by Jacques Hagoort
Why the IPCC carbon budgets in SR1.5 are over conservative, and the CO2 reduction pathways are too stringent.
Abstract Carbon Budgets specify the total amount of CO2 that can be emitted before global warming exceeds a certain threshold. Since the introduction of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, prominently featuring the 1,5 and 2˚C global warming limits, Carbon Budgets have become the cornerstone of global warming mitigation policy by CO2 reduction. In the recent IPCC special report on global warming of 1,5˚C from 2018 (SR15), the Carbon Budgets have been substantially upgraded compared with the ones reported in the preceding IPCC Fifth Assessment Report from 2013 (AR5). We have analyzed the new method for estimating Carbon Budgets in SR15 and found it seriously wanting, leading to non-physical future global warming profiles. The net result is Carbon Budget estimates that are over-conservative leading to timeframes for the reduction of CO2 emission to net-zero that are too stringent. A simple alternative calculation method without the shortcomings of the SR15 method yields substantially larger Carbon Budgets and thus more lenient timeframes for net-zero emission. Assuming a linear emission reduction pathway, we estimate that net-zero emission for a global warming limit of 1,5˚C is reached in 2070 instead of 2043 as per the SR15 budget. In the case of a warming limit of 2˚C, net-zero happens in 2125 rather than in 2079.
Introduction
Since the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came out in 2013, Carbon Budget has emerged as a widely accepted and powerful concept in both Climate Science and Climate Policy (IPCC, 2013a). It stems from the observation that in climate model projections, global warming since pre-industrial times shows an approximate straight line when plotted against cumulative CO2 emission, irrespective of the emission scenario. Hence, to limit global warming to a certain threshold there is a limit to the allowable cumulative CO2 emission. This defines the Carbon Budget. Given the straight line, Carbon Budgets can be readily calculated for an agreed global warming limit, such as 1,5 or 2˚C as stipulated in the Paris Climate Agreement.
The metric to characterize global warming straight lines is the Transient Climate Response to Cumulative Emission (TCRE). It is defined as the warming in ˚C per emission of 1000GtC (1 GtC = 109 tonne of Carbon) and is essentially a measure for the slope of the straight line. The TCREs in AR5 are based on global warming projections of Earth Systems Models (ESM), a subset of some 20 climate models that are capable of simulating the global carbon cycle. They show a rather wide spread: from about 1,25 to 3,25˚C/(1000GtC) for the 5-95% confidence interval with a central value of 2,44˚C/(1000GtC). See Figure SPM.10 in the Summary for Policymakers of AR5 WG1 (IPCC, 2013b). These TCREs represent total warming (CO2 warming and the rest) and for this reason are sometimes referred to as effective TCRE as distinct from the TCRE for warming due to CO2 only. Naturally, the CO2-only TRCEs are smaller than the effective TCREs. According to the expert judgement of the AR5 author team the CO2-only TCREs are distributed normally around a central value of 1,65˚C/(1000GtC) with a standard deviation (SD) of 0,85˚C/(1000GtC).
The best-estimate Carbon Budgets per 01-01-2011 presented in AR5 were based on the central effective TCRE of 2,44˚C/(1000GtC). See Table 2.2 of the AR5 Synthesis Report (IPCC, 2014). Following the publication of AR5 in 2013, a steady stream of climate studies appeared that challenged the official AR5 Carbon Budgets because they were based exclusively on climate model projections and ignored observational climate data (Hausfather, 2018a). As the ESMs used for the Carbon Budget calculations in AR5 tend to overestimate global warming and underestimate cumulative emission, the AR5 Carbon Budgets were deemed too conservative (Hausfather, 2018b). The recent IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1,5˚C (SR15) assessed the various Carbon Budget studies and came up, not unexpectedly, with a rather drastic upward revision of the AR5 Carbon Budgets (IPCC, 2018a). For example, the Carbon Budget for a warming limit of 1,5˚C increased by a factor five. Exactly how these revised budgets were arrived at, however, was not entirely clear from the report (Lewis, 2018). Fortunately, a recent publication by the responsible author team of SR15 has shed more light on the underlying calculation procedure (Rogelj et al., 2019). It even provides a theoretical framework for assessing Carbon Budgets so that future changes can be more easily traced and assessed.
To better understand the new calculation method used in SR15, we have tried to reproduce the Carbon Budgets reported in SR15. While successful, in the process we have come upon a number of serious shortcomings, which casts doubt on the reliability of the reported Carbon Budgets. This article sets out our reservations about the new SR15 method and shows what to do about it. The outline is as follows. First, we present a brief summary of the SR15 method. Next, we show how the SR15 method has been applied and has led to the reported Carbon Budgets. We then highlight the shortcomings and present an alternative method to overcome these. Finally, we discuss the implications of the alternative Carbon Budgets for the mitigation of global warming by CO2 reduction.
The SR15 method
Figure 1 schematically illustrates the SR15 method for estimating Carbon Budgets as described by Rogelj et al. It shows an (x, y) diagram with the global warming since pre-industrial times on the y-axis and the cumulative CO2 emission since pre-industrial times on the x-axis. The crux of the SR15 method is the observed total global warming (i.e. CO2 warming and the rest) at a certain cumulative CO2 emission, indicated by the blue bullet point. It serves as a calibration point for the linear warming relationships. The light-blue line begins in the origin (zero global warming at zero cumulative CO2 emission) and ends in the calibration point. It describes past total warming but plays no role in the SR15 method proper. The uninterrupted dark-blue straight line begins in the calibration point and describes the best-estimate warming caused by CO2 only. The slope of this CO2-only line is of course less steep than the slope of the light-blue total warming line. Uncertainty in future warming is accounted for by maximum and minimum CO2-only warming straight lines that also begin in the calibration point. The Carbon Budget for a certain total warming limit follows from the intersection of the CO2only straight lines with the horizontal red line at the level of the allowable total warming limit minus the non-CO2 warming. The dark-grey horizontal bar shows the Carbon Budget for the intersection with the best-estimate warming straight line and thus represents the best-estimate Carbon Budget relative to the calibration point. Likewise, the intersections of the horizontal red line with the maximum and minimum warming straight lines result in minimum and maximum values of the Carbon Budget.
Figure 1 – Schematic of SR15 method
The calibration point used in SR15 is the observed average total warming in the period 2006-2015 relative to the average warming in the period 1850 – 1900 at the average cumulative emission during 2005 – 2016 relative to the average cumulative emission during 1850 – 1900. The average warming in 1850 – 1900 is considered representative of the beginning of the industrial era. The warming depends on how global warming is defined. In climate models, global warming is customarily expressed as the average of near-surface air temperatures (SAT) everywhere. The warming reported in observational global temperature series, however, is a blend of near-surface air temperatures over land and sea surface water temperatures (SAT/SST). The observational (SAT/SST) global warming in the period 2006 – 2015 is 0,87˚C. The corresponding SAT global temperature is slightly higher: 0,97˚C. See table 1.1 of Chapter 1 of SR15 (IPCC, 2018b). The average cumulative emission during 2005 – 2016 relative to 1850 – 1900 is 1958 GtCO2 (1 GtC = 3,664 GtCO2). The cumulative emission at the calibration point follows from the CO2 emissions database of the Global Carbon Project (GCP), a consortium of international climate research groups that keeps track of historical global carbon emissions (Le Quéré et al., 2018). The CO2 emissions comprise emissions by the burning of fossil fuels, by the industry, and by changes in land use. In line with the expert judgement of the AR5 author team, the SR15 method assumes that the TCREs for warming by CO2-only are normally distributed with a central value of 1,65˚C/(1000GtC) and a standard deviation (SD) of 0,85˚C/(1000GtC).
