Essay by Eric Worrall
The greenhouse effect should already be cooking the world – but something keeps it tame.
The surface temperature would be at least 20C hotter than it is, if Greenhouse Gas was the only forcing which matters.
Regular readers of WUWT might already know the secret sauce which keeps the Earth’s surface survivable, but even if you already know the answer, Ridd has a gift for explaining context and complexity, so the video is still well worth watching.
Well worth a few minutes of your time.
Peter kept saying “The top of the atmosphere” when I think he meant top of the troposphere or tropopause.
For IR wavelengths in the CO2 absorption bands, the effective “top of the atmosphere” is well above the tropopause.
There are very few molecules of CO2 per cubic meter in the lower stratosphere
These weak absorbers and emitters of photons could not have any effect on global warming.
Any CO2 molecules close to the surface are totally overwhelmed by abundant water vapor molecules, which have many wide absorption bands.
CO2 molecules play a pigmy role
Any IR photons in the lower stratosphere would have wavelengths well beyond 15 micrometer, so CO2 does not even absorb those, but water vapor, even if frozen, does
YOUR THEORY IS WRONG. PLEASE READ SCIENCE: https://CLIMATE.NASA.GOV
Science??
You don’t know how to recognize science?
“You don’t know how to recognize science”
You are the one that linked to science-free propaganda, rather than science. !
There is ZERO science on your link.. Just propaganda nonsense.
From the link…
Heat trapping properties of CO2.
Definition: Heat – flow of thermal energy across a temperature gradient from hot to cold. If heat is “trapped” the thermal energy is not flowing and therefore is not heat, by definition.
NASA did a piss poor job with the science and a first rate job are parroting the propaganda.
Heat is not trapped by greenhouse gases. Heat energy in the form of IR attempting to leave earth is absorbed and immediately reemitted in all directions, thus returning some to earth, warming the earth.
Heat is thermal energy.
IR is electro magnetic energy.
As discovered by E. Foote in the mid 1800s, they are not the same.
How are they “overwhelmed? You really don’t have clue, do you. The frequencies that are exited interact are different and CO2 is in fact much more powerful than WV per unit mass, but there is not much CO2.
There are about 200x fewer H2O molecules in the stratosphere than CO2 molecules.
Almost all the GHE scattering by CO2 happens in the Troposphere, where most of the CO2 is, below the Tropopause.
Robert,
Peter Ridd outlined his use of these terms at the start of his talk.
Geoff S
Yes, at the 7 minute mark, he mentions greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and water vapour at the top of the atmosphere, while showing a diagram illustrating those molecules at the top of the troposphere. I missed that watching it the first time.
It’s a good video, by the way, reminding everyone that weather is full of negative feedbacks that offset much of the greenhouse effect.
Nope. The top of the atmosphere is the height at which the satellites take measurements of what happens below. It is generally considered at a height of 100 km, so above the stratosphere.
I often tell alarmists that temperature of Earth would be 116° F without any water. That gets them angry since they think water vapor feedback creates warming. How could the planet be so warm without any water?
I get that number by simply using the dry adiabatic lapse rate and adding in some extra energy from the reduced albedo similar to the moon. Not 100% accurate but likely to be reasonable.
That would work for the average of the sunlit side of the Moon, I make it 118°F with 11% albedo. But without water, there is little to keep the night side warm and the global average would be as cold as the Moon.
Why not add the earth without water or atmosphere? Temperatures would likely range over 400 degrees Fahrenheit between night and day at the equator.
Without atmosphere or water, earths temperature would be as cold as the moon, no?
The world DOES have an atmosphere and WV… Why live in a fantasy !
How does this model relate to your calculation?
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2025/01/26/uli-webers-hemispheric-stefan-boltzmann-model/
Nicely done. Enjoyed the content and easy tone.
Reminded me of the UK WWII phrase–
“Keep Calm and Carry On”
Thanks Dr. Ridd
Guterres can’t seem to keep his pecker up.
Maybe Guterres has had that unforgettable weather experience that Ron White (and most of us blokes) had with a hard-to-find pecker –
“I didn’t realize it was that COLD that day” 🙁
I think Dr. Ridd misses out on a couple of opportunities. While he shows weather is a negative feedback, he hasn’t yet discovered CO2 itself enhances evaporation which leads to lower high altitude water vapor as described by Dr. William Gray.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr2DEiPHlkg
Also, it doesn’t take any warming for this effect to take place. CO2 induces evaporation without warming the surface (counterintuitive, but true).
Dr. Ridd also mentions the potential for 1-2 degrees of warming. From a couple of papers I think this is closer to a 0.24 C estimate in Reinhart 2017.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/german-researcher-doubling-of-atmospheric-co2-causes-only-0-24-c
The cooling induced by this evaporation eliminates all this warming as shown in Miskolczi 2023.
https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/Miskolczi-2023-Greenhouse-Gas-Theory.pdf
Finally, we see the validation of this science in the NASA CERES data Willis pointed out a few weeks ago. No increase in the overall greenhouse effect this century.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/22/greenhouse-efficiency-2/
Dear Richard M,
CO2 is not an energy source – it is not exothermic. So, what is the physical process that provides the energy for CO2 to cause evaporation (actual) to increase?
Although not measured much these days, there is no evidence that A-pan evaporation has measurably increased since observations commenced in Australia in the 1970s. So which evaporation are you talking about – evapotranspiration, or direct evaporation from water surfaces?
Also as evaporation from soil and plants cannot exceed the rainfall and over most of Australia rainfall is less than potential evaporation. Holding rainfall the same, how does it work that evaporation is increasing due to CO2?
