by Judith Curry
The UN Climate Change Conference this week in Madrid provides an important opportunity to reflect on state of the public debate surrounding climate change.
The UN Climate Conference (COP25) is beginning today in Madrid. I’ve been invited to write an op-ed for a newspaper in Madrid, which I assume will be published sometime this week (in Spanish). Below is the text of my op-ed.
JC op-ed
The UN Climate Change Conference this week in Madrid provides an important opportunity to reflect on state of the public debate surrounding climate change.
Most of the world’s governments are prioritizing energy security, affordability and industrial competitiveness over commitments made for the Paris climate agreement. Even if these countries were on track to meet their commitments, a majority of the national pledges are totally insufficient to meet the Paris targets. At the same time, we are hearing increasingly shrill rhetoric from Extinction Rebellion and other activists about the ‘existential threat’ of the ‘climate crisis’, ‘runaway climate chaos’, etc.
There is a growing realization that Paris climate agreement is inadequate for making a meaningful dent in slowing down the anticipated warming. And the real societal consequences of climate change and extreme weather events remain largely unaddressed.
How have we arrived at this point? For the past three decades, the climate policy ‘cart’ has been way out in front of the scientific ‘horse’. The 1992 Climate Change treaty was signed by 190 countries before the balance of scientific evidence suggested even a discernible observed human influence on global climate. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol was implemented before we had any confidence that most of the recent warming was caused by humans. There has been tremendous political pressure on the scientists to present findings that would support these treaties, which has resulted in a drive to manufacture a scientific consensus on the dangers of manmade climate change.
Fossil fuel emissions as the climate ‘control knob’ is a simple and seductive idea. However this is a misleading oversimplification, since climate can shift naturally in unexpected ways. Apart from uncertainties in future emissions, we are still facing a factor of 3 or more uncertainty in the sensitivity of the Earth’s temperature to increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We have no idea how natural climate variability (solar, volcanoes, ocean circulations) will play out in the 21st century, and whether or not natural variability will dominate over manmade warming.
We still don’t have a realistic assessment of how a warmer climate will impact us and whether it is ‘dangerous.’ We don’t have a good understanding of how warming will influence extreme weather events. Land use and exploitation by humans is a far bigger issue than climate change for species extinction and ecosystem health. Local sea level rise has many causes, and is dominated by sinking from land use in many of the most vulnerable locations.
We have been told that the science of climate change is ‘settled’. However, in climate science there has been a tension between the drive towards a scientific ‘consensus’ to support policy making, versus exploratory research that pushes forward the knowledge frontier. Climate science is characterized by a rapidly evolving knowledge base and disagreement among experts. Predictions of 21st century climate change are characterized by deep uncertainty.
Nevertheless, activist scientists and the media seize upon each extreme weather event as having the fingerprints of manmade climate change — ignoring the analyses of more sober scientists showing periods of even more extreme weather in the first half of the 20th century, when fossil fuel emissions were much smaller.
Alarming press releases are issued about each new climate model prediction of future catastrophes from famine, mass migrations, catastrophic fires, etc. Yet, these press releases don’t mention that these predicted catastrophes are associated with highly implausible assumptions about how much we might actually emit over the course of the 21st century. Further, issues such as famine, mass migrations and wildfires are caused primarily by government policies and ineptitude, lack of wealth and land use policies. Climate change matters, but it’s outweighed by other factors in terms of influencing human well being.
We have been told that climate change is an ‘existential crisis.’ However, based upon our current assessment of the science, the climate threat is not an existential one, even in its most alarming hypothetical incarnations. However, the perception of manmade climate change as a near-term apocalypse and has narrowed the policy options that we’re willing to consider.
We have not only oversimplified the problem of climate change, but we have also oversimplified its ‘solution’. Even if you accept the climate model projections and that warming is dangerous, there is disagreement among experts regarding whether a rapid acceleration away from fossil fuels is the appropriate policy response. In any event, rapidly reducing emissions from fossil fuels and ameliorating the adverse impacts of extreme weather events in the near term increasingly looks like magical thinking.
Climate change – both manmade and natural – is a chronic problem that will require centuries of management.
The extreme rhetoric of the Extinction Rebellion and other activists is making political agreement on climate change policies more difficult. Exaggerating the dangers beyond credibility makes it difficult to take climate change seriously. The monomaniacal focus on elimination of fossil fuel emissions distracts our attention from the primary causes of many of our problems and effective solutions.
Common sense strategies to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events, improve environmental quality, develop better energy technologies, improve agricultural and land use practices, and better manage water resources can pave the way for a more prosperous and secure future. Each of these solutions is ‘no regrets’ – supporting climate change mitigation while improving human well being. These strategies avoid the political gridlock surrounding the current policies and avoid costly policies that will have minimal near-term impacts on the climate. And finally, these strategies don’t require agreement about the risks of uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions.
We don’t know how the climate of the 21st century will evolve, and we will undoubtedly be surprised. Given this uncertainty, precise emissions targets and deadlines are scientifically meaningless. We can avoid much of the political gridlock by implementing common sense, no-regrets strategies that improve energy technologies, lift people out of poverty and make them more resilient to extreme weather events.
We’re not “facing a factor of 3 uncertainty.”
We’re noticing a factor of 3 overstatement.
Which is why the first Global Warming Rule of Thumb is “divide all predictions by three, right off the bat.”
“We don’t know how the climate of the 21st century will evolve, and we will undoubtedly be surprised. Given this uncertainty, precise emissions targets and deadlines are scientifically meaningless. We can avoid much of the political gridlock by implementing common sense, no-regrets strategies that improve energy technologies, lift people out of poverty and make them more resilient to extreme weather events.”
What part of Meaningless don’t you understand?
Common Sense, a rare commodity these days!
Citrby
divide all predictions by three; was clever and displayed great wisdom with humor, which is hard to do.
While there is only one point in Ms. Curry’s piece that was confusing, I considered the overall effect of her work, and found it unpersuasive — actually boring.
Ms. Curry has been beat up in the past by the climate alarmists, while I have not. That may affect her writing. Ms. Curry may have a business related to science, or climate, that could be hurt by making statements about the climate, or climate alarmism, that would upset potential customers. Perhaps as a result, Ms. Curry’s writing is “safe”, which means it won’t get much attention and will not change minds. That’s not good enough, considering the great knowledge of climate science stored in her brain.
I plan to delete this website from my Favorite Bookmarks list after this comment. Here’s why, and I’m not going to censor myself.
We have 325 years of experience with global warming, since the 1690s. of roughly +2 degrees C.
We have over 100 years experience adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
WHY NOT DISCUSS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED, concerning PAST global warming, which is real, rather than speculating about what might happen in the FUTURE, which is a leftist fantasy?
There is no real science to support anything more than a prediction of mild global warming in the future — totally harmless, at worst, and beneficial at best (‘greening’ the planet’).
The claims for FUTURE global warming (consistent, rapid and dangerous) are completely the opposite of actual experience with PAST global warming (inconsistent, mild and beneficial).
In fact, the climate now is the best it has been for humans and outdoors animals since the Holocene Optimum, that ended roughly 5,000 years ago.
That’s right — the climate on this planet does not get much better than this for humans — a degree or two C. warmer would be even better, and hopefully we will be there in 100 or 200 years.
The next major climate change — one that matters — is likely to be the end of the Holocene interglacial. Then people can look forward to 80,000 to 90,000 years of increasingly cold climate. The “global warming years” will be seen as the “good old days”.
Anyone can speculate about the future climate, and many do — the future climate is supposedly a “crisis” has been coming for over 50 years !
A crisis that never shows up.
The warming of our planet has been mild and mainly affected high northern latitudes, mainly during the coldest six months of the year, and mainly at night.
Where is the “existential crisis” from Alaska being warmer than it used to be?
Who has been hurt by the past 325 years of global warming?
No one.
Has any prediction of doom from alarmists ever been right, since the DDT scare in the early 1960’s.
Not one.
My comment provided some facts to think about.
I don’t have to play safe — I’ve been retired for 15 years, and I don’t have a job to “protect”. I want to rock the boat, because the coming climate change “crisis” is the biggest science fraud in the history of our planet. I won’t sit quietly and ignore the scaremongers bellowing to tear up the US economy for a New Green (or)Deal. Sitting quietly and doing nothing would make me just as evil as the leftist climate alarmists.
Richard Greene
Bingham Farms. Michigan
Thank you Richard, I agree 100%
Richard
I have written a number of articles carried here about historical climate with particular reference to the over 300 years of warming that you mention.Judith does have a considerable interest in historical climate and references such links in her weekly round up.
The trouble is that emphasis has switched to the hysterical cries of climate emergency and that we have 12 years to save the planet.
As a result the longer over view has been crowded out as activists are frankly not interested in historical references which are dismissed as anecdotal
Tonyb
I have no specific scientific knowledge about Climate Change. However, I have some familiarity with statistical methods as well as some understanding of the history of scientific development. Science has interacted with politics before. For example, since about 1950 the movement toward required vaccinations began. Also, fluoridated water. Centuries ago the Catholic Church felt threatened by theories that did not have the earth at the center of the solar system (although by today’s understanding, given the seemingly “infinite” size of the universe—-we ironically can view ourselves as at the “center”!). But I never recall a movement such as the current climate change movement. People believe in bizarre rantings of former politicians like Gore. Also, the quite remarkable willingness to believe in the magical thinking of a disturbed teenager is medieval. I resort to judging the worthiness of an argument based on the internal consistencies of the policies proposed. It amazes me that Judith can maintain her professional demeanor and framework——to which we must all be thankful—- when what she is confronting seems like pure nonsense.
Nice summary. I look at the govt policies on a path to renewable energy as supply of our modern electronically enabled world and think, where are the engineers, physicists and statisticians to advise the govt that this path is pure nonsense?
The ‘rational’ (engineers, etc) are refused access to the decision making and branded heretics and ‘deniers’.
Most of the engineers, physicists and statisticians either work for the government or for some corporation beholden to the government.
97% of engineers don’t work for government
By working in industry and the oil patch for over 45 years and educated as a mechanical engineer, physicist, astronomer and petroleum geologist, All I can say is “global cooling, global warming, climate change, sustainability, social, racial, economic, environ-mental justice, the GND” and others, is a bunch of hokum dreamt up by Marxist and hooked onto the likes of Georgie Soros and his minions and sheeple. We see it all the time with paid hired jobless radicals at the climate summits. With this kind of corruption we, the hard working tax payers, must out smart them, which shouldn’t be hard. Regards, old hick farm boy, US Navy vet (1966-1969) and staunch denier. Ammo up
I think Dr Christy’s talk at the GWPF in June 2019 was a reasonable summary of what we understand now about their so called CAGW.
I think his test of their claims certainly allows plenty of room for sober thought and doesn’t seem to require the world to panic at all.
https://www.thegwpf.com/putting-climate-change-claims-to-the-test/
“we are still facing a factor of 3 or more uncertainty in the sensitivity of the Earth’s temperature to increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere”
What does this mean?
Estimates of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity range from 1.5 to 4.5 °C ± 0.5°C (at least).
Thats like your fortune teller reading the tea leaves and saying “you will live to somewhere between 25 and 75 years of age, probably!”
Just to confirm, if a value can vary from 5 to 15, the uncertainty factor would be 3? Sorry to belabor this, but the terminology was unfamiliar.
yes to John Ferguson above; 5 to 15 is a multiplicative factor of 3 difference.
But meaning can depend on where the zero point is put.
For 10 deg C. yesterday and 20 today, someone might say the temperature doubled, and in units of “degrees Celsius” it did, but to do any physics with those numbers the Celsius scale has the zero in the wrong place; you need to subtract 273 to get onto the Kelvin scale, where the relationship between temperature and energy is well defined. 10 and 20 deg C. transform to 283 and 293 deg K. — so not a double in physics.
If earths climate-temperature-sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 turns in at 3 degrees, then we’d be faced with a change in climate where the global average temperature is on the move from around 287 to 290 deg K., plus and minus the other sensitivities / variabilities. But don’t take comfort from less alarming looking numbers: it’s just a fact of a technical sort, and doesn’t itself indicate what the consequences (good, bad, and otherwise) of that change might be.
Another common terminology is “orders of magnitude”, generally representing sequential multiples of 10. So, three orders of magnitude is 10 x 10 x 10 = 1000 times more.
Some here might argue that climate sensitivity is close to zero, even negative. If this were generally accepted as a credible estimate, then the range for climate sensitivity becomes 0 to 4.5 degrees, and all the orders of magnitude you can imagine won’t bridge that.
It’s worse than that, actually. 1.5 to 4.5 equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) was the result of the CMIP5 simulation codes, the newer state-of-the-art (LOL) CMIP6 fare even worse, with higher values!
And yet the glassy-eyed cultists defend these results… 👎
Excellent analysis Dr. Currie.
Some people will view the analysis as radioactive.
True, true, ‘Climate change – both manmade and natural – is a chronic problem,’ not an existential threat and, one of the problems is when unverifiable and wholy gratuitous statements like, e.g., ‘Coasts Should Plan for 6.5 Feet Sea Level Rise by 2100,’ is put forth as expert opinion.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
Representatives of Vatican City in will be relieved at this added opportunity to continue to imagine that population increase has nothing to do with anything.
Population growth has a lot to do with the value of your home. In time, supply will outstrip demand.
If you’d read the collected papers of population economist Julian Simon (Princeton University Press, 1992), or read the extensive work of statistician Bjorn Lomborg (who set out to refute Simon and failed), you wouldn’t make such regrettably vacuous alarm drivel like this. Meet the Extinct Extinction Rebels.
Being in Madrid, perhaps the conference can be referred to as “The running on the Bulls” hit
oops meant to type “OF” not on
Dr. Curry,
Would you please comment on whether our climate has a tipping point, as defined in IPCC AR5:
“A level of change in system properties beyond which a system reorganizes, often abruptly, and does not return to the initial state even if drivers of the change are abated. For the climate system, it refers to a critical threshold when global or regional climate changes from one stable state to another stable state. The tipping point event may be irreversible.”
Climate tipping points are very visible in the data. Every time it gets warmer that is followed by colder. Every time it gets colder that is followed by warmer. It is a self correcting cycle that alternates warmer and colder. There is no fixed climate equilibrium and no CO2 sensitivity that pushes climate only warmer. We are in a warmer period, we will stay in this warmer period, it will snow more until accumulated ice advances and causes colder, like another little ice age after a few hundred years of more snowfall.
Excellent Op/Ed, it needs to go viral so that all scientists will start to listen to rational, experienced voices like yours.
Care to speculate what “Nobel Prize Winning” scientist Dr Mann, will say about it?
Maybe read my book “Why the Green New Deal is Bad Deal for America.” A common sense approach is described in the final chapters.
But are you just preaching to the choir?
Which papers will run your excellent article–will it hit mainstream or be ineffectual?
The greenhouse gas theory is itself invalid, and mainstream science has yet to face this challenge, for instance, https://www.climatesciencejournal.com/invalidity-of-greenhous-gas-thy/
Interesting paper. Just recently someone posted about Profs Ronan and Michael Connolly and their work with the Ideal Gas Law. But … just like your offering, there wasn’t much comment. I’m not a scientist, so it’s disappointing for me when there isn’t commentary as I learn much from the back and forth. Thank you for your post.
Thanks, Bill. As some parties have said below, challenging the real science is unpopular. Even the sceptics have acceded to the Greenhouse Gas theory.
But, as Phil Salmon posted below, there is an excellent paper by Einstein confirming my perspective. I haven’t had an easy time finding English versions of Einstein’s papers, but that’s a good one.
Bringing hard science to bear on the problem with the Greenhouse Gas theory, which has simply not been done, and then getting people to consider it when most of them don’t understand the hard science, is a problem.
I’ll be releasing a validation of Arrhenius’ paper before long, which is what Gore referenced, showing it rather light and unjustified, even from its purely classical perspective, as it was pre-quantum molecular physics.
Importantly, however, is that scientific exploration in the 19th and early 20th century was inductive science, rather than the more empirical science of today. Students of our day who specialize in the sciences generally read 3-time regurgitated studies of original authors, which is truly dumb, as we should all be learning from the people who discovered/invented the science in the first place. The Planck’s, Bohr’s, Maxwell’s, Rayleigh’s and Einstein’s were first rate writers as well as scientists–there is no reason they should not be studied in their original today. They connected their scientific discover very capably to its inductive, perceptual origins, which connections are severed in the a-priorized, statistical science of today.
Because of this failing of education, modern scientists are mostly good with trees, but stink with forests.
Kevin, the article is on the main commentary page of The Australian today. 295 mainly supportive comments online last time I cheked. This is Australia’s main, and best-regarded, newspaper. Their Environmental Editor has reported Judith’s work for several years.
Kevin, the link you provided is a significant piece of work in my view and should be promoted as much as possible. I am a mechanical engineer and did not study the kinetic theory of gases, and this is the answer to why N2 and O2 are significant, which they have to be. It is impossible for their energy to transfer to the greenhouse gases before it is emitted to space, which is the claim that some make. The climate scientists ignore the gases which make up 99% of the atmosphere. Common sense alone must tell us this cannot be correct. I look forward to your next paper.
Thank you, working on it now.
You wrote “We can avoid much of the political gridlock by implementing common sense, no-regrets strategies that improve energy technologies, lift people out of poverty and make them more resilient to extreme weather events.”
We would be better off if we got politics out of the equation entirely. Problems (i.e., opportunities) with energy technology and poverty are not in need of political solutions, but of politicians getting out of the way. Putting politicians in charge of improving energy technology, alleviating poverty, feeding and housing people, or coping with changes in weather (climate control is beyond anybody), is about as foolish an idea as one could imagine. Politicians are in pursuit of power and power corrupts. Political gridlock, meaning: they do nothing, is the best we can hope for.
The word that comes to my mind regarding governments’ attitude to activists is ‘appeasement’.
“Useful Idiots”. These activists are produced & fed by governments, we’re seeing the way that “Climate Change” is being monetarised, with Carnie being moved into position to oversee the vast funds generated.
Judith’s plea for a rational approach that moves humanity forward (energy, land and water use, engineered weather resilience, etc.) regardless of climate concerns is the only way to build a broad consensus. AND THEREBY ever actually do anything that’s not a total waste of resources.
However, it is obvious that the far left has overleveraged the climate cause as a tool to advance their International goals. This has resulted in everyone from the Center – Right to dig in their heels.
So, if the Climate Crisis is a real threat, the leftist tactics of name calling, screaming a lot and making endless falsified (wildly erroneous) serial predictions of doom…has backfired.
Populations WILL NOT DO what they cannot AFFORD TO DO without being totally convinced of a necessity.
We don’t see bad weather events often enough or bad enough — and the constant cries from Chicken Little have become tiresome…lost in the constant noisy lies we have come to expect from the left.
I’m out of this war but I do keep an eye on it. You okay Judy? Have a sway on me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUCyp7Fsepg
Pointman
We’ve known humans contribute to warming for at least 40 years. To suggest otherwise is intellectually dishonest.
This is no good. You can’t come here using calm logic and understanding, this is Man Made Climate Change® for Pete’s sake.
Only grotesque hyperbole and misunderstood science is allowed, preferably while wearing costumes resembling Polar Bears or a sick Earth or red Handmaids.
Come now Dr. Currie, how do you ever expect to be taken seriously if you don’t state that we are all going to die in 11 years ( or so ), in a convincing and definite manner, unless we immediately stop burning fossils and buying stuff?
As usual, an extremely level headed analysis. Thank you for your efforts to bring sanity to the debate.
Do you all really know what a factor of 3 can be a metric of uncertainty?
CO2 sensitivity is zero, a factor of 50 would make it still zero.
No one has ever proved with actual data that CO2 has ever causes temperature change or sea level change.
There is much proof that life on earth, with green things growing better, while using water more efficiently, that life on earth is better for all living things due to the increased CO2.
They population explosion alarmists twist this into climate alarmism because they do want people to suffer. They do want to limit the good life. They try to turn every good thing we have into some evil crime against nature.
I was impressed with Will Happer’s talk today in Spain. He admitted to being wrong in the past- back in 1982 he predicted too much warming. He now shows that GHE is essentially saturated, but has provided some warming going from 200ppm to 400ppm. Monkton OTOH showed calculations indicating GHE is very small, like 3C vs 33C that’s been generally accepted.
Both presentations are here: https://youtu.be/a3W8EVEEKQ8
Follow the money – or, the power. The “climate change” is scientifically a nonsense; climate has always been changing. The Wikipedia lists five “major ice ages”. It is a convenient global threat. A free discussion of it has been blocked by major media, as well as a “scientific establishment”. A real global threat to a global establishment is a free speech, and it is being eliminated, starting in the first grade, now reaching universities. The Third Reich showed what you can do with a brainwashed population.
The UN is already headed by a socialist, and leaders of the EU are unveiling Marx statues. These people aspire to become a global government.
Care to point to any evidence that EU leaders are unveiling statues of Karl Marx?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/922699/eu-news-jean-claude-junker-communism-karl-marx-statue-Daniel-Kawczynski-uk-mp
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/955635/Juncker-speech-EU-chief-Marx-200th-Birthday-Trier
May 5, 2018JEAN-CLAUDE Juncker delivered an impassioned speech praising the legacy of German philosopher Karl Marx at an event commemorating his 200th birthday, despite huge controversy surrounding the occasion. During a speech lauding his legacy, the EU chief said that Karl Marx should not be judged for the crimes that his followers committed decades after his death. However, at one point during Mr Juncker’s address, a protester interrupted the church hall in Trier, Germany, in fury at the celebration of Marx.
The first Earth Day took place April 22, 1970. The centennial of Lenin’s birth took place April 22, 1970. Needless to say, the Lenin centenary was a huge deal to the communist movement, which goes bonkers over dates and memorials to its icons.
