Essay by Eric Worrall
Professor Mike Hulme: “… There’s going to be a lot of work done to reconstruct a narrative …”
Was the world’s most influential climate target doomed from the start?
As the world passes 1.5 degrees C of warming, a Cambridge scholar argues that putting a deadline on climate action was the wrong way to frame it.
…
A pair of new studies in the journal Nature Climate Change looked at historical data and came to the conclusion that the record heat last year — the first year to surpass 1.5 degrees C — wasn’t a temporary fluke, but a sign that the world is now soaring past this influential climate target over the long term. The new year continued that upward trajectory. Even as a natural cooling pattern called La Niña took hold recently, January managed to be hotter than ever, clocking in at a record 1.75 degrees C warmer than the preindustrial average.
…
… So is the world now at the edge of disaster?
Mike Hulme, a professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge, asserts that it isn’t. “There’s no ‘cliff edge’ that emerges from any of the scientific analyses that have been done about these thresholds,” he said. “They are, in many senses, just arbitrary numbers plucked because they are either integers or half of an integer.”
…
Of course, the thing that’s going to happen is, “Well, if 1.5 is now in the back mirror, what’s in the front mirror now?” There’s going to be a lot of work done to reconstruct a narrative for those people who think that 1.5 was the be-all and the end-all. There’s now going to have to be very significant work in reeducating and reframing what the future actually holds, if 1.5 is no longer the benchmark.
…
Read more: https://grist.org/language/world-climate-target-doomed-mike-hulme-deadlines/
The Grist article is long, so it covers a lot of ground not mentioned in the quotes above.
But the fortuitously early arrival of 1.5C warming, and the lack of any accompanying climate disasters, will likely hasten the demise of the climate movement.
Because unlike the 1970s global cooling scare, the internet age has abundant digital records of how alarmists tried to frighten people with “arbitrary numbers” like 1.5C global warming.
I look forward to enriching attempts to “rebuild the narrative” by replaying lots of ridiculous 1.5C scare campaign material.
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January 2025 averaged about 13.2C for the planet as a whole. Seems a bit chilly.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/?dm_id=world
(Yes, I also know that a “global average temperature” does not describe the climate situation very well at all.)
Communists make it cold inside in winter.
Mr February Cherry Picker strikes again
During a typical year, Earth’s average temperature varies by roughly 2 degrees Celsius (around 4 degrees Fahrenheit) with the most significant fluctuations occurring between seasons due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis, with colder temperatures in winter and warmer temperatures in summer; however, this variation can be slightly different depending on the region and climate zone.
So What?
What February? What was cherry picked?
Don’t worry. Mr irrelevant is at it again is all.
You need to update your Almanac, Poor Richard! The amplitude of the annual cycle, on a whole-planet basis, is more like 3.8C, as shown at the web page I linked to. “Fluctuations” is not the right word. The explanation that makes more sense than “tilt” (for the planet as a whole) is that the land area of the NH is much greater than SH, so the stronger seasonal surface temperature response of land vs. ocean produces the cycle. Be well.
(Yes, fluctuation/variation around the cyclic mean is also obvious in the plots.)
That is what averages are used, right?
/s
January 2025 was the COLDEST January in the whole of the USCRN surface data.
It was the Trump effect. He solved the climate crisis in the U.S. in his first week in office. 🙂
Is “The Gore Effect”** still a thing. If the weather wasn’t so nasty I would go out looking for him and send him on his way.
**has its own wiki page
And the ‘pristine’ USCRN was once again warmer than the adjusted ClimDiv
Still has work to do globally, though.
Jan 2025 was the warmest January on record globally.
The records show 4Ka BP as 2 degrees warmer than now, CO2 at 280ppm. 130Ka BP was 4 degrees warmer, CO2 at 290ppm.
Discuss……
To be clear, I mentioned January as a response to the nonsensical “January managed to be hotter than ever…”
“Well, if 1.5 is now in the back mirror, what’s in the front mirror now?”
To see what is in the “Front Mirror” you need to be looking back. Maybe those looking back will see their mistakes and learn from them. I’m too old to hold my breath.
Whoopsie? Yes.