In Australia’s Murray Darling Basin, about 5% of the area contributes around 95% of runoff to the Basin. In general terms, areas contributing runoff are above 800 m altitude, they receive more then 800 mm rainfall PA, which equals or is less than 800 mm evaporation (rule-of-thumb only, but I’ve done transect studies that show this – not published at http://www.bomwatch.com.au).
Runoff in the far north of the basin is usually due to heavy rainfall arising in the tropics (tropical lows etc.) that sweep-down from the north tropics due to residual cyclones. Such events, which are overwhelming, occur more often in La Nina years, than El Nino ones. Floods were recently experienced along the Queensland coast for example. What role CO2?
Yours sincerely,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
The energy comes from the kinetic energy of the atmosphere. When a CO2 molecule low in the atmosphere is excited by a collision with another molecule, it may radiate a photon downwards which reaches the surface. If that surface molecule is H2O, a certain (small) percentage of the time this will lead to evaporation.
This is most important in the tropics over oceans where water is warm enough to be evaporating at a high rate anyway. If you watched the video presentation by Dr. Gray, you will understand why this is key and adds to the natural cooling effect of the water cycle.
Richard, you are dreaming. Unless you believe that adding CO2 to air will somehow magically make it hotter!
You have no clue about physics, so I won’t even bother trying to tell you why the Earth’s surface has actually cooled from its initial molten state.
You quite obviously wouldn’t believe me.
Nothing magic about it in the slightest.
Molecules of CO2 are excited by photons of certain wavelengths, they then transfer energy to other molecules. The end result is more energy in the atmosphere.
Basic physics. Perhaps you should study some.
Any thermalisation is absolutely tiny and immeasurable and is immediately taken up with the natural convection and air movement of the atmosphere.
CO2 does not alter the energy transfer rate (lapse rate) in the atmosphere.
The definition of thermalization is to approach or achieve thermal equilibrium. EM energy is not thermal energy as proven by E. Foote in the mid 1800s.
The IR photon excites a vibrational movement of the O atoms on the CO2 molecule, at that point the EM energy has been converted to a mechanical energy. If a N2 molecule collides with the vibrating CO2 molecule the thermalization of the N2 molecule results in an increase in its kinetic energy.
Rubbish, the thermalization is not tiny, the energy from the IR photon that excites the CO2, is greater than the average kinetic energy of the N2 molecules in the air. Only a few % of the N2 molecules have enough energy to dethermalise and return the CO2 vibrational energy back to the excited state.
The excitation is potential, not kinetic energy related to valence states.
Even if what you said was true, < 10 eV does nothing compared to the KE of the molecule.
FYI, sinewaves induced on a free molecule have zero impact on momentum of the molecule.
The energy of a 14.77 um IR photon is 0.08 eV.
1 eV is 1.6 x 10-19 J.
A single photon does not do much at all.
But the Earth’s surface emits about 2.8×10^21 photons per sq m per sec!
The average kinetic energy of a N2 molecule at room temperature is ~2×10-21 J which is much less than an eV!
Oh right. You mean the wind -> convection coupled with Hadley and mid-latitude circulation that dissipates energy not removed by the Monsoon, from the tropics towards the poles.
And where does all this kinetic energy come from that has anything to do with CO2, rather than energy gradients between the ‘true’ tropics (between Cancer and Capricorn), that receives as a proportion more incoming radiation per m^2 than at higher latitudes, and the rest of the globe?
And anyway, how would you measure all these collisions, separate from the wind effect, and relate those to pan evaporation, say at Amberley, Wagga Wagga or down in Tasmania?
New theory is it?
Cheers,
Bill
And ps, I did flick through Dr Grey’s talk. While you may see it differently, unless I missed it, I don’t think he made a solid point about omni-directional CO2 collisions.
Leaving models and indecipherable graphs aside, the proof still comes down to grabbing some data and analysing some property that supports the hypothesis.
All the best,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
Kinetic energy originates primarily after solar radiation gets absorbed by the surface and gets into the low atmosphere by multiple processes including LWIR absorption by CO2 or water vapor along with conduction.
When CO2 or water vapor transfer their absorbed energy to other gases it is referred to as thermalization. When the reverse happens as I mentioned above it is called dethermalization.
None of this requires any wind energy, although that is certainly part of the kinetic energy of the atmosphere.
Dr. Gray just assumed conventional greenhouse theory caused warming in his discussion. I pointed out that is not necessary as CO2 can cause the evaporation directly.
All this is pretty direct atmospheric physics. I take it that is not where you got your PhD.
Dear Richard M,
I disagree. But then I am not an atmospheric physicist.
You say
I say the process is advection – which works both ways.
The terrestrial surface heat flux is dominated by LWIR (which is a component of net radiation – which is energy available at the surface (MJ/m^2/day – or hour, or less)) = ground heat flux [energy exchanged with the surroundings] + latent heat flux [energy expended evaporating water = 2.45 MJ/kg of water evaporated, which as 1mm = 1kg/m^2, in rainfed environments = mm of rainfall] + sensible heat transferred to the near surface atmosphere by advection, which of course is measured by thermometers held 1.2 m above the ground in a Stevenson screen.
All are big numbers.
The purpose of my question to you, was not to enquire about your pHD, but rather, how does one measure a piddlingly small number, like a very, very small photon-scale number to do with CO2, against that background, plus wind and everything else, given that CO2 is a rare atmospheric constituent anyway?
Why don’t you start with data, say for Halls Creek (https://www.bomwatch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/HallsCreekbackstory_FINAL-18-Mar-2023.pdf) and show how it is done.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
I think we are talking apples and oranges. Advection and convection are key processes in moving energy around. They are also a big reason the planet is 20-30 C cooler as Dr. Ridd mentioned. However, this tells us nothing about the effect of changes in CO2/CH4 concentration.