Sing it, brother!!
Here, here!
I have found that it can help to re-examine text I have written when I know it is going to be translated.
For example, twice you could put the article ‘the’ before Paris agreement and you could replace ‘magical’ with ‘wishful.’
It’s a pity you can’t prepare your article for the misunderstandings that will occur because of alarmist misinterpretation. It’s actually a very nice piece.
There’s a missing “is” in the following sentence:
“However, the perception [is] of manmade climate change as a near-term apocalypse and has narrowed the policy options that we’re willing to consider.”
Any competent translator will insert the article in the right place. The Spanish are big on articles. What’s wrong with Judith’s choice of ‘magical’ thinking (pensamiento mágico)? In context, it seems more appropriate than ‘wishful’ thinking (ilusiones)?
Dr. Curry ==> Excellent — a wonderfully sensible viewpoint offering a terrific set of the best of the Pragmatists’ Picks solutions.
Climate Scientists have zero chance of understanding natural changes of climate. They do not understand the stabilizing influence of sequestered ice on land in cold regions. There would be little or no ice on Greenland, Antarctica, or many other ice sheets and glaciers if the oceans never warmed and thawed to produce the evaporation necessary to provide water vapor to form snowfall. Ice is always dumping into the oceans and on the land and providing significant cooling of the water that travels back to chill the tropical waters. The tropical currents are traveling to the polar regions to thaw sea ice, when it is sufficiently warm. The sea ice is the switch that turns on evaporation when it is thawed and turns off evaporation when it is frozen. This is only part of the cooling of the earth, but it is the part that significantly contributed to the creation of small and large ice ages and significantly contributed to the depletion of ice that ended small and large ice ages. Ice is placed on land when oceans are thawed. Ice on land depletes when oceans are frozen.
Understand and teach the causes of this natural process that has happened in all our proxy records and continues now and will continue in the future.
We just came out of the little ice age and it is warmer because it is supposed to be. It will stay warmer for a few hundred years while the more snowfall that is now occurring is rebuilding sequestered ice. Sea level has dropped since we started using the atomic clock to measure time more accurately, the Length of Day has decreased compared to in the 1970’s, inertia of the earth crust and oceans has decreased or Length of Day would have increased and more and more leap seconds would need to be added every year.
Climate change is normal, natural, necessary and unstoppable.
CO2 makes green stuff grow better and more is better.
They are selling wind mills and solar panels and pushing ethanol and getting rich. They must scare people get them to pay more for less reliable energy.
Study, understand and teach natural causes of climate change, that is the only good way to end this alarmist blast from the Media.
My phone was streaming video of the latest alarmist snow storm when I first woke this morning. No mater if storms are not worse than in the past, they can find something scary about every storm that is worse for someone now. Teach that it is different, it may be worse in some ways, but it is caused by natural factors, not an increase of one molecule of CO2 per ten thousand molecules, that is ten thousand to one against that being the cause.
No one has ever proved that CO2 sensitivity is not just zero.
There are several “the”s missing at rhe start of tour Madrid editorial. Here is the first one: “ reflect on state of the public” should say “ reflect on THE state of the public”
“Climate change – both manmade and natural – is a chronic problem that will require centuries of management.”
Wonderfully insightful and packed with wisdom.
If the institution of climate science displayed just 10% of the common sense and circumspection in this op ed, the ranks of skeptics would be greatly diminished.
How can anyone argue with Judith’s major points.
Reblogged this on Utopia, you are standing in it!.
Reblogged this on Quaerere Propter Vērum.
Thanksgiving was at our house this year. Conversations before, during and after the dinner were calm as we spoke with and about the grandchildren.
Your words capture much more concisely and eloquently the thoughts that briefly flashed through my mind as I surveyed the scene and listened to the babble of conversation and young children talking.
“Common sense strategies to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events, improve environmental quality, develop better energy technologies, improve agricultural and land use practices, and better manage water resources can pave the way for a more prosperous and secure future.”
“Think of your grandchildren!” I do and have done so multiple times. Their futures are filled with hope and laughter, sadness and disappointment accompanying thoughtfulness and whining. Great inspirations to remain positive.
Thank you Professor Curry for another contribution of common sense.
The UN’s impossible climate action pyramid
https://www.cfact.org/2019/12/02/the-uns-impossible-climate-action-pyramid/
Every year the UN produces a climate action report just before the annual climate summit (this year COP 25 in Madrid). This time the UN greens have outdone themselves, but not in a good way for them. The UN Environmental Program has produced a report that graphically demonstrates why what they want to happen is impossible.
I call this graphic the Impossible Pyramid. It is starkly simple and worth careful contemplation, especially by the 20,000 climate action negotiators in Madrid and their bosses at home. Yet, the people who should really care are the ones who would be clobbered.
The report is titled “Emissions Gap Report 2019”, which sounds like there is a gap of some sort to be filled. This turns out to be a gross understatement, to say the least.
See https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30798/EGR19ESEN.pdf?sequence=13 for the UNEPnreport.
The graphic is Figure ES.4. “Global GHG emissions under different scenarios and the emissions gap by 2030.”
The basic structure of the graphic is a simple pyramid. On the left it rises rapidly to a peak, after which it falls rapidly on the right. The x-axis on the bottom is time and the peak is now. Thus the rapid rise on the left is real while the rapid decline on the right is not. It is a hoped-for-fantasy, over the next ten years, between now and 2030.
What is rising and falling (the y-axis) is global human CO2 emissions. What the graph says is that emissions have been rising rapidly (primarily in the emerging economies) but now they must suddenly stop and then fall rapidly.
This nonsense is impossible — politically, socially, economically and even physically. Most importantly, consider what the rapid rise signifies. It is billions of people greatly improving their lives, with things like electricity and mechanical transport. Light, heat, running water, computers and TV, scooters, cars, tractors and much, much more. There is no way this dramatic progress is going to suddenly stop and reverse.
The difference between the left and right sides of this pyramid is not a gap and calling it such is hugely deceptive. We are talking about reversing human progress.
The report specifically calls for social disruption. Here is some of the social revolution stuff, from page X of the Executive Summary (couched in the nicest possible terms):
“Decarbonizing the global economy will require fundamental structural changes, which should be designed to bring multiple co-benefits for humanity and planetary support systems. If the multiple co-benefits associated with closing the emissions gap are fully realized, the required transition will contribute in an essential way to achieving the United Nations 2030 Agenda with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
“Climate protection and adaptation investments will become a precondition for peace and stability, and will require unprecedented efforts to transform societies, economies, infrastructures and governance institutions. At the same time, deep and rapid decarbonization processes imply fundamental structural changes are needed within economic sectors, firms, labour markets and trade patterns.”
“By necessity, this will see profound change in how energy, food and other material-intensive services are demanded and provided by governments, businesses and markets. These systems of provision are entwined with the preferences, actions and demands of people as consumers, citizens and communities. Deep-rooted shifts in values, norms, consumer culture and world views are inescapably part of the great sustainability transformation.”
“Legitimacy for decarbonization therefore requires massive social mobilization and investments in social cohesion to avoid exclusion and resistance to change. Just and timely transitions towards sustainability need to be developed, taking into account the interests and rights of people vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, of people and regions where decarbonization requires structural adjustments, and of future generations.”
So the UN clearly says that we are to restructure society, plus reversing energy progress, in order to pursue an impossible goal. This is like the statements of nonsense promoted by the radical alarmists, except now it is the United Nations saying it. No major government is prepared to take these absurd steps. In fact most are pulling back from any new near term emission reduction commitments. It simply cannot be done.
They do mention some technological approaches, but nothing of this magnitude could be done in ten years. We couldn’t even build the factories that fast and the cost of the revolution would be crippling.
Note too that there are actually three right sides to the Impossible Pyramid, each sloping rapidly downward but at sightly different rates of descent. They correspond to what the UN claims is needed in order to limit warming to 1.5, 1.8 and 2.0 degrees C.
These numbers are also hugely misleading (along with the term “gap”). Each target already includes the supposed 1.0 degrees of past warming over the last 100 years or so. Thus these targets, for which we are supposed to sacrifice our energy supply and restructure human society, are really just 0.5, 0.8 and 1.0 degrees of future warming. These are tiny amounts of global warming, the very opposite of catastrophic.
The targets are trivial and the means impossibly disruptive. This simple UN graphic says it all. Governments may talk the talk but they ain’t going to walk the walk. I find this rather comforting, except for the noise.
David
David Wojick, Ph.D.
The Climate Change Debate Education project
http://ccdedu.blogspot.com
Our fundraiser:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/climate-change-debate-education
Please donate. Children need the truth about climate change.
My latest article on this topic:
https://www.cfact.org/2019/12/02/the-uns-impossible-climate-action-pyramid/
One centres on a big open-cast coal mining project in the Taymyr Peninsula, in the far north of central Siberia.
The area is rich in high-quality coking coal (anthracite), used to make steel and aluminium.
Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, said: “We are the second largest coal importer in the world, and we intend to achieve production of 3m tonnes of steel per year by 2030, so we need to increase coal supplies.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50507539?fbclid=IwAR3Caf3ZJmzpyFFXCZ_SDmlgudI6ZU9y1_CeHHbLv_hUPmdLO1yWBhFLLOM
I think you misunderstand how a wicked problem like climate change can be solved in a democracy. Spending any significant amount of money is a political decision. Seriously mitigating co2 emissions is extremely complex and will affect every person and every political interest group in profound ways, many of which are and will be unpredictable. It will also fundamentally alter an economy built in large part by fossil fuels and whose continued health depends on cheap energy – i.e. fossil fuels up to now.
Solving, or not solving, climate change is a political exercise of the first magnitude, because it involves everyone. And everyone has a stake in our system. The collective will of the people, hopefully enlightened by experts, will decide this and every other important issue.
The above comment was meant to be a reply to a comment by paulg23, who thinks climate change has to be solved by experts and not by politicians.
Also I became Kipper489 due to my failure to comprehend to log-in process for wordpress. My real handle is scraft1.
“Solving, or not solving, climate change is a political exercise of the first magnitude, because it involves everyone. ”
Your conclusion assumes:
1. that CO2 is “the only” or at least the “major” control knob of climate change.
2. that the politics in one or several nations determines the actions of all the other CO2 emitting nations
3. that there is unlimited funding for all wished actions
None of the 3 points are true.
Firstly, Western countries do not have “democracies”. They have republics. Democracy is distinguished by having government officials selected by random draw, as was done in ancient Athens.
Republics are also known as having ‘faction-based’ governance. Decision-making is based upon resolution of conflicts of interests, with the majority’s interest winning. It has nothing to do with decision-making based upon what is right or wrong from a functional or best-practice method.
The “collective will” in republics is usually just the majority will, and more often than not today is not even a majority, but a compromise between minority parties, just edging over the majority by watering down decisions, generally reducing the efficacy of republican governance.
It will eventually be known that CO2 has nothing to do with causing warming. It is rather a result of warming: when the ocean waters warm CO2 is less soluble, therefore atmospheric CO2 increases.
This is a very explicit, scientifically-determined and hugely engineering-validated value. For a 1d C change in ocean water temperature in the top 200m of the surface, a ~6.5% increase in atmospheric CO2 results, with some caveats. Some of this CO2 is used by land-based vegetation, with increased growth rates, and that number is also reduced because of more phytoplankton growth, with higher water temperature, which, because photosynthesis is endothermic, also slightly cools the water, in addition to reducing the ultimately release of CO2.
In other words, the financial interests of the so-called “experts” is taking precedence over their expertise, with the prize as €25 trillion, to be distributed, presumably, through the un-elected UN to the biggest supporters of the CO2 heist.
CO2 bubbles out of water pretty quickly when ocean water rises in temperature. Some have said the lag between CO2 atmospheric increases and warming is about 600 years, on the charts from ice-cores, but this is probably noise, or somehow other causal response.
For those interested in emerging climate science that is actual science, please see https://www.climatesciencejournal.com/
Kevin, you say that “Decision-making is based upon resolution of conflicts of interests, with the majority’s interest winning.” I’ve worked (long ago) for Prime Ministers of the UK and Australia, and the best ones, such as Bob Hawke and John Howard, had the interest of all Australians at heart, rather than just those on their side of politics. Similarly with Harold MacMillan and Harold Wilson in the UK. Recent Oz PMs have been of lesser quality, but some at least recognize that they are governing for all.
By focusing on radiation, without checking the work with conduction analysis and more thermodynamic rigour, climate scientists today have in general failed to understand real causes of climate change.
The assumption that radiation is only stopped by greenhouse gases is also false, as solar photons are right-shifted by momentum loss to N2 and O2 primarily.
So while your measured newspaper article is very good, and a much better approach, climate science has bigger problems still.
A wave in the stratosphere indicates that it could be even warmer in the far north.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_WAVE1_MEAN_OND_NH_2019.png
“The global-mean temperature trends associated with GSW are as large as 0.3 °C per 40 years, and so are capable of doubling, nullifying or even reversing the forced global warming trends on that timescale.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6
GSW is the global stadium wave. Natural variability in a globally coupled, turbulent and chaotic oceans and atmosphere flow field causing half of recent warming and presumably most of early 20th century warming. ( I have been experimenting with dropping the definite article in favor of a terse modern style – although Grammarly insisted I shouldn’t until I uninstalled it.) Implicit in the GSW is not just uncertainty but a problem of tipping points. Another order of complexity in the planetary system for which there are almost no mathematical tools. Probabilities are indeterminate and consequences potentially huge – risk is therefore extreme. No existential threat? I simply don’t believe that is empirically demonstrable.
The planet is going to hell in a handbasket. Lost and fragmented habitat, radically declining biomass, exhausted agricultural soils, aquifer decline, expanding dead zones in oceans… Expecting wind and solar energy – or simply emitting more CO2 – to meet humanities challenges this century is twaddle promulgated by skeptic or believer extremes. They tell themselves stories superficially in the objective idiom of science – 97% twaddle from both sides.
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/images/18.3110ee8c1495db74432636f/1459560224012/PB_FIG33_media_11jan2015_web2.jpg
The foundation for solutions to these multiple existential threats are capitalist markets in the context of robust democracies. In an energy rich – and this on the scale of two decades is neither renewables or fossil fuels – anything is possible.
Madrid 1995: Was this the Tipping Point in the Corruption of Climate Science?
https://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/madrid-1995-was-this-the-tipping-point-in-the-corruption-of-climate-science/
The Corruption of the Royal Society in the Climate Emergency
Part 1: Never to give their opinion as a body
https://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/the-corruption-of-the-royal-society-in-the-climate-emergency/
From your second reference, Peter, “…the Society, formed primarily to advance experimental method, took another step down the path towards the modern practice of establishing scientific authority by peer review”.
That would be a step backwards in the history of science.
Galileo established science with the scientific method by showing exactly that it was not peer review that counted. Peer review means knowledge is dependent upon the opinions of others–Galileo showed that the opinions of others has nothing whatsoever to do with accurate, valid knowledge.
That is because an idea does not derive its epistemic stature from how many or who endorses it. The idea, as a conceptual model, and its relationship to existence is all that matters–from an epistemological standpoint, it doesn’t even matter who originated the idea.
Galileo failed peer review so miserably that he was given house arrest for the remainder of his life. His work was published in England, escaping the censorship of the Vatican peers, and so we have science at all.
As your other article explains, now we have been hit with the politicization of science, substantially in the UK, which basically means the destruction of science across the board.
This is a greater threat to human welfare than a bit of CO2 ever was or ever will be.
Kevin Alexanderman, Thank you for the excellent comment. I have a great deal more on the corruption of science by the CAGW alarmists.
Dear Dr Curry
As usual, you are the voice of quiet reason and sanity.
Interesting to note that following the recent death of the highly acclaimed Australian journalist and writer, Clive James, in Cambridge, not one journalist in the UK’s BBC and the Australian ABC mentioned his excellent essay as a climate change sceptic. His analysis and view of the current media’s role is, as usual, deadly accurate.
The alarmist hyperbole emanating from Madrid is actually sounding so crazy that the general public are going to continue to wake up to this nonsense.
Dr Sheilagh Cronin
Clive James’ article: https://ipa.org.au/ipa-today/massdeathdieshard
To grasp the threat posed by the corruption of science by the false epistemological paradigm, or pseudo-science, of ‘peer review’, consider that if an entire society built upon technology destroys the conceptual basis of that technology by mis-endorsing and thus falsifying scientific knowledge, when things start to fail through wear or error in use, and the general people lack the ability to understand any of the technology they depend upon, then they will be exposed to a high level of risk of mass technology failure.
That’s similar to a big financial risk, and should be subject to the same concern and discussion as financial markets are.
Right now, each of you should do a personal analysis, within the context of your own life and experience, as to how much of modern society is dependent upon aging engineers and scientists, who are opposed and increasingly replaced by peer-reviewed, pseudo-scientists driven by desire for political gain.
Yea Gods!!!
What does this mean: “We still don’t have a realistic assessment of how a warmer climate will impact us and whether it is ‘dangerous.’ ”
Is it not dangerous if all land ice melts?
No.
Why should it be?
Judith,as you say elsewhere ,the climate models are not fit for the purpose of advising Policy Makers re future global temperature trends. Climate is controlled by natural astronomical and solar activity cycles. A millennial solar activity peak was passed in 1991. It is more likely than not that the NH will cool by about 2 degrees C by 2650. This is a much more plausible and simpler hypothesis than any of the dangerous warming scenarios currently driving the “Crisis”. See my 2017 paper “The coming cooling: Usefully accurate climate forecasting for policy makers.”
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0958305X16686488
and an earlier accessible blog version at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-coming-cooling-usefully-accurate_17.html
And /or My Blog-posts http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-millennial-turning-point-solar.html
and https://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-co2-derangement-syndrome-millennial.html
also see the discussion with Professor William Happer at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2018/02/exchange-with-professor-happer-princeton.html
Norman, your 2012 prediction of global cooling “in the near future” was terribly wrong:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/19/cooling-in-the-near-future/
Did you learn anything from this failure?
“For the past three decades, the climate policy ‘cart’ has been way out in front of the scientific ‘horse’. The 1992 Climate Change treaty was signed by 190 countries before the balance of scientific evidence suggested even a discernible observed human influence on global climate.”
I don’t know how well that metaphor will translate to Spanish. But to continue it, why slam the stable door only after the horse has bolted? There was ample reason in 1992 to expect that huge amounts of carbon would be burnt, and would cause warming. Even then, it was 96 years since Arrhenius had spelled it out. And it isn’t as if precipitate action started in 1992.
I think that what Judith is referring to is that there is no justification for public policy, either economic or political, in the absence of reasonably accurate scientific information and appropriate uncertainties. This is the only responsible adult position.
It’s analogous to abstinence policies and strong adultery laws. They are appropriate by your standard and should be the default public policy since if adhered to they would prevent harm to tens of millions and catastrophic health consequences for many hundreds of thousands. After all syphallis, its consequences and methods of transmission have been known for hundreds of years. Impossible mitigation goals are irresponsible.
But in the real world, policy must also take into account human nature to avoid total failure. Throughout history, policies of scarcity have always failed. This is the real problem with climate extremists such as extinction rebellion, they are children being fed nonsense by adults who know better and have no idea what effective policy would look like.
The FAR was available and even then there was no reason to doubt greenhouse gas physics. I read it and then went back to hydrology and decadal shifts. It is still the case that radiative physics of the atmosphere stacks up despite copious amounts of skeptic junk science. Assume that all of it is junk and you won’t be far wrong. It’s a case of 97% twaddle from both minority extremes.
Kyoto started the grand charade of a lot of hot air and not much accomplished. Paris continues the tradition of not committing to much other than business as usual and then pretending that something happened. In developing economies the emphasis is on HELE coal – until something better comes along.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/hele-e1550170804379.jpg
http://www.aseanenergy.org/resources/reports/aseans-energy-equation/
But with tipping points – it’s more like walking in the dark towards a cliff you know is there just not exactly where. There are many things with high benefit to cost ratios that are being done to reduce human pressures on the Earth system. In wealthy and energy rich communities – much more can be done.
“It is still the case that radiative physics of the atmosphere stacks up despite copious amounts of skeptic junk science”.
No, it’s not the case.
That’s an irrational, ungrounded and pure ad hominem response.
Such a response has no place in science. It is a blatent call for intolerence.
It is not a defense, and displays only ignorance on your part.
So far, the rest of the world sees record snows, in N and S America, as well as Europe. There were 300+ record cold temperatures broken in November.
Evidence is widely available of purposeful alteration of temperature data, and financial and political motives for the crime of misrepresentation for gain by “mainstream” scientists, which is an oxymoron.
Kevin, snow cover is falling.
Here are the data:
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/table_area.php?ui_set=2
Northern hemisphere snow cover has decreased by 4% since 1966. Statistically significant.
@david appel
No, snow cover is not down, just look at this :
https://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=0&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=11
It may be down with respect to the beginning of the record, but since 1990 the trend is, clearly, going up.
Why do you play tricks? What for?
David: NH snowcover with data from your source:
https://i.imgur.com/oxnHQ7h.jpg
What data with a significant downward trend do you mean?
Clearly it is a common thing to be “an expert in misrepresentation” these days.
Eh.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NHemisphereSeasonalSnowCoverSince1972.gif
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-spring-snow-cover
And for weather?
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.shtml
Easy – the Rydberg formula doesn’t work with polyatomic molecules and Einstein was talking energy partitioning between available vibrational modes. You have not a clue. For someone like me with actual scientific training and experience – who has wasted a lifetime reading science – it all reads like gobbledegook.
Over the years there have been many sky dragon slayer theories fall by the wayside. Yet skeptics – or an extreme no greenhouse effect subset – in a triumph of hope over experience keep earnestly believing the latest is a breakthrough. Or perhaps just that you are capable of schooling me. You are not.