I was soooo happy to see the endangerment number drop from 3.0 to 2.0 to 1.5. Every time it became clear that sensitivity was lower than they thought, they made up for it by decreasing the temperature at which disaster occurs to keep the alarm alive.
It was inevitable that the steady decrease in the alarm “limit” would eventually cross into current temps. When they dropped it to 1.5 it was the first time I started to think that maybe this entire charade will collapse in my lifetime.
Not only did they reduce the danger limit from 2 to 1.5C because it was becoming clear we wouldn’t get there by 2100 – they also changed the base year from current (Ca. 1990) to ‘pre-industrial’ 1850 thus picking up almost a degree of warming already. So they only needed a bit over 1/2 C to reach their catastrophic 1.5C limit. The whole thing has been a clumsy long term con.
So what they are saying is that Earth’s surface now averages 1.5 degrees C from the depths of the Little Ice Age. Perhaps we could use another degree of warming to be sure we’re out of it?
…. and it was, and still is, a two-for-one sale of lying. They don’t subtract the baseline from 1850 to about 1940-ish. They know they’re doing it and we know they’re doing it. Can we have some criminal prosecutions please Mr Musk.
Not only did they reduce the danger limit from 2 to 1.5C because it was becoming clear we wouldn’t get there by 2100 – they also changed the base year from current (Ca. 1990) to ‘pre-industrial’ 1850 thus picking up an almost a degree of warming already. So they only needed a bit over 1/2 C to reach their catastrophic 1.5C limit. The whole thing has been a clumsy long term con.
The minor little problem is that we are still in an Ice Age. Most of the Earth’s prehistory it was considerably warmer, and not a disaster.
So what is the problem?
In an interglacial period named the Holocene between glacial periods.
Period of reduced glaciation is more accurate.
That is my usual response to this whole “climate weirding” propaganda. What would be their response if the Earth were to leave this Ice Age and return to the normal temperatures prior?
Every use of a hockey stick graph I’ve seen in my 82 trips around the Sun has been wrong except for true exponential growth like inflation.
The official name is
The Michael Mann Tree Ring Circus Hockey Stink Chart
Aha……….. back pedaling is not a good sign.
Quite the contrary 🙂
What is a Department of Human Geography? All these exaggerated names for various entities must be an unusual new form of advertising which is certainly what Columbia University produces. “Twelve months at 1.5 °C signals earlier than expected breach of Paris Agreement threshold.” Of 24 references only one earlier than 2020 (2016). Grist article did mention “Alert Fatigue” “1.5 grad is das limit.”
I read these different forms of ‘back patting’ and not so implied ‘warnings’ all the time, often without much in the way of specifics. Examples– From the end of a marine science journal (not climate per se) article abstract about a model “…[will]..provide a powerful tool…..” Maybe so, haven’t studied it but still is a relatively new bragging dialogue for a scientific paper. Another –“ This provides a unique opportunity to implement more integrated research projects uniting the different disciplines covered in this review.” The old saying BUYER BEWARE! needs updating due to the indirect and cost hidden often freely available purchase.
Early in my career we often joked about ending all technical reports with “[a] powerful new tool hsa been developed. Further research is required.”
Professor of human geography? What’s that?
As a fan of human geography, I find Tasmania more interesting than Florida.
Keep it a secret. About ten times as many people live around Miami as in all of Tasmania.
You’re advising me to keep my Tassie preferences in the closet? Has woke come to that?
No. Just be glad that Tasmania is not in the Gulf of America.
I’m not interested in closely examining any “human geography” that resembles a map of Florida!
Accorig to my research human geography is the study of mountains and the human body. The most popular, and a favorite of mine, science journal for human geographers.is Big hOOters Illustrated.
You mean The Grand Tetons?
Yep, I find a “map of Tassie’ to be fascinating to study up close and in depth 🙂
Geography of the human body? Makes sense now.
Speaking of human geography, I’ve always been a fan of the french curve.
296b0e8bac8f69f5d798f5ccbc23d925.jpg (1000×1000)
Mike Hulme’s book ‘Climate Change Isn’t Everything’ is worth reading.
In the current public commotion over global warming, almost all the discourse is composed of hearsay. Ross McKitrick explained that the alleged changes in temperatures are so small that no one can possibly notice. Thus, their concern over global warming can only come from repeating hearsay in the form of charts and graphs published by people with an axe to grind. His article in the Financial Post was Hold the panic: Canada just warmed 1.7 degrees and … thrived.