For the minimum and maximum TCRE, SR15 takes the 33th and 66th percentile of the CO2-only TCRE distribution following the IPCC practice that started with AR5. The 33th and 66th percentiles are interpreted by the IPCC as corresponding to a chance of meeting the warming limits of 1 out of 3 and 2 out of 3, respectively. The expected non-CO2 warming in the future at the global warming limits is estimated from the results of projections of climate models of reduced complexity calibrated against the full-fledged ESM climate models. For the 1,5˚C warming limit this non-CO2 warming is about 0,1˚C and for the 2˚C limit it is twice as much.
Table 1 summarizes the results of the Carbon Budget calculations reported in SR15 (Table 2.2) for the reference date of 01-01-2018 (IPCC, 2018c). They are equal to the calculated Carbon Budgets relative to the calibration point minus the cumulative emission from 01-01-2011 to 01-01-2018 of 290 GtCO2. The Carbon Budgets for the 50th percentile represent best estimates and are the main outcome of the SR15 budget calculations. The 33th and 66th percentile Carbon Budgets illustrate the sensitivity of the Carbon Budgets to the selected TRCE for CO2-only warming.
Table 1 – SR15 Carbon Budgets (CB) at 01-01-2018 for different TCRE percentiles
The error margins of the calculated budgets are rather large. In the case of the 1,5˚C warming limit the relative standard deviation (RSD), the standard deviation relative to the best estimate, for SAT and SAT/SST is 67 and 63%, respectively. For the 2˚C case the RSD for SAT and SAT/SSS is 54 and 53%, respectively.
Shortcomings of the SR15 method
Figure 2 displays the total warming since pre-industrial times expressed in both SAT and SAT/SST versus cumulative CO2 emission as inferred from the SR15 Carbon Budget estimation method and its results. For both SAT and SAT/SST the warming consists of two straight lines: one up to the calibration point for past warming and one thereafter for future warming.
In the observational period up to the calibration point the SAT line has an equivalent slope of 1,81˚C/(1000GtC). The equivalent slope of the SAT/SST line is 1,63˚C/(1000GtC), lower than the one of the SAT line and commensurate with the lower calibration temperature.
The straight lines beyond the calibration point follow directly from the reported SR15 Carbon Budgets for 1,5 and 2˚C which are indicated in Fig. 2 by the plus symbols. The slopes of the two warming lines are identical and equivalent to a TRCE of 1,99˚C/(1000GtC). The intercepts differ by 0,1˚C, equal to the difference between SAT and SAT/SST warming at the calibration point.
Figure 2 – Total global warming relationships as per SR15 method
Figure 2 reveals three evident shortcomings of the SR15 method. First, there is a discontinuity of the total warming at the calibration point, which is physically impossible. Second, there is not only a discontinuity in the warming but also in the warming slope. In the case of SAT the equivalent slope jumps from 1,81 to 1,99˚C/(1000GtC) and for SAT/SST from 1,63 to 1,99˚C/(1000GtC). It means that global warming in the future is stronger, i.e. more warming for the same amount of CO2 emission, than in the past before the calibration point. This may not be impossible but at this point there is no evidence for such a change. If we go by the climate model projections reported in AR5, the simulated warming curves are concave down rather than concave up, which means that we may expect a decrease in warming strength as opposed to an increase. See Figure SPM.10 of the SPM of AR5 WG1 (IPCC, 2013b). Third, the difference between future SAT and SAT/SST warming is constant and equal to the difference at the calibration point. This is highly peculiar, if not impossible. The difference is zero at zero warming and zero cumulative emission and has increased to 0,1˚C at the calibration point. Why would this increase stop at precisely the calibration point?
The discontinuity in total warming is due to the CO2-only warming straight line starting at the calibration point for total warming (see Fig. 1), while in actual fact this line should have started below this point. According to AR5, the temperature difference between central total warming and central CO2-only warming at the calibration point is 0,42 ˚C (= (2,441,65)/(1000×3,664)×1958). See again Figure SPM.10 of the SPM of AR5 WG1 (IPCC, 2013b). In reality this difference might be overstated but there must be a marked difference between total and CO2-only warming. The discontinuity in total warming slope at the calibration point is caused by too steep a slope of the CO2-only straight line of 1,65˚C/(1000GtC). In essence the calibration point narrows the suite of possible total warming straight lines spanning an effective TCRE range 1,25 to 3,25˚C/(1000GtC) to a single straight line with an effective TRCE of 1,81˚C/(1000GtC) for SAT and of 1,63˚C/(1000GtC) for SAT/SST. The effective TCRE of the calibrated SAT straight line of 1,81˚C/(1000GtC) is considerably lower than the original central estimate of the AR5 range of 2,44˚C/(1000GtC). The implication is that the slope of the best estimate of the CO2-only straight line, which is based on the same AR5 climate model projections, must also be less steep and thus lower than the assumed 1,65˚C/(1000GtC). A proportional reduction (=1,81/2,44) would result in a CO2-only TCRE of 1,22˚C/(1000GtC). That the slope of the CO2-only line is too steep is also obvious from the SAT/SST slope for total warming of 1,63˚C/(1000GtC), which is already lower than the CO2-only slope of 1,65˚C/(1000GtC), a physical no-no.
In addition to the inconsistencies in the profiles for total warming, the incorporation of uncertainty in the estimated Carbon Budgets is another issue. In the SR15 method, the uncertainty is accounted for exclusively through the uncertainty in the climate-model derived TCREs for CO2-only warming (the Min and Max lines in Fig. 1). The uncertainty in the CO2-only TCRE is substantial and leads to an equally substantial uncertainty in the Carbon Budgets. Subsequently, to make allowance for this uncertainty, the final estimates of the Carbon Budgets are significantly downgraded from the best-estimate Carbon Budgets.
On a general note, it is debatable whether best-estimate Carbon Budgets should be downgraded at all. The warming limits of 1,5 and 2˚C are no hard physical boundaries but negotiated political compromises laid down in the Paris Climate Agreement. In the absence of any specification in the Agreement, the Carbon Budgets belonging to these warming limits should be, by legal convention, best estimates, i.e. taken at the 50th percentile of the range of possible Carbon Budgets. Taking a stricter estimate, e.g. at the (arbitrary) 66th percentile as in SR15, amounts to an unstated lowering of the negotiated warming limits, disregarding the letter and spirit of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Regardless of the legitimacy of the downgrading, the actual evaluation of the uncertainty in the Carbon Budget estimates in SR15 is flawed on two counts. First, by attributing the uncertainty exclusively to the uncertainty in CO2-only TCRE, the uncertainty in the calibration point and in the estimates of the non-CO2 warming at the warming limits is ignored. As we shall demonstrate in the next section, errors in the calibration point may have a significant effect on the error in the final Carbon Budget and should be part of the overall error analysis. This also holds for the errors in the estimates of non-CO2 warming. Second, the uncertainty in CO2-only TCRE is vastly overstated. Using a calibration point drastically lessens the uncertainty in the effective TCRE. That is exactly what a calibration point is all about. Because the CO2-only TCRE is directly related to the effective TCRE, the uncertainty in the CO2-only TCRE is considerably reduced as well.
All in all, the SR15 method is seriously flawed and used as-is leads to over-conservative Carbon Budgets. The discontinuity in warming effectively lifts the total warming straight line and thus lowers the Carbon Budgets. The inflated warming slopes increase the warming strength of CO2 and thus decrease the Carbon Budgets. Finally, the choice for the 66th instead of the 50th percentile reduces the Carbon Budget even more.