We still need to understand how energy enters (and is removed from) the atmosphere. That is where radiative gases like CO2 and CH4 are important.
The current definition of the greenhouse effect claims that increasing CO2/CH4 concentration will add more energy to the atmosphere. I also believe convection/advection would reduce the impact of that process, but the amount is debatable.
What I am showing is that increases in CO2/CH4 from current levels do not lead to any additional warming.
There is no more energy to move around, hence advection/convection processes are mostly unaffected. There will be small increases in advection/convection driven by the increased evaporation I described.
Finally, the changes in the amount of energy moved by radiation events may be smaller, but they are not down to the trivial level and understanding the real effects are still important.
Dear Richard M,
As there is no convection, advection or conduction between earth’s atmosphere and space, the only pathway for energy to enter and be removed from the atmosphere is via radiation.
Internally, flux components have been known and studied for most of the 20th Century. There is an accepted nomenclature built on the laws of thermodynamics, in particular, the First Law, which states that energy is conserved.
In 2004, CSIRO convened a workshop at the Australian Academy of Science Shine Dome in Canberra to discuss the “evaporation paradox” or conundrum if you like.
An overview of the proceedings are available here: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=fe6434e1504e3ab61e63161874ef834a3bb58b23#page=4
The opening sentence of the executive summary reads:
“There is no evidence anywhere in the world of large-scale, long-term increases in potential evaporation estimated as “Class A pan evaporation” over the past several decades, despite well-documented global warming”….
Further that: “In the northern hemisphere, widespread decreases in pan evaporation rates, averaging 2-4 mm per year per year, have occurred over several decades up to about 1990″…. And there is more if you are interested, plus individual papers, of which I have most.
Following on from the workshop, another paper (DOI 10.1007/s10584-007-9324-6) used the BoM’s homogenisation methods to develop a homogeneous 60-station dataset, and concluded that “Australian annual mean pan-evaporation shows large interannual variability with no trend over the 1970–2005 period”. I have a download of THE ORIGINAL DATA for most of those datasets.
Removing the bird-guard effect in particular (bird guards were not fitted until later so Ep was higher near the commencement of most records), reduced trends in all datasets to zero.
As I can find no evidence that CO2 is linked to increased Ep, in my view, it is the theory that is wrong.
All the best,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
Excellent post..
The Co2 factor in energy transfer is always assumed and modeled. It is true you can measure general Co2 levels in the atmosphere. Its effect cannot. It is guesswork in relation to radiation only. Relevant detail in this are the vibrational modes of the various molecules. People always claim Co2 does x and use words like ‘kinetic’ energy that is supposed to prove the theory. And that this wee Co2 mouse is enough to feed the big H2o ( wv) elephant. Again, assumed..
Not assumed. The Greenhouse effect of H2O, CO2, N2O, CH4, and other gases has been known in the theory and measured and documented in lab experiments for over 100 years. It’s textbook science.
Those early experiments were performed in containers with class lids.
Those devices can act as a greenhouse.
Step outside. Do you see a glass ceiling or glass walls?
You aren’t familiar with the experiments that have been conducted for the past 100 years.
You need to look up the definition of thermalization.
The word has been hijacked and repurposed.
“ it may radiate a photon downwards which reaches the surface.”
This is extremely unlikely. View this video to understand why.
Sorry, these folks have the science wrong. The CO2 DWIR has been measured at the surface (Feldman et al 2015). While it doesn’t cause any warming, it is real.
DWIR incident on the earth doesn’t cause warming? Since when does IR not warm the surface it encounters?
Science can be tricky. The key is in understanding the long term effect. Clearly, there will be warming for at least a few microseconds. It occurs right on the surface skin because the weak photons emitted by CO2 cannot penetrate the surface skin.
In this case the energy comes from the low portion of the turbulent atmospheric boundary layer. This is the same part of the atmosphere constantly sharing energy with the surface skin via conduction.
As this energy is transferred to the surface skin and warms it, the atmosphere is cooled. This creates an energy imbalance and since there’s a high speed energy flow already constantly working, the 2nd Law ends up sending back an equal amount of energy to remove the imbalance.
So, no long term warming. It’s really not any different than what is happening with conduction already. Any conduction event that warms the surface is balanced by events moving energy into the atmosphere.
Earth’s surface has a high absorptivity to downwelling infrared (IR) radiation, typically around 90% or more; meaning that most of the infrared radiation coming down from the atmosphere is absorbed by the Earth’s surface, contributing significantly to the planet’s temperature regulation through the greenhouse effect.
Yup, it absorbs the IR and conducts/radiates an equal or greater amount of energy back into the atmosphere. Anything else would violate the 2nd Law.
Yes it does. But in order for the earth to reradiate the added IR energy, it must warm up according to T^4 power. That’s how warming from the GHE works.
Nope, as I explained earlier, when the energy cools the lower atmosphere then conduction will balance it out.
You said: “Yup, it [the earth] absorbs the IR and conducts/radiates an equal or greater amount of energy back into the atmosphere.
Which is it? Radiation or conduction?
Photons are not particles. They have no rest mass. They have no physical size. Photons are a quantum of energy related to valence bands.
When photon is emitted, it expands in a spherical geometry exactly as any single point electro magnetic emission.
A single photon in the single digit 3 electron volt energy range will do nothing to warm anything.
In addition, no photon is guaranteed a straight line unimpeded path. The expanding photonic wavefront will intersect other molecules. There is no simple model for this.
A photon is a reasonable proxy for this process. The various effects have been tested and verified.