My synopsis:
https://rclutz.com/2019/04/15/climate-hearsay/
It’s been cold so far in Colorado and there’s more racist precipitation falling today (and yesterday and maybe tomorrow, and the day after).
Not true
The warming was mainly in the colder months and was very easy to notice in SE Michigan where I have lived since 1977. In the same home since 1987 and 4 miles south before that.
The snow shoveling is way less than in the late 1970s ad early 1980s. Today will be the first day this winter we will have to shovel our driveway. Last year had only ten minutes of shoveling, one time, over the whole winter.
The claim that no one no one noticed global warming is wrong
I aways wondered what / who represents “the world”.
My hopes were high for a Darwin-type person.
So Richard you can imagine my disappointment to now be informed that YOU represent the whole world’s experiences of natures behaviors.
Well oil beef hooked.
Sorry for your loss. You could buy a gym membership to get your exercise on their machines rather than the banjo.
Or you could move to Japan if your need to shovel snow is so great:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/02/04/japan/hokkaido-record-snow/
Record-breaking snowfall hits Hokkaido as cold front sweeps Japan
Memory is not the best guide to use for accessing past climate, as you tend to remember only the hard winter weather and not all the average stuff in between.
Interestingly enough 1977 was the year l started recording the first snow dates for my local area here in North Lincolnshire, England. Yet dispite all of the claimed warming of the British winters over that time. The arrival of the first snow has not been getting later in the season.
So let’s compare the late 70’s/early 80’s with the most recent 6 years for some real data on first snow.
1977/78 Nov 21st
1978/79 Nov 27th
1979/80 Dec 19th
1980/81 Nov 28th
1981/82 Dec 8th
1982/83 Dec 16th
Now compare it with the last 6 years.
2019/20 Feb 11th
2020/21 Dec 4th
2021/22 Nov 26th
2022/23 Dec 8th
2023/24 Nov 30th
2024/25 Nov 18th
Apart from the outliner season of 2019/20 then the typical first snow dates are much the same as 45 years ago. This is some real data rather then just relying on memory.
North American snow anomalies.
“The snow shoveling is way less than in the late 1970s ad early 1980s.” And that is bad because?
Richard, your little part of SE Michigan is hardly representative of anything global.
Not true. The claim that no one noticed global warming is correct. No one notices ‘global warming’. But they may notice changes in local weather patterns aka local climate.
SE Michigan is the globe now. Who knew?
There was also this from Javier Vinos
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GhKODqSW4AAstjO?format=png
The usual Vinos baloney
Charts presented without knowledge of what they mean
Between 1961 and 2020, world agricultural output increased by nearly fourfold with most of the increase in the Global South, while agricultural output in the Global North has remained roughly constant since the 1990s.Sep 30, 2024
From 1961 to 1990, agricultural output growth primarily resulted from the use of more land, labor, and material inputs. However, from 1990 to 2020, most of the agricultural output growth was driven by advancements in how those resources were used.Sep 30, 2024
FAO estimates that current food production would be halved without the use of fertilizers in agricultural production. Other reasons for the increase in food production, are more land being used for farming, new technology and farm machinery, better pest and disease management and new plant varieties.
Repeat after me:
A warmer world is a more prosperous, healthier, and happier world.
A warmer world is a more prosperous, healthier, and happier world.
My friends are so out of reach of logic that even hearing this will do nothing to wake them up. They’ve left orbit.
Tell them “Scientists say CO2 will kill your dog”
They love to fear CO2
You will be treated as a brilliant scholar
Belief is a strange thing, even though people might still seem impervious, even small amounts of doubt can change their behaviour. The climate alarmists recognise this, which is why they keep trying to censor us.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/08/10/claim-insidious-repetition-of-climate-skeptic-claims-creates-doubt/
Having said that they are your friends. Don’t sacrifice friendship trying to shake their faith, because you have a difference of opinion about climate change.
