful extent.
Agree.
Considering only radiation physics, like the IPCC does causes one to only think in the vertical dimension.
Energy transport in the climate system has a very significant horizontal dimension, and it matters. Latent heat in water vapor can travel thousands of miles before it rains out. Also, tropospheric energy transfer is largely through latent heat transport and wind.
The effect that global circulation has on residence time is mainly in the horizontal, and not in the vertical.
Excellent points, sir! And in the vertical, especially in the tropics, it impresses me how the dynamic formation of clouds suppresses the OLR to retain energy in the atmosphere to maintain the horizontal circulation.
I always thought that the basic physics showed only 1 vibrational mode of Co2 and 3 of H2o (water vapour) w the relation Co2 to water vapour molecule 1:20. Coupled with the IR bandwidths/ wavelenghts in which these 2 molecules are active it gives Co2 very little chance to ‘force’ anything. Not close to the surface and even less at high altitude. Until someone can point out the ‘real’ physics this is my position..
From the article: chrisa.4937: “Your answer refers to historical measurements scrutinized for correlations. This is in no way a test for the hypothesis. To test the hypothesis, you must measure IR spectra from the ground and from high above simultaneously”
Well, that has been done by CERES.
CERES data says all the temperature increases since the beginning of the 21st century can be correlated with cloud coverage changes in the Earth’s atmosphere.
There is no room for CO2 warming. Whatever warming CO2 does is lost in the noise.
So if all the warming since 1997 (the year CERES went into operation) can be attributed to cloud cover changes, then what is left to answer? CO2 is a minor player in determining the Earth’s temperatures, at best. We now have data that blows the CO2 speculation out of the water.
That’s what I think too. What mainstream science claims is that reduced cloud cover is a feedback from energy accumulation due to slower cooling by GHGs. But there’s no proof behind that; it’s just an assumption they try to explain with models. If this were a feedback, shouldn’t we see acceleration in the ASR time series because with more energy accumulation due to GHGs, the stronger the feedbacks should get? After all, nothing is stopping humans from emitting GHGs into the atmosphere.
Just trying to think about this logically here.
A paper by Fasullo/Trenberth back in 2009 showed climate models predicted this would occur, but not until after 2040 at the earliest. This is because there was not enough energy available to cause it. So, they are currently ignoring this paper and simply asserting this is a feedback. I suspect models are being changed as we speak to produce this effect earlier.
It seems like this would be another runaway warming situation which is completely falsified by Earth’s climate history.
Good point.
Back to Andy’s debate.
Just my opinion, just a gut feeling, no proof. I think there are some Twitter climate alarmists who are just activists — who have been coached and provided cheat sheets to help them try to embarrass “deniers” on social media.
Andy takes the time to explain to her that there is more to climate than just radiative transfer. And she returns, like a robot, to the basic laws of physics we all learn in our college physics curriculum. That’s why, I think, it appears like Andy’s talking to a child. Or it might even be someone spooning the answers from an AI algorithm into the posts.
Could be, but I feel like Chris A (man or woman?) was a real person with training in physics. Chris claimed to have a PhD in physics but didn’t say from where. I also got the feeling that Chris was British.
Ah ha, there you go. Gets her knowledge of climate change and global heating from the BBC then?
Re temperature changes as a function of energy distribution.
Some points to consider:
1) If there’s a cloudless sky at night anywhere, the surface temperature drops significantly. The drop is related to the rate of loss, not the amount of energy available to be lost.
If more energy is lost during the polar night, temperatures drop during the polar nights. If more energy comes to the polar region, there is more available to be lost. The more lost, the lower the total energy there is in the global system. If the amount coming to the polar region is greater than the systems for loss, the surface temperatures will rise.
A large hole in a bucket will drain the water in the bucket faster than a small hole. The more water in the bucket, the faster the outflow will be.
If the inflow of solar energy is overall positive in the tropics and negative at the poles, it is obvious that the “stable” temperatures in both areas are dependent not just on inflow rates but outflow rates.
2) Thermal capacity and conductivity matters. Air heats rapidly. Moist air holds its heat better than dry air. The land, sea and ice are slower to absorb heat energy and show a rise in temperatures. It doesn’t require much of a temperature change in warm tropical water to supply a big one in the air above (hence bigger hurricanes with global warming) according to standard understanding/IPCC.