The average temperature difference between summer and Winter for the northern hemisphere is 13 degrees. The average temperature difference between summer and winter is 5 degrees for the southern hemisphere. Are we talking about 2 different worlds? They both get the same insolation from the sun so what is the story? There is a lot more land in the northern hemisphere versus water than the southern hemisphere but you all know that. Also there is an upper limit to the ocean temperature about 30 degrees Celsius when many thunderstorms appear to knock the temperature down.
There are too many inconsistent inputs points for such “averaging” constructs to provide any practical, useful information or guidance.
That’s before we even consider the
PROBITY
PROVENANCE
or
PROSECUTION
of temps “data”
They do not get the same insolation. They get the same amount of energy each year but the SH gets it in 4 days less. The power flux is up to 80W/m^2 higher in the SH than in the NH at any latitude on the respective summer solstice.. My solar panels at 37S produce more power than the same panels would produce at 37N because they get more intense sunlight.
The reason for the wider temperature range in the NH to the SH is the proportion of land in each hemisphere and the greater thermal response of land versus water.
The peak solar internstisty over the NH land bottomed 500 years ago. It has been increasing since then with the inevitable consequence of the land warming up.
The NH is being primed for the termination of the present interglacial. Record snowfall will be a feature of daily NH winter weather reporting for at least the next 5,000 years.
I was mistaken in my statement on insolation. I assumed they were equal but I agree with you that the northern hemisphere has been in deficit mode for about 3000 years now and that is why glaciers are forming. Read The inconvenient skeptic by John Kehr; he explains things quite well.
The earth is closer to the sun during the southern winter. That at least partially counters the 4 fewer days.
The Earth is closer to the sun during the northern winter.
You have answered your own question. The reason is because there is a lot more ocean in the southern hemisphere.
I thought he would mention the oceans as having a big stabilizing effect on climate.
Same thing ive been saying for many years. But nice to have a famous name on our side.
But Roy.. you are a famous name! 🙂
“But Roy.. you are a famous name!”
I’m assuming you said that because you respect what Roy Spencer says…..If so, I’ll remind you that you said that, next time you wrongly claim that El Nino is causing the warming. Why, because Roy Spencer does not agree with you.
Anyone can look at the UAH data and clearly see the warming at major El Nino events.
Take your blinkers off. !!
Show me the warming in the UAH data that is NOT from El Nino spike/step events.
b, you have to distiguish between waring at El Ninos and warming because of El Ninos. Two different things. The warming at El Ninos leaves the measured atmospheric temp slightly higher due to a thermal shock coming from released ocean heat. No one knows what causes El Ninos but it’s a natural event. The question is why is this so-called ”step up” continuing? The answer may be that this is just a natural way the ocean’s heat is expelled after a period of increased activity from the SUN possibly decades earlier. There is no evidence of co2 influence. I remain to be convinced that increased co2 has warmed the ocean.
In short, El Nino is the cause of the warming but indirectly.
Sun
The step up is because of warm ocean water being transported to other ocean regions… takes about 6 months.
Bob Tisdale shows that clearly
I’m talking about each step-up settling higher than the previous. Simple periodic circulation does not explain that. There must be a cause and the only cause that seems valid is earlier sun activity which warmed the ocean above the ”norm”.
People seem to forget that El Nino is a cooling phenomena. It seems obvious to me that heat would be dissipated in steps like this from a liquid. Not linearly.
Just as we can see here..
If that were the case then we would be able to measure a reduction in ocean heat content.
In fact, the opposite is occurring. The oceans and atmosphere have both warmed over their joint periods of measurement.
So whatever is causing the long term warming, it isn’t heat coming out of the oceans.
A nonsense
As we know that CO2 cannot warm the ocean, only the Sun and maybe volcanic activity can do that.
Averaging over the whole ocean also makes everything a straight line, hides the individual step changes as shown by Bod Tisdale.
Also please show us where they measured the heat content of all the Pacific Ocean before 2005 when ARGO was implemented.
ie.. most of that is basically modelled data.
Do you even realise just how tiny the temperature change has been over the whole of ocean…or do big number and small units confuse you.
Did you note the measurements going back to 1950?
Solar Maximum. Also at a 27000 year point in periodic orbital variations.
It’s all connected, along with lunar and solar gravity, planetary alignments, position in the galaxy.
No question there is warming, modest warming. At issue is how unnatural it is proclaimed to be.
There is no question. All warming since 1970 is caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. No other explanation fits the data.
Roy doesn’t agree with your childish low level thinking man. Face it. And if he doesn’t agree with you and every other scientist on the planet doesn’t agree with you… then your chance of being wrong is probably somewhere near 99.9999999999% (I could add a few more 9’s). Now who to believe?
So, as expected, you are totally unable to show any warming that is not from El Nino events…
If you remove the spike-step change at El Ninos, there is no other warming in the UAH dat.
In my opinion, it is a mistake to show UAH without Nino.
Why? It shows that without the major El Nino events…
… there is no warming.
That’s silly. If you remove the steps of a staircase you get a ramp.
No, if you remove the steps, you get a horizontal travel-way.
If you smooth out those steps without removing them, you get a slope.
Perhaps you could show us some warming in UAH that is not from El Nino events ?
You have polled “every other scientist on the planet”, including all those newly graduated in the PRC?
That sounds like the argument from a school girl.
I believe reality as demonstrated by rigorous reproducible experiment. It’s part of the scientific method.
What about you?
Ad hominem attacks R US.
So noting that you fail to credit the scientific method is now an ad hominem?
Famous does not mean right about everything.
You saying Roy is wrong on that point?
I believe your leftist rage is hindering your brain function.
Again, are you saying Roy Spencer agrees that El Nino is causing the warming? Just say yes or no. No need for the immature name calling.