Temperature is an intensive thermodynamic property. An average temperature of two independent thermodynamic systems has no physical meaning. A global mean temperature is a mathematical construct that has nothing to do with the earth’s climate. This was discussed in detail by Essex et al in 2007. Arrhenius assumed an average global temperature of 15 °C in 1896. Callendar created a global temperature record in 1938. The warming that he found was from the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), not CO2. In 1967, Manabe and Wetherald used an oversimplified one dimensional radiative convective (1-D RC) model that created a global warming artifact of 2.9 °C for a CO2 doubling from 300 to 600 parts per million (ppm). In 1981, Hansen’s group manipulated the ‘radiative perturbations’, now called radiative forcings, in their 1-D RC model to create a times series of mathematical artifacts that resembled the mathematical time series created by averaging weather station and ocean surface temperature data. As climate models became more complex, the 1-D RC model was replaced by atmospheric global circulation models (GCMs), then by coupled ocean-atmosphere GCMs. However, these were simply tuned by manipulating the radiative forcing agents and feedbacks to match the global mean temperature record. The raw temperature data used to calculate this record are totally unfit for the purpose. Even worse, the raw data is then manipulated by various ‘homogenization’ algorithms to create more warming.
The global mean temperature record should not be used as a measure of climate change. Climate should be defined in terms of the Köppen-Geiger or similar climate zone classification. Climate change is then defined as changes to the zonal boundaries. Once ocean oscillations, urban heat islands and other land use changes are accounted for, there can be no CO2 induced climate change. In more quantitative terms, at present the average annual increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is near 2.5 ppm per year. Radiative transfer calculations then show that this produces an increase in the downward longwave IR (LWIR) flux from the lower troposphere to the surface of about 40 milliwatts per square meter per year. This cannot cause any measurable climate change. Nor can it have any influence on ‘extreme weather events’.
Climate models are often compared using the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) as a benchmark. This is the global temperature rise produced by doubling the CO2 concentration in the model. It is just a mathematical artifact created by the model calculations. The correct value for the ECS is ‘too small to measure’. The 1.5 or 2 °C global temperature rise incorporated into the Paris Climate Accord is mathematical fiction.
For further discussion on climate energy transfer see ‘Finding Simplicity in a Complex World – the Role of the Diurnal Temperature Cycle in Climate Energy Transfer and Climate Change’ by Clark and Rörsch, 2023. For more on the climate modeling fraud see ‘A Nobel Prize for Climate Modeling Errors’, Clark, 2024 and the Tom Nelson podcast # 271. The invalid use of the global mean temperature record as a measure of climate change is addressed in the Researchgate preprint ‘A Proposed Definition of Climate and Climate Change for IEEE PP2030 and Related Standards’.
“there can be no CO2 induced climate change”
Meaning 99.9% of scientists have been wrong since 1896?
You claim the GAT is meaning less
… so if the GAT increased from 15 degrees C. to 20 degrees C., that would be meaningless?
“The correct value for the ECS is ‘too small to measure”
So 99.9% of scientists have been wrong about CO2 since 1896? Including Happer and Lindzen?
You win the WUWT
Junk Science Post of the Day prize
(the most climate baloney in one comment)
’
This comment certainly challenges the title.
Richard, neither you nor I have any idea what 99.9% of scientists think, as the number of scientists in the world is rather large, and they have not been polled. Now, if you wish to say the 99.9% of Climate Scientists (TM) have been wrong since 1896, we might agree. And why 1896 – are you cherry-picking? How about going back at least to Dalton in the 1860’s?
Or 1820 when CO2 was measured at levels comparable to today.
“there can be no CO2 induced climate change”
And there is no physical measured evidence that it even exists. No-one has ever been able to produce any. They produce radiative only calculations and measurement that ignore the fact that most energy movement in the atmosphere is by bulk air movement.
___
“The correct value for the ECS is ‘too small to measure”
Correct physics on the action of CO2 in the atmosphere shows that ECS is indistinguishable from ZERO.
No-one can show any warming from CO2 in the last 45 years, certainly not in the only mostly reliable temperature data there is (UAH).
The challenge to show CO2 warming in the UAH data, without using non-CO2 El Nino events, has never been met.
No one has empirically measured that those pretty dots in the night sky are big balls of gas.
Yes they have. Spectroscopy. IR astronomy.