If global atmospheric circulation changes energy distribution temporally and geographically, even with the same input/output levels, the resulting global temperatures will be different. Heat retained in tropical oceans, for example, won’t be available to heat the polar areas and the global average will drop.
3) The current average global temperature is higher than that of the moon because of not just the GHGs but of the combined land, water and ice and cloud cover with their different heat capacities and thermal retention physicalattributes. If these change while the solar input stays the same, the global average temperature changes.
Our planet is livable because it acts as a giant energy (heat) redistribution engine that just happens to give a end result that is livable for most life in much (but not all) of the world. I’ll give CO2 some impact. But I’m not convinced other factors are not involved AND as covered in Chaos Theory, ongoing variations in other processes aren’t involved.
Locally we have large variations in weather conditions of temperature and precipitation we can’t predict other than “natural variabilty”. We’ll blame warm and wet air from the Pacific on multiyear changes in NW YS/Canada, but say the GLOBAL climate stays the same. The IPCC narrative ASSUMES this stability while evidence of catastrophic droughts killing the Mayan civilization and bringing hot, dry deserts from Arizona to northern Alberta and Saskatchewan a 1000 years ago are ignored EVEN WHILE the IPCC says solar changes are minimal and unimportant.
If solar input is constant, but temperature changes are noted, and CO2 levels didn’t change, what are we left with but (not understood) changes in the thermal redistribution system? What, really, is the nature of “stability” (amplitude and frequency, positive and negative reinforcements etc) in the global system of moving energy from one place to another?
It’s weird that we all recognize “natural” variability in weather/our daily lives, the significant of climate changes at a continental level in archeological studies, in the glibal Little Ice Age ending in 1850, but DO NOT recognize that there are equal type If smaller “natural” variations going on today that can be seen globally. It has to be A-CO2.
I’d add one more thing to my comments above, in part to support Andy May.
By SB Law, the “BB temperature” of the earth before CO2 doubles is 255 deg K. The “BB temperature” after CO2 doubles is… 255 deg K. It changes by zero. Not some small number rounded off, but ZERO.
So how do we get to “but the earth is warmer?”. Well that is based on the MRL increasing in altitude. Following the lapse rate back down to surface, we arrive at a warmer surface. This is in accordance with 2nd Law that requires the surface to be warmer in order to radiate enough additional energy upward that it overcomes the effects of CO2.
Heres the problem with that. It requires that “all else be equal”. Well all else CANNOT be equal. the MRL is a mean not a hard line. There is no requirement for it to change uniformly. I explain it better in this article written in 2010. For those not used to my writing style, if you splutter coffee on your keyboard at the end, you cannot say I did not warn you.
The Physicist and the Climatologist; FOLLOW THE MONEY!, by David M. Hoffer (ncc-1776.org)
How much of the temperature rise since 1940’s dip was caused by a)Increased CO2, b) Reduction of SO2 by the Clean Air Acts, 3) Urban Heat Island Effect, 4) Natural Variation, 5) Adjustments to the temperature Record, 6) Other? I’m getting impatient for someone to explain each contribution.
Surely there is an easier visualisation. Point a by Chrisa right up the top is
a) CO2 slows down the heat loss of the surface of earth to space.
Actually not stated quite accurately, the thesis is it reduces heat loss but lets leave it they way it was stated. If this is true then Earth’s heat loss to space should be reducing as CO2 levels rise. After all that’s precisely the central thesis that defines CAGW. Well NASA has been measuring exactly this quantity since around 1970. Its called outgoing longwave radiation or OLR for short.
Trouble is OLR has been rising throughout the satellite era as CO2 levels rise NOT falling. Its hard to see a more definitive destruction of a theory than that the measured trend of its absolute central tenant is the exact opposite of what the theory is based on.
If CAGW is predicated on OLR falling as CO2 levels rise yet direct measurements of OLR show it is rising while CO2 levels rise, how can CAGW be further defended.
Yes, if the theory doesn’t match observations, then the theory is wrong.
Indeed
Because “Climate Change™” was never about climate, it has always been about centralizing control of energy and who gets to use it and who doesn’t. Remember, the Green New Deal wasn’t a climate change bill at all. Its author thought of it as a fundamental transformation of the economy (I’m paraphrasing ’cause I can’t find the quote, funny how that happens, isn’t it.)