Alternative method
We propose an alternative method for estimating Carbon Budgets that preserves the strong point of the SR15 method (calibration) and does away with its shortcomings (discontinuities): simply extrapolate the calibrated total warming straight line of the past (light-blue line in Fig. 2) to the future. This goes back to the initial proposition in AR5 to estimate the Carbon Budgets from a single total warming straight line. The only difference is that the slope of the line does not depend on climate model projections as in AR5 but on the observational record as boiled down in the calibration point. What is retained from the climate model projections is the notion that mean global temperatures are a function of cumulative CO2 emission and that this functional relationship is approximately linear.
Figure 3 – Total global warming relationships as per alternative method
Figure 3 depicts the total warming straight lines for both SAT and SAT/SST as defined by the calibration points. The SAT line is steeper with a TRCE of 1,81˚C/(1000GtC) compared with the SAT/SST line with a TCRE of 1,63˚C/(1000GtC). Carbon Budgets follow straightforwardly from the intersection of the straight warming lines with the horizontal line corresponding to the warming limit.
Table 2 – Alternative and SR15 best-estimate Carbon Budgets (CB) at 01-01-2018 and Carbon Budget Emission Ratio (CBER)
Table 2 lists the alternative Carbon Budgets relative to 01-01-2018 for the warming limits of 1,5 and 2˚C along with the comparable best-estimate SR15 Carbon Budgets. Also shown is the Carbon Budget/Emission Ratio (CBER) for the calculated Carbon Budgets. It is the ratio of Carbon Budget at a certain reference date and the annual CO2 emission rate just before the reference date and indicates the number of years a given budget will last if emission continues at the then current annual emission rate. Here the reference date is 01-01-2018 and the current emission rate in 2017 is 41 GtCO2/year. As expected, the alternative budgets are substantially larger than the SR15 budgets. What is also worth noting is that the difference between SAT and SAT/SST in the new budgets is much more pronounced than in the SR15 budgets.
The IPCC has traditionally used the blended SAT/SST as a measure for global warming. See Chapter 1 of SR15 (IPCC, 2018b). In keeping with this tradition, the relevant Carbon Budgets are 1130 and 2250 GtCO2 for a warming limit of 1,5 and 2˚C, respectively. The Carbon Budget for 1,5˚C is almost 50% larger than the comparable SR15 best estimate and about twice as much as the 66th percentile estimate of SR15 (see Table 1). At the 2017 emission rate, the 1,5 and 2˚C Carbon Budgets will be consumed in 27 and 55 years, respectively.
The Carbon Budgets in Table 2 are best estimates. The uncertainty (error) in these estimates is governed by the errors in the calibration temperature and in the calibration cumulative emission. According to Chapter 1 of SR15 (IPPC, 2018) the relative standard deviation (RSD) of the SAT/SST calibration temperature is 13,8% (=0,12/0,87×100). We assume the same RSD for the SAT calibration temperature. We have conservatively set the RSD of the cumulative emission to 1%. Using the Error Propagation Law, we then calculate in the case of SAT for the RSDs in the Carbon Budgets at the calibration point 39 and 27% for the 1,5 and 2˚C warming limits, respectively. For SAT/SST the RSDs become 33 and 24% for the 1,5 and 2˚C warming limits, respectively. The SAT errors are larger than the SAT/SST errors because the SAT calibration temperature is closer to the warming limit. The uncertainty in the Carbon Budgets due to uncertainty in the calibration point is appreciable but not as much as in the reported SR15 budgets due to the uncertainty in the CO2-only TCRE.
Climate policy implications
Carbon Budgets form the core of global warming mitigation policies by CO2 reduction. They define how fast CO2 emissions are to be reduced to net-zero to prevent global warming from exceeding the agreed global warming limits of 1,5 and 2˚C. An often used reduction scenario assumes a simple linear reduction to zero from the current emission rate, called a ‘stylized CO2 reduction pathway’ by the IPCC. Of course such a scenario is not realistic, it is merely a thought experiment that provides uncomplicated but useful insight into the timeframe for CO2 reduction and thus into the urgency of CO2 mitigation. In some countries (e.g. The Netherlands) climate policy is based on such a simple scenario.
To illustrate the implications of the results of our analysis for climate policy we have constructed two stylized CO2 reduction pathways: (1) a base case with the 66th percentile SAT/SST Carbon Budgets as reported in SR15 and (2) the alternative case with the best-estimate SAT/SST Carbon Budgets calculated by the above alternative method. We have chosen the blended SAT/SST Carbon Budgets to conform to the IPCC practice of expressing global warming in SAT/SST. We assume that the reduction pathways start in 2020, the year that the Paris Climate Agreement enters force. The IPCC budgets at 01-01-2020 for the 1,5 and 2˚C warming limits are 488 and 1608 GtCO2, respectively, equal to the 66th percentile of the corresponding SAT/SST Carbon Budgets at 01-01-2018 (see Table 1), minus the estimated total emission in 2018 and 2019 of 82 GtCO2. Likewise, the alternative Carbon Budgets per 01-01-2020 for the 1,5 and 2˚C warming limits are 1048 and 2468 GTCO2, respectively, equal to the SAT/SST Carbon Budgets 21 01-01-2018 (see Table 2) and corrected for the CO2 emission in 2018 and 2019.
Figure 4 depicts the pathways for the base-case SR15 budgets. The orange bullets denote the historical CO2 emission rates from 2000 up to and including 2017 and the assumed emission rates in 2018 and 2019. The green and blue straight lines represent the linear emission paths for the 1,5 and 2˚C warming limits, respectively. Net-zero emission for the 1,5˚C warming limit happens in 2043 and for the 2˚C limit in 2079. At the end of the term of the Paris Agreement in 2030, the reduction in CO2 emission is then 42% of the emission in 2010 for the 1,5˚C warming limit and 12% for the 2˚C limit. The 1,5˚C reduction pathway broadly agrees with the main conclusion in Chapter 2 of SR15: “decline of about 45% from 2010 levels and reaching net-zero around 2050” (IPCC, 2018c). It corroborates the central message of SR15 that limiting global warming to 1,5˚C is within reach, in theory, but would require an extraordinary effort in emissions reduction.
Figure 4 – CO2 reduction pathways for the SR15 base-case Carbon Budgets
Figure 5 shows the CO2 reduction pathways for the larger Carbon Budgets estimated with the alternative method described above. As expected, the pathways to net-zero emission are substantially longer. The net-zero point for the 1,5˚C warming limit happens in 2070 and in 2124 for the 2˚C limit. Logically, the associated reductions in 2030 are not as stringent as in the SR15 base case: 16% and 4%. Hence the larger and more appropriate Carbon Budgets derived in this study offer considerably more latitude in meeting the Paris warming limits than the over-conservative SR15 budgets. As a consequence, the need for reducing CO2 does not seem as urgent as conveyed in SR15.
Figure 5 – CO2 reduction pathways for the alternative Carbon Budgets of this study
Conclusions
- The method for estimating Carbon Budgets in SR15 has serious shortcomings, leading to non-physical future global warming profiles.
- Used as-is the method gives rise to over-conservative Carbon Budgets and thus to too stringent timeframes to reach net-zero emission.
- A simple alternative method without the shortcomings yields substantially larger Carbon Budgets and so more lenient mitigation timeframes.
- For a linear emission reduction pathway, net-zero emission for a global warming limit of 1,5˚C is reached in 2070 instead of in 2043 as per the SR15 budget. For a warming limit of 2˚C, net-zero emission happens in 2125 rather than in 2079.
References [References]
Moderation note: As with all guest posts, please keep your comments civil and relevant.
If this goes mainstream, especially in our education system (big if) we all now could breath a bit easier as we’d have approx. two generations to reach the elusive net zero emissions goal.
I don’t think mainstream (whatever that means) is of much significance.
The reasoning behind the setting of carbon budgets is, of course, open to question. It is good to see this is being done.