See above for my take.
So with no evidence at all that the sun is the cause you too have an outrageous theory. Congratulations you just joined benice2000 in a club of two.
No evidence? The sun can explain all the current warming.
The sun obviously does have an effect, but the current warming is not caused by the sun… in fact the sun is an a low ebb at the moment… It must be something else. Now what could it be?
You do not comprehend my comment.
Try harder.
Look up thermal lag.
The sun is at a low ebb? Hmm…. Rumor has it that the sun currently is peaking in a Grand Solar Maximum.
For 50 years beginning about 1970, the suns irradiance slightly fell, while the earth warmed. And the sun is the cause of warming?
The only one that has produced no evidence is you, Simon.
Aww… shucks…
Famous name or no, adding CO2 to air does not make it hotter. Many “famous names” believed in phlogiston, luminiferous ether, caloric, and so on.
All about as substantial as the belief that adding CO2 to air somehow generates additional heat. Obviously, it’s really the CO2 phlogiston being transmitted as caloric through the ether.
Oh my, to quote your good self.
It doesn’t “generate additional heat” it “traps existing heat. Shish!!!! I mean this is climate change 101.
Simon, so you believe that adding CO2 to air raises its temperature?
What about adding CO2 to CO2? How hot would 100% CO2 become? Or does your imagination crash and burn when faced with reality?
Oh my (as Dr Spencer would say).
There is absolutely no measured evidence that CO2 “traps” any heat energy whatsoever.
If you think there is, then produce that evidence.
Perhaps you should watch all this video to educate yourself as to the reality of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Much like phrenology 101
Ah, now we see the level of yr understanding. It is indeed standard climate change 101…from the kindergarden uni of Forced Ideas.
By definition, heat can not be trapped.
Heat is thermal energy in motion.
Until the fixed points at which water changes state, themselves change, we should not worry too much.
I am not sure whether or not CO2 has any appreciable effect on evaporation, but given that wind is the major factor, at least on land, who would know?
To me it boils down to the climate system is chaotic. It’s the ultimate hubris to try to model it. Many mathematicians and physicists were saying that in the 1990’s
It is the ultimate hubris to think humans can control weather.
Climate, after all, is an average of weather over a defined period of time and per that definition is changing microsecond by microsecond.
Dr Ridd notes that the mechanism of the alleged global warming since the last little ice age remains unknown. It would be nice to solve that puzzle. Has there been a reluctance to study this mechanism for fear that the result might not support some popular idealism? Geoff S
The climate models are blind to the precession cycle. They are based on energy not power.
Temperature is a function of power. Think of dissipating vehicle kinetic energy in the brakes on your car. Slow down from 100kph to zero over 30 seconds and compare the temperature of the brakes with slowing down from 100kph to zero in 5 seconds. The brakes end up much hotter in the second case despite the same energy dissipation. The SH gets the same amount of energy annually as the NH hemisphere but it takes the NH 4 days longer in the present era.
On the austral summer solstice, the midday sun on my solar panels at 37S will be 80W/m^2 more intense than the midday sun on solar panels during the boreal summer solstice at 37N. My panels will have more power output than the ones in the northern hemisphere.
But the land in the NH started getting higher peak solar intensity 500 years ago. It started warming soon after that and has been warming since. The increasing sea level is not new and it not accelerating.
The solar intensity over land in the NH will reach its peak in 9000 years. By then, all the land north of 40N will be covered in ice.
We saw a glimpse of the future just last week with Japan having record snowfall. But the oceans off Japan are up to 5C warmer than the 30 year average.
Screen-Shot-2025-02-21-at-11.23.06-am-1740097431.1916.png
The oceans of the NH will get much warmer yet and snowfall records will continue to be set for thousands of years.
Climate models do not mass balance. The create precipitation from nowhere. All precipitation starts life in an ocean and eventually returns to the oceans unless it gets locked up on land as ice. Land ice is still being lost everywhere but the extent of ice cover on Greenland is increasing.
Your concepts are right, but your vocabulary is a tad off.
Climate models treat temperature and energy as interchangeable.
That allows them to claim IR is heat.
Temperature is a function of energy, not power.
The climate stuff is power density (W/m^2).
Energy is in joules. 1 J = 1 W sec.
They tend to keep everything in W/m^2 so they do not have to bother with latencies, transfer rates, etc.
This results in the absurdity of a column of air transferring 10 W/m^2. So a 15 km tall, 1 m wide column of air passes how much energy?
The nonsense can be histerical.
youre misinterpreting the models . They use the overall change in global surface temperature as a proxy for energy change is earths system. Since earths system is a fixed mass, that’s a valid treatment.
Some commentators mention photons in explanations that lack understanding of technology particularly heat transfer (which is an engineering subject in which very few scientists have any direct experience). 1955 Nobel prize winner WE Lamb Jr says in his peer reviewed article “Anti photon” that photons do not exist. There are radiation waves which have a range of frequencies or wavelengths. The waves do not act like a stream of massless(?) particles.
Peter Ridd either does not know or skipped over the point that on Earth the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere on average is only an insignificant trace about of 420ppm (v) (0.04%). Further that CO2 for outgoing longwave radiation absorbs only around a wavelength at 14.8 micron from the Earth surface radiating in the range 9.5-11.5 micron. CO2 has no so called “green house” affect. Even on Venus where CO2 makes over 90% of the atmosphere CO2 has no greenhouse effect and also on Mars (where I think CO2 makes up 5%) there is no greenhouse effect from CO2.
As a chemical engineer I have had personal experience with flames in furnaces and boilers including measurements, heat balances, aerodynamic assessments, and controls.