How is that comment even remotely relevant to Earth’s atmosphere?
Oh, and Walter is correct.
You can’t empirically measure the volume increase when you piss in the ocean but trust me, it’s there. Lol.
You need to be addressing that to bnice and Roy.
No, I don’t
I agree with Your statement, “…an increase in the downward longwave IR (LWIR) flux from the lower troposphere to the surface of about 40 milliwatts per square meter per year. This cannot cause any measurable climate change. Nor can it have any influence on ‘extreme weather events’”
]
In 100 years that’s 4000 milliwatts. May not four (4) watts make a difference in climate? At 2.5 PPM/year that gets us to 676 in 100 years. I’ve long argued that the sooner we get to 700 PPM the better because the slight warming (1C?) and slight additional CO2 (0.000250) is positive and that the reduction in temperature difference between the Equator and the Poles lessens “extreme weather events”. Can it be that simple?
.
Just one thing. The Earth is not an open system. It’s a naturally balanced thermodynamic system in space, controlled by strong negative feedbacks.
The only available control of earth’s temperature is in fact the dynamic energy balance it must maintain between the Sun and space. This must always tend to equilibrium as its components vary, so enrgy in equals enrgy out, at whatever level that is. A fundamental natural state that should obvious to any heating engineer. One balnce is establihsed it will be maintained, as imbalance is rebalanced at a new energy equlibrium and temperature value. Obs.
If the incoming enrgy stays the same and you improve the insulation the surface temperature will rise to increase heat loss by all means to maintain the energy balance, because the balancing energy loss rate is lower. And equlibrium is estatblished at a new higher temperature, for example. If you have a palace garden somewhere hot and install a small lake and running water it will be cooler, etc. Such systems occur in nature, by the water cycle, for example. The top 200m of the oceans hold over2 years of solar enrgy.
There is no other control available but this natural thermodynamic balance by varying heat loss, by whatever mechanism there is on the planet in question. The effect is most senitive where there is a condensing liquid in the atmosphere above an ocean. to assist in this process using latent heat loss to space via water vapour transport, as well as S-B radiative effect, or actually, together with S-B effect when the latent heat is released as radiative energy.
IF, as I have calculated by summing the rate of change with temperature of the known/measured radiation outputs according to their natural properties, the net negative feedback to any perturbation to the earth’s energy balance system is circa 9 W/ m2 deg K, THEN your 4W/m2 will make a difference of slightly less than half a degree.
Just thought you’d like to know that there IS a strong negative feedback that manages earth’s energy loss to maintain its energy balance in space, and any imbalance heats or cools the internal feedback system of atmosphere and oceans to maintain that balance. So the climate is determined by the changing energy balance, at a temperature that matches gains to losses by varying the overall energy loss from the ocean and atmosphere. The GMST delivers the necessary feedback rate. it’s really quite simple but, if it’s very complicated and navel gaxin at small effects within the larger system, a few dishonest people can control the narrative.
I suggest that, If you consider the overall energy balance system rather than the odds and sods inside, the balance is both obvious and also quantifiable, given the measurements we have.
IF you are interested in what the numbers look like, to me and my referees, then they are here, in Part 2 of the paper. Skip the bit about models and mystical thermodynamics they guess and don’t balance, while leaving out some rather important feedbacks. The planet doesn’t work like modellers claim, and the atmosphere they obsess over is an internal system that plays a simple part in determining the rate of enrgy loss per deg K change, and that’s easy to measure.
If we know how much enrgy is entering, and how much will leave at a given temperature, we have all the empirical data and physical variabilities we need. We don’t need no models.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4950769
If you can wait, I am rewriting the paper to cover the simple quantification of the feedbacks alone. The numbers stay the same. I just don’t point out what they mean for the tiddly 1.6W/m^2 of “AGW”. Not a lot in a strongly variable 240W/m2 of total LWIR radiative feedback to a change in warming or planetary lagging, always tending to a balance at whatever temperature works.
Because that’s how nature works, by whatever means. From bare rocks that radiate and require a larger range to balance themselves, Mercury varies between the melting point of lead and the boiling point of liquid nitrogen as it rotates, to the lowest range that an evaporating ocean cover delivers by latent heat transfer and surface energy storage – a long term energy balance is the natural state on every planet orbiting its Sun. And ours has three very strong negative feedback controls. QED
Don’t forget that heat loss is an exponential relative to temperature change. Planck and S-B say so. Maybe not T^4 but T^something.