But for now I want to go back and learn some more about water vapour using my honed research skills. Something a lot more fun than you or Don.
Robert, Frank: download the Rutgers data and calculate its trend. I have, and it’s negative, and it’s statistically significant. Franklin’s graph is wrong.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/table_area.php?ui_set=2
Surely it is time to accept that it is quite unlikely that our the very nature of our current geopolitical world, where ‘GROWTH’ in human-activity is seen as desirable, must be abandoned, as Greta has pointed out. We need to dynamically regulate human-activity using feedback from the sciences that measure our planet’s human carrying capacity. An example of such a system is describe at this page: https://blueplanetclub.ca/Index.htm
Don Chisholm donchism@kos.net
“as Greta has pointed out”?
The ultimate demonstration of incompetence is relying on a basically abused child for scientific reference.
“Surely it is time to accept that it is quite unlikely that our the very nature of our current geopolitical world, where ‘GROWTH’ in human-activity is seen as desirable, must be abandoned”.
What? It is unlikely that the “nature of our current political world” must be abandoned?
It’s not only unlikely that it will be, it’s rather insane that you would so stupidly demand that it be.
If Don approves it must be wrong.
I am a hydrologist by training, profession and (much more) through a deep fascination with water in all its power and beauty. Given the importance of water to us practically and symbolically, there is more than an element of the sacred. I went on to study Environmental Science – one of the more fun things I have ever done. I combined the two in biogeochemical cycling – the movement of nutrients and pollutants through biota, soils and water. I have spent decades reducing the impact of cities, farms and mines on waterways and the life it contains.
As a relatively young environmental scientist – it was apparent that only rich economies can afford environments. The data compiled by the World Wildlife Fund seems to confirm that we in the west are at least holding the line on the abundance of key populations.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/income-and-lpi.png
The global economy is worth about $100 trillion a year. To put aid and philanthropy into perspective – the total is 0.025% of the global economy. If spent on Copenhagen Consensus smart development goals such expenditure can generate a benefit to cost ratio of more than 15. If spent on the UN Sustainable Development Goals you may as well piss it up against a wall. Either way – it is nowhere near the major path to universal prosperity. Some 3.5 billion people make less than $2 a day. Changing that can only be done by doubling and tripling global production – and doing it as quickly as possible. Optimal economic growth is essential and that requires an understanding and implementation of explicit principles for effective economic governance of free markets.
Markets need fair, transparent and accessible laws – including on open and equal markets, labour laws, environmental conservation, consumer protection and whatever else is arrived at in the political arena. Optimal tax take is some 23% of GDP and government budgets are balanced. Interest rates are best managed through the overnight cash market to restrain inflation to a 2% to 3% target. These nuts and bolts of market management are mainstream market theory and keep economies on a stable – as far as is possible – growth trajectory. The critical project for development is opening up markets for agricultural products. The Copenhagen Consensus found that a deal on the DOHA round of trade talks would make the world richer by $11-trillion by 2030.
At the base in developing economies is the agricultural sector. Rattan Lal estimates that 500 GtC – more than the 350 GtC of industrial emissions – has been lost from from terrestrial systems in the Holocene. Farming by fire and then moving on when soils were exhausted. We can no longer do that. Carbon sequestration in soils has major benefits in addition to offsetting anthropogenic emissions from fossil fuel combustion, land use conversion, soil cultivation, continuous grazing and cement and steel manufacturing. Restoring soil carbon stores increases agronomic productivity and enhances global food security. Increasing the soil organic content enhances water holding capacity and creates a more drought tolerant agriculture – with less downstream flooding. There is a critical level of soil carbon that is essential to maximising the effectiveness of water and nutrient inputs. Global food security, especially for countries with fragile soils and harsh climate such as in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, cannot be achieved without improving soil quality through an increase in soil organic content. Wildlife flourishes on restored grazing land helping to halt biodiversity loss. Reversing soil carbon loss is a new green revolution where conventional agriculture is hitting a productivity barrier with exhausted soils and increasingly expensive inputs.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/women-farming-sand-dam.jpg
This picture shows what is possible with better land and water management in Africa. But it all takes resources.
https://www.excellentdevelopment.com/
Increased agricultural productivity, increased downstream processing and access to markets build local economies and global wealth. Economic growth provides resources for solving problems – conserving and restoring ecosystems, better sanitation and safer water, better health and education, updating the diesel fleet and other productive assets to emit less black carbon and reduce the health, environmental and warming impacts, developing better and cheaper ways of producing electricity, replacing cooking with wood and dung with better ways of preparing food thus avoiding respiratory disease and again reducing black carbon emissions. A global program of agricultural soils restoration is the foundation for balancing the human ecology. Many countries post Paris have committed to increasing soil carbon by 0.4% per year. As a global objective and given the highest priority it is a solution to critical problems of biodiversity loss, development, food security and resilience to drought and flood.
In the polycentric governance framework of Elinor Ostrom – beyond the tragedy of the commons – local and and regional stakeholders is where the rubber hits the road. We’d like to bring you with us. But I’m prepared to roll over you if that’s what it takes.
Having been a farmer in a developing country for 6 years, I have experience in adopting as well as advancing the technologies of agronomy to build a sustainable farm. The M of Ag used to bring other governments to my drip irrigated farm to show our effective approach. We used bagasse from a local sugar factory annually to replenish organic material, and were thus able to grow 15 different crops year-around, 25 years ago.
It’s nice that you had lots of fun at uni studying environmental science.
But the last thing the world needs is academic bozos with little life or business experience imposing inane solutions that haven’t even been prototyped in the real world. The research papers are mostly written for recognition, not to solve actual problems–no sense it failing to understand that.
Politicians in modern faction-based, republican oligarchies do not really care about anything besides getting elected, generally by making promises that have no legal recourse for their victims when they fail. They have to serve their factions, primarily.
Mostly, governments need to stop pushing government solutions, and encourage their people to solve problems they each feel need solving, to save enough and invest it in competent people who don’t quit when business gets difficult.
I have spent 40 years in the commercial world working on projects worth up to $10 billion dollars – a gas export hub. As a civil engineer and environmental scientist. I studied both while working construction sites. The last thing I want is more bozos promulgating junk science and inane social commentary.
Since you cannot counter the new science, which shows the old “science” to be invalid, you have already lost the argument.
Scientific knowledge is not static, but always subject to revision given new understanding or data.
Right now, the data says the world is cooling, with record snows and cold weather in Switzerland, the US and late snows in S America. The data also shows that N2 and O2 are the predominant stores of thermal energy in the atmosphere, by far, as 99% of the mass of air.
Either get your thugs and try to rationally debate my challenge, or stop the ad hominem and go back to hustling for billions from oil companies.
Bozo and inane were your usage. It’s not your first rodeo is it? Nor your first adhom just in this post. Even a child is fair game. Take responsibility.
But yours is quite obviously junk science that I decline to discuss with you as a complete waste of time. And off topic.
I agree, actual climate science is off topic for you–likely over your head.
And by the way, Greta Thunberg is being abused for political gain. She is not qualified to be a spokesperson for climate science, and is not knowledgeable enough about physics to rationally assess the scripts they provide her.
The global warming cabal use her as a human shield, which is child abuse, undermining her ability to get an education, as they hide behind her to avoid responsibility for their fraud.
Accusing me of ad hominem towards her is misrepresentation–discussions as to her competency or the motives of those who promote her are fair game–she is a public figure, and still must be responsible for herself.
Aggression, abuse and post hoc rationalization. You are a piece aren’t you. Bye.
“Aggression”? That’s a good one! I hope you weren’t physically harmed by my comment.
“Post hoc rationalization”? You mean counter-argument, which you can’t handle.
“Abuse”? Yes, that’s what Greta’s handlers are doing to her.
You seem to be an expert in misrepresentation.
Your very long comment with the chart and the photo was not the usual tedious BS. It was a very interesting and pertinent contribution. Thanks.
If Don approves it must be wrong.
Yeah, I should have known. On further review, it is just a slightly more coherent sample of your usual tedious BS. Does that make you feel better?
At the very least it is not crapulent little piles of snark left everywhere by an obscurantist.
You are wasting what’s left of your life here. Pathetic.
Don – you are a scientific and policy illiterate who imagines that trite little insults – and nothing of any substance otherwise – are a good use of your time. I’m with Hayek.
“Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it—or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism.
Hayek was spot on, but I think you are not being honest with yourself.
Presently, RIE, you are the most conservative person on the site, opposing any view that’s new just because it’s new.
Hayek would be laughing at your hypocracy.
The universal law of a rotating planet, N2 and O2 interacting with IR frequency photons and water vapor from irrigation. I am getting more skeptical by the moment.
And now for something different, RIE, tell us about the combination principle, that is, the Rydberg-Ritz one, and how, according to Einstein, in yet an additional way, N2 and O2 absorb the momentum of IR photons.
Easy – the Rydberg formula doesn’t work with polyatomic molecules and Einstein was talking energy partitioning between available vibrational modes. You have not a clue. For someone like me with actual scientific training and experience – who has wasted a lifetime reading science – it all reads like gobbledegook.
Over the years there have been many sky dragon slayer theories fall by the wayside. Yet skeptics – or an extreme no greenhouse effect subset – in a triumph of hope over experience keep earnestly believing the latest is a breakthrough. Or perhaps just that you are capable of schooling me. You are not.
But for now I want to go back and learn some more about water vapour using my honed research skills. Something a lot more fun than you or Don. And it is much more than time to bail from this thread.
And the tedious BS carpet bombing continues…
Is there anything more tedious than Don’s pissant aspersions?
You can’t help yourself. What do you think you are accomplishing here with your incessant, obsessive chatter? Do you think you are advancing the science, or influencing policy? I will help you. You are not. Take a break and review your last thousand comments. Then, tell us what enlightenment you provided therein, that was not covered in your previous thousand comments.
Let me fill you in Don. If you were capable of saying anything of real substance it would have happened by now.
You don’t know what I do. I don’t live on this blog. I will be spending a lot of time on the move getting the Most Powerful Man in the World re-elected. No doubt, you will carry on in seclusion with your obsessive crusade to bombard this blog into submission. You are hooked. Pathetic.
You appear to be failing at that too.
That’s what they said last time, then the tears flowed. Carry on with your foolishness. I am done here.
Don – saying the first mean spirited thing that comes into your head is of no interest at all and people may be relieved at your vacating the field. .
Some of the comments make it clear the motives of the climate alarmists: it is an attempted political coup through the un-elected UN.
They are attempting to seize 1/3 of a year’s global GDP, or €25 trillion, to replace (“abandon”) the current political system.
With what?
I suppose we should ask Greta.
(Am I supposed to say “Hiel Greta!” now?)
Kevin, as a German I wouldn’t understand “Hiel” but “Heil” . :-) However it’s not clear to me why you apply Godwins Law, because this makes your arguments obsolete IMO.
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Judith,as you say elsewhere ,the climate models are not fit for the purpose of advising Policy Makers re future global temperature trends. Climate is controlled by natural astronomical and solar activity cycles. A millennial solar activity peak was passed in 1991. It is more likely than not that the NH will cool by about 2 degrees C by 2650. This is a much more plausible and simpler hypothesis than any of the dangerous warming scenarios currently driving the “Crisis”. See my 2017 paper “The coming cooling: Usefully accurate climate forecasting for policy makers.”
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0958305X16686488
and an earlier accessible blog version at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-coming-cooling-usefully-accurate_17.html
And /or My Blog-posts http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-millennial-turning-point-solar.html
and https://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-co2-derangement-syndrome-millennial.html
also see the discussion with Professor William Happer at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2018/02/exchange-with-professor-happer-princeton.html
Norman, your 2012 prediction of global cooling was abysmally wrong. What have you learned from that?
https://davidappell.blogspot.com/2016/03/them-that-cant-learn-doctor-dr-norman.html
David Here is the Abstract from my 2017 paper linked above:
“This paper argues that the methods used by the establishment climate science community are not fit for purpose and that a new forecasting paradigm should be adopted. Earth’s climate is the result of resonances and beats between various quasi-cyclic processes of varying wavelengths. It is not possible to forecast the future unless we have a good understanding of where the earth is in time in relation to the current phases of those different interacting natural quasi periodicities. Evidence is presented specifying the timing and amplitude of the natural 60+/- year and, more importantly, 1,000 year periodicities (observed emergent behaviors) that are so obvious in the temperature record. Data related to the solar climate driver is discussed and the solar cycle 22 low in the neutron count (high solar activity) in 1991 is identified as a solar activity millennial peak and correlated with the millennial peak -inversion point – in the RSS temperature trend in about 2003. The cyclic trends are projected forward and predict a probable general temperature decline in the coming decades and centuries. Estimates of the timing and amplitude of the coming cooling are made. If the real climate outcomes follow a trend which approaches the near term forecasts of this working hypothesis, the divergence between the IPCC forecasts and those projected by this paper will be so large by 2021 as to make the current, supposedly actionable, level of confidence in the IPCC forecasts untenable.”
As you are well aware, the general trends were disturbed by the Super El Nino of 2016/17. The effect of this short term event have been dissipating so that “If the real climate outcomes follow a trend which approaches the near term forecasts of this working hypothesis, the divergence between the IPCC forecasts and those projected by this paper will be so large by 2021 as to make the current, supposedly actionable, level of confidence in the IPCC forecasts untenable.”
See also the Figures in http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-millennial-turning-point-solar.html
Beautifully written, Dr. Curry. It’s ironic that the most important factor necessary for human adaptation to climate variability is affordable and accessible energy, specifically carbon-based and nuclear. That is precisely what the catastrophists want us to minimize or even eliminate.
Doc, why does the energy need to be carbon-based?
David, I’m all for any energy sources that promote human flourishing. At this time, hydrocarbon and nuclear fuels best satisfy this overriding objective. Limiting the availability of these affordable, available, and least environmentally harmful energy sources negatively impacts human flourishing along several dimensions. We need energy to protect us from a naturally dangerous climate. Making energy more expensive impacts the poorest among us to the greatest extent, but everyone will suffer the consequences.
DocStephens wrote:
At this time, hydrocarbon and nuclear fuels best satisfy this overriding objective.
Says who? And why?
Who? The U.S. Department of Energy among countless others.
Why? Because is available, affordable, practical, and safe. Energy production in the United States is currently about 80 percent from carbon-based fuels, around 10 percent from nuclear, about 8 percent from hydroelectric and biomass and the remaining 2 percent from wind and solar.
Geomagnetic activity is currently minimal.
https://images.tinypic.pl/i/00993/n7li1alvq7g1.png
Presently, we are entering a period of low solar activity, as confirmed by NASA and others, predicted by V Zharkova et al about 5 years ago, from new solar observations and innovative magnetosphere theory, funded by EU grants.
Reduced solar flares means less ultraviolet radiation (the highest energy solar photons) and more cosmic radiation enters the Earth’s atmosphere, which latter solar flares normally shield.
Cosmic radiation ionizes water molecules, causing them to attract one another, forming larger droplets, increasing cloud cover and precipitation. More clouds cool the Earth by reflecting solar radiation, and cause greater snowfall and more floods, explaining global experience.
That is looking as a primary causal force now, cooling the planet. More snow means more reflected light, as a positive feedback, driving global cooling.
That’s science.
The global warming scam has been found out, with a little help from nature, and the pseudo-scientific peer-review advocates are freaking out because bad weather is threatening the completion of their heist.
If you’ve been in on the global warming racket, you should realize when it is time to fold your hand, and be happy for your prior good fortune and easy money–nothing lasts forever.
Very strong temperature anomaly in the lower stratosphere above the western polar circle.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t70_nh_f00.png
Here’s is a better view of the whole northern hemisphere, showing anomaly from +20C to -20C varying rather wildly over the whole region.
I had understood there to be a hole in the ozone in the n hemisphere, perhaps that has shifted over the AK region.
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs®ion=nhem&pkg=T2ma&runtime=2019120306&fh=-54
Excess ozone in the stratosphere has an impact on the strength of the polar vortex over North America. It blocks western circulation.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-13.01,92.14,296
We’ve had satellites for about 30 years, open communications on them about 10, and significant advances in measurement and software visualization available for about 5.
Anomaly charts are clearer to everyone now, but we’d have a hard time saying that we knew what these differences were in the last 120 years, and could reliably say whether they had changed in magnitude or duration since then. ‘Climate’ only begins after about 30 years of ‘weather’, so we are just getting started with genuine science.
We are in a new age of measurement technology, which is fascinating, but we must temper our enthusiasm and be careful we don’t jump to conclusions.
Here’s current projections for the area you refer to, through next week, https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs®ion=us&pkg=T2ma&runtime=2019120306&fh=12
showing how much these vary over larger regions.
I have found pretty good correspondence with projections and the actual occurrence, as this chart shows past temperatures.
It is better to look at current temperatures than predicted.
https://www.wunderground.com/wundermap
The rest of the week is expected to remain anomalously cold across vast swathes of Australia, too — with temps holding well-below the December average.
In Melbourne, for example, residents will likely have to wait until next Sunday for any warm-up.
Despite these real-world observations, the BOM are sticking with their original summer forecast, with stubborn senior meteorologist Michael Efron saying: “climate indicators suggest we’re actually in for a warmer and drier than average December”.
https://electroverse.net/heavy-summer-snow-buries-parts-of-southeast-australia/?fbclid=IwAR3OEsPYbVNRp9nzX6r1-TkL-fdNx_EVABIgCLhp5tJkg8RmLcyAnbq0MX0
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Why do you not believe in global warming?
Paul Noel
Paul Noel, former Research Scientist 6 Level 2 UAH Huntsville Al. (2009-2014)
Written Nov 24
The proper question is why do they believe in climate change/global warming at all. I could give you about a mile of writing but I will cover just one example to show you t…
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This is on QUARA DIGEST. this , I believe, Indicates that I am correct that the NEW ICE AGE began about 18,000 years ago .
Orlando, Fl. latitude 28.53823N
Orange Beach, Fl. latitude 30.29191N
There is a model written by Mother Nature!!!!
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Circulation in the North Atlantic is unusual for the beginning of winter. The stream reaches far north as far as the Greenland Sea. Europe is dominated by extensive high.
https://images.tinypic.pl/i/00993/ylpy9sp730tl.png
Please note the solar equatorial dipole. It has the greatest impact on geomagnetic activity and the amount of galactic radiation reaching the stratosphere.
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/DipallR.gif
“We don’t have a good understanding of how warming will influence extreme weather events.”
A good understanding of what causes extreme weather events, can show that warming has no influence on their occurrence, and can show how they influence warming, or cooling.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/major-heat-cold-waves-driven-key-heliocentric-alignments-ulric-lyons/
Ulric Lyons wrote:
A good understanding of what causes extreme weather events, can show that warming has no influence on their occurrence,
Temperature fluctuations of a gas increase with temperature.
I don’t see any evidence for annual mode anomalies and variability being dependent on the mean atmospheric temperature.
typo..annular mode
Ulric: Annual?? Your original statement was about “extreme weather events.” Nothing annual.
Annular mode anomalies. Similar extremes of temperatures can occur over a range of global mean temperatures. Extreme cold events during very warm periods, and extreme heat events during colder periods. They would not even occur without their discrete solar forcing.
Thank-you for writing such a common sense article. Instead of sensationalism, you actually try to make sense of this issue. Their are far more pressing global, regional and local concerns that need to be addressed than this “EMERGENCY”. Land use, food production, a general disconnect with the natural world, and the basics of necessity are far more pressing issues that need to be addressed.
I hope your comments get the attention they deserve. Unfortunately, experience suggests that they will be ignored.
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In terms of common sense strategies what about some policies about encouraging corporations to increase the life span of their products and consumers to hang on to them longer — maybe some emphasis on making products easier to fix for the consumer rather than throwing them away. How long is the average life-span of a cell phone? If everyone held on to their vehicle a year longer rather than go out and buy the new model wouldn’t that help to curb the demand for fossil fuels.
What matters most is not what should be done, but who should decide. The free market is the right answer to that. Edicts from ‘experts’ are not a valid solution. Continuing to debate, as Judith Curry is doing so artfully here is the right answer.
I’m just adding on to JC’s list…
“Common sense strategies to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events, improve environmental quality, develop better energy technologies, improve agricultural and land use practices, and better manage water resources can pave the way for a more prosperous and secure future. Each of these solutions is ‘no regrets’ – supporting climate change mitigation while improving human well being. These strategies avoid the political gridlock surrounding the current policies and avoid costly policies that will have minimal near-term impacts on the climate. And finally, these strategies don’t require agreement about the risks of uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions.”
I do appreciate her continuing to debate. I hope she is not fighting a losing battle. I see a lot of propaganda. There is a lot of APGW momentum among the public and the media has no concern for fairness in alternative perspectives. I also see a lot of scientists who seem to have there reputations tarnished and livelihoods damaged which is the bigger issue. I am a proponent of the free market but it doesn’t always work. The assumption that the free market will take care of all environmental issues is clearly wrong. It certainly doesn’t work without government policies that promote it. I like the idea of proposing alternative solutions such as JC provides that are win-win.
John Howard wrote:
What matters most is not what should be done, but who should decide. The free market is the right answer to that.
Does a “free market” include making polluters pay for the consequences of their pollution?
Or should those expenses be socialized so the public pays them?
David Appell asks, “Does a “free market” include making polluters pay for the consequences of their pollution?”
Absolutely. Pollution is a violation of Private Property rights. Private Property is the foundation of Liberty, Morality, and Economics.
Thanks John — it is good to hear that. But what we currently have is far from a free market.