CO2 absorbs photons at several ranges of frequencies.
Mars’ atmosphere is about 95% CO2.
But the surface pressure is 6.35mbar so over 100x thinner than Earth’s, and significantly colder.
Dear cementafriend,
You may have missed the point of Peter Ridd’s talk, which was about the tropical ocean heat-pump (the Monsoon).
The so-called feedback, is the energetic response of the ocean-surface to radiation (RickWill posted a series on this here at WUWT and also at http://www.bomwatch.com.au).
RickWill and Peter Ridd (and others) have shown that as radiation increases in spring, which warms the ocean’s surface, warming promotes evaporation, which removes excess heat as latent heat by convection, which cools the surface. That is the basis of the warming-cooling feed-back loop and there are datasets available that allow it to be modelled statistically (i.e., using data).
While the controlling variable is latent heat loss via evaporation and convection, advection between the ocean surface and the air above maintains air temperature and sea surface temperature in lock-step (one can’t “heat” independently of the other.)
The same process on land can only occur up to the limit imposed by rainfall – no rainfall, no evaporation, no latent heat loss, so the surface warms and the drier it is the warmer it gets.
Over ocean warm-pools, convection forms cumulonimbus towers which rise to the mid to upper troposphere and which then direct large amounts of embedded heat, as long wave radiation, directly to space. These things collapse leaving behind an umbrella of ice-clouds (high-altitude cirrus), that reflect incoming solar radiation back in the direction it came. As shown by Peter’s satellite images and photographs, the whole process is dynamic with cumulonimbus towers forming and collapsing in rapid succession, on a scale of hours, not days.
As they short-circuit the process of ocean warming, and are responsible for limiting warming to below about 29 degC, the relationship of sea surface temperature with Latitude in summer, is not linear to the equator nor asymptotic, but quadratic (second order polynomial). While it may be different in the NH, the Monsoon cools the ocean surface from about 13 deg S, toward the equator.
Cheers,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
All I mentioned was about CO2. I know about evaporation (chapter 12 Psychometry, evaporative cooling, and solids drying in The Chemical Engineering handbook) I suppose you are familiar with dimensionless numbers such as the Nre, Ngr, Nnu, Nsh, Nsc etc as used in heat and mass transfer? The late Prof Dr Eng (Chem) Noor Van Andel used the Sherwood number Nsh in a peer reviewed paper on Thunder storms. Can not find the specific paper but I have an article called “CO2 and Climate Change dated 14/02/2011” which covered everything in the Peter Ridd video but in engineering technology detail -here is the conclusion
“Our present climate is due to an increased length of the last interglacial period, more than 10000 years, due to a low level of GCR that maintains a low cloud cover, a low albedo, more absorbed sunshine and a pleasant climate. In the very long run, we need not mind about CO2 or global warming, but instead about lower GCR activity and global cooling. There is no way we can influence GCR activity. It originates in active black holes and imploding supernovae in the Milky Way, modulated by weaker or stronger solar and interplanetary magnetic fields that screen off the GCR particles.”
Sorry Bill, found the paper by Van Andel -called “tropical rainstorm feedback” on P217 of Energy & Environment Vol21 No4 2010. There has been so much misinformation about climate since 2010. I once asked Lindzen around 2011 if he had ever talked to some of the Chemical Engineers at MIT.
Thanks cementafrield,
There are other references too, mostly about feedback mechanisms and sea surface temperature in the tropics.
I posted RickWill’s work at http://www.bomwatch.com.au [ https://www.bomwatch.com.au/ocean-temperature-limit/ ]
Cheers,
Bill
Dear cementafriend,
I don’t use (or know about) dimensionless numbers and I can’t see in the dark, but there is plenty of data around that comprises actual numbers representing observed properties of the climate. Some go back 150-years allowing almost real-time comparisons, with say newspaper reports.
I don’t now of any cloud data for 10,000 years ago, so, whatever follows from that, in my view, is speculation, and I don’t want to be flooded with references that I won’t read.
The question that comes to mind, is that if cloud cover has actually declined, why has rainfall not followed suit.
Multiple long-term datasets show that over most of Australia, it was drier during the first half of the 20th Century, than it is now. How much rain was falling 10,000 thousand years ago or did the cloud just sit there? I don’t pretend to have a clue, but there are sensible, legit questions aren’t there.
Cheers,
Bill
True, but it does not explain the GHE as such or the way it is supposed to work ( never mind ‘trapping’ heat). It is simply the mechanism in which H2o deals with incoming radiation from the sun. The GHE is supposed to explain the IR radiation flux from the surface to the troposphere and the interaction of molecules. I dont consider water vapour a greenhouse ‘gas’. And i think the whole GHE theory is based on radiation only and the stated influence of ‘latent’ heat and ‘kinetic’ energy. Nice words that supposed to explain the GHE. To me it just muddies the waters ( pun intended). I think it is best to go back and say it is a GHH(ypothesis). Simply because it assumes a mechanism which cannot be measured in Earth’s atmosphere. Main reason: you cannot separate the various elemental signals as one could in a lab. Im fine with that. It’s all fun and games..like this video. Not to be taken seriously..
It’s mainstream science, taught in every University. Did you take a class?
They also taught the earth was flat and the universe (sun included) orbited the earth.
Universities taught the earth was flat? You’re a bit out of date — like a thousand years or so.
“The waves do not act like a stream of massless(?) particles.”
Well, yes, they do. You can reject the reality of the double slit experiment if you wish – you can even believe that adding CO2 to air raises the temperature. I suppose you would also have to accept that removing CO2 from air reduces its temperature.
Do you have experimental support for reducing air temperature merely by removing CO2?