At the moment, we are not meeting the budget anyway, so it is more or less business as usual. I happen to feel that this is potentially dangerous. As our experiment with the atmosphere continues and as work like that detailed here is done, my ‘feel’ will evolve. At least I will be better informed!
The Author should have cited my work, because the conclusions are about the same. The difference is that my work was published 11 years earlier.
“our experiment with the atmosphere”
You mean the development of human civilisation? Sure, it’s just been a damaging experiment so let’s bring it to an end.
We were able to bring the emission of CFCs, tetra-ethyl lead to virtually zero without crashing civilisation. So, not all curbs to emission necessitate the end of civilisation.
We are already curbing carbon emissions.
The question is to what extent we curb and at what cost. “All or nothing” may be a nice rhetorical ploy, but you will have to do better.
The point of the article discussed here is identifying overly stringent restrictions.
Mainstream or not – it is all seems unworldly. The core of Paris is not 2 degree or whatever but the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC’s). It is first of all a little late in the game to lament that the country commitments are insufficient to meet an arbitrary and ill defined objective. Secondly – budgets that neglect technical feasibility and political and economic pragmatism are worse than useless – they are a distraction from effective responses.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-05/global_emissions_gas_2015.png
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-05/global_emissions_sector_2015.png
Electricity and heat production is 25% of the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. Rather than CO2 budgets – to be effective a multi-gas and aerosol strategy is required – carbon dioxide, CFC’s, nitrous oxides, methane, black carbon and sulfate. Along with ongoing decreases in carbon intensity and increases in efficiency and productivity across the board. And technical innovation across sectors – energy, transport, industry, residential and agriculture and forestry. This is in fact what is happening in the real world.
Additionally – good policy would focus on development priorities. Each of the Copenhagen smart development goals have implications for population growth.
https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/
But while these priorities are excellent – ultimately what is needed is not aid or philanthropy – but solid economic growth. That requires energy – and we get back to the real world reality of Paris accord NDC’s.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/hele-e1550170804379.jpg
“The ASEAN region is rich in coal resources, which are cheap to develop and use and constitute an important part in satisfying ASEAN’s increasing energy demand.” https://aseanenergy.org/study-on-cleaner-coal-utilization-roadmap-in-asean/
Thank you, Robert !!!!!
Pingback: NY Times Climate Info: Help to Preserve Forests – Climate Narrative
“Carbon Budgets specify the total amount of CO2 that can be emitted before global warming exceeds a certain threshold. Since the introduction of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, prominently featuring the 1,5 and 2˚C global warming limits, Carbon Budgets have become the cornerstone of global warming mitigation policy by CO2 reduction”.
A case of re-arranging the furniture on the Titanic. The carbon budget is a fatally flawed metric that has no interpretation in the real world.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/06/tcre/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/09/21/boondoggle/
One more link
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/14/climateaction/
I would have thought the role of the carbon budget in the world was obvious; hence the value of this article. Putting too much carbon into the air involves risks. Overly stringent restrictions will cost much for little benefit; the cost would be better incurred elsewhere.
Finding reasonable reactions to the situation we are in and critiquing them is a good approach.
” Putting too much carbon into the air involves risks.”
The subtitle for the last reference mentioned that you are questioning says
“HERE WE SHOW THAT THESE UNCERTAINTIES AND COMPLEXITIES ARE THE PRODUCTS OF A FATAL STATISTICAL FLAW IN CARBON BUDGET MATHEMATICS.”
It seems that the risks you allude to ( I can’t name any that have been demonstrated with empirical data) would be better addressed using different analyses that employ corrected math procedures.
“…that the role of carbon budgets in the world was obvious”.
If it is obvious then it does not need mathematical proof. On the other hand, if mathematical proof is provided then the prood must not contain mathematical errors.
I am afraid that the IPCC did not use the best available astrology.
I will, of course defer to your expert knowledge of astrology. I will therefore accept your evaluation of astrological methods implemented in the generation of any report and I hope you will forgive me for not spending any more time on the matter. I am here to read what I hope is a reasonable commentary on, er, climate.
Putting too much carbon into the air does involve risk. Carbon dioxide not quite so much.
The history of this whole budget progression is relevant, but little attention is paid to the pre-IPCC days.
“World Climate Programme – International Conference on the Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and of Other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variations and Associated Impacts, VILLACH, AUSTRIA, 9-15 OCTOBER 1985”
https://library.wmo.int/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=6321#.W8HF1vZRfs0
“As a result of the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, it is now believed that in the first half of the next century a rise of global mean temperature could occur which is greater than any in man’s history.
This was a repeat of Nordhaus ten years earlier:
CAN WE CONTROL CARBON DIOXIDE? William D. Nordhaus June 1975 http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/365/1/WP-75-063.pdf
(A working paper for IIASA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Institute_for_Applied_Systems_Analysis
“As a first approximation, it seems reasonable to argue that the climatic effects of carbon dioxide should be kept well within the normal range of long-term climatic variation. According to most sources the range of variation between climatic (sic) is in the order of ± 5 °C., and at the present time the global climate is at the high end of this range.
If there were global temperatures more than 2 or 3°C. above the current average temperature, this would take the climate outside of the range of observations which have been made over the last several hundred thousand years. [sound familiar?]
Within a stable climatic regime, the range of variation of ± l °C is the normal variation: thus in the last 100 years a range of mean temperature has been 0.7°C.”
In 1977, Nordhaus expanded on his theme:
“Strategies for the Control of Carbon Dioxide” http://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d04/d0443.pdf
In this paper he repeated a lot of his IIASA paper, but he changed his figure for the range of variation within a stable climatic regime “such as the current interglacial”, from l°C, to 2°C and said that in the last 100 years a range of mean temperature had been 0.6°C, rather than his earlier 0.7.
In 1990, the UN AGGG (United Nations Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases), was asking for no more than a 1 degree rise in global temperature. That in turn traces back to Villach 1985 and the subsequent Bellagio Conference in 1987. That then morphed into 1.5 degrees and again into 2 degrees. After Paris, 1.5 degrees is back as the new mantra.
In 1995, John Schellnhuber, Director (now emeritus) of the Potsdam Institute, promoted 2 degrees via the German Advisory Council on Global Climate Change, of which he has been alternatively Chairman and Vice-Chairman for many years. He has claimed 2°C as “his” ever since. It was essentially based on the simplistic logic of Nordhaus and in 1996, it was adopted by the EU.
The WBGU’s recommendation: A maximum of 2°C warming is acceptable. The WBGU reaffirms its conviction that in order to avert dangerous climatic changes, it is essential to comply with a ‘climate guard rail’ defined by a maximum warming of 2°C relative to pre-industrial values. As the global mean temperature has already risen by 0.6°C since the onset of industrialization, only a further warming by 1.4°C is tolerable.
A global mean long-term warming rate of at most 0.2°C per decade should not be exceeded. This climate window should be agreed as a global objective within the context of the UNFCCC process. The European Union should seek to adopt a leading role on this matter.”
Richard Tol examined the 2 degree target in 2005, here: “Europe’s Long Term Climate Target: A Critical Evaluation”
https://web.archive.org/web/20170808131603/http://www.fnu.zmaw.de/fileadmin/fnu-files/publication/working-papers/twodegreeswp.pdf,
with a later version in 2007:
https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v35y2007i1p424-432.html
His conclusion was, “This target is supported by rather thin arguments, based on inadequate methods, sloppy reasoning, and selective citation. Overall, the 2°C target of the EU seems unfounded.”
The EU’s own defence of it in 2008, is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160416231556/http://www.climateemergencyinstitute.com/uploads/2C_EU.pdf.
“This paper outlines the scientific background for the EU climate protection target – the 2°C limit – established by the EU Governments in 1996 and reaffirmed since then by the Environment Council 2003, and European Council, 2005, 2007. The paper also identifies how this target may be achieved through global action.”