“There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision.” Hayek – The road to serfdom
“When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike…
Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it—or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny that scientists as much as others are given to fads and fashions and that we have much reason to be cautious in accepting the conclusions that they draw from their latest theories. But the reasons for our reluctance must themselves be rational and must be kept separate from our regret that the new theories upset our cherished beliefs.” Hayek – Why I am not a conservative.
Disaster planning, preparation and management is a legitimate government function. Conserving natural environments may come under the heading of policy arrived at in the cut and thrust of representative democracy. The touchstone here is whether policy cost effectively satisfies aspirations.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2015/05/01/changing-our-approach-to-the-environment/
Common pool resources – air quality, aquifers, forests, fisheries etc – are best managed at a scale between that of government and business with the buy in of stakeholders under agreed rules.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2009/ostrom/biographical/
The typical conservative reaction to this?
https://cdn5.vectorstock.com/i/thumb-large/42/19/brain-explosion-when-it-is-unclear-vector-21994219.jpg
https://cdn5.vectorstock.com/i/thumb-large/42/19/brain-explosion-when-it-is-unclear-vector-21994219.jpg
Whatever is subsidized will expand. Providing a minimum income, a home, a warm meal, and a Teddy Bear to everyone will result in ever more people requesting those freebies, instead of working to earn them through trade in the market. Subsidizing poverty results in more poverty. Subsidizing Medical Care results in more people claiming to be sick. Forgiving sin results in more sin.
God forgives sin – I just quote Friedrich Hayek.
Excellent!!! Thank you.
Counter op-ed from Greta, Girl Wonder: How dare you?
Can you falsify any of the information shared by Happer, or even Monkton, in Spain today? Both presented convincing data that suggests that AGW from CO2 or methane has very little if any ability to force further warming.
https://youtu.be/a3W8EVEEKQ8
yeah: why does Happer avoid publishing his climate claims in the peer reviewed literature. He well knows that’s the gold standard in science. So why does he avoid it?
Is this a falsification? Is this true?
You don’t even know what “falsification” means.
An excellent, thorough yet concise analysis of the climate issue. Wise and insightful. Sadly one suspects it will prove to be Cassandra-like. The climate juggernaut will roll on regardless.
Who voted for these endless climate jamborees, each one ratcheting still higher the global rhetoric of climate extremism? The catastrophism may end up being self-fulfilling. The reckless sabotage of economies and technologies driven by nothing but a mixture of computer simulations/games and politically motivated dystopian imagination. It could all be leading us to a very dark place.
Phil Salmon,
You are right in that the climate alarmism is redirecting resources from beneficial to damaging policies and programs. First, the cost of the programs is huge:
The U.S. Climate Change Industry 2005-2013 ($bn)
year US$bn USA Growth
2005 123.2 24.7%
2006 154 25.0%
2007 185 20.1%
2008 219.3 18.5%
2009 217.2 -1.0%
2010 218.8 0.7%
2011 247.6 13.2%
2012 283.8 14.6%
2013 300 5.7%
Second, reducing global warming reduces economic growth.
source of the figures: https://brattlefiles.blob.core.windows.net/files/7474_j%C3%BCrgen_weiss_-_climate_change_business_journal.pdf
Peter Lang wrote:
Second, reducing global warming reduces economic growth.
Really? Since 1973 US per capita energy use has declined by 14% and per capita CO2 emissions have declined by 29%, while real GDP per capita has increased by 115%.
How can this be if reducing global warming (that is, reducing CO2 emissions) reduces economic growth?
Peter, the vast majority of that money goes satellites and the like.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has posted a Request for Information (RFI). It is seeking information to ensure “that the research environment is welcoming to all individuals and enables them to work safely, efficiently, ethically, and with mutual respect, consistent with the values of free inquiry, competition, openness, and fairness.”
This appears to be the latest effort to bring skeptics into the debate.
The RFI can be found here:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/26/2019-25604/request-for-information-on-the-american-research-environment
RICHARD
Sounds like an end-run around the science. Like an invitation to a birthday party, not serious intellectual inquiry.
What happens when the current interglacial ends? ±100K of glaciation?
“serious intellectual inquiry.”?
What a maroon!
What says the current interglacial is going to end?
David
“The science” is currently a closed club; this innovation by the Office of Science and Technology Policy could open the science to people like Dr. Curry and her “No Regrets” approach.
Richard
You didn’t address my comment.
“Given the slow unfolding of what may become catastrophic changes to Earth’s climate, many are understandably distraught by failures of public policy to rise to the magnitude of the challenge. Few in the science
community would think to question the scientific response to the unfolding changes. However, is the science community continuing to do its part to the best of its ability? In the domains where we can have the greatest
influence, is the scientific community articulating a vision commensurate with the challenges posed by climate change? We think not.”
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2019/11/26/1906691116.full.pdf
Tim Palmer is not a scientist who is easily dismissed. And there are many other accomplished scientists making serious science. Opposed is a lot of political posturing – by both sides. Not science at all. Then there is the prolific skeptic invention of new physics. Each crude theory radically diverging from any other. That seems to be a problem with skeptic ‘science’ that is conveniently overlooked. Skeptics on this site seem to imagine that Judith Curry is a skeptic of this ilk. That is not the case.
So if it is understood that models are a work in progress – and that uncertainty in a nonlinear climate system is absolute – what remains is pragmatic public responses on a broad front. In a reality where most people are concerned about climate change – and where the level of concern varies with proximity to the last extreme weather event – skeptics are on a hiding to nothing in representative democracies. They are worth ignoring in favor of setting a rational agenda.
Robert,
Scientific knowledge is not a closed domain, reserved to a few who have joined and conformed to a club.
Physical reality does not recognize clubs.
The most accurate conceptual models in time become the science, because of their improved explanetary insight and broader application. Revisions of theory don’t care if you understand them or not.
The “greenhouse gas” theory is invalid science. It does not follow that less than 1% of atmospheric gases dictate the thermal energy stored by the 99%.
If the club says that temperatures are warming, what they are saying, in classical, real science, is that the thermal energy in the atmosphere is increasing.
Temperature is a measure of thermal energy.
But CO2 has a lower specific heat capacity than either N2 or O2–this means at the same temperature, CO2 stores less thermal energy.
Increasing its concentration thus reduces the thermal energy the atmosphere stores at the same temperature.
To be frank, the 0.04% of CO2 is of negligible influence in any case. In a solar eclipse, temperatures drop 5-20° C in 20 minutes, mocking the “greenhouse” in the Sun’s absence.
But this all is not radiative discussion, as the club wants to force the conversation. It is instead thermodynamics and conductive theory.
But it is not some arbitrary new physics as you pretend.
Thermodynamics, conductive heat theory and radiation theory all happen in the same universe, whether the club wants to recognize that or not.
CO2 does not cause warming.
N2 and O2, at 99% of the atmosphere’s mass, store by far the most thermal energy, in proportion to their concentration. These two primary gases, travelling near the speed of sound, absorb photon momentum, as Rayleigh explained, with increased velocities primarily, from interaction with photons travelling near light speed. The shift of wavelengths across the spectrum is there for all to see.
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, the greenhouse effect operates radiatively, not thermodynamically (that is, not via specific heat). There’s nothing classical about the GHE — it’s a consequence of quantum physics.
Stating “CO2 does not cause warming” is in so much opposition to the scientific evidence that no one is going to take you seriously. You’re wasting your time and choosing not to understand the science and the essence of today’s climate problem. Why would anyone do that?
Science seems a closed book to Bugs Bunny.
Kevin wrote:
“The “greenhouse gas” theory is invalid science. It does not follow that less than 1% of atmospheric gases dictate the thermal energy stored by the 99%”.
I agree with Kevin Alexanderman.
Kevin wrote:
“To be frank, the 0.04% of CO2 is of negligible influence in any case. In a solar eclipse, temperatures drop 5-20° C in 20 minutes, mocking the “greenhouse” in the Sun’s absence”.
I agree with Kevin Alexanderman.
Thank you, Kevin.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
David
“There’s nothing classical about the GHE — it’s a consequence of quantum physics.”
Quantum physics is a theory not yet fully understood and not fully accepted by the likes of Einstein. And, regarding the Earth Climate System, quantum physics cannot be divorced from the complex network within which it operates.
Richard
“To be frank, the 0.04% of CO2 is of negligible influence in any case.”
What analysis led to your claim? Any at all?
I strongly suggest a trip over to the blogroll for a look at Science of Doom, which patiently clears up all of these misconceptions about the theory of radiative forcing via CO2.
https://scienceofdoom.com/roadmap/confusion-over-the-basics/
Models, Schmodels??! You call this “science”?
Science is nothing BUT models.
I’d rather watch a flamenco show in Seville.
Judith wrote:
Fossil fuel emissions as the climate ‘control knob’ is a simple and seductive idea. However this is a misleading oversimplification, since climate can shift naturally in unexpected ways.
I don’t understand this.
Humans can’t control natural variations. But they can control their GHG emissions.
If we ever try to terraform Mars, the very first thing we’ll try is melting the CO2 ice caps to enhance the planet’s greenhouse effect. Lately there doesn’t seem to be enough to get as much warming as we’d like. Maybe there’s more dry ice underground. But it’s the first obvious thing to try that can make a planet-wide difference.
That’s a control knob, not a natural change in solar irradiance or Milankovitch cycles.
.
My first hydraulics lecture changed my life. OMG. I can model this? I went out and bought an XT clone with 64 kb RAM and no hard drive for $2000 – a relative fortune. Computer models are amazing but let’s take a step back and ask what it is that is being modelled. Climate shifts happen at many scales in the nonlinear Earth system. It is the nature of science to infer mechanism from observation.
e.g. https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm
“The non-static, ever changing hydroclimatic processes are often described as nonstationary. However, revisiting the notions of stationarity and nonstationarity, defined within stochastics, suggests that claims of nonstationarity cannot stand unless the evolution in time of the statistical characteristics of the process is known in deterministic terms, particularly for the future. In reality, long-term deterministic predictions are difficult or impossible. Thus, change is not synonymous with nonstationarity, and even prominent change at a multitude of time scales, small and large, can be described satisfactorily by a stochastic approach admitting stationarity. This “novel” description does not depart from the 60- to 70-year old pioneering works of Hurst on natural processes and of Kolmogorov on turbulence. Contrasting stationary with nonstationary has important implications in engineering and management. The stationary description with Hurst-Kolmogorov (HK) stochastic dynamics demonstrates that nonstationary and classical stationary descriptions underestimate the uncertainty. This is illustrated using examples of hydrometeorological time series, which show the consistency of the HK approach with reality. One example demonstrates the implementation of this framework in the planning and management of the water supply system of Athens, Greece, also in comparison with alternative nonstationary approaches, including a trend-based and a climate-model-based approach.” https://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/1001/
Hurst compiled and analysed a millennia long record of Nile River water levels measured on this column that is connected to the river at Alexandria. Hurst’s work was plucked from obscurity by Mandelbrot. Kolmogorov came to a similar conclusion about turbulence. You see where I am going with this?
https://assets.atlasobscura.com/media/W1siZiIsInVwbG9hZHMvcGxhY2VfaW1hZ2VzL2QxNGFhOTllMmY2NWNjMjI4ZF9DYWlyb19OaWxvbWV0ZXJfMi5qcGciXSxbInAiLCJ0aHVtYiIsIngzOTA-Il0sWyJwIiwiY29udmVydCIsIi1xdWFsaXR5IDgxIC1hdXRvLW9yaWVudCJdXQ/Cairo_Nilometer_2.jpg
When I talk about models it is a numerical model with some version of Navier-Stokes at its dynamical core. Emphatically not the IPCC opportunistic ensembles – that are emphatically not even close to credible. But there are excellent current uses for models.
e.g. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009GL042239
Here Tapio Schneider reports on a cloud resolving model. It is fine scale that would require millions of times more computing power to do for the planet. Ultimately, reducing the propagation of uncertainty in models requires either a new mathematics – it’s not clear that this is possible – or quantum computing and much better observations of initial conditions. The fine scale modelling with known physical processes and explicit equations reveals yet more bistability in low level marine stratocumulous.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/cloud-computation.png
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1
The physical components of the system spontaneously reorganize into an emergent regime that may be very far from the original state. Dynamical complexity is the fundamental mode of operation of the climate system and this is the first time it is shown to happen in a model with high order complexity. Models are very good science with huge existing limitations as Tim Palmer said.
“Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation.” James McWilliams.
Contrast this with Bugs Bunny’s junk science.
A gripe first: the terminology “radiative forcing” is new. Presumably it means a causal basis for climate alteration. So let’s consider it as such, as we should not propagate terminology for no reason. That could appear deceptive or obfuscatory.
Let’s travel down the radiation rabbit hole, since rabbits seem to be a popular topic.
The question is whether CO2 blocks IR waves. Sure, it does, at 100% concentration. But IR radiation coming through the atmosphere is also absorbed and radiated by N2 and O2, see https://tinyurl.com/N2-IR-wavelengths and https://tinyurl.com/O2-IR-wavelengths . This is done through the Rydberg-Ritz combination principle, which is pretty simple: it just means that energy levels can also be combinations of energy levels. For instance, a radiating photon of wavelength of 800nm might be absorbed or emitted in packets of 300nm and subsequently 500nm, allowing an IR wavelength (800nm) to be absorbed or emitted even if its molecule would not facilitate it harmoniously.
So this again is evidence of problems with the “greenhouse gas” theory.
But there is more. N2 and O2 also absorb photons of all wavelengths by absorbing photon momentum, increasing their velocities/rotations, primarily, and shifting the photons to the blue (right). Yes, these right-shifted photons then may be picked up, or absorbed, by the “greenhouse gases”, but again, the amount of energy CO2 molecules can actually store is limited by their specific heat capacity and concentration.
Considering radiative causation of warming does not improve the legitimacy of the “greenhouse gas” theory.
Thus, contrary to widely disseminated pseudo-science, aka “peer-reviewed science”, N2 and O2 also absorb, conduct and even radiate IR energy, and are the primary molecules storing thermal energy in the atmosphere. Any warming is going to be caused when they are warmed, because they constitute 99% of the atmosphere. As my paper https://www.climatesciencejournal.com/invalidity-of-greenhous-gas-thy/ shows, IR and other wavelength photons, travelling at the speed of light, are absorbed partially by near speed-of-sound velocity N2 and O2, whether they emanate from the Earth, or the Sun.
Robert, try an experiment. Invite 100 Moonies in a room, and have them vote on ethical values. Which ones do you think they will approve, or “peer review” as valid? I was going to suggest Jim Jones Christians, but they all drank grape Coolaid, and are no longer with us.
This may be a crass example, but it is entirely relevant. Again, concepts of science do not derive their epistemic stature as knowledge from their endorsement, but solely by their relationship with reality. That determination is the full responsibility of the individual who chooses to depend upon them as knowledge through application in life.
Education is supposed to provide us each with the capacity to validate ideas on our own.
Yeah – discussion with you on anything is not going to happen. Your silly sky dragon slayer theories don’t make any sense even to the vast majority of skeptics. You are utterly irrelevant and terminally sidelined Bugs. Get used to it.
Oh – and radiative forcing has always been the central idea.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2018/06/10/a-maximum-entropy-climate-earth-in-transient-energy-equilibrium-2/
Mars daily highs are what? Lows? You want to “terraform” it?
Once again, idiocy.
Many people want to terraform Mars.
CO2 molecule, relaxation rate v. collision rate?
That’s your answer.
Branleur.
I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
It is true that many people want to terraform Mars.
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Reblogged this on ClimateTheTruth.com.
How have we arrived at this point? Because the masses do not understand the basics of science to see through this fraud. Why supposed scientists have invented fake science is a mystery but I assume it the secure government money they are getting. They should all be locked up and the key thrown away.
There is an article published in The Telegraph which says there is no crisis but the science is completely wrong. There is no greenhouse effect in the atmosphere. The temperatures change with height, which most people realise, and this is not a radiative greenhouse effect, it is due to gravity compressing the atmosphere. The denser the atmosphere, the more molecules and the higher the temperature. CO2 does not cause any warming. It is impossible to change the temperature of any system by changing the materials in the system. Temperatures only change by adding thermal energy or by doing work (compression by gravity). The entire concept of human caused global warming is based in fraudulent science. The so called greenhouse gases do not warm the earth, they do exactly the opposite – they radiate the energy into space.
I also saw Baroness Scotland on TV telling us that the oceans keep us cool. They do not water has a huge thermal capacity compared to the atmosphere. Land masses have a slightly lower thermal capacity but they do not move heat about. The sun heats the oceans and the oceans heat the atmosphere. Baroness Scotland should know that the British Isles are warmer for the latitude because of heat from the Gulf Stream.
The ignorance of the masses, and I include journalists, actors and politicians in this category, is staggering.
Well explained. But oceans do cool us, if you spend most of your time off the French Riviera.
This is my simple explanation of the Ice Ages. I think you will understand the simplicity of the warming of the earth and the coolimg of the earth. It is simple science we all leaarned in High School.
The amount of radiant heat hitting the earth from the sun daily is relatively constant. The radiant heat lost daily by the earth thru black sky radiation is constant since absolute zero is constant. The amount of heat gained by the earth’s surface depends on the surface area of the earth covered by water relative to that covered by land. Land area absorbs a larger percent of the radiant heat relative to the water area since the surface of the water reflects a percentage of the radiant heat back to outer space. The daily access heat, or loss of heat, is transferred to the eath thru conduction and convection where it works its way to the poles and it freezes water adding to the polar ice caps or melts the polar ice caps thus keeping the surface temperature of the oceans, thus the earth, relatively constant. As the polar ice caps grow or melt, the surface area of the earth covered by land relative to that covered by water changes. This is the definition of global warming. I call it Global Ice making and Global Ice Melting.
Kevin wrote:
“The “greenhouse gas” theory is invalid science. It does not follow that less than 1% of atmospheric gases dictate the thermal energy stored by the 99%”.
I agree with Kevin.
Kevin wrote:
“To be frank, the 0.04% of CO2 is of negligible influence in any case. In a solar eclipse, temperatures drop 5-20° C in 20 minutes, mocking the “greenhouse” in the Sun’s absence”.
I agree with Kevin.
Thank you Kevin.
Tony Heller has an excellent video today, where he checks peer reviewed papers for accuracy.
I wonder what he finds?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvL1Aj2vHIA
Could it be that no one gives a hoot?
Who pays them for that? The further anyone goes down an irrational, but popular path, the more funding can be justified just by referencing other peer-reviewed articles.
Dogmatic subjectivism prevails in the academic world precisely because it eliminates critical epistemic standards, and allows almost anyone to be funded for any half-brained idea they can invent that looks even remotely relevant to some other half-witted idea.
You are kind to call them “half-witted”. I would say “0.041 %” witted.
David Appell said, “…the greenhouse effect operates radiatively, not thermodynamically (that is, not via specific heat). There’s nothing classical about the GHE — it’s a consequence of quantum physics.
To be frank, there’s nothing quantum about the GHE, as I said, it’s invalid science, see my recent post under Robert’s. Most climate scientists do not understand quantum physics in the first place, and certainly do not understand thermodynamics, as you don’t, which is still completely relevant.
“…classical thermodynamics… is the only physical theory of universal content concerning which I am convinced that within the framework of the applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be overthrown.”
— Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes (1946)
Returning to your (less eminent) quotes, “Stating “CO2 does not cause warming” is in so much opposition to the scientific evidence”
That’s silly. When the top 200m of oceans warm even 1d C, they release so much CO2 that it would increase the atmosphere’s by about 6.5%, if much of it were not absorbed by increased plant/phytoplankton growth rates, because it is less soluble in warm water.
You simply have inverted the causal relationship, knowingly or not.
“…no one is going to take you seriously”.
People are starting to laugh at adults hiding behind duped children in order to drive panic in the population to get more funding from politicians.
No one is going to take the academic world seriously again after the full implications of the global warming scam are widely acknowledged, which is increasingly happening every day.
Remember, the mainstream media is now a minority channel, as people are moving in droves to alternative sites that are more honest, less politically biased, and more relevant to their own lives. It’s not like your dream USSR days where the press was completely dictated.
Kevin
You don’t need to only look to the USSR for an example of a 100% state-dictated press. The UK with its BBC was the exact same till about a decade ago when citizens started discovering an unbiased internet.
Einstein had this to say in 1917 about the radiative heating of gas:
During absorption and emission of radiation there is also present a transfer of momentum to the molecules. This means that just the interaction of radiation and molecules leads to a velocity distribution of the latter. This must surely be the same as the velocity distribution which molecules acquire as the result of their mutual interaction by collisions, that is, it must coincide with the Maxwell distribution. We must require that the mean kinetic energy which a molecule
per degree of freedom acquires in a Plank radiation field of temperature T be
kT / 2
this must be valid regardless of the nature of the molecules and independent of frequencies which the molecules absorb and emit.
http://inspirehep.net/record/858448/files/eng.pdf
Thank you, Phil, that’s a great reference. I have been having a dialogue with Prof. Happer over the last month or so, so I will forward this to him for consideration. He still hasn’t agreed with me.
Neither does Einstein.
Thanks, Bill. As some parties have said below, challenging the real science is unpopular. Even the sceptics have acceded to the Greenhouse Gas theory.
But, as Phil Salmon posted below, there is an excellent paper by Einstein confirming my perspective. I haven’t had an easy time finding English versions of Einstein’s papers, but that’s a good one.
Bringing hard science to bear on the problem with the Greenhouse Gas theory, which has simply not been done, and then getting people to consider it when most of them don’t understand the hard science, is a problem.
I’ll be releasing a validation of Arrhenius’ paper before long, which is what Gore referenced, showing it rather light and unjustified, even from its purely classical perspective, as it was pre-quantum molecular physics.