The earth is not an open system?
Then how is it we can land on the moon?
A close system is bounded with no energy input and no energy output.
We get the sun, gravity, cosmic rays, meteors, etc. Those are inputs.
Ummmm….
open system – can exchange mass and energy
closed system – can exchange energy
isolated system – can exchange neither mass or energy
Great post , Roy….. 100% correct all the way.
And it doesn’t rely on a completely fake, non-science “consensus” meme. !
Dear Ray Clark,
You say “Temperature is an intensive thermodynamic property. An average temperature of two independent thermodynamic systems has no physical meaning” which I don’t dispute.
However, in discussing surface warming, temperature of the near-surface air is the only measurable parameter. It also needs to be remembered, that temperature of the air, is that of a fluid in motion in contact with a surface. It is advection to and from the surface, that determines the measurable parameter, and it does not matter if the ‘surface’ is the ocean or the landscape (there is data for both).
Thermodynamically, the surface heat flux has only four components. Net energy available (short-wave in minus long-wave out) = latent heat loss via evaporation plus sensible heat loss via advection plus ground-heat flux which shows-up as a cycle and is often ignored. Provided radiation strikes a surface, there are no other components that describe its fate.
Over land, of those components only sensible heat is directly measurable. The surrogate for “environmental heat” is the component of sensible heat advected to the air, which is measured by thermometers in a Stevenson screen.
Latent heat loss dominates the heat balance over oceans, consequently temperature of the air above is closely controlled by the advecting surface – I have data that shows this.
How can temperature not have “physical meaning”. You cannot measure “heat” as heat in the landscape or oceans, so how does one measure this unmeasurable “thing”, except as a surrogate – satellites do not measure “temperature”, they model it from other properties. And of course, like homogenised temperature data, modelling can be fiddled.
Further, if one wants to know if temperature has increased, the obvious thing to do is grab some temperature data and using sound protocols, test that hypothesis. Whether or not temperature is “intensive thermodynamic property” is irrelevant.
The chicken-and-egg question is whether “the climate” controls temperature or temperature controls “the climate”.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
I believe what I do meets your criteria and applies it to empirical observations to determine the natural overall feedback to perturbations to the earth’s natural enrgy balance in space, which dynamic equilibrium determines its internal temperatures. In my World, of physics, temperature is the proxy for the energy density of the mass under study, I suggest. That can be measured radiatively, but is expressed a temperature. If we can monitor people this way, why not planets.
And we must always be aware of the basic fundamentals of thermodynamics, which to me is the Zeroth Law. Which say no heat flows between separate bodies of a similar energy density? Because they are all inequilibrium with each other. The tempertaure we measure to determine that is created by the radiation they release to heat something we can measure the change in by conduction. For me, the concepts within this law leads to the consequences of all the others. But that’s me. It would be nice if climate scientists understood how enrgy moves from the most to the least excited state available. In our case, from the Sun to space via the Earth. Once energy leaves a hotter surface for a colder atmosphere, there is no going back to a hotter one, at scale and over time, it is headed for space to try to rebalance the imbalance with space. No going back.
The loss of energy as it is absorbed and re radiated from less energetic, hence colder, bodies, is clear in the energy spectrum it presents. So compare the solar spectrum with the LWIR from earth, and the microwave background of space it leaves for. What MODTRAN can explains, simply integrate the electromagnetic energy flux over the frequency range it occupies and you have yourself an enrgy level that equates to a temperature? Isn’t that what Plank did? I don’t know how radiometer based thermometers work, but it has to be along this lines, John Christy will know.
Liquid thermometers display the energy they are absorbing from their surrounding to keep them at whatever volume they are constrained to occupy in a vacuum subject to gravity. So they are measuring an energy level. By conduction. Liquid thermometers won’t work as advertised in a vacuum. They will stay at what they were at when they were put in it? A radiometer thermometer will measure the temperature of another hot body in a vacuum, because theenrgy ransfer can still occur, by radiation. etc.. Just typing out loud.