Tol could discover no scientific background and it still traces back to Nordhaus 1975, who I think had been reading Hubert Lamb at the time and came away with some quotes.
As we see, “Climate Emergency” has not just emerged.
Thank you very much. I will read this again after breakfast and write a response.
Nordhaus the economist? Climate science of climate change or economics of climate change?
Jacques, Thanks for the post. Nic Lewis has a youtube video of a talk he gave recently that uses observations to constrain the carbon budgets. His budgets are much larger than the IPCC ones. Don’t recall how they compare to yours though. His TCRE is 1.05 C.
“His TCRE is 1.05”
The TCRE is a spurious statistic. It has no interpretation in the real world.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/01/09/agwmath/
Carbon (sic) budgets can work … sometimes too well …
Greenhouse gas emissions drop in Spain as power plants ditch coal
https://elpais.com/elpais/2020/01/06/inenglish/1578314036_180989.html
It looks cold. All that “thing of the past” lying on the ground …
Much easier to accomplish if the country is reducing its electricity generation.
https://i.imgur.com/uXGcyhz.png
If we all take the path of de-growth this should be a breeze.
That is what is called a truncated graph, making the change look bigger than it is.
Energy costs in Spain are among the highest in Europe
https://www.expatica.com/es/living/household/energy-costs-108518/ “But there are ways in which you can reduce your energy costs in Spain so that you’re not paying through the nose.”
CA’s Gavin Newsome seems to have been listening, he has ideas too.
Energy costs making California unaffordable for too many
https://www.ocregister.com/2017/07/13/energy-costs-making-california-unaffordable-for-too-many/
(Why does one need energy anyway, if they can’t afford a home to use it?)
Every CA citizen provides “investment” towards the states carbon reduction future; importantly these investments have organic tentacles; they encourage the growth of the low carbon citizen. This can be seen with the expansion of tent cities, and through the uptake of low carbon push carts (easily procured grocery store technology). Who needs an expensive home anyway, invest in yourself, go tent! This organic growth continues to give back to society in myriad ways, what’s not to like.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
It should be mentioned that Jacques Hagoort is well qualified to write on this topic, having had many decades of experience in the petroleum industry. He is the 1975 recipient of the prestigious Rossiter W. Raymond award, http://www.aimehq.org/programs/award/member-society-administered/aime-rossiter-w-raymond-memorial-award and is the author of the 372-page book Fundamentals of Gas Reservoir Engineering, which appeared in 1988 as Volume 23 of the series Developments in Petroleum Science. He is the principal of the Dutch company Hagoort & Associates B.V. The Netherlands is of course well-known as one of the leading countries in the petroleum industry.
Classless comment attacking the credentials of the writer instead of actually pointing out facts against the writers conclusions.
I’m sorry. How is this an “attack”? There has been much debate in this forum about what is and is not possible with fossil fuels, much of it by people with little or no background in the subject. It is therefore a pleasant change to hear from someone whose credentials demonstrate that he actually knows what he’s talking about.
In case you haven’t noticed, it is common practice to highlight the credentials of authors. Do you really take seriously every long article by people who for all you know are totally ignorant of what they speak? That says more about you than about them. You should be celebrating that this post is from someone completely at the opposite end of that spectrum!
I don’t think that it’s a “classless comment attack”, but acknowledgement that the writer has knowledge of energy pathways. He probably realizes that limited fossil fuel (oil, cola, etc) will hit us before long, making that a bigger issue than climate change
cola -> coal (typo)
@ycal: ” He probably realizes that limited fossil fuel (oil, cola, etc) will hit us before long,”
Actually I’d be interested to know Hagoort’s expectations for the economics of abiogenic petroleum between now and 2100. I would expect that as someone who wrote the book on gas reservoir engineering a third of a century ago he’d have as good an understanding of those prospects as anyone.
The 2002 article “Abiogenic formation of alkanes in the Earth’s crust as a minor source for global hydrocarbon reservoirs” by Sherwood Lollar et al is pessimistic about those prospects for economic gas reservoirs. What is deemed “economic” however can be quite demand sensitive, and it would interesting to know how the industry views its prospects today, 18 years later.
I looked up what “abiogenic” means. What I found is that it is impossible to create the complex hydrocarbon molecule chains of petroleum in any way other than organic means. They say that methane is possible because it is a simple molecule, 1 carbon and 4 hydrogen atoms.
@ycal: “it is impossible to create the complex hydrocarbon molecule chains of petroleum in any way other than organic means.”
If https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws are any indication this must have been said by the sort of person mentioned in his first law:
“1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
The abstract of the paper “Abiogenic Petroleum Generated by Serpentinization of Oceanic Mantellic Rocks” by Charlou et al at http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/abstracts/2005research_calgary/abstracts/short/charlou.htm states the following. “In ultramafic-hosted sites, such as Rainbow (36°14’N) on the mid-Atlantic Ridge, the fluids exhibit a mineral and gas composition different on many aspects from basaltic-hosted fluids. Particularly, they contain a very high hydrogen concentration (13 mmol/kg), associated with high concentrations of methane and other light hydrocarbons. In addition, many families of hydrocarbons are identified in the fluids by GC/MS, including linear saturated hydrocarbons, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, aromatics, and cyclic compounds.”
In other words, far more than merely methane.
When you have CO2 and H2O at high temperatures and pressures in rocks of great variety, the statement that it is impossible to create anything more complex than methane other than from former lifeforms would surely be extremely difficult to prove!
But even if all complex petroleum turns out to be almost all of biological origin, there still remains the question of when its extraction will cease to be economically viable. How certain are you that this will occur before 2100, and what is the basis of your certainty given the ongoing reports of newly discovered reserves at various sites around the world that we keep reading about?
I have yet to see any definitive answer to this question from anyone with a level of expertise in this field equivalent to that of Jacques Hagoort.
I recall reading that somewhere. Maybe what the true statement is that it is impossible to create petroleum inorganically at any rate that would match the rate of depletion by man. It likely takes thousands of years for anything substantial to be created because it has to collect in the right places, but here we have mankind extracting it all in a hundred years or so. Nothing new is really being found.
A background in the oil industry is widely regarded as suspect – as Vaughan must be aware of. I expect that he is amusing himself as a skeptic provocateur. Abiotic oil and all. And nor is a background in oil much qualification for quantifying future emissions. That depends on many socioeconomic factors. Hence the new ‘Shared Socioeconomic Pathways’ feeding into AR6.
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0959378016300681-gr1_lrg.jpg
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378016300681
I suspect that SSP5 was intended as a cautionary tale – but although I would express it more colorfully it seems an inevitable future. Except in my world human ingenuity succeeds in a context of markets and democracy.
“SSP5 Fossil-fueled Development – Taking the Highway (High challenges to mitigation, low challenges to adaptation) This world places increasing faith in competitive markets, innovation and participatory societies to produce rapid technological progress and development of human capital as the path to sustainable development. Global markets are increasingly integrated. There are also strong investments in health, education, and institutions to enhance human and social capital. At the same time, the push for economic and social development is coupled with the exploitation of abundant fossil fuel resources and the adoption of resource and energy intensive lifestyles around the world. All these factors lead to rapid growth of the global economy, while global population peaks and declines in the 21st century. Local environmental problems like air pollution are successfully managed. There is faith in the ability to effectively manage social and ecological systems, including by geo-engineering if necessary.”
I’ve been doing geoengineering for decades. It isn’t brain surgery – at which I would be horrible.
I was going to drop another video in – but there are a few of my favorites on the front page of my WordPress site. – https://watertechbyrie.com/ –
My alternative ‘narrative’ – btw – is a cyberpunk future.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2015/10/19/cyberpunk-is-the-future/
@RIE: ” I expect that he is amusing himself as a skeptic provocateur.”