Importantly, however, is that scientific exploration in the 19th and early 20th century was inductive science, rather than the more empirical science of today. Students of our day who specialize in the sciences generally read 3-time regurgitated studies of original authors, which is truly dumb, as we should all be learning from the people who discovered/invented the science in the first place. The Planck’s, Bohr’s, Maxwell’s, Rayleigh’s and Einstein’s were first rate writers as well as scientists–there is no reason they should not be studied in their original today. They connected their scientific discover very capably to its inductive, perceptual origins, which connections are severed in the a-priorized, statistical science of today.
Because of this failing of education, modern scientists are mostly good with trees, but stink with forests.
You are of course wrong, Robert. Einstein exactly confirms my paper, which you probably have not read.
The point of my paper is that N2 and O2 are by far the primary stores of thermal energy in the atmosphere, which they gain from solar radiation by absorbing momentum from photons, at all wavelengths, including infrared.
Because they are the 99% of the atmosphere, their store of thermal energy determines whether the air is warming or not, and basically dictate the weather patterns under solar and cosmic influence. The “greenhouse gases” are completely irrelevant, and are a result of warming, not a cause.
Arrhenius’ theory was pre-quantum, and invalid, yet your cult promotes it as a dogma.
No one complains about your fluffy posts because they don’t read them, yet you can’t shut up, even if you have nothing to say but misrepresentation.
Most energy emitted by the planet is in the IR bandwidth. It is a function of surface temperature. These waves of energy interact with greenhouse gas molecules creating molecular translations and vibrations. Photon energy (E=hf) is converted to kinetic energy with a Maxwell quantum statistical velocity distribution. As Einstein said. Kinetic energy (heat) is imparted to nitrogen and oxygen molecules through collisions. Hence with more greenhouse gas molecules the atmosphere warms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6dSM_nDee8
Might Bugs’ very odd behavior be indicative of a descent into the heart of darkness?
Robert, you don’t actually understand what you are talking about.
Einstein above made it clear that the kinetic energy had to be apportioned amongst the degrees of freedom.
Well, there are present problems with the equipartition theorem, as I’ve mentioned to Dr. Happer. So let’s address them.
Firstly, “vibrations” are molecular energy storage degrees of freedom, as you can google. For your “greenhouse gas” theory, it is presented that the polyatomic molecules, like CO2 and CH4, have more degrees of freedom than the diatomic molecules, N2 and O2.
It is presumed that these extra degrees of freedom allow the polyatomics to store more energy–that is, thermal energy.
In steps thermodynamics–yes, that perfect theory Einstein went on about in the quote I referenced.
The polyatomic molecules can only store so much thermal energy, which is divided amongst their degrees of freedom. But their specific heat capacity, a both theoretically and experimentally derived number, limits the amount of thermal energy the polyatomics can store. In fact, CO2 can store less thermal energy for a given temperature change than the diatomics–surprise!
But the plot thickens. You see, energy level changes are about electrons, not about vibrations. Vibrations are classical!!! Energy level changes are quantum!!!
The silly “greenhouse gas” theory thinks the extra degrees of freedom are quantized and due to their modes of vibration.
Bzzzz. Wrong answer.
In fact, energy level changes do facilitate the absorption of thermal energy (which is what this whole thing is about), but these storage capacities are also dependent upon many other things, such as, for instance, pressure. CO2, for instance, stores 110Xs as much thermal energy at 75 atmospheres as it does at 1 atmosphere. Go figure, because not many people have. The way a scientists does this is to ask “why?”, which is probably a new question for you.
So, to further your ignorance, polyatomic molecules store only so much thermal energy, limited by the specific heat capacity. Einstein says this is dictated by his formula, allocated amongst the degrees of freedom. But, and herein lies the problem, if a diatomic molecule has 7 degrees of freedom (3 translation, 3 rotation, 1 vibration), and a polyatomic, say CO2 has more, say 9 (3 translation, 3 rotation, 3 vibration, or whatever), then clearly less thermal energy is stored in each one for the polyatomic. Adding degrees of freedom doesn’t increase the thermal energy storage capacity.
Now, let me tell you a little secret: if Dr. Happer doesn’t get this, and he is a leading sceptic, do you think it possible that no one gets it?
Ahhhh… that means the science is not settled.
And stop talking about your beloved “greenhouse gases” being the only ones able to absorb and radiate IR wavelengths, yes, that’s right, the ones that come from the Earth. N2 and O2 also do, as I quantify in my paper, if you would consider challenging your intellect.
If, as I said, “less thermal energy is stored in each DoF for the polyatomic” molecules, then we have to ask how can the equipartition theorem be valid for gases (experimental results say it is not).
That would put an imposed limit on their velocities, which is not a reasonable expectation.
I never liked the equipartition theorem any way, because it clashes so clearly with the Kinetic theory of gases, which has so much value for chemistry, engineering, life itself, etc.
The equipartition theorem is just a bit too clunky.
I am not omniscient, so if anyone else has insight into these issues, I’d appreciate the feedback. It is no crime to assert and validate ideas in public, as it stimulates the conversation and better understanding generally.
Robert
What you are saying (sorry – cut-and-pasting) would, I agree, be true if the universe was less than 300,000 years old. That is, if we were still in the light dominated epoch of the universe after the Big Bang, with baryonic particles still unable to form and the universe opaque to photons (too short a path between interactions).
But we’re not. For the last 13.9997 billion years after the light epoch ended the universe has become transparent and is matter dominated.
In the atmosphere this means that heat movement is more by convection than radiation. The only thing you can say is pure radiation is the transfer of heat from the sun to earth. As soon as sunlight hits the earth’s atmosphere however, radiation hands over to matter in controlling thermodynamics. Convection rises, radiation falls. Radiation becomes a result, not a cause, of convection.
Whoever wrote your cut-and-paste paragraph above seems to think that heat moves from the earth’s surface to space only by radiation (IR). This is nonsense. At the heart of this argument and if all CAGW arguments is an inversion of cause and effect. If a thing is heated, by radiation or convention or Brownian motion or chemistry or magic or whatever, it will radiate more because of its higher temperature. This does not mean that radiation was/is causative. Has it ever crossed your mind that anything other than IR radiation might transfer heat in the atmosphere?
Yes there is an emission height from which IR can reach space. Yes the height and temperature of this height are important, as Miskolczi showed. But it is absurd to assert that heat can only reach the emission altitude level from the surface or anywhere else by radiation only. Most of the heat transport is by convection. Just as CO2 in the atmosphere follows rather than leads ocean temperature, radiation in the atmosphere follows rather than leads convective heat transfer.
No, we have left the opaque light epoch and are firmly in the light-transparent matter dominated epoch. The only thing still opaque is (no I won’t say it, I’m trying to be nice :-)
Fanatics – both minority extremes in this – first recourse is to ad hom. For which they fail to take responsibility.
But it is a very odd physics from both of them. Equipartition of energy is statistical mechanics. Partitioning between modes has no implication for total kinetic energy and may reasonably be neglected in a discussion of the atmospheric greenhouse effect. With linear molecules the formula for the number of vibrational modes is.
3N – 5
So for carbon dioxide there are 4 modes and for nitrogen and oxygen 1. Kinetic energy parcels out between the vibrational states. Total kinetic energy can be added to or lost with molecules having an average velocity and a Maxwell speed distribution. Again statistical mechanics.
“A molecule has translational and rotational motion as a whole while each atom has it’s own motion. The vibrational modes can be IR or Raman active. For a mode to be observed in the IR spectrum, changes must occur in the permanent dipole (i.e. not diatomic molecules). Diatomic molecules are observed in the Raman spectra but not in the IR spectra. This is due to the fact that diatomic molecules have one band and no permanent dipole, and therefore one single vibration. An example of this would be O2 or N2. However, unsymmetric diatomic molecules (i.e. CN) do absorb in the IR spectra. Polyatomic molecules undergo more complex vibrations that can be summed or resolved into normal modes of vibration.
The normal modes of vibration are: asymmetric, symmetric, wagging, twisting, scissoring, and rocking for polyatomic molecules”
https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry_Textbook_Maps/Supplemental_Modules_(Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry)/Spectroscopy/Vibrational_Spectroscopy/Vibrational_Modes/Number_of_Vibrational_Modes_in_a_Molecule
Bolding is mine. You will find – btw – that if I do quote it is always referenced.
Ozone interacts with UV frequency photons, Oxygen and nitrogen scatter blue light. Why is the sky blue? Most of the sun’s energy gets through to the surface – with some reflected. The surface heats and emits IR frequency photons. The additional vibrational modes of greenhouse gases results in molecules gaining either kinetic energy when struck by IR frequency photons or undergoing quantum jumps in electron orbits. The latter involves the absorption and emission of IR frequency photons. Vibrations impart energy to other molecules in the atmosphere through collisions.
This is greenhouse gas theory 101 disputed only by a very small subset of skeptics. There are many other things with relevance to warming and cooling in the Earth system. But Bugs is hugely incompetent – and Phil is off with the fairies as usual – so we never get to the difficult bits.
Robert
You are in danger of seeming hypocritical. In almost all your posts you include ad-hom snarky comments about skeptics. Now you complain about “ad-hom” from me just because I pointed out your comment was obviously a cut and paste but without attribution. If you cut and paste you really should quote the source.
We are talking past each other as usual. I asked a simple question – often a politically incorrect thing to do. Why do you focus myopically on radiation interactions when convection moves as much heat or more in the atmosphere? No reply, just more copy-pasted text tweaked to look like your own.
All that IT fluorescence stuff is all well and good but does not answer the basic question of how heat moves in the atmosphere. The CAGW narrative is built on the lie that it is radiation only. This is impossible and absurd. Why are there clouds? How do gliders glide? Rising warm air, moving at least as much energy as radiation.
Why does CO2 “back radiation” work only in the troposphere sending photons back down? Why does it not also do the same thing above the emission height, sending photons back out to space? Reducing TSI?
I’m not expert in thermodynamic physics (and nor are you, although Kevin is). But I recognise a well-used tactic of politicised science of the mandated result. Create your own narrow frame of reference and restrict all discussion to this narrow frame. In nuclear radiation biology it’s restricted to mechanistic molecular/genetics of DNA damage and multi hit cancer models. In CO2 warming science it’s nothing but IR interactions with a trace component of the molecules in the atmosphere. Bigger questions like convection or Prigogine’s nonlinear thermodynamics are excluded. It’s more like a sport or game with pedantic rules and a very limited number of moves available, rather than open curiosity driven scientific inquiry. This kind of inquiry is anathema to politicised science and gets pushed out by political control of sciences.
If heat moves from the surface to the emission layer as much by convection as radiative interactions, if it turns out that the universe is indeed in the matter and not still in the light epoch, then the CO2 back radiation story becomes even more insignificant.
Thought experiment: if the atmosphere, or a walled off column of air, was denuded of CO2 but everything else stayed the same, would it become 30-50 degrees colder as is claimed?
I doubt that it would get even one degree colder. Call me whatever you want to call me but I still believe in gravity (my God I said it!)
Heat transfer in the atmosphere is predominantly through convection, as you say. Convection moves the big masses of air that have already been warmed.
Heat transfer also starts out predominantly through conduction in the boundary layer at the surface of the Earth. Then it rises in thermals to be distributed throughout the atmosphere, as you mention.
Radiation from Earth and solar energy is absorbed also by mostly N2/O2/Ar, with the <1% "greenhouse gases" making the most of their tiny part by leaving a record of their absorption that can be misinterpreted by politicians for confiscatory purposes (what a mess).
The CAGW narrative is built on the lie that it is radiation only. This is impossible and absurd.
I suppose this could be more wrong, but it is hard to imagine how.
You are in danger of seeming hypocritical. In almost all your posts you include ad-hom snarky comments about skeptics. Now you complain about “ad-hom” from me just because I pointed out your comment was obviously a cut and paste but without attribution.”
First of all I never quote without attribution and have not here. Secondly, I find it amusing that skeptics can feel personally slighted by my calling skeptics as a group nuts. What we have here is a collecting of no greenhouse effect nuts all saying different things but agreeing with each other. All wrapped in hand waving and polemic.
Third – there a quote above’
“For a mode to be observed in the IR spectrum, changes must occur in the permanent dipole (i.e. not diatomic molecules).”
“Permanent dipoles. These occur when two atoms in a molecule have substantially different electronegativity: One atom attracts electrons more than another, becoming more negative, while the other atom becomes more positive. A molecule with a permanent dipole moment is called a polar molecule..” Wikipedia
This is why greenhouse gases interact with outgoing IR photons – and nitrogen and oxygen do not. It is the start of the atmospheric greenhouse effect that is at it’s most elemental level purely quantum mechanics.
That’s your best attempt to keep people from thinking for themselves, isn’t it, RIE?
You have no idea what others are thinking, because you cannot think capably yourself. You are here to defend junk/pseudo science, which is what the “greenhouse gas” theory is, and you know it.
Each of my comments can be googled to validate–you don’t want people to. As an enemy of science, you are a threat to everyone you meet.
If someone disagrees with something I say, they can argue a point, or ignore it. But you are here to censor others, to stifle free enquiry and undermine learning.
This post has been hijacked by one sky dragon slayer in particular. He is at odds with even the majority of skeptics. And quite obviously with scientists like Roy Spencer, John Cristy and Judith Curry.
“Claiming there is no greenhouse effect is the fastest way to take yourself completely out of the picture.” Tony Heller
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/29/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-molecules-and-photons/
The acquisition of knowledge requires both discipline and humility. Bugs has neither.
You may think your response is rational, but it is not. You do not even address the arguments. You focus entirely on other people’s opinion, and clearly not everyone agrees with you.
That I have challenged the Greenhouse Gas theory is clear: but I do not need your, Tony’s or anyone else’s permission to do so.
That theory is invalid science, and very many people agree, including professionals, with PhDs in atmospheric science and physics.
I didn’t mean to hijack the post, I was only responding to others.
But if you think that science does not evolve, you are clearly unfamiliar with science.
I have an education/background in aerospace engineering, computer science, and epistemology and its application to AI, as well as in the history of science and particular in validation, or the scientific method.
You appear to be one of those intellectually stagnant types who likes to go around attempting to censor freedom of speech.
It is very simple. All molecules at temperatures above absolute zero have kinetic energy. What matters for climate is what is changing in the atmosphere and its impact on global energy dynamics.
This is the wrong place to challenge the greenhouse theory as this is a totally non-serious joint.
Get thee to a journalery where the anonymous blue-team reviewers can eat you alive with extreme prejudice.
The question is, prejudice based upon what? Politics? Prior commitments? Expectations of conformity, or not rocking the ship? Financial conflict of interest?
A rational person would be naive to think that all is well in the halls of academia. Most unis derive much revenue from governments, which are anything but unbiased, suffering as they do to resolve conflicts of interest in their faction-oligarchies, or 4-year monarchies, as they’ve become.
A smart person would take the concept to the street, and get feedback, interacting with presumed know-it-alls who had all kinds of conflicts of interest, as well as none.
A communist state has very poor conferences on the intellectual foundations of human liberty, endorsed though they may be by the highest authorities.
The premise behind my paper was that momentum is transferred by photons of any energy level to molecules of any nature. Translational energy is not quantized. For the academic world, that means they ignore molecular velocities in atmospheric science, as Robert has emphasized, and is a trap standard textbooks fall into as well. This truncation of the largest part of molecular energy has dumbed-down everyone uniformly.
History’s best minds confirm that translational energy is not quantized, and the Kinetic theory of gases is built upon it.
But you can’t ignore it as a venue for storing thermal energy in the atmosphere by the 99+% of gases.
Based upon science. Like Happer, I don’t think you’re ready.
To you.
Based on historical science, most of today’s climate “scientific” community is nuts, looking over their shoulders instead of thinking for themselves.
JCH! I think you are the only non-serious one here. But it makes sense you would then see it that way.
There is a reason they are called greenhouse gases – and that nitrogen and oxygen are not. It is such obvious scientific nonsense supported by hand waving and empty headed skeptic rhetoric. If you believe him you science, integrity and civility.
Truly vacuous comment, Robert.
“There is a reason that we call turning iron ore into gold, alchemy.
It is because it is alchemy.”
CO2, CH4, water vapour and the chlorofluorocarbons are called “greenhouse gases” because of the theory: that does not make the theory valid.
If you believe Bugs – you sacrifice science, integrity and civility.
That’s the fundamental difference between you and a scientist, Robert.
A scientist does not expect anyone to “believe” our ideas.
We show and explain them, and use evidence and reasons to persuade rationally, to establish causality and forces at work.
You defame, ridicule, and make inane comments that do not enlighten, often attempting to impress, in order to garner belief, while trying to keep other readers from considering with their own minds some idea that threatens your own beliefs.
Scientists speak to the intelligence of others, not to gain their obedience or conformity. No sincere scientist wants someone to believe without questioning. At issue is the topic and the nature of the world. A new idea to a scientist that is different to what they have seen presents a challenge–it is something they hope for, not are threatened by.
It is very simple – diatomic molecules do not have a permanent dipole and so do not interact with outgoing IR frequency photons.
It’s not necessary for a molecule to absorb quantized photon energy by interaction (by the way, both N2 and O2 also have a vibrational and rotational DoFs, they do not show in spectral readings lacking dipoles–but they still have energies associated with these motions).
As I have made clear, internal molecular energies are not the only energy of a molecule–the far more significant energy for atmospheric science is their translational velocity, the basis for increasing thermal energy of the 99%, upon which the Kinetic theory of gases is based, where 3 DoF velocities are increased not on a quantum basis, but on a classical basis as the photon, travelling at near light speed, transfers momentum to the molecule on passing, through electric field affects on the molecule’s photon/electron.
It is very simple. All molecules at temperatures above absolute zero have kinetic energy. What matters for climate is what is changing in the atmosphere and its impact on global energy dynamics.
If only the harvest of actual food this year had been collected with the same zealous efficiency with which the scythe of censorship has been swung here to protect impressionable bloggers from the influence of the dangerous preachers of carbon heresy. Sadly not.
While Madrid showers the world with a storm of outraged self-righteous jowl-flapping over catastrophic global warming (yes – that’s still the story) and works itself into a frenzy of wrath against unbelievers, the farmers in North America have been trying to collect a harvest.
Soy 30% down from cold-shortened season.
Maize 50% down from cold-shortened season.
Sunflower 70% down from cold-shortened season.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/11/12/state-of-the-crops-address-usda/
But those farmer rednecks all voted Trump so serves them right, let them eat cake.
Since the rest of us are unaffected by what happens on redneck farms and download our food from Google and Apple, no worries for us eh?
https://scijinks.gov/review/polar-vortex/vortex-diagram.png
“Regular, strong polar vortex with fairly stable jet stream (left) compared to the early 2014 weak polar vortex with a detached low pressure system over the United States and wavy jet stream (right).”
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa9152/meta
https://www.aer.com/science-research/climate-weather/arctic-oscillation/
Farmers are high tech these days – but a weak polar vortex may well be more prominent in NH climate should there be a Grand Solar Min.
e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535
But then there may be multiple factors involved.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26278-crazy-weather-traced-to-arctics-impact-on-jet-stream/
This year large areas of fields were so saturated they could not be planted until they dried out, which takes weeks to occur. Many fields remain lakes to this day.
Cold-shortened seasons? Did that report happen to come out of Colorado where pot is legal?
Just wait until they fail to get a hard, prolonged freeze in the winter. Then you’ll see fireworks.
Poor harvests because farmers all stoned on pot? That sounds like something Joe Stalin would have said. (Ask your uncle, he’d remember :-)
The person who claimed corn and soy crops have been stilted by a cold-shortened growing season is on a hallucinatory drug.
Either that or he was born dumbbbb as heck.
The 2019 growing season was shorten by the inability to plant a large amount of field area in the spring due the fields being too wet.
Responding to Robert,
Yes, I left Cornell grad school, where my thesis was AI applications in aerospace engineering design, after recognizing that without a science of epistemology, we would never have successful AI.
I spent about 10 years in total developing a broad-based, historically distinct epistemological theory, including new theories of deduction (theory of reasoning), validation (scientific method), induction (concept formation), concepts and lexicology (theory of meaning). I set up a little farm in a small developing country so that I could do this work independently, which supplied all the supermarkets, restaurants and hotels with 15 different fruits and vegetables. You cannot work on a farm at night, so I lived on the edge of a jungle and did my research.
After accomplishing my task, discovering an underlying order at the basis of epistemology that could serve as a foundation for a science of epistemology, I then spent a couple of years at Oxford’s Bodleian, at the time arguably the world’s best philosophical library, doing a full philosophical comparison of my new view with the history of Western thought, demonstrating to myself that it was historically distinct, and solved many, if not most, of the problems in the field.
Subsequently I was admitted to grad philosophy at the LSE, where upon reviewing my paper called Validation of Premises, leading philosophers of mind in the London university system said that I was “either a genius or a crackpot”. Since I have at last measure a 164 IQ, I assumed the former, wrote a book on the theories’ application to the humanities, then founded a software company that developed the first technology to deliver direct answers to questions from live, unstructured text, purchased and used by such companies as P&G and Litton Aerospace. A Global 100 firm offered to acquire the firm and its 30+ employees, these applications attesting to the validity of the theory as an emerging science of knowledge. Our Natural Language Reasoning technology used my theory of deduction, the lexicological theory, and the symbolic representation derived for the theory of Validation.
My purpose in addressing the global warming “science” was to test my theory of validation on a real scientific challenge, rather than just a technological one, and used this much improved scientific method to systematically assess the validity of the Greenhouse Gas theory, finding it invalid. I will shortly introduce the Greenhouse Functionality Theory, demonstrating the efficacy of my theory of induction in creating new and valid scientific theory.
My motives thus are purely scientific, and my efforts highly disciplined.
“…seems to be path-breaking research in the domain. The paper reads nice and the science involved is analogous and clear. This paper is a hallmark and would benefit the advances in science, government planning as well as policy makers for the next course of action. I congratulate you for this great work and thank for giving me an opportunity to read it and enlighten myself.”