Michael, -latter sentence of course not because at a level of 0.04 % or even 1% in Earth’s atmosphere, CO2 has no effect on temperature. There have been many articles (including ones by Russians) that say CO2 at over 95% in the atmosphere of Venus has little effect on the surface temperature other than than the weight leading to a very high atmospheric pressure at the surface. I have sighted photos that show yellow light gets to the surface but measurements did not last long because of the high pressure. The radiation from a flame depends mainly on the emissivity. CO2 has almost no emissivity because it radiates only small amounts at very narrow wavelengths (around 2.4, 4.3 and 14.8 microns). With a nozzle mixed burner the emissivity is about 0.45 nearly all due to water vapour. It is possible by design to crack the CH4 to give carbon particles to raise the emissivity to about 0.8. A coal flame is always more efficient than a natural gas flame for radiation.
I hope you know emissivity. It is the relative radiation over a temperature range to an ideal black body. As a chemical engineer I have actual experience with radiation.
Try and name one reliable scientific source that supports this idea. It’s junk science.
Reality !!
Michael doesn’t know anything about emissivity, unfortunately. It seems that he thinks it is always 1 under all circumstances for all materials, or something.
Ouch, ouch, ouch..
First of all, no WV is NOT responsible for 97% of the GHE. This figure comes from a look at “back radiation” in an inner-tropical scenario in modtran, without clouds. If you then remove all other GH-constituents except WV, “back radiation” only drops by 3%. Et voila, WV must do 97% of the GHE.
No!
So this is complete nonsense, repeating the claim does not make it any better. Even more so, WV is actually cooling the planet, but that is for the advanced.
Second he refers to Manabe’s GHE model. Manabe was dead wrong. His idea of multi-layer “back radiation” being a source of energy is akin to believing in free energy. In fact one could just build his model as a “Manabe-Strickler” device to produce free energy. And no, it will not work.
The other fundamental problem here is that Manabe assumed something the video does not quite tell. The “back radiation” would heat the surface to much higher temperatures than we have, but that heat would constantly escape by convection (aka thermals), forcing the troposphere back to an adiabatic lapse rate. The surface would thus only have a marginal excess heat, but constantly so.
The problem then is, where is that convection? Without the sun heating the surface, it does not exist. Rather during the night the surface turns colder than the air above, resulting in an inversion. This reality is inconsistent with Manabe’s model.
The problem w Manabe’s model is that it rests upon Arrhenius( flawed) one…and then some.
Arrhenius’s work has been confirmed multiple times over the last 125 years. WUWT? Their work has been featured in Mad Magazine and Jackass.
Then you have a misconception about Arrhenius’s model which has little to do with the actual atmosphere. It is just a flawed series of assumptions, as are Wanabe’s.
Since all scientific research since has confirmed Arrhenius and Wannabe, I’m not interested in your uninformed musings that lack scientific support.
He swings. He misses. Again.
When they average everything, they are able to conjure a simple answer.
Very nice Peter, good work.
That was a fun video and pretty informative. Good job, Peter Ridd. Now I have only one criticism. The cooling from thunderstorms that Dr. Ridd describes has a huge negative radiative effect, a negative forcing, but that is not the cloud feedback those climate modelers keep yammering about. When they say feedback they mean the change in that big negative forcing when the surface temperature changes a tiny amount. They think it is a positive feedback, but who knows? It’s too small to see in all that weather.
THIS ! The real effects of the greenhouse effect have yet be determined. Equating the planet Earth as a whole to a simple greenhouse is so naive as to be idiotic. We engineers put a mass and energy balance around any process that we want to model. Modeling the Earth is non-trivial and the models to date are not even close as exhibited by the presenter.
The models barely scratch the surface.
I am sure you see the pun intended.
This is nonsense. He does not present any evidence for his claim that the greenhouse
effect is significantly larger than all previous estimates of the effect. The paper that he cites by Happer and co. does an excellent job of modeling the surface temperature using a static atmosphere so if the greenhouse effect was as large as Rudd is claiming they would have found a significant disagreement with the actual temperatures.
Plus of course if the greenhouse effect was significantly larger then the effects of increasing
CO2 would be significantly larger as well. Making climate change more of a problem rather than less.
The effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 on “climate”, is basically ZERO.
It has never been observed or measured anywhere on the planet.
If you think it is any other value, show measurements of CO2 warming over the last 50 years.
____
“modeling the surface temperature using a static atmosphere”
Which planet is that ?? certainly not Earth. !
____
“Making climate change more of a problem rather than less.”
That is a nonsense statement, based on zero science.
There is a reference in the video notes to the peer reviewed paper which details the 20C calculation.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341997882_Dependence_of_Earth's_Thermal_Radiation_on_Five_Most_Abundant_Greenhouse_Gases
All the CO2 we have allegedly added in over 150 years amounts to 0.5% of greenhouse gases, and not even the most effective greenhouse gases. More of a miniscule effect is still a miniscule effect.
The reference that Eric links to is long, technical, and the 20C hotter figure is implied and not explicit. However, just take the idea of adiabatic to its extreme. A 10C/km gradient projected to surface from that imaginary 255 K emission surface at 5 km or so, and the surface temperature is 305K. Just about 20C hotter than 288K.
Good vid. Thanks.
Nup the science is settled the seas are boiling and yer all doomed unless you do as we say-
Scientists discover unexpected decline in global ocean evaporation amid rising sea temperatures
In particular stopping that Musk dude interfering with the slush funds.
OK, but… Need to be careful when using simple demonstrations to illustrate an effect. That hot plate and colored water display reminded me too much of that “Science Guy’s” CO2 filled balloon and heatlamp show. We don’t want to get distracted in that playroom.