While I admit to doing so with idiots so long as their idiocy is evident to non-idiots, as a matter of principle I would never do so with a widely acknowledged expert in any field whatsoever. If the world of bank robbers acknowledged Jacques Hagoort as their master I would take his every word at face value. I might even learn a trick or two about how best to rob banks.
My only complaint about fossil fuels is how the average user of them is content to dump their waste products directly into the atmosphere. Blaming the fossil fuel industry for the bad behavior of their customers is no better than blaming the plastics industry for the bad habit of their customers of tossing plastic into the ocean.
The denizens of Climate Etc. do not represent the fossil fuel industry. They represent their customers who would prefer not to be hassled about polluting the atmosphere with CO2. This is why they prefer to argue, contrary to the US Supreme Court, that CO2 is not a pollutant. They find that ruling terribly inconvenient.
So we have established what you are. Now it’s time to discuss price?
What we need to do is accept that SSP5 is best social, economic and environmental path to a future for the planet, its people and its wild places – and accelerate technical innovation across sectors – energy, transport, industry, residential and agriculture and forestry.
What I don’t accept is that SSP5 is the worst of all worlds.
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0959378016300681-gr5_lrg.jpg
Go progressive! It’s mud huts for everyone!
What’s surprising in Figure 2 is that it’s linear and places weight on the historical as near as I can tell. I’ve argued with my son that you just use the historical data and a straightedge to draw a line. Then make your plans. That’s what we get for all this money. It’s hard to argue with history. This happened. Compare to, We think this will happen. I win every time. What happened? I can tell you what a house sold for. What can I tell you about what it will be worth in three years or ten years? The best data is historical, or I could argue the only data is historical. What else have you got better than that? With data you can say, this happened and this happened. We can have theories until the cows come home like some opinion show host about what will happen.
Of course there’s Mosher. We don’t even plan for the past. No, we dream up a future and panic. And then we say, it’s science.
Weather forecasters routinely compare the predictions from their numerical models to what would be expected if the historical average were to prevail. The models are better. A simple reliance on historical data is less accurate.
When Fitzroy (skipper of the Beagle) first started issuing primitive weather reports the British fishing fleet found they helped reduce loss of life and damage in the industry. They didn’t need averages, they needed information they could act on in the present. Cheaper fish resulted. What we get for our money are cheaper flights, less money spent on fuel in the armed forces and timely emergency warnings etc. etc.
It’s not perfect, these are models, not the real thing. It is proper that we debate their uses and their costs. They can be misused. But it would be very expensive to abandon them.
Eleven years ago, in my part of the world, the users of the “straight edge” gave advice on how to deal with a fire emergency. There was horrific loss of life. This time (so far) we have had much lower mortality despite the fires being both more extensive and more intense. Our ability to avoid the temptation to skimp and rely on extrapolation, but to use models instead has probably saved hundreds of lives. The expenditure on modelling has repaid itself handsomely. A return to averaging and extrapolation would be seen to be the height of irresponsibility.
I don’t think that’s how it works. And am puzzled by the conflation of weather forecasting and emission scenarios.
No conflation. An illustration, addressed to … someone else … who had asserted that this modelling nonsense can be done away with in favour of good old extrapolation.
Weather forecasts are initialized and probabilistic. That’s how they work – not as you claimed. Hence the video.
@PT: “The models are better. A simple reliance on historical data is less accurate.”
This makes no sense.
The best models are Bayesian run to convergence.
But they must be initialized to some prior.
If you don’t look to historical data for your priors, how can you be sure you models are better? It seems like a religious belief in the power of modeling!
I was speaking much more simply. The prior here is a simple average. Model does better than that.
The comment to which mine was addressed was to the effect that measuring a few events, then running a straight edge across them is better than all this modelling stuff. I was trying (evidently failing) to say “not necessarily”.
We are modelling the future beyond the weather modelling limit. It depends on how much you think CO2 time X equals the GMST? Let me make that my rule though I stole from of all people, Salby.
Many people have plotted CO2 versus the GMST. Now I want to do that and predict. My input is historical. And I have a plan. A simple one. That policy makers can probably understand. At least their hipster advisors with a science IQ above 95.
I am suggesting a value approach. Whose approach is more valuable when considering costs? Think diminishing returns, and failed message delivery. Here’s a CMIP6. Fail. No one understands that. Okay a few people here do. Gavin Schmidt arguing for one more 1/10 C. And having his posse agree with him. Fail. It doesn’t sell. No one understands Schmidt. Marketing.
The alarmists have met the enemy. Themselves.
In Australia, the alarmists are meeting fire. It looks like a disaster to us. It is more intense, more extensive than any previously experienced.
But we shouldn’t worry, apparently. It’s natural. We were wrong apparently to try to save life and property, we should just let it burn.
We should roll over and accept advice from fools from afar with no experience, as we sizzle and with our dying breath thankfully repeat the mantra.
“It’s natural”.
Look, the point is, fewer people have died in this conflagration than the smaller one in 2009 because we learned. Much of the learning has been incorporated into models. Resisting (ignoring, actually) the urge to do nothing because Gödel, chaos, Heisenberg and all the reasons why models cannot work, we developed tools that helped predict. When the fire season ends (it hasn’t started in some parts) there will be enquiries, finger pointing, learning, despair and all the normal human behaviour. There will be better models. We will need them because the warming has barely begun.
I do not understand the lunacy that would have us go unprepared.
“As our nonlinear world moves into uncharted territory, we should expect surprises. Some of these may take the form of natural hazards, the scale and nature of which are beyond our present comprehension. The sooner we depart from the present strategy, which overstates an ability to both extract useful information from and incrementally improve a class of models that are structurally ill suited to the challenge, the sooner we will be on the way to anticipating surprises, quantifying risks, and addressing the very real challenge that climate change poses for science. Unless we step up our game, something that begins with critical self-reflection, climate science risks failing to communicate and hence realize its relevance for societies grappling to respond to global warming.” https://www.pnas.org/content/116/49/24390
This is Tim Palmer – a global doyen of climate computing. And he can’t stop preaching simplistic nonsense long enough to listen and understand. And he still hasn’t said what he wants to do about it – apart from selling AR5 on street corners.
Yes, my simplistic remark was a short answer to the notion that nothing was to be gained from models that couldn’t be obtained by running a ruler over historical data.
That we need to re-evaluate models is self-evident, as is the need for models themselves
There is a class of models – and the ensuing opportunistic ensembles – that are not just wrong but dangerously so. And then you prattle on about them.
JC SNIP Tim I have been reading for decades. As a hydrodynamic modeller – I have been aware of the huge limitations of the current generation of climate models for decades. There is a new generation that is far more promising.
https://www.slideshare.net/UCAR/computer-modeling-capabilities-challenges-for-earth-system-predictions
The Author should have cited my work published 11 years earlier. The conclusions are about the same
The “Author” is an authority in his field. Unless some other authority in the field has previously cited your work in the intervening 11 years, why would any reasonable person expect him to be the first?
The NOAA/NASA co-chaired, international panel to forecast Solar Cycle 25 released their latest forecast for Solar Cycle 25. The forecast consensus: a peak in July, 2025 (+/- 8 months), with a smoothed sunspot number (SSN) of 115. The panel agreed that Cycle 25 will be average in intensity and similar to Cycle 24.
Additionally, the panel concurred that solar minimum between Cycles 24 and 25 will occur in April, 2020 (+/- 6 months). If the solar minimum prediction is correct, this would make Solar Cycle 24 the 7th longest on record (11.4 years).