PhD, Atmospheric Sci and Meteorology, IISc
M.Sc., Geophysics, ISC
BSc., (Hons) Physics, Delhi U
Kevin
You may be interested in the work of Ronan and Michael Connolly at http://www.oprj.net. They have analyzed lots of radiosonde data sets using a new method and conclude the greenhouse effect is very small or nonexistent.
Kevin Alexanderman,
Thanks you for infroming readers of your background. Might I suggest you add it to the Deinzens II thread here: https://judithcurry.com/2015/02/15/denizens-ii/
Well, I’ve appreciated your posts, Kevin, my LSE background was economics, 1961-64.
Kevi
Kevin, as an applied epistemologist, your work sounds interesting. Can you give a link or two to something one can read?
Off topic, I have done knowledge engineering to animal instinctive behavior and concluded that a
Instinct is a body of expert knowledge – http://horsecognition.blogspot.com
Comments not working.
https://www.amazon.com/OutThinking-your-Competition-Using-Technology-ebook/dp/B075FD3LRC
Concept analysis is my field so will try to get to this.
Dec 4, 2019 Rewriting History, One State At A Time
Colorado’s record high temperature has just been rewritten. This video examines the validity of that claim.
https://youtu.be/GfzFZ0dJV8U
Pingback: Climate Roundup 5 December | Catallaxy Files
This is probably the most common sense recap of the climate controversy I’ve seen. Thank you.
February 13, 2017 Chemistry Expert: Carbon Dioxide Can’t Cause Global Warming
Scarcely a day goes by without us being warned of coastal inundation by rising seas due to global warming. Why on earth do we attribute any heating of the oceans to carbon dioxide, when there is a far more obvious culprit, and when such a straightforward examination of the thermodynamics render it impossible.
http://principia-scientific.org/chemistry-expert-carbon-dioxide-cant-cause-global-warming/
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
“In the climate wars, I see this behavior from both skeptics and alarmists. The alarmists point to increasing storms, heat waves, wildfires, etc. as evidence that humans are making weather worse. When they are shown evidence from a century of more of data that, no, things are not getting worse, these ‘storm truthers’ still bitterly cling to their beliefs while calling us skeptics “deniers”.
On the flip side, I routinely engage skeptics who claim that there is no such thing as the greenhouse effect, and that it is physically impossible for the cold atmosphere to make the surface warmer by increasing its CO2 content, anyway. No matter how many different ways I try to show how they are wrong, they never change their stance.
As a result, despite being a skeptic on the subject of humans having a serious effect on global climate, I’ve had to block more fellow skeptics from commenting on my blog than I have blocked alarmists. So, I get attacked from people on both sides of the issue.” Roy Spencer
“Given the huge benefits of more CO2 to agriculture, to forestry, and to primary photosynthetic productivity in general, more CO2 is almost certainly benefitting the world,” the authors wrote. William Happer
The greenhouse gas ‘cult’ is deeply entrenched – even with William Happer.. It is almost certainly the case that anthropogenic emissions are warming the planet. And yes – we may use elevated CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to restore carbon content of soils and ecosystems. Which is where the real benefits kick in.
This paper use a lot of words but say nothing of value. Never, in this planets long history, has environmental changes taken place with the speed it has over the last 200 years.
This paper use a lot of words but say nothing of value. Never, in this planets long history, has environmental changes taken place with the speed it has over the last 200 years.
Don’t repeat yourself, dear!
Per IPCC: primary causes for human caused climate change: population and economic growth. Problem: Warming and sea levels rise : 0.3 Deg. C/decade and 4 mm/yr resp. Everybody knows or should know that the problem is wicked and solution(s) can at best be clumsy/non-elegant yet entire Governments “plan” to yr. 2030-2050-2100 and beyond?
Admiral William Bull Halsey (hit hard, fast, often) when told weather forecasts in the WW II Pacific theater were inaccurate at best responded: “I know they’re useless but I need them for planning purposes”.
My point: GW is a “wicked mess”. I lifted this from Dr. Curry’s (un) motivated reasoning 2017 end of year essay. Current top down global “solutions” and grandiose plans are mere posturing and virtue signaling from various actors.
Why Climate Alarmism Hurts Us All
By Michael Shellenberger
“Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among teenagers are at their highest levels in two decades in Britain and the United States.
There is growing evidence that apocalyptic climate change rhetoric is contributing to them.
I
n September, British psychologists warned of the impact on children of apocalyptic discussions of climate change. “There is no doubt in my mind that they are being emotionally impacted,” one expert said.
Here’s why climate scientists and activists are speaking out against the unscientific alarmism.”
Full article in Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/12/04/why-climate-alarmism-hurts-us-all
As I said in response to your first adhom accusation – the terms I used were the ones you first used. You have doubled down on your disparagement since. You stalked David Appell and myself with silly little sock puppets and gross insults. These have of course disappeared since. Who’s the troll?
And it seems that William Happer doesn’t accept your junk science either.
It was meant as a response to Bugs Bunny above.
Place your bets:
When does the the next glaciation start?
Everything else is bollocks.
The other question is where.
My bet would be Antarctica.
That continent and surrounding ocean led us into the Holocene with ocean warming starting already 20,000 years ago.
http://home.sandiego.edu/~sgray/MARS350/deglaciation.pdf
By natural symmetry Antarctica will most likely lead us back to glacial inception. There has been a persistent and pronounced cold anomaly in the ocean surrounding Antarctica for many years that no-one ever comments on. Instead the media attention is fixed on warm and melt on the Western peninsula of Antarctica only which happens to be sitting on a chain of active volcanoes (the journalists usually fail to mention that detail). Glacial inception has probably already started.
Today down under
https://www.iceagenow.info/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum-nasa/
https://i.imgur.com/oC1qfP1.png
Anthropogenic CO2, big medicine, kicks the next glaciation’s butt into a galaxy far far away.
https://i.imgur.com/oC1qfP1.png
Yes the IceAgeNow site mistakenly posted a record Antarctic sea ice maximum from 2014 as if it were this year. Post in haste, repent at leisure.
What’s up, doc?
Your Op-Ed was published in “the Australian” today.
Well done.
Environmental science is a practical, team based, multidisciplinary field that solves complex problems that have ‘wicked’ dimensions of culture, history, economics and environment. It synergistically – the whole is greater than the parts – integrates physical and biological sciences within a real world context of society. It provides the most flexible and comprehensive approach to designing sustainable futures, assessing and managing environmental risk and environmental planning and management. The alternative is the politics of despair.
There is a myopic vision involving narratives of moribund western economies governed by corrupt corporations collapsing under the weight of internal contradictions – leading to less growth, less material consumption, less CO2 emissions, less habitat destruction and a last late chance to stay within the safe limits of global ecosystems. And this is just in the ‘scholarly’ journals. It is complete nonsense from a small minority. Economic growth in well managed markets is the foundation for any solution.
But there is plenty of room for catastrophe in a system as naturally and dramatically variable as climate.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/bifurcations1-e1565126351114.png
e.g.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2019/10/18/thresholds-and-epochs-in-the-grand-climate-system/
“We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced.” http://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252
In the absence of any guarantee that change will not be catastrophic – pragmatic responses that reduce pressures on the Earth system should be encouraged in the interest of mental health. In the interim – I have taken on advice og The Kominsky Method and greet myself in the mirror in the morning with the brightest smile I can manage. Sets up the entire day.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/14729315_185611671889159_1633264217574689588_n1-2.jpg
The irony is curtailing the use of fossil fuels will have no effect on climate. Humanity’s contribution since 1909 is about 0.5 K nearly all (~96%) from increased water vapor from increased irrigation. The good news is the added WV will slow the decline to the coming ice age.
#Hitran, using Quantum Mechanics, calculates, besides many other things, the relative absorb/emit intensity of water vapor molecules vs CO2 molecules. The calculator is here: http://spectralcalc.com/spectral_browser/db_intensity.php Comparison at zero altitude is shown at https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECWhyyDUYAA1P89?format=jpg&name=medium . Comparison by the ratio of the summation of intensities (line lengths) for each wavenumber for each molecule species is 8.7/0.07 = 124. On average at ground level, according to the low populations used by Hitran, WV molecules outnumber CO2 molecules by about 8,000/330 ≈ 24 to one. After accounting for molecule count, each WV molecule is still 124/24 ≈ 5 times more effective at warming (absorb/emit of thermal radiation) than a CO2 molecule.
The relative effectiveness of the increases of WV and CO2 over 30 years is calculated as follows:
CO2 increase in 3 decades, 1988 to 2018 = 407 – 348 = 59 parts per million by volume (ppmv)
Average global water vapor increase trend from NASA/RSS TPW data, is 0.04272/28.9 * 100 * 10 = 1.47 % per decade.
Average global WV ≈ 10,000 ppmv. WV increase in 3 decades = .0147 * 10,000 * 3 = 441 ppmv
Therefore, WV increase has been about 441/59 * 5 = 37+ times more effective at increasing ground level temperature than CO2 increase 1988-2018. (Most of the world has been falsely indoctrinated.)
Well above the tropopause, about 10 km (33,000 feet), radiation emitted from molecules there to space is primarily from CO2 molecules. If you ignore the increase in water vapor (big mistake), near the surface, WV averages about 10,000 ppmv. The increase in absorbers at ground level since 1900 is then about 10,410/10,295 ≈ 1%. WV above the tropopause is limited to about 32 ppmv because of the low temperature (~ -50 °C) while the CO2 fraction remains essentially constant with altitude at 410 ppmv; up from about 295 ppmv in 1900. The increase in emitters to space at high altitude (~> 30 km, 0.012 atm), and accounting for the lower atmospheric pressure, is (410 + 32)/(295 + 32) * 0.012 ≈ 1.6%. This easily explains why CO2 increase does not cause significant warming (except at the poles) and might even cause cooling. The result being that Climate Sensitivity is not significantly different from zero. The exception at the poles is because it’s cold there at ground level so WV is already low.
Humanity has contributed to warming but it’s from added water vapor not added CO2 http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
Judith’s related article in today’s Australian newspaper has had 295 online comments so far, mostly highly supportive.
Robert says, “the Rydberg formula doesn’t work with polyatomic molecules”, which is irrelevant, as its use refers to N2 and O2, as shown by NIST. This means that N2 and O2 have IR wavelengths, as here, https://tinyurl.com/N2-IR-wavelengths and here, https://tinyurl.com/O2-IR-wavelengths
Then Robert says “Einstein was talking energy partitioning between available vibrational modes. You have not a clue.”
So energy of a molecule is not partitioned across velocity? Dr Happer would disagree. And so would anyone with honesty and a brain.
The emission/absorption of both N2 and O2 through IR wavelengths is shown clearly, and your saying that Einstein does not partition molecular energy along velocity is insane.
If you are honest, then you have been duped. But the “greenhouse gas” theory is invalid, as you basically have confirmed.
Vibrational and rotational energy is in statistical mechanics equipartitioned within molecules between available vibrational modes. Total kinetic energy of atmospheric molecules has a translational Maxwell speed distribution. Neither is the intrinsic property of a permanent dipole in greenhouse gases – not in nitrogen and oxygen – that results in interactions with outgoing IR frequency photons.
You say, Robert, “Total kinetic energy of atmospheric molecules has a translational Maxwell speed distribution.”
Not important. The kinetic energy of 99% of the atmosphere’s gas is determined by the temperature, which is affected through conduction from the surface boundary layer, convection, and absorption of radiation through momentum transfer from interaction with the passing photon electric fields.
You say further, “Neither is the intrinsic property of a permanent dipole in greenhouse gases – not in nitrogen and oxygen – that results in interactions with outgoing IR frequency photons.”
This statement is as convoluted as most of your reasoning.
The kinetic energy of an N2 molecule, for instance, is not intrinsic to it. But it has protons and electrons that acquire momentum from passing electric fields of photons, whatever their wavelength may be. This Raman effect induces a non-permanent dipole momentum, not “intrinsic” to use your mis-term, to the molecules.
It is very simple. The kinetic energy energy of nitrogen and oxygen overwhelmingly is caused by collisions with greenhouse gas molecules. The latter is what’s changing.
For God’s sake I thought you were going. The first thing you did was call me an academic bozo in response to a comment on development and environments. Incorrect – but it’s called playing to the room. You then obsessively pollute the post with off topic ‘no greenhouse effect’ junk science consisting of name dropping and hand waving wrapped in polemic and gross abuse. You then call yourself a genius. 🤣
“Almost all theories of thermal radiation rest on the considerations of the interaction between radiation and molecules. But, in general, one is satisfied with dealing only with the energy exchange, without taking into account the momentum exchange. One feels justified in this because the momentum transferred by radiation is so small that it always drops out as compared to that from other dynamical processes. But for the theoretical considerations, this small effect is on an equal footing with the energy transferred by radiation because energy and momentum are very intimately related to each other; a theory may therefore be considered correct only if it can shown that the momentum transferred accordingly from the radiation to the matter leads to the kind of motion that is demanded by thermodynamics.”
Einstein, 1917, The Quantum Theory of Radiation
What this means is that while Einstein omitted the momentum changes from radiation that were not quantized, the interaction between a molecule and radiation still imparted momentum.
This is how N2 and O2 absorb energy from all wavelengths, including IR, originating from either the Earth or the Sun. Not through absorption of discreet packets, but from the transfer of momentum from photons speed of light.
Yes, it is small, but my calculation at https://www.climatesciencejournal.com/invalidity-of-greenhous-gas-thy/ shows that it is not negligible, amounting to up to 5m/s increase for each 700nm (beginning of IR spectrum) photon passing an N2 molecule.
Again the “greenhouse gas” theory is invalid, as it does not recognize the absorption of what is also known as Rayleigh scattering energy on the majority of molecules in the atmosphere.
This momentum absorption produces a right shift (blue) that is clear on any spectral distribution of solar or Earth radiation.
CO2 may absorb IR lines, but the IR it absorbs may have already been shifted to IR by N2 or O2 molecules in particular.
This momentum absorption produces a right shift (blue) that is clear on any spectral distribution of solar or Earth radiation.
CO2 may absorb IR lines, but the IR it absorbs may have already been shifted to IR by N2 or O2 molecules in particular.
Regarding the Rydberg-Ritz combination principle, its relevance is in regards to absorption/emission of energy quanta by N2 or O2, not their momentum exchange as above.
We ask, for example, whether an N2 molecule can absorb an IR photon of 800nm in ~200nm increments?
We call this Raman or Compton scattering. So, yes, N2 molecules can absorb IR radiation, per Rydberg-Ritz, and leave photons with less energetic wavelengths (blue shift), again showing the “greenhouse gas” theory invalid.
CO2 bands may be distinctly absorbing IR wavelengths, but it does not mean that all solar/Earth IR energy that is radiated is being absorbed by CO2 in those wavelengths, as it may be transmuted from higher energy photons by N2, O2 or Ar before being absorbed by CO2, still leaving distinct bands of absorption.
While many IR wavelengths may be absorbed in part before becoming longer wavelengths, not showing IR absorption except through blue shift.
Consider a hurricane.
It is a huge transfer of energy by convection. Certainly not much is by radiation.
Presumably people here are interested in climate.
Most of the thermal energy in molecules in the atmosphere is stored and transferred as velocities of molecules–not their internal energy, which is the quantum regime.
This is confirmed by the Kinetic Theory of Gases.
If this topic is not of interest to this crowd, let me know. As I prepare the more serious paper, on the Greenhouse Functionality theory, I appreciate any earnest dialogue and feedback. Sorry to hog the space today, but my arguments against the prevailing paradigm are not trivial.
All those buoyant, warm molecules of nitrogen and oxygen gas lift cars, destroy buildings, and end lives. CO2 is irrelevant when we look at climate or weather, as a trivial store of internal energy that is ignored on the larger store of convective and thermal energy of molecular velocity.
Kevin
Almost all theories of thermal radiation rest on the considerations of the interaction between radiation and molecules. But, in general, one is satisfied with dealing only with the energy exchange, without taking into account the momentum exchange.
Einstein, 1917.
Crazy that Einstein was having the same absorption versus momentum argument 100 years ago that we are having now. Equally crazy that climate science has become dominated by a belief that apart from “radiative gasses” the atmosphere has no interaction with IR radiation. Has it been demonstrated that a glass bulb filled with nitrogen and oxygen only will fail to warm up at all in an IR radiation field? I doubt it.
Like a virus the CAGW hypothesis has mutated into multiple strains making refutation more difficult. But most explanations of it describe only IR absorption/emission interactions as if this is all there is to atmospheric thermodynamics. Convection is minimised or ignored entirely. There is 2500 times more N2 and O2 in the atmosphere than CO2 and this is considered thermally inert. If N2 and O2 interact with IR even 100 times more weakly than CO2 then CO2 is already insignificant.
It is simply a mandated dogma that scientists are terrified of contradicting. I’m sure there are physical experiments that could be done to decisively settle the issue one way or the other, but I doubt any such proposals would be looked on with favour by academic grant awarding bodies.
Let’s together explain an observation I did yesterday.
It was a December 3d in Athens.
The days are much shorter now – at 5 pm it is getting dark.
But it was a clear sky day and the sun at 11 am was burning.
In the house it was much colder, it was significantly colder inside, than outside on the sunlit veranda.
It was a natural thought then, to wide open the veranda’s door to let in the warm air.
When doing so the outside very cold air, much colder than that inside, swooped in making the house colder.
It was a big difference between the air temperature and the outside sunlit warmth.
What I thought was that the air remained snowy cold in the almost burning sunshine. It was very hot outside even in the shade, away of direct insolation.
Isn’t that a kind of experiment proving the air is transparent to the high frequency solar irradiation?
Note that it was a clear sky dry winter day. There was not much water vapor in the air.
Christos
Remarkable – the air outside your house changed from hot to cold to hot again in just a few minutes? Within a single blog post? We have discovered a new climate oscillation. I suggest we call it the VIO – the “Veranda Intradiurnal Oscillation” :-)
It is not difficult to predict that ionization of the lower stratosphere by galactic radiation increases during the minimum solar activity, which causes the temperature of the lower stratosphere to increase.
“About once a week, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launch a helium balloon with radiation sensors to the stratosphere over California. This is a unique monitoring program aimed at tracking the cosmic ray situation in Earths atmosphere. During each flight, our balloon passes through something called the Regener-Pfotzer Maximum, a layer of peak radiation about 20 km above Earths surface.”
https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2018/06/07/what-is-the-regener-pfotzer-maximum/
Ionization by GCR is not evenly distributed. It depends on the geomagnetic field and is concentrated in high latitudes.
http://sol.spacenvironment.net/raps_ops/current_files/Cutoff.html
See temperature anomalies of the lower stratosphere (82.5 S to 60.0 S).
http://images.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/TLS_v40/plots/RSS_TS_channel_TLS_Southern%20Polar_Land_And_Sea_v04_0.short.png
Temperature in the lower stratosphere in the north.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t100_nh_f00.png
The article in Quora Digest that I refered to explained that the growing time of the orange crop has been shortening around Orange Beach, Alabama. It has been moving south.
The Vostok Ice Core shows that about 18,000 years ago Nature began depositing ice at the poles. To me this is proof the new Ice Age has begun.
The oceans went down until the Ice Shelf began breaking off. The Ice shelf is now breaking off at a rate equal to the daily heat loss of the earth to the Black Sky. This is nature keeping the average surface temperature of the earth constant. Because the melting of the ice is trying to lower the average surface temperature nature is lowering the average surface temperature of the earth in the northern hemisphere.
You have to understand BLACK SKY RADIATION AND THE FACT THAT WATER REFLECTS RADIANT HEAT FROM THE SUN!!!!
Orange Beach, Alabama?
Lol.
How about Iowa? A place where actual food for steaks and hamburgers is seriously grown.
You may LOL. I sit here and GQ (giggle quietly) Eventually you will have to understand BLACK SKY RADIATION!!!
I am not a climate scientist but a once-upon-a-time engineer. I lived in Rio when the first IPCC took place and have followed closely, but silently, ever since. Like many on this blog and elsewhere I am dismayed at the way this is going. Judith Curry is a voice of calm, of logic and of reason. How is it possible that the many, similarly thoughtful scientists have allowed climate change to be hijacked by extremists – in science, in governments, in the UN and by the press? Why do so many people, including so many of my friends, think that it’s only a lack of government will that stops the “on the shelf” solutions from being rolled out tomorrow? A few more solar panels, a few more wind turbines, plentiful green hydrogen for cars, ships and planes, $100 billion for the UN and its all done! Extinction rebellion think it can be done by 2025 – my friends by 2030! When I try to talk to them their eyes glaze over – John thinks he knows better than 97% of scientists!
Today I read the paper by Tim Palmer and Bjorn Stevens (above). They seem level headed and in the same camp as Judith. As a layman, I found the paper a difficult read in parts but they seem to be saying that some of the science is settled so let’s act on that part, such that it is, and not lose the plot in the mess that is unsatisfactory models and partial understanding. There is a nuance here though – they fear that admitting the unsettled part will cast doubt on all of it. I see that failure to admit the unsettled part allows deniers to reject even the settled part but allows zealots to go for broke in an attempt to overthrow the world order – and it is the unsettled part that gives them the license to do this. If the contents of this paper were widely known common sense would return to the debate.
There are many respected scientists, including Judith, who have been branded deniers and thrown in among the nutcase crowd. I beg the serious scientists who don’t buy the “everything is settled” label to get together in sufficient numbers to show the world that they are the real 97%. Then the governments would be able to act and to believe in their action – with a list probably not dissimilar to Judith’s, Tim’s and Bjorn’s proposals, As the 16 year old said “let’s do it now”. Please.
I rise to support belief in the emergency of climate! (?)