Dear Brian,
The need for a gradient to exist between two ‘energy’ states in order for energy to ‘flow’, be they a hydraulic gradient between water reservoirs (representing a potential energy difference) or between objects, is not in question.
The so called “Zeroth Law” refers to an equilibrium condition resulting from conduction, which is not the same as advection. For an air mass in constant motion due to convection, advection occurs both to and from the surface and an equilibrium condition cannot exist.
The surface energy balance, which is a restatement of the First Law of Thermodynamics, accounts for energy fluxes in the environment. Energy is conserved; therefore, inputs must balance outgoings, thus:
RN = (RS – RL) = G + H + LE,
where: RN, is net radiation (incoming shortwave (RS) minus emitted long wave radiation(RL)); G, is ground heat flux (energy exchange with the surroundings); H, is atmospheric flux (heat exchange with the local atmosphere via advection); L is latent heat of vaporisation and E the amount of water evaporated.
It is not necessary to solve the surface energy balance directly and anyway, required (or alternative) atmospheric parameters such as directly measured RS and RL, wind speed, vapour pressure deficit, cloudiness (hours of sunlight), heat storage in the surroundings etc. are mostly unavailable.
On the heat dispersion side, evapotranspiration (E) accounts for 2.45 MJ/kg of water evaporated (L) as latent heat, which is removed via convection as potential energy (LE) in the vapour phase.
Thus, as 1 mm of rainfall is 1 kg/m^2, evapotranspiration of median Mildura rainfall (c. 280 mm) accounts for 686 MJ/m^2/yr, which is 10% of estimated average total solar exposure (6778 MJ/m2/yr, 1991-2017). The balance, the 90% not accounted for, is dispersed either as RL, which increases with temperature according to the Steffan-Boltzmann Law (and is reduced by cloudiness), or, it is advected to the near-surface atmosphere as sensible heat and measured by thermometers held c. 1.2 m (4-feet) above the ground in a Stevenson screen.
Although sensible heat can be added artificially (as urban heat or from passing traffic for example), or removed (via increased evapotranspiration due to watering), for well-controlled sites there are no other pathways for energy to be directly gained or lost.
The Zeroth Law cannot apply to an open system. Consequently, surface energy balance is the sole arbiter of what happens with temperature measured in Stevenson screens at specific sites. While assumptions are necessary in order to deal with RL and G, although LE can be calculated in flux terms (LE), only sensible heat is measurable, and that itself is a proxy for atmospheric flux (H).
In practice, H in flux units is mostly estimated by difference, using say Bowen ratio gear, or else look at a thermometer held 1.2m above ground in a Stevenson screen ….
I am unconvinced, given the difficulties of measuring heat-flux components at the surface, that satellites, which don’t do direct measurements but rely on modelling (including a bunch of other assumptions) can do a better job, especially given they are looking for tiny numbers in a cloud of noise.
Which raises the burning question: if there is no trend in maximum temperature measured at Mildura, Port Hedland, Marble Bar, Amberley, Meekatharra, Townsville or anywhere else in Australia, and temperature extremes are due to the rollout of 60-litre Stevenson screens in place of 230-litre ones, where does all this warming come from if it is not built into the datasets (terrestrial or otherwise) via homogenization.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
(story tip)
Maybe my memory is not what it used to be, but wasn’t Paris 2ºC, revised to 1.5ºC in 2018 at COP whatever-it-was because it was taking too long to get to 2ºC?
They rounded it up as a taxpayer donation to the elite class.
1,5 was from 2010
The first UNFCCC document to mention a limit to global warming of 1.5°C was the Cancun Agreement, adopted at the sixteenth COP (COP16) in 2010.
Paris 2015 always used 1.5
The 1.5°C target was set in the Paris Agreement, which was adopted in 2015. The agreement was adopted at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France on December 12, 2015.
Some history. The original 2C was made up by Schellnhuber of PIK, back when ECS was 3+C. When the EBM estimates came out about 2016-2017 of ECS ~1.7, 2 was revised arbitrarily to 1.5 to keep the alarm going. The alarmist problem now is 1.5 has been reached and nothing bad happened. Oopsi.