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/solar-cycle-25-forecast-update?fbclid=IwAR0II6o75ehEkIfRW-QP4F4w1ljXx89KsQrKdhEGeJvnIm6GviIFiEjdH34
The solar forecast is from a month ago. April 2020 ± 6 months is from October 2019, so a minimum in 2019 is not out of the cards for them either.
In three days there will be an unusual drop in temperature on the northwest coast.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_int/gif_files/gfs_hgt_trop_NA_f072.png
As I “only” have a Ph.D. in Psychology and as English is not my mother langage, I find it difficult at times to fully grasp the highly scientific exchanges between you people. Therefore I am somewhat confused about climate. Two questions: 1) Is the relationship between Co2 and global temperature definitely established from a scientific standpoint? 2) Is there an established relationship between the rise in global temperature and the occurrence of extreme meteorological events? Thank you for you contribution to my knowledge on the climate issue.
Hello Pierre.
I think that climate and all earth science differs from psychology and medicine in terms of empirical evidence. Medicine attempts to categorize the strength of scientific evidence such as:
https://www.brainrecoveryproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Pyramid-of-evidence.png
Near the top of this hierarchy is “randomized control trials”.
Equivalent climate experiments with CO2 and the earth are not possible.
We have only one ongoing experiment which, since n=1, is not randomized , nor blinded, nor controlled for other factors which are changing simultaneously.
Still, some things are known. The radiative properties of CO2 are testable in a laboratory. The constituency of the atmosphere is repeatably measurable. And since energy is not transferred convectively at the top of the atmosphere, we know that the only process which balances incoming solar radiation is outgoing infrared radiation.
So, as to:
“1) Is the relationship between Co2 and global temperature definitely established from a scientific standpoint? “
the radiative balance of earth is roughly described as:
Net = In – Out
where:
In is mostly a function of
Solar Radiation, Clouds, and Snow
Out is mostly a function of the profile of :
Temperature, Humidity, Clouds, Dust, CO2, and other gasses
It’s possible that things other than temperature could change to balance a change from CO2, but it would seem that since temperature is a direct response to radiative imbalance, temperature increase would be the most likely way.
So, I would say that the relationship is not definite, but very likely.
As for:
“2) Is there an established relationship between the rise in global temperature and the occurrence of extreme meteorological events? “
The radiative forcing of question 1 is a consideration at the top of the atmosphere, where motion is near zero.
The extreme events of question 2 are near the bottom of the atmosphere, where motion is great and determines these event. You may be familiar with so called ‘chaos theory’ in which motions are not predictable. That is the case with atmospheric motions. But that is true regardless of what the CO2 level is.
Global average temperature is not a term in the equations of motion, so there’s no direct causation of global warming and extreme weather. There’s some speculation about the gradients of temperature which do determine the general circulation, but the models indicate one thing and observations another. Indeed, there’s not evidence of much change, one way or another with hurricanes, tornadoes ( in the US ), floods, droughts, or storms.
The answers are:
1) No. Nobody knows how much the Earth should warm in response to an increase in CO2, although a lot of people pretend that they know when they say that a certain increase in emissions will take us to a certain temperature. It is fiction. What we do know is that there has been times in the history of the Earth when CO2 levels were increasing and temperatures where decreasing, like between 6000 and 600 years ago.
2) No. The statistics of extreme weather events do not allow to say with sufficient certainty that global warming has increased their occurrence. The only exception is heat waves. As they are defined in terms of temperature, an increase in average temperature results in a higher frequency of heat waves unless the definition is adjusted to the new higher mean temperature.
Nevertheless if precipitations increase there should be a higher frequency of floods, and if they decrease there should be a higher frequency of droughts, so any change in precipitation should have an effect at least in theory.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/community.oilprice.com/monthly_2019_06/Wheel-of-Climate-Change.jpg.e27bc8325a40f5cd996287d367889d4b.jpg
@javier: “Nobody knows how much the Earth should warm in response to an increase in CO2”
Psychologists call this “projection”. “I don’t know how neutrons can become protons by emitting an electron, therefore nobody on the planet knows how this can happen.”
Psychologists know little about climate science.
How much the Earth should warm in response to an increase in CO2 is what we call climate sensitivity. Since nobody knows the value of climate sensitivity, nobody knows how much the Earth should warm in response to an increase in CO2.
1. CO2 in the atmosphere is produced by nature, and man for about the last 10,000 years. I believe it has little to no effect on Ice ages.
2. Mother Nature is controlling the Ice Ages, She is taking water vapor from the oceans to the poles and dropping it as frozen water. This is how she keeps a relatively constant surface temperature of the earth’s surface during the Ice Making Stage, which we are in now.
When the true defination of BLACK SKY RADIATION is understood it will all fall into place.
“Earth’s energy budget describes the balance between the radiant energy that reaches Earth from the sun and the energy that flows from Earth back out to space. Energy from the sun is mostly in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. About 30 percent of the sun’s incoming energy is reflected back to space by clouds, atmospheric molecules, tiny suspended particles called aerosols, and the Earth’s land, snow and ice surfaces. The Earth system also emits thermal radiant energy to space mainly in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The intensity of thermal emission from a surface depends upon its temperature.” https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/what-is-earth-s-energy-budget-five-questions-with-a-guy-who-knows
The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed – only converted from one form of energy to another. Sunlight strikes the planet, warms it and energy is emitted at lower frequencies. The interaction of photons – literally packets of energy – with molecules in the atmosphere differ with frequency. Greenhouse gas molecules absorb and emit photons in the infrared frequencies that would otherwise escape to space. More gases mean more interactions and a warmer atmosphere – which then warms the surface.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/slowed-photon.gif
But Earth’s oceans and atmosphere is a turbulent fluid flow problem in which patterns form and reform in spatio-temporal chaos as energy is transported into, around and out of the Earth system. Eddy should note the pressure term in the Navier-Stokes equations.
e.g. http://www.ds.mpg.de/LFPB/chaos
Climate shifted in the mid 1970’s – shown here in rainfall anomalies in Australia with a shift in mean and an increase in variance. Although in principle unpredictable – the system is one that is hugely variable and sensitive to small change.
https://i0.wp.com/www.bom.gov.au/tmp/cc/rranom.aus.0112.24060.png
For extreme weather, use Roger Pielke:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/12/14/why-climate-advocates-need-to-stop-hyping-extreme-weather/#3055db317f0a
Fossel fuels >> Wealth >> Ability to deal with extreme weather
I’d like some of these people to get firewood from a forest using horses to haul it for each North American Winter they live through. Cutting it with handsaws and splitting it with wedges.
All hypeing should stop, of course. It has no place in science. Perhaps some of your North American woodsmen could come to Australia and help us clean up the six or seven million hectares of burnt countryside.
Our bureau of meteorology tells us that record high temperatures and record low rainfall (measurement, not hype) may have something to do with the situation. Getting a handle on what is behind such catastrophes is a serious business. There is much to gain on succeeding and much more to be lost if we get it wrong.
Paul Tikotin:
In Australia they can do something with or without climate change. Preventive clearing of brush or whatever they call it. That Australia burns seems natural.
I think you’ve been sold snake oil. Do you actually believe that primitive tribes knew how to control bushfires in conditions that included record heat, severe, prolonged drought, and strong winds?
I think our 1st peoples would object to JCH calling their ancestors primitive. But yes – they have a sophisticated understanding of ecological responses to fire stick farming evolved over some 60,000 years.
Cool season burning reduces fine fuel litter while leaving the canopy and soil carbon relatively unscathed. Waru is the Pintupi/Luritja word for fire.
https://www.clc.org.au/files/pdf/Waru-Calendar.pdf
Well, Ragnaar sounds like you are a fan of Trump’s rakes.