According to that most eminent of online references:
“In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own. These properties or behaviors emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.
“The formation of complex symmetrical and fractal patterns in snowflakes exemplifies emergence in a physical system.
“Temperature is sometimes used as an example of an emergent macroscopic behaviour.
“For thermodynamics, a thermodynamic state of a system is its condition at a specific time, that is fully identified by values of a suitable set of parameters known as state variables, state parameters or thermodynamic variables. … For an idealized continuous or quasi-static process, this means that infinitesimal incremental changes in such variables are exact differentials.” (with path-independent properties)
Classical thermodynamics is a proper methodology for analyzing emergent properties. Statistical mechanics is better reserved for discussion of equilibria and perturbations thereof. (Boltzmann’s constant is the ratio of thermodynamic property of a hypothetical dilute gas to Avogadro’s number.)
There seems a popular misconception that complex, chaotic systems are unpredictable. Emergence, however, implies existence of physical properties not to be deduced by reductionist argument. Thermal convection in fluids is an emergent property with a threshhold set by an adiabatic gradient (Landau). That observed gradients are approximately adiabatic implies convection to be a determining energy transport process. A common belief in climate science is that this gradient is some sort of thermo-gravimetric equilibrium property. But, as Maxwell pointed out to Kelvin more than a century ago, this would be a clear violation of the 2nd Law.
Climate, whatever one’s definition, temperature, entropy, dissipation and even the arrow of time are emergent properties and it is surely the last which poses the existential threat for mankind.
An emergent structures analysis of climate is applied starting at Section 17 of http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com With 5-year smoothing applied to reported temperatures it achieves a 96.7 % match to measured temperatures 1895-2018,
Kevin wrote:
“The premise behind my paper was that momentum is transferred by photons of any energy level to molecules of any nature. Translational energy is not quantized”.
Yes!
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
A fundamental mistake being expressed in IPCC reports appears to be a lack of understanding and/or misapplication of the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. CC applies only at saturation. The only place in the atmosphere where saturation exists is in clouds. The total volume of clouds is a tiny part of the total volume of the atmosphere.
Another fundamental mistake is the assertion in FAQ 8.1 “…the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is controlled mostly by air temperature, rather than by emissions.” WV content is only controlled by air temperature at saturation.
And another, WV, since it has been accurately measured worldwide (1988), has increased at an average rate higher than possible from feedback. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELCsPMHUcAAHcID?format=jpg&name=small
Demonstration that CO2 has no significant effect on climate but WV does was provided above.
Dan, as I said on the last post, the Clausius-Clapeyron equation assumes equilibrium, not saturation.
Please study its derivation.
DA, The Wiki definition includes “…dp/dt is the slope of the tangent to the coexistence curve at any point.” If not saturated, the atmosphere is subject to the ideal gas laws. I am puzzled how you (and a lot of others) apparently got so falsely indoctrinated on this.
Dan, I’m not going to discuss science with someone who always insults me. Apologize, stop it and we can go on.
DanP wrote:
Demonstration that CO2 has no significant effect on climate but WV does was provided above.
By what mechanism does water vapor affect the climate?
Water vapor is a ghg and it has been increasing faster than possible from feedback (temperature increase of the liquid water).
Dan, good afternoon.
Can you, please, comment the following:
Heat of water vaporization 2.270 kj/kg
Air specific heat 1,005 kj/kg
Does it mean the 1 % water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere when saturated to approximately warm the air 2.270/100 = +22,7 oC ?
Thank you.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
1% WV is by volume. By wt must apply ratio of molecular weights so is about 0.62% by wt.
I haven’t seen much on this but I will offer my opinion. Radiation to space occurs over much of altitude to account for much of the cooling. Condensation occurs in clouds but not all WV condenses. The population decline of WV is about 1200 to 1 from ground to tropopause because of temperature and pressure decline with altitude. So, no, you are not going to see that much change at any one location. You might develop some more insight from Figures 0.7 and 2 in http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
The effect of any GHG depends not just on its concentration, but also on its absorption cross section. The latter can be very big; for CO2 it can be of order 1 m^2….
DA,
Hitran QM assessment, as expressed in my first post above, determined that each water vapor molecule is 5 times more effective as a ghg than a CO2 molecule.
Christos, it is not always 2.270 kJ/kg. It depends on temperature.
A really well-spoken young climate scientist,
Indeed!
Her denialism is clearly based on ideology, not science.
Just because she’s pretty doesn’t mean she’s right.
It is perhaps not science denial at all – but a social analysis from a classic liberal perspective that is correct as far as it goes. The political motivations sky dragon slayers Christos and the curmudgeon Bugs are suspect. As are yours.
And you, of course, have no biases…..
How does my quoting Hayek not give the game away? Naomi and I stand in stark opposition to a myopic vision involving narratives of moribund western economies governed by corrupt corporations collapsing under the weight of internal contradictions – leading to less growth, less material consumption, less CO2 emissions, less habitat destruction and a last late chance to stay within the safe limits of global ecosystems. And this is just in the ‘scholarly’ journals.
Optimum economic development in well managed markets is the foundation for meeting all of humanities 21st century challenges.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/02/madrid/#comment-903727
Vague word salad saying little. Want to translate that into English?
I guess you mean the first paragraph – which is a paraphrase of a passage from a peer reviewed article. Pretty close to the original word salad.
No excuse. I had almost no idea what you were trying to say.
Don’t get mad just because I hoped to get a translation of the stuffy intellectualism from all the ‘scholarly’ journals you read.
Go try to impress people somewhere else. Science isn’t an intellectual weapon.
It is in plain English and doesn’t seem difficult to grasp. One can find countless examples of these attitudes. Go try and bamboozle someone else.
bamboozle – transitive verb – trick
deceive, delude, hoodwink, mislead
take in, dupe
It didn’t actually say anything. It’s high falutin just for the sake of trying to appear intellectually superior.
It is everything you need to know about extreme pissant progressive social and economic agendas.
Or all you need to know about snooty faux-superior incoherent nose-in-the-air intellectualism.
You are being a bore David. This is not science. It is a matter of conflicting cultural values. You don’t want to admit that this is at the pissant progressive heart of darkness – but it is impossible to evade.
Yet more pretentious gobbledygook without a meaning. WHAT is the heart of darkness? At least define what you’re mumbling about.
Heart of Darkness is of course a Joseph Conrad novel. Cleared that up for you David?
Kevin Alexanderman
Thank you!
I’ve copied some of her speech below.
Naomi Seibt and Her Journey to Climate Realism
“Science is entirely based on intellectual humility. And it is important that we keep questioning the narrative that is out there instead of promoting it. And, these days, climate change science really isn’t science at all.
Those self-proclaimed scientists, they draw their conclusions before even testing their hypotheses. And they base their assumptions on completely incoherent models, which is an insult to science itself.
And, I ask myself, what is the goal of all this?
And, I believe, unfortunately, that the goal is to shame humanity.
Climate change alarmism is, at its core, a despicable, anti-human ideology.
We are told to look down upon our achievements with guilt, shame and disgust. And not even to take into account the many major benefits we have gained from using fossil fuels as our main energy source.
Because, look around, we are living in such an amazing era of fast progress, of innovation, and we are not allowed to be proud of that at all?
Instead debates are being shut down. And scientists – real scientists – lose their jobs for performing the most genuine and innocent form of science there is, which is real science, real scepticism.
And that is not just an insult to science. It is an insult to the complexity of nature. And, most importantly, it is an insult to the freedom of speech.
And that’s why we are here today – to speak up and bring the spirit of science back to life again. I hope you will do the same with us together.”
Much as I endorse her libertarian inclinations – there is a very undeveloped understanding of models and science.
There is a tremendous future for models and a vast wealth of excellent Earth System Science.
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0048969719340410-ga1_lrg.jpg
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969719340410
Objecting to policy should not require throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I have an idea that fanatical skeptics won’t like the bottom line of the new science, But adopting rational policy – such as discussed above – is a way to regain some relevance and shape the future.
Bizarre calumny from a couple of radical skeptic fanatics, They do exist.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/02/madrid/#comment-903727
Why can’t we all just get along?
https://youtu.be/Wd5dDc2xE3U
It’s OK Phil – extreme calumny removed.
I’d say that martian must have an IQ of at least 164 :-D
COP 25: Hysteria meets diplomacy in Madrid (my latest)
https://www.cfact.org/2019/12/05/cop-25-hysteria-meets-diplomacy-in-madrid/
The climate change hysteria movement is expecting bold action at the COP 25 climate summit now on in Madrid. That is not how these protracted international negotiations work. One wonders what the hysterical reaction to inaction will be?
As I have pointed out, the climate alarmism movement is tearing itself into two camps.
They are not yet warring camps but after Madrid they well may be. COP 25 is real negotiations, by real countries, over real issues. The issues are stupid, but still real, because they can lead to really stupid national actions. This I call the moderate camp of alarmists. The hysterics want impossible actions, stuff that cannot happen, which sets them against the moderates.
For example, the hysterics want immediate drastic action to reduce co2 emissions. The nations meeting in Madrid have adopted very mild emission reduction measures, or promises at least. The big issue is whether they will increase their ambitions next year, at COP 26. Nothing is on the table this year. This has to infuriate the hysterics.
The hysterics want emissions to end by 2030 (which is impossible). The COP nations are dickering over maybe setting a goal of net zero emissions (which still allows emissions) by 2050. The hysterics have to hate this.
The biggest issue on the table at COP 25 is what the rules should be for a new emission trading scheme. I call this the sale of indulgences and explain in detail here.
Given that billions of dollars worth of indulgences are at stake for big countries like China and Brazil, this is a huge issue for the moderates. The hysterics damn it as just a way to avoid taking domestic action. In this case they are correct.
There are other huge issues of wealth transfer either on the table in Madrid, or hoping to get there, or standing beside the table, or something (the metaphor is getting away from me).
The developing countries want to see some evidence that the promised $100 billion a year in bribes from the developed countries will actually begin next year (it will not). The promises for emission reduction by the developing countries are predicated on that big money coming. The hysterics could care less about who pays for what. Funding is not part of their grand plans, like the Green New Deal.
Then there is the lumbering giant slowly approaching the Madrid table, the giant whose stage name is Loss and Damage. The giant’s real name is Compensation. This is the idea that the developed countries should compensate the developing ones for all the future damages due to human caused climate change. In practice this probably means pretty much all bad weather, all sea level rise, etc. The official estimate here is $400 billion a year but that could easily grow. I am not making this up.
Th last time the giant was on the table, it was exiled to a study-like limbo. But that study has now ended, so the biggest issue of all may find its way back to the table. What happens then is anybody’s guess.
But the hysterics have no need for the giant Compensation. Their avowed program is to quickly end human caused climate change, so the issue of future loss and damage simply does not arise for them.
There are more big differences, but these are enough to show the yawning policy gap between the two camps. The COP 25 negotiations and the hysterical climate emergency movement are about as far apart as two camps can get.
How the hysterics react to COP 25’s inaction remains to be seen. It could be quite a show. Stay tuned to CFACT for the blow by blow.
David
The Climate Change Debate Education project
https://www.gofundme.com/f/climate-change-debate-education
Thank you David.
The people of the Earth should decide.
The people of the Earth are poorly informed.
We say to people there is only 400 ppm CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.
We say the atmosphere CO2 content is 0,04 %.
Those figures are very difficult to understand even for university degree people.
People do not concentrate enough when numbers are involved.
Let’s say it is 2.500 to 1. ( 2.500 molecules air to 1 molecule CO2 )
Can one dictate the 2.500 ?
Of course it can, why not, a friend of mine answered today.
I took out a euro coin: I am giving you one euro then.
You give me 2.500 euro back.
Ok, he said jokingly, I’ll be prepared next time to have 2.500 euro with me.
I think people should understand that.
For a one euro gain humanity is going to spend 2.500 euro.
David wrote:
“Then there is the lumbering giant slowly approaching the Madrid table, the giant whose stage name is Loss and Damage. The giant’s real name is Compensation. This is the idea that the developed countries should compensate the developing ones for all the future damages due to human caused climate change. In practice this probably means pretty much all bad weather, all sea level rise, etc. The official estimate here is $400 billion a year but that could easily grow. I am not making this up…”
As you, David, said:
“The giant’s real name is Compensation.”
“The official estimate here is $400 billion a year but that could easily grow. I am not making this up…”
Please, Madrid, listen to the reason.
Please, Madrid, listen to the common sense.
It is not too late yet.
Christos, the people of Earth *are* deciding, through their elected representatives. Unless they live in a totalitarian country, where unfortunately they get on choice and should focus on overthrowing their government, violently if that’s what it takes.
“Let’s say it is 2.500 to 1. ( 2.500 molecules air to 1 molecule CO2 )”
In the ozone layer of Earth’s atmosphere, its concentration is 5 ppm. But without it we’d all be dead.
David
Remember when Spain’s solar farms produced electricity at night.?
then they discovered they ran the backup diesel generators to take advantage of subsidized energy prices coming from that interlock.
false pricing distorts the market incentives.
Looking for the article exposing it for later.
Scott
Scott: Remember when Enron laughed at old people?
Meant for David W not A.
Here is first cut at article.
https://theecologist.org/2010/apr/16/spanish-nighttime-solar-energy-fraud-unlikely-uk
Scott
This graphic should be familiar. There are two things that count. Changes in atmospheric composition and the resultant change in the planetary energy dynamic.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Atmospheric_Transmission.png/450px-Atmospheric_Transmission.png
This graphic should be familiar. There are two things that count. Changes in atmospheric composition and the resultant change in the planetary energy dynamic. For the same reason – btw – rain and drought have a large effect on surface temperatures as measured by thermometers. But maybe 90% of rain on land – and vapor in the air – has an oceanic origin. It turns over about every 9 days.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/dietmardommenget_zps939fe12e-e1540922749884.png
Specific humidity is a function of atmospheric temperature. Overlaying total precipitable water (TPW or TPV as you like) in earthnullschool shows a connection between temperature and humidity that I hope should hope doesn’t need to be labored.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_precipitable_water/equirectangular
This is something I screen grabbed from a Tapio Schneider video. The 25mm is 25kg/m2. I calculated 24.5kg/m2 from global means – but we won’t quibble.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/water-vapor-and-cloud-1-e1570482763721.png
And we can see that this has increased by about 4% over oceans in the satellite era . This closely matches not so simple calculations that suggest a 7% increase in water vapor per 1 degree C warming of the atmosphere.
http://images.remss.com/figures/announcements/long-term-record-of-water-vapor-over-the-oceans/Figure_08webres.png
Water vapor is about 60% of the natural greenhouse effect.
This graphic should be familiar. There are two things that count. Changes in atmospheric composition and the resultant change in the planetary energy dynamic.
Ignore. I distinctly remember writing about irrigation. I can’t find any global data on areas involved. Roughly averaging country values – it is some 20% of cropping areas – which is some 11% of the land area or about 3% of ther planet’s surface. With spray irrigation – some 30% of water volume evaporates before it hits the ground. With more efficient irrigation – it evaporates and transpires. Water vapor and the latent energy it contains is carried into the troposphere by convection – rather than being radiated from the surface. It cools the surface with more latent and less sensible heat. For the same reason….
Australia is burning in extreme conditions of drought and temperature. The political reality is that most people see climate change through the lens of the last extreme event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-jqvD7h3XM
http://www.bom.gov.au/web03/ncc/www/awap/temperature/maxdecile/month/colour/latest.gif
It recently came to my notice that the jet streams in both hemispheres are showing extreme velocity.
Do you know why?
Praise be to God it’s raining.
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/national_radar_sat.loop.shtml
If you overlay total precipitable water in earth.nullschool cold air masses spinning off the polar vortices can be seen over both Australia and North America. Jet streams are part of these polar vortices. Excursions of cold polar air into lower latitudes are driven by polar surface pressure. Negative AO and AAO indices imply high polar surface pressure and more excursions into lower latitudes. I think this may be the source of what you have noticed. Indeed – I think it is the source of most global climate variability in interglacials.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/aao_index.html
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index.html
Robert, what is earth.nullschool?
A near real time supercomputer animation.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_precipitable_water/equirectangular
Okay thanks, but in your estimation is the jet stream picking up speed because of its meridional behaviour?
https://i.ibb.co/5YjvGbD/a-2019-12-04-SE-Africa-4th-Dec-34-000-ft-336-kmh.png
I don’t know. We are seeing blocking patterns emerge. What height is this at and what is the source.
The height is 34,000 feet and I think WxModels is the source.
Blocking is a key element and is having a huge impact on the ground in midlatitude.
Does a meandering jet stream create blocking, or is it the other way round? The subtropical ridge has lost its intensity and I was wondering if its a global cooling signal?
I believe that the more meridional patterns are what they term blocking patterns. And it may be a response to declining solar activity.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024001/meta
The ‘gyre hypothesis’ connects these meridional or zonal flows to decadal changes in ocean circulation and surface temperature.
https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/3/4/833/htm
Connecting these processes to documented centennial to millennial changes in ocean patterns?
I wrote this – https://watertechbyrie.com/2019/10/18/thresholds-and-epochs-in-the-grand-climate-system/
From the second link …
‘We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect.’
Solar forcing on the AO and NAO is well known, but I’m convinced that we are looking at a universal phenomenon.
SAM is very negative, so thanks again I’ll give it more thought.
It’s a NH paper – but if anything the link with solar activity is more apparent in the SH – with the Mansurov effect,
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/lam-2013-geopotential-at-polaes.png
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/507981/1/grl52088.pdf
And yes – SAM is very negative. Even at the Tropic of Capricorn we are seeing alternating periods of cool or very warm conditions. Not much rain – but there have summer snow falls down south. Have you seen our climate dogs?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=ZQwgosJ_RL0&feature=emb_logo
http://www.climatekelpie.com.au/index.php/climatedogs/
It could be argued that a mini ice age may have started.
‘A comparison of the composites to climate mode archetypes suggests LIA summer climate and atmospheric circulation over New Zealand was driven by increased frequency of weak El Niño-Modoki in the tropical Pacific and negative Southern Annular Mode activity.’
Lorrey et al 2014
LOL – not sarcastically at all. I don’t know this reference but I’d like to have a look. Link or full citation?
I had the same idea – and I think that’s why this works. This is simply the running total of MEI-V1 vs surface temperature. They are obviously correlated but what’s the mechanism? It suggests that ENSO (or better the IPO) modulates cloud cover over the eastern Pacific. Warm SST and reduced cloud cover and vice versa changing the amount of solar energy entering the ocean.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/mei-v-hadcrut1.png
Closed and open cell cloud in Rayleigh–Bénard convection fits the bill.
e.g. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4973593 – http://www.eumetrain.org/satmanu/CMs/OCC/print.htm
The LIA was a period of strong trade winds and cold water upwelling (Vance et al 2012) – closed cloud convection cell persist for longer over the cold upwelling region before raining out from the center leaving behind open cells. Less energy entered the ocean and it cooled. Oceans have a memory of past climate in heat content.
On the whole though – the system is unpredictable and surprises are inevitable.
Here is the link to the Lorrey et al paper
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014ClDy…42.3039L/abstract
Robert the original link got swallowed by the auto mod, but here is basically the same.
https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/the-little-ice-age-climate-of-new-zealand-reconstructed-from-sout
And I also agree that the IPO and ENSO are major players, natural variable rule.
Yeah I got. Thanks. But I can’t agree that it’s just one thing or the other.
The Madrid disaster summit is no doubt at this very moment being told of accelerating and perilous sea level rise, and low lying nations aggressively begging for “compensation”.
Meanwhile back in the world, both satellite imagery and comparisons with old (really old) maps is showing no sea level rise whatsoever.
https://notrickszone.com/2019/12/05/cartology-affirms-relative-sea-levels-were-the-same-or-higher-than-now-during-the-little-ice-age/
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3111
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcc.557
If anything, sea level, compared to past decades (satellite) and past centuries (old maps) is FALLING.
(It is falling, not rising sea level that causes coral bleaching.)
Robert,
I was going to let you off the hook, but that would not be just.
So you said that all the energy absorbed by “greenhouse gases” from the radiating Earth is then transferred by impacts to N2, O2 ?
So these less than 1% gases are the conduit through which all thermal energy passes and leaves the planet (save a little radiation that escapes their clutches) for the 99%?
Are you saying that in an eclipse, when the temperature drops 5-20d C in 20 minutes, all the thermal energy in N2 and O2 then impacts those miraculous “greenhouse gases” again, to transfer their thermal energy, which then radiates outwards into space?
I didn’t bother with this drivel because it is imbecilic.
But go ahead and stick with your scam theory like a true believer.
And, naturally, you don’t admit of conduction at the boundary layer of the Earth’s surface between all the gases?
And you also agree that once heated to 25d C or so, N2 s IR-based thermal energy will remain there indefinitely, for all time, without radiating unless it is conducted to other molecules?
Do you not see a couple of problems with your “greenhouse (last) gasp” theory?
Whoops!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Atmospheric_Transmission.png/450px-Atmospheric_Transmission.png
Good graph. Note how the bright red region is shifted to the right of the black body line.
It is shifted because N2 and O2, predominantly, are absorbing this radiation and right-shifting the radiation. CO2 picks up the spectral lines, duh, but the photons CO2 picks up have already been scattered by N2 and O2.
Again, you haven’t read my paper, so you are obviously just talking rubbish.
This graph is in my paper, with the explanation.
https://www.climatesciencejournal.com/invalidity-of-greenhous-gas-thy/
Kevin wrote:
“So you said that all the energy absorbed by “greenhouse gases” from the radiating Earth is then transferred by impacts to N2, O2 ?
So these less than 1% gases are the conduit through which all thermal energy passes and leaves the planet (save a little radiation that escapes their clutches) for the 99%?”