H. L. Mencken described it all quite adequately in the early 20th century in these top 10 quotes.
1) Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
2) A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
3) A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
4) Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
5) Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
6) Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
7) Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
8) If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
9) For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
10) The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Another Mencken favorite quote of mine: “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
Everyone with sense knows that you can best scare people with a prediction of doom that will happe after your lifetime and theirs. You can’t disprove a prediction before the “due date”.
Think of the religious leaders scaring people to behave with the silly prediction of them going to h e l l after they die, if they don’t behave “properly”
62% of Americas believe in h e l l
71% believe in heaven
60% to 65% think global warming is dangerous
All these beliefs are based on faith, not science or evidence, yet people in one “faith” belief group criticize people i other “faith” belief groups.
The irony is that the UN has created a framework to control the weather and climate through controlling greenhouse emissions in developed nations only. After 30 years climate action the total annual quantity of global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Knowing this they, reduced the target temperature rise from 2C to 1.5C.
It’s absurd that the UN IPCC thinks that it can control the weather.
But the fecklessness of the organization and its framework is apparent in the continued rise of annual greenhouse gas emissions after trillions of dollars spent.
“after trillions of dollars
spentwasted” Fixed.The first UNFCCC document to mention a limit to global warming of 1.5°C was the Cancun Agreement, adopted at the sixteenth COP (COP16) in 2010.
While it is clever propaganda to have an imaginary tipping point, I suppose they thought 1.5 would be happening a lot slower than it actually happened.
1.5 is BS, not real science
Real science requires three decimal places. like +2.385 degrees C. Four is even better!
Having +2.385 as the tipping point would have been a lot better propaganda.
Arguments over the tipping point number will tend to distract people from needed debates on:
(1) There is no such thig as a tipping point
(2) There is no evidence greenhouse global warming is dangerous in any way after the first 50 years of warming
(3) The average temperature in 1850 or 1880 is much closer to a wild guess than an accurate statistic.
“Real science” does NOT require 3 decimal places.
From Grist: “A pair of new studies in the journal Nature Climate Change looked at historical data and
came to the conclusion that the record heat last year — the first year to surpass 1.5 degrees
C — wasn’t a temporary fluke, but a sign that the world is now soaring past this influential
climate target over the long term.”
Same old problem but in a different form. Now Greenland, Antarctica, and so on will melt and we’ll all die in biblical floods.
The moving goalposts remind me of Robin Williams’s bit on Qaddafi’s (sp?) Gulf of Sidra line of death.
Irony on irony. We passed 1.5 and nothing happened, and Gavin Schmidt says the cause wasn’t CO2 anyway.
What if other than Milankovitch it is all volcanoes with different cloud compositions? Watery volcanoes push the temperature up, sulfur volcanoes drag it down? We live in interesting times for climate science.
I don’t know who Hume is, he might be a good guy, he might be an important guy but I have no respect for him. We have to change the conversation from climate change to CO2. CO2 is either the control knob for earth’s climate or it isn’t. No one has shown that CO2 can raise earth’s average global temperature to catastrophic levels. That is the conversation we need to be having. Hume and people like Hume can believe anything they want I don’t care what they believe. Show me the science.
99.9% Ask Greene.
“I don’t know who Hume is”
Philosopher. But this article is about Hulme.
Sorry my mistake, can I blame it on spellcheck?
Climate change? The last time we had real cc was 10 to 12 thousand years ago when there was a warming of 15 C and then a crash back 15 c due to the Younger -Dryas event and then a fortunate rise of 15 c according to the Greenland Ice Cores. The temp fluctuations since are nothing in comparison.
When I was a kid, I used to dig out fossils of trilobites and mollusks (and on one lucky occasion a big starfish) from low mudstone cliffs near the city that are are now possibly 50 feet above sea level. That is climate change. Today we are talking about weather. Climate is NOT 30 years of average weather. I don’t care what they say. It’s more like 5000 years of average weather. There has been negligible climate change over the entire satellite era.
The original 2 degrees being the trigger for disaster was abandoned when it became clear that it was unlikely ever to be reached. Also, it was reached it was going to be in two or three generations, so nothing immediate.
These numbers are, as you all know the output of models that have estimated temperature rise by 2050 1/10th the size of the uncertainty. Two degrees, plus-minus 20. A prediction like that never be wrong!