Can someone provide a link to the calculation that shows that the greenhouse effect temperature would be twenty degrees higher?
That’s Manabe & Strickler, 1964. Look it up. As I recall, the delta is actually quite a lot more than that… something like 30 C warmer for the pure greenhouse effect without convection. That’s why the term “greenhouse effect” turns out to be pretty accurate… because it’s without convection. The real world gives us GHE warming plus convective cooling.
…BTW, we verified that 1964 calculation with our own model from scratch.
In the real world, convection cannot transfer heat out of earth’s system to space– only radiation can do that.
Yes, from top of atmosphere, mostly by WV.
Energy movement within the atmosphere is controlled by the gas laws… CO2 has no effect.
Watch and try to learn.
Water vapour at the top of the atmosphere, there’s not much of that!
Ever see the imagery from a hurricane. They show the IR emissions from the top of the hurricane (clouds).
How tall are hurricanes?
That’s not the top of the atmosphere!
Correct
Here’s a plot showing the loss of radiation to space, note the major effect of CO2.
Thank you
The heat flux absorbed from the sun is about 240W/m^2, with no Greenhouse gases the amount emitted to space would be the same which would mean a surface temperature ~255K. Add some Greenhouse gas to the atmosphere and the amount of energy lost to space becomes lower than the amount received and so the surface warms up until the amount lost to space equals the amount received, which gives ~288K at the present.
Gee. If you use energy to perform work, you cannot use it for heating.
Whoda thunk it?
One more serious note: at around 10:00 in the video, the claim is made that storms intensify when sea temp increases. 2024 (and earlier years) hurricane season has shown that this is not the case.
Work is often converted to heat. Eg, friction from brakes in a car
I challenged GROK to Peter Ridd’s hypothesis. Here is how it went:
My question:
Peter Ridd has a lecture / paper on how “weather” limits the GHE to a very little role in the scheme of things — making it almost insignificant. Upward convection in the atmosphere (and ocean currents) is a driving force creating “weather.”
Groks response:
You’re referring to Peter Ridd’s perspective, which I’ve come across in discussions about climate dynamics. He’s a physicist and former professor who’s argued that the greenhouse effect (GHE), particularly CO2’s contribution, might be overhyped because natural processes like weather—driven by convection in the atmosphere and ocean currents—play a bigger role in regulating Earth’s temperature. Let’s break this down based on what I know and how it ties to our earlier thermalization chat.
Ridd’s core idea, from what I’ve seen in his lectures (like one he gave recently, possibly the one you mean), is that the GHE should theoretically make Earth much hotter than it is if you just crunch the radiative forcing numbers—like a simple blackbody model with no atmosphere gives you a frigid -18°C, but adding greenhouse gases alone overshoots to something unlivable, say over 60°C. He suggests something’s tamping it down, and his money’s on weather—specifically, upward convection and ocean currents moving heat around and out.
Here’s how that fits with what we’ve discussed. We talked about how CO2 absorbs 15-micron IR, thermalizes it via collisions in the lower atmosphere, and then convection lifts that heat upward. Ridd leans hard into this, arguing that this upward movement—think thunderstorms, trade winds, or the Hadley cells—dominates over radiative trapping. In his view, the energy CO2 captures doesn’t linger near the surface to pile up as back-radiation; it’s whisked aloft so fast that it limits the GHE’s surface warming impact. Over oceans, he might say currents like the Gulf Stream or upwelling further shunt heat around, diluting any localized CO2 effect.
He’s got a point that convection’s a beast—Earth’s heat engine is relentless. Warm air rises, cools as it expands, and dumps heat higher up where it’s more likely to radiate to space. Ocean currents do similar work, redistributing heat from the tropics to the poles. Weather—storms, clouds, winds—acts like a pressure valve, and Ridd argues this makes CO2’s role “almost insignificant” compared to these dynamic processes. He’s suggested the GHE’s real-world warming might be a fraction of a degree, not the 1-2°C per doubling you see in IPCC models.
Now, let’s poke at it. Convection and currents are huge players—no one disputes that. More than 90% of the extra heat from human emissions ends up in the oceans, and atmospheric convection moves heat vertically every day. But the mainstream view says CO2 still matters because it raises the altitude where heat escapes to space—the effective radiating level. Even if thermalization and convection shuffle heat upward, a thicker CO2 blanket up there traps more before it exits, warming the whole system. Ridd might counter that weather’s negative feedbacks—like more clouds reflecting sunlight—cap this, but data shows cloud feedbacks are tricky and often net positive.
Over oceans, he’s got a stronger case—water’s low IR absorption and massive heat capacity mean CO2’s direct radiative effect is muted there. Currents and evaporation (amped by any warming) could indeed dominate. But then there’s water vapor feedbacks—warming begets more evaporation, which begets more greenhouse trapping. Ridd might downplay this, saying convection dries the upper atmosphere, but measurements show humidity’s rising with temperature.
So, does weather make the GHE “almost insignificant”? It’s a stretch. Convection and currents limit how much heat piles up at the surface, sure—Earth’s not a runaway greenhouse like Venus. But CO2’s radiative forcing (about 1.8 W/m² per doubling) is measurable, and decades of ocean heat uptake align with it. Ridd’s right that weather’s a massive moderator, but saying it dwarfs the GHE feels like it overlooks how the two interplay. The system’s complex—convection might reduce CO2’s direct bite, but it doesn’t erase it.
What do you think—does his weather-as-king angle sway you, or do you see the GHE holding more ground?
I think that the likelihood of Peter Ridd overturning 100 years of studies of the GHE by thousands of scientists working in every country of the industrialized world, is vanishingly small.