“Are you saying that in an eclipse, when the temperature drops 5-20d C in 20 minutes, all the thermal energy in N2 and O2 then impacts those miraculous “greenhouse gases” again, to transfer their thermal energy, which then radiates outwards into space?”
“And you also agree that once heated to 25d C or so, N2 s IR-based thermal energy will remain there indefinitely, for all time, without radiating unless it is conducted to other molecules?
Do you not see a couple of problems with your “greenhouse (last) gasp” theory?”
Very good!
I did a similar observation three days ago:
It was a December 3d in Athens.
The days are much shorter now – at 5 pm it is getting dark.
But it was a clear sky day and the sun at 11 am was burning.
In the house it was much colder, it was significantly colder inside, than outside on the sunlit veranda.
It was a natural thought then, to wide open the veranda’s door to let in the warm air.
When doing so the outside very cold air, much colder than that inside, swooped in making the house colder.
It was a big difference between the air temperature and the outside sunlit warmth.
What I thought was that the air remained snowy cold in the almost burning sunshine. It was very hot outside even in the shade, away of direct insolation.
Isn’t that a kind of experiment proving the air is transparent to the high frequency solar irradiation?
Note that it was a clear sky, dry weather, winter day. There was not much water vapor in the air.
I am with you, Kevin.
Doesn’t make sense to me.
Not saying it didn’t happen, just saying it doesn’t make sense that the air under a shade tree was hot, while the air that blew into your house was cold.
Maybe a cold front came through, or there were different air temps locally.
Kevin,
The air outside the house on the sunlit veranda remained snowy-cold.
When I went out the sun was burning.
I didn’t measure the temperature, but I reckon thermometer of any kind cannot be isolated from the radiation, especially when the outdoors air temperature is considered.
When the outside air blew in, only then I realized how snowy-cold the outside air in the sunlit veranda was.
Another example is the winter sunbathing in Alps and elsewhere.
The air is very cold, there is snow around,
The feeling is warm.
Kevin,
The air remained snowy cold in the sunshine. In the shade too.
I felt warm in the shade because there was the sunlight’s reflection from the surroundings.
JCH,
Thank you for your advice.
Do you know any jet plane to NASA?
Why NASA, in your opinion, should stop sending spaceships?
You know JCH, I am very thankful to NASA. I am repeating it again and again.
My findings were not possible without NASA very precise all planets temperature satellites measurements.
Thank you JCH, for reminding me about Dr. Judy.
Thank you Dr. Judy for your very important forum.
It’s also right shifted for the bright blue area, for the same reason, N2 and O2 absorbing photon energy from infrared photons, with increased velocity.
For God’s sake – if the surface isn’t warming then the atmosphere isn’t warming through conduction and convection – together they add up to 20% of heat transport in the troposphere.
Why are you arguing at Climate Etc.?
You should be on a jet plane to NASA. I don’t know how, but they must have missed your journal article. They most definitely need to be alerted before they attempt to send anymore spaceships into orbit, or off to some distant planets.
Because, well, they sort of need to know how atmospheres work. Unlike the denizens, they’re really smart people and it will take them just a few minutes to comprehend their gigantic errors.
Roy and Judy are unnecessary steps. Go straight to Lacis and Schmidt.
I contacted NASA, through JPL, to get albedo data from their satellites.
As did Tony Heller, I found them to be dishonest. Just another bunch of bureaucrats who think they are James Bonds or something.
They could only offer albedo data mosaics from satellites where they removed the cloud cover. They would not provide the data with the clouds, which is rather stupid.
A good measure of albedo over time would precisely quantify whether the Earth was absorbing more thermal energy, or not. It does not make a difference what mechanism, whether a gas, or dust, or more black rooftops, more clouds or more snow.
Showing the albedo change and acceleration, if there is any, would then precipitate study of why there was a change. They won’t show it, because I don’t think there is any.
The Earth appears to be cooling, from unadulterated temperature records, so the albedo number is probably going up (reflecting more), even if it is due to more cosmic radiation causing more cloud cover.
By the way, you guys are a joke to be defending the “greenhouse gas” theory by defamation. It makes the political scam more obvious.
JCH wrote:
“Because, well, they sort of need to know how atmospheres work. Unlike the denizens, they’re really smart people and it will take them just a few minutes to comprehend their gigantic errors”.
Please, JCH, what errors you are talking about? I don’t understand you.
The BBC are reporting abnormally heavy rains and flooding in east Africa.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-50676782/east-africa-hit-by-weather-phenomenon
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-50628420
This is related to a positive IOD – Indian ocean dipole, the west Indian Ocean being warmer than the east. The beeb needless to say paints this all as a climate change disaster. But looking at it in a longer historical context it might actually be good news. Very good indeed.
That reminded me that Africa has had humid periods in past millennia, during which the current Sahara desert and Sahel has been fully covered with vegetation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_climate_cycles
This wiki article states that the Sahel flips between wet and dry periods by apparent attractor-switching, and these transitions can be rapid. They are driven by feedbacks linked to mutual effects between vegetation and climate.
Since CO2 is causing a greening of wilderness areas like the Sahel,
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004
it made me wonder if our recent enrichment of the atmosphere with CO2 could be pushing North Africa toward another flip back to a humid period and a green Sahel.
Imagine a green and verdant Sahara. That would be one of the most wonderful things to happen in human history. It would mean that our CO2 emission has been and is an unmitigated good, the best thing the human race has ever done.
Research such as Pausata et al 2017 has indicated that a greening Sahara is a likely outcome of continued warming.
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/24/6221.abstract
Naturally they fail to mention that beneficial CO2 fertilisation is an equal or greater driver of this greening due of course to the ecofascist AK47 held to the heads of all climate scientists. But that doesn’t matter. What is also amusing about this paper is that they try to hide to positive outcome of a greening Sahara by headlining another parallel outcome that their models show. Cyclones and hurricanes increasing especially in America. God bless America. Yes of course it’s better to keep half of the African continent arid desert rather than risk property damage in the Homeland.
The Sahara greened. But a few more hurricanes in the USA. That’s a bad news story? For Europe it would be good. The flow of migrants across the Mediterranean would reverse direction.
“A thorough analysis of a proxy El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) record indicates that a bifurcation occurred in the ENSO system sometime around
5,000 years B.P. As a result of this bifurcation the attractor became higher dimensional and a new mechanism of instability was introduced. As a consequence of these changes the system switched from a dynamics where the normal condition (La Nina) was dominant to a dynamics characterized by more frequent and stronger El Nino events.” https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/people.uwm.edu/dist/f/330/files/2016/11/2009-12_ENSO-11000-year-17fuo6d.pdf
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/moys-2002-2.png
This is a little more interesting – although I do wish they would tone down the skeptic polemic. Just assume we have heard it all before. Phil tends to run on with wild and unprovable theories. Here he has put the cart before the chaotic horse – Sahel greening as both cause and effect. The last transition some some 5,000 years B.P. seems linked to a transition in the Pacific Ocean. I suggest that hydrology changes caused by bifurcations in the globally coupled ocean and atmosphere flow field is a more obvious candidate for the cause of Sahel drying. Given the gyre hypothesis and links to solar variability I mention above – I suggest that slowly increasing insolation drove the system past a threshold and into a new emergent state.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/isotope-9400-e1531338833901.png
Panel B shows decreasing cosmic ray (increasing solar) intensity in the relevant period. Look at the left side of the graph showing an uptick in cosmic ray intensity in modern times. Panel C shows the last 1000 years. It mirrors the Vance et al high resolution ENSO proxy I post occasionally.
But if you really want to transform a continent – contribute to a million of these by 2040.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkq540gsq2M
https://www.excellentdevelopment.com/our-strategy
Water management more generally across the planet is a solution for many problems – including putting carbon back in soils where it belongs and where it does the most good.
RIE
A quick question: in B – ‘cosmic ray intensity’, is that latitude dependent?
Nope. It is based on cosmogenic isotopes created in the upper atmosphere.
https://www.pnas.org/content/109/16/5967
Robert
Yes it annoys me when gorillas-in-the-room are ignored e.g. CO2 plant growth enrichment, but I shouldn’t take it out on you guys, my bad (again).
As a result of this bifurcation the attractor became higher dimensional and a new mechanism of instability was introduced.
I wasn’t aware that an attractor could be high dimensional, I thought high dimensional meant full-blown chaos and turbulence, and that attractors were a feature of low dimensional chaos closer to the region of (Hopf) bifurcation. Perhaps it’s a question of definitions. I joined the “Academia” website and since downloading a couple of papers on Turing reactions, now I get papers emailed to me every day on the subject. No time to read them all of course.
Here he has put the cart before the chaotic horse – Sahel greening as both cause and effect.
That is a feature of chaotic systems causal links being bi-directional. In this case it could simply be positive feedback. Greening produces better soil (I actually watched your Rattan Lal video above at least most of it) so more greening.
REI Thanks for the info, and the link.
The data is from ice-cores from polar regions. It would be helpful to compare with similar data from equatorial regions (if such exists, I do not know). There might just be a latitude dependence.
I say this because I have just compared fig B with other data, and there seems to be corroboration, in the sense that the 5500BP signature occurs again at an earlier event at about 7700BP.
As per link in my post appearing below, the evidence can be gleaned from the ‘North Atlantic ice rafting’ (B), as an earlier repeat of the 5500BP appears at ~7700 (both preceding the 7k2 and 5k2 tectonic events evident from archaeology).
There has been enough CO2 in the atmosphere to green the Sahara for the entire Holocene.
Recent paper, intense agriculture is more responsible for recent greening than CO2. Another recent paper, greening has, as of recent years, actually reversed. Water Vapor Deficit: interesting to see where that goes.
You better watch that gorillas phil. Thay are tricky. If you think you understand spatio-temporal chaos – then you don’t understand spatio-temporal chaos. I challenge you to show that even just the biological component of the Earth system is not chaotic. And there are not nonlinear responses to ‘global greening’ involving nutrient and carbon cycling. water availability, biodiversity or fire regimes. But even then it is not nearly enough to double food production by 2050. No the only solution is to sock it away as quickly as possible in soils and ecosystems using modern management practices. You’ve seen most of the video. Now read the book.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/9/708/238009
“We are living in a world driven out of equilibrium. Energy is constantly delivered from the sun to the earth. Some of the energy is converted chemically, while most of it is radiated back into space, or drives complex dissipative structures, with our weather being the best known example. We also find regular structures on much smaller scales, like the ripples in the windblown sand, the intricate structure of animal coats, the beautiful pattern of mollusks or even in the propagation of electrical signals in the heart muscle. It is the goal of pattern formation to understand nonequilibrium systems in which the nonlinearities conspire to generate spatio-temporal structures or pattern. Many of these systems can be described by coupled nonlinear partial differential equations, and one could argue that it is the field of pattern formation is trying to find unifying concepts underlying these equations.” http://www.ds.mpg.de/LFPB/chaos
Equations do exist but they are insoluble at present at the scale of the planet. And because the patterns in the system are globally coupled even the number of dimensions of the state space is incalculably large.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/cloud-computation.png
Some $200,000 worth of computing time show it can be done at a cloud resolving scale – and that reversing the process is far from easy.
But if you want to transform a continent I encourage you to contribute to a million of these by 2040.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkq540gsq2M
https://www.excellentdevelopment.com/our-strategy
Water management across the planet more generally is the foundation for meeting humanities challenges this century.
We are living in a world driven out of equilibrium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd_o7_4oW0Q
Sorry couldn’t resist that one.
When was it ever in equilibrium?
The planet is a thermodynamically non-equilibrium system. You have misunderstood the Max Planck Institute and take the opportunity to make a trite observation.
The answer to the ” Sahel flips between wet and dry periods by apparent attractor-switching” is not ‘under the lamp-post’.
P DeMenocal here at 33:09 points to 5500BP (about 3550bce), here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIAkJg8knTI&t=1988s . It was abrupt.
Now look at that date here: https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2019/08/12/searching-evidence-deaths-tsunamis-and-earth-dynamics/ Look at the spike from the Iceland Ice-cap C/N ratio at precisely that date. The see why those ancient guys had to change the equinox to solstice angle from 23 to 18 degrees.
It’s “hydrocarbons”, not “fossil fuels”. Thanks.
The graph with explanation from our site,
http://www.climatesciencejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Atmospheric_Transmission.png
It is also clear that the right shift is affecting the right side of the red-coloured area, which has gone past the black body curve in places.
The entire spectrum has been shifted right, as has the returning blue-coloured spectrum from the Earth.
CO2 is trapping “regurgitated” thermal energy, which has already been shifted to the right by N2 and O2.
Infrared photons are lower energy photons, and much of the thermal energy from the surface is not radiating, but transferring to air molecules by conduction in the boundary layer, then by convection to higher altitudes. Convection would be less necessary with such a low concentration of radiation-trapping gases.
This graphic from Wikipedia shows the blackbody emissions that are a function of temperature and calculated line by line absorption based on measured characteristics of gases. This is an entirely theoretical graphic that shows the difference between nominal absorption and a blackbody emission – in the case of the planet at a couple of different temperatures. They neglect shifts to lower frequencies..
There is a nice little interactive illustration here of absorption by various gases.
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/nasa/measuringuniverse/spectroscopy/a/absorptionemission-lines
It’s a graphic used all over the world, because it is public domain.
But it is not correct in principle. On the bottom, it shows absorption due to Rayleigh scattering, but scattering is occurring across all wavelengths, not just the ones on the left. And the magnitudes of this energy absorption are not right, as lower wavelength/higher frequencies are much higher energies than the measly IR region.
The total energy absorbed by Raleigh scattering has to be properly calculated, and I’d imagine it is probably on the order of 90% of absorption of solar radiation by the atmosphere (because of the much greater UV energies), and probably 30-40% from the Earth, again, across the spectrum equally, including IR wavelengths. You ignore this, of course, as does your loony “greenhouse gas” theory.
Don’t patronize me by acting like you are helping me–I consider you a bit of a twit, and wouldn’t believe a word you said.
Robert wrote in last “week in review – science edition”:
” The 33 degrees C is the 60 odd degree greenhouse gas warming of the surface less cooling through enhanced convective and radiative cooling”.
I had found the above thought about a year ago somewhere in the web.
Is it still valid, Robert? “… the 60 odd degree greenhouse gas warming…” ?
In my opinion it is an old science.
That comes from Roy Spencer.
The graphic is an aid to visualizing process and is not useful beyond that, It’s a cartoon just like Bugs Bunny.
MIT coached Al Gore in 1991 on the theory of Global Warming (I was there as it was announced in New Orleans). At the time, MIT was excited that a Senator was willing to sponsor funding for their research. To quote Gore’s MIT lead (I challenged his data), “Please don’t bring this up…this will fund new buildings, computers and fund grad students…”. It was about money. The MIT researcher who postulated the concept later recanted it and was fired by MIT. Today, it’s still about money. Unfortunately, our leaders and the public haven’t the knowledge-base to challenge those spouting “Climate Change”. And, it’s traumatizing our young people. They believe the “old folks” and nay-sayers don’t care about them and are beginning to revolt. Anyone who is really interested in the facts can find that we are actually heading for another ice age, that cycles in nature occur (we don’t live long enough to see it and there aren’t long-term documentations), there have been documented events in history such as the fall of Rome and extinction of the Wolley Mammoth where both were precipitated by significantly greater warming than we are now forecasting. Summer and winter are normal phenomena because we see them during our lifetime. We only read about global warming and ice ages and know little of their affect. Alarmists/activists have very little first hand knowledge they are parroting the sound bites of a few self-serving scientists who are pressed by their management to write, publish and bring in funding. Hardly a wholesome, trustworthy work environment. In my 47 years working for the US government, I lead weather, atmospheric science, research and engineering programs. What I learned in working with the government, academia and key industries is that they take care of themselves first by only sharing information that supports their interests. All the distracting information is gleaned from their releases to ensure public support. My points — 1. We cannot change the natural course of nature 2. Money being used to stop global warming would be better spent to find ways to survive both warming and cooling events. 3. Don’t be fooled by self-serving scholars, politicians or corporations.
Regarding albedo of clouds: During daytime, clouds cool the surface underneath. In nighttime, clouds warm the surface underneath. Are there any data on daytime and nighttime albedo? (BTW, does a nighttime albedo exist – or is there another name for that effect?)
Yet another pointless thread. I make informed social, economic, environmental and scientific comments like this:
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/02/madrid/#comment-904127
And it can be seen what happens. have been a hydrodynamic modeller since I got my fist XT clone running in DOS around 1990. I routinely follow development in both modelling and computing architecture. But I guess it conflicts with the model skeptic meme.
Context is everything. Here’s a vastly more stimulating and productive thread.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/02/madrid/#comment-904086
Or here::
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/02/madrid/#comment-904157
And this one shows how wrong it can go and why:
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/02/madrid/#comment-903727
Carbon Policies Are ‘Futile Gesture Politics’
London, 6 December: A prominent economist says that Britain’s climate and energy policies are ‘futile gesture politics’, and will fail to bring about any change to the climate.
Dr Ruth Lea, who has wide-ranging experience of working in the civil service, the financial sector and policy institutions, says that while politicians celebrate their increasingly ambitious decarbonisation targets, most of the world is ignoring them:
“The UK now represents just 1% of global emissions, so any reduction we make will not even be noticed. And it will be offset many times over by increases in the developing world, which continues to burn cheap coal and gas as fast as it can.”
And Lea warns that politicians’ determination to be seen to ‘do something’ about climate change carries major political risks:
“The decarbonisation programme that we are embarking on will be extraordinarily expensive and will hit businesses and consumers harder every year. That can’t carry on for ever, and eventually a major political price will be paid.”
H/T GWPF:
https://mailchi.mp/529a78db6e41/press-releasecarbon-policies-are-futile-gesture-politics-175505
It is has become abundantly clear that the anthropogenic “climate change” mob is driven far more by a Leftist political agenda than it is by sound scientific analysis. Those who disagree are not really paying close attention or are a party to the conspiracy.
There is a tremendous amount of excellent Earth system science out there – including process level models. Those who disagree are not paying attention to science. Then the question is what to do about it.
Just when you think things can’t get more ridiculous they do. Latest post on the BBC from their environment correspondent, Matt McGrath, comes “Climate change: Oceans running out of oxygen as temperatures rise”
The water needs more CO2 then, as when it’s warmer, phytoplankton growth rates increase, converting CO2 into O2 and growth.
Not enough O2? Needs more CO2.
As Dr Happer said, CO2 concentration declines to about 200ppm in cornfields in the middle of the day, if it gets below 150ppm, growth stalls, reduced O2 production.
“We can assume that the oxygen produced by photosynthesis (i.e. net primary production) in the upper layer is roughly consumed by
respiration within the water column, except for a small production of 0.002 Pmol O2 yr-1 that corresponds to burial (Wallmann, 2000). An oxygen loss ranging from 0.048 Pmol O2 yr-1 (Manning & Keeling, 2006) to 0.096
Pmol O2 yr-1 (Schmidtko et al., 2017) results from a modification of the balance in the atmosphere-ocean fluxes with a decreasing influx from the atmosphere to the ocean and an increasing outflux from the ocean (e.g. Bopp et al., 2002; Frölicher et al., 2009).” https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/2019-048-En.pdf
Thank you for injecting a bit of sanity into this ‘climate change’ hysteria! More common sense required I agree.
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Amid the celebrity posturing around the Madrid climate circus, a voice of reason from one of the world’s best and most classy actors, Anthony Hopkins. Pressed for a political opinion, he answered:
“Actors are pretty stupid. My opinion is not worth anything.”
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/475257-actor-stupid-hopkins-politics/
What a contrast of humility and wisdom, compared to the opposite in so many Hollywood poseurs who abuse their profile for infantile activism. Proving Hopkins right. Named examples too obvious to mention.
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It looks to me that mostly everyone has finally acknowledged that the earth is warming. The next stage is discussion about what to do about it. That’s a good change.
That’s silly. You need to get out more.
Here’s a demonstration of the daily temperatures across the US, just out today–you should watch at least through the first minute.
The earth has warmed before, the warm times have been the best of times. It is time to celebrate, we did not cause it and we cannot stop it, but we can enjoy our good fortune to be living in a best of times.
When we shut down fossil fuel power and replace it with renewables, then we find out we done wrong, we were tricked into less reliable, more expensive junk.
https://twitter.com/aDissentient/status/1204783791878950912?cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email
everyone has finally acknowledged that the earth is warming
Yes.
I acknowledge that the earth is warming – au unprecedented event.
Before humans climate stayed static an unchanging, the garden of Eden. Now it’s changing because of CO2. Greta save us!
I acknowledge that the sun rose this morning – an unprecedented event.
Before humans there was only a blessed darkness, this horrible burny yellow thing in the sky must he caused by CO2. Greta save us!
I acknowledge that the tide rose this afternoon.
Before humans the sea level never changed, not in a matter of hours half the beach was gone. This also is caused by CO2, Greta save us!
I acknowledge that the moon is changing shape!! Horror! Fear! Save us!
Before humans the moon was only ever round. Now it keeps changing into this Muslim crescent shape. This is horrible and scary and must be caused by CO2. Greta save us!
There are THREE points.
1. This is NOT about climate change, but about $trillions in profits for a permanent ruling oligarchy. Climate change is purely a vehicle.
2. NONE of the climate issues matter. It matters only that the ruling oligarchy have large estates manned by a subservient peasantry. A much smaller population, satisfied with much less, is the goal. Getting there via energy poverty is a first step. Fossil fuel and nuclear power have to go!
3. The ultimate, but unstated, goal is a pre-industrial energy intensivity by 22nd century . Then, hte peasants can burn wood and live in wattle huts while the masters travel in jets and own the sunny beaches.
All the rest is pure codswallop: 97%, etc, just window dressing.
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