Let’s say that there is only another million hectares at risk, now that six or seven have burned. Work out how much you can rake in a day, and let me know when you would be finished. Meanwhile I will keep well clear!
There is a serious point to be made. A little numeracy goes a long way here. A serious argument will be held in Australia about land clearing and how it should be conducted. As mentioned elsewhere, Australian people survived here for thousands of years and fire was one of their tools. There is a clue. But Australia has changed. Traditional methods, if they can still be used, will have to be adapted.
The relevance of all this to modelling of carbon budgets is unclear. However, if, as some believe, the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is relevant then that is of interest. Good modelling is helpful, bad modelling may be dangerous.
Fire is natural in the Australian landscape. Bubonic plague is natural on the earth. There is evidence that human activity can affect both. It is worth understanding how. Lives are at stake.
He wants to reduce CO2 emissions? Whoopee. Whenever I ask how there is a bit of foot shuffling and mumbling. And the trump card. Boring. Now he treats this tragedy brought on by Kyoto as an opportunity for further misguided, dangerous, smug and obnoxious preaching.
https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/pages/9d2dcb07-5bce-46fb-a160-84f42e573746/images/climate-solutions-fund.jpg
“Yirralka Rangers fuel reduction burning, Laynhapuy Indigenous Protected Area © Copyright Yirralka Rangers/Laynhapuy Homelands Aboriginal Corporation”
https://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/government/climate-solutions-fund
“The Climate Solutions Fund will provide a further $2 billion to continue the success of the Emissions Reduction Fund. This funding will boost agricultural productivity, support jobs for Indigenous communities and improve biodiversity and water quality, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/styles/width-450/private/resources/c42c11a8-4df7-4d4f-bf92-4f14735c9baa/images/fig4.jpg
https://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/publications/factsheet-australias-2030-climate-change-target
https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/promo/c4304a68-450f-4770-9370-05a77fa3ef77/images/wide.jpg
https://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/government/emissions-reduction-fund
So let’s see some practical ideas He’d better include cool season burning – such as has been curtailed by bureaucrats, climate activists, greens and urban hipster pissant progressives for 20 years. With inevitable consequences that were predicted.
Paul Tikotin:
https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/management/fire/fire-and-the-environment
My suggestion is that fire is natural. And has many benefits. We can’t save the planet by suppressing it. I suggest the bias should be towards back to the 1600s for Australia while not having a connection to the area. I am a let it burn advocate. Now Australia can do more about its fires than it can do about the GMST.
Australia fires: Does controlled burning really work?
https://i.imgur.com/UuFjGlN.png
Prescribed burning debate rages as Australia finds there’s no time to burn going into peak fire season
https://i.imgur.com/7vFtWqF.png
Ragnaar, “My suggestion is that fire is natural. And has many benefits. We can’t save the planet by suppressing it.”
While my heart aches for the billion creatures lost to the fires in Australia, I agree with your thoughts.
It wasn’t that long ago in the historical record that when a wildfire started, it burned, burned, and burned until it either exhausted its fuel, or a fortuitous rain squelched it. There were no DC-10’s in 1850 dropping 11k gallons of fire retardant a pop; nor smokejumpers, heavy equipment, or legions that could be sent to a scene of a blaze at a moments notice to mitigate wildfire damage. There was little means to direct efforts to put out blazes, and also little in the way to quantify damage (humans call it damage). Spectacular expanses of wilderness burned, and did so mostly without witness.
But we know that fire is also a fundamental reality that nature uses to reinvigorate ecosystems. Yet human reality is usually near sighted and naturally governed by heartfelt responses as a species to protect what we value.
Outside of the destructive natural forces of fire, per a November study published in Nature: the amount of forest area worldwide grew by 2.24 million square kilometers from 1982-2016. Net loss in the tropics was “outweighed by a net gain in the extratropics”.
Whatever media narratives may communicate, woodland expansion continues. Interestingly, woodland expansion also dovetails to the roughly 20-30% increase in crop yields, overlapping the period of reforestation in the Nature study.
Ahhh, the good old 1850s.
I can see your 1850s and raise you $10
The good old 1250s, small pox, bubonic plague, nature’s way and all that.
We have a civilisation to protect, my child. It relies on many, complicated things. It has been built on a tacit assumption that the climate is stable. There are adults trying to maintain it. There are foolish children imagining its success is inevitable and that a stable climate is their birthright. Some even imagine that the climate is in an equilibrium so profound that nothing can disturb it.
“At the scale of observation,woody vegetation cover increased in all lowland woodland and coastal ecosystems over the 16-year period. Thus,
published examples of encroachment in selected coastal and woodland patches do appear to reflect widespread increases in woody vegetation cover in these ecosystems. This densification appears to be associated with changes in land management rather than with post-fire vegetation recovery and is likely to be ongoing and long-lasting, with substantial implications for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services.” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02255.x
These woody weeds go off like a bomb.
Mostly to do with clearing laws on private land and the lack of resources on public and indigenous lands. So we get back to pig ignorant bureaucrats, climate activists, greens and urban hipster pissant progressive who think that 5 minutes on an ABC TV web page means they are informed.
How many of the alleged arson fires were started by landowners/civilians who have been persistently hearing this completely unproven nonsense about lack of prescribed burns being the problem?
Misled into hating the evil greens so they started a fire at the worst possible time.
The PM says all he’s hears is “not enough prescribed burns.” It’s Australian madness.
The proof of a lack of burning and clearing to conserve the ecological balance of open woodland is in the increase in woody weeds – that I have not only linked to biological science on – but have seen with my own eyes over much of eastern Australia – and to my despair – over the past 20 years. So take your pig ignorant opinion – and accusations of farmer arson – and stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Oh – and climate is not stable and never has been.
Tikotin: “Ahhh, the good old 1850s…We have a civilisation to protect, my child. It relies on many, complicated things. It has been built on a tacit assumption that the climate is stable. There are adults trying to maintain it.”
So, adult, pick a century; the time period here merely serves as a perfunctory date to illustrate the human cultures desire to control certain sensibilities for perceived negative human outcomes, here based on the unproven relationship of wildfires caused from AGW; and how we should resolve the issues relative to what you believe humans intrinsically are culpable for. Your illusion is that humans must control these predetermined unnatural events in nature as a consequence of human causation, and that control would be good. You have an unnatural fixation based on: “There are adults trying to maintain it.” But first, can you prove that AGW increases the incidence of wildfires?
According to law enforcement, there is a problem with landowners/civilians doing unauthorized burns (arson.) Why are they doing them? Maybe because they’re listening to propaganda about lack of prescribed burns being the cause of the out-of-control fires.
We end up switching sides. I think restoring prairies and river systems is a good idea. If the prairie catches fire, let it burn. The roots will fine, and it will come back. Natural prairies evolved to survive burning. A prairie on fire kills baby trees I suppose trying to invade. We have floods, and it’s partly North Dakota’s fault with whatever they’re doing across from Minnesota. Let it flood. Don’t build in a flood plain. It will all work out and the fishing will be better. We build berms and then bridges get taken out by ice floes. Good plan. It’s going to rain and it’s going to burn. Nature will win.
I’m for all proactive measures to improve the environment, and common sense good stewardship. And by all means we should do our best to mitigate forest fires. My argument is the blame game complex where cause and effect is flippantly utilized as a political methodology to coerce outcomes for policy. These often have little to do with the underlying purpose for the policy being lobbied for, other than serving as a premise to launch, or build a case from, i.e. here, where AGW meets wildfire.
I don’t get a lot of this logic. First, the author claims a straight line accumulation of CO2. Charts I have seen pegs the CO2 curve as a rising one. First, from 1910 to 1945 12 ppm with 0.5 deg C rise. Then a temperature DROP! of 0.1 deg C with a corresponding CO2 RISE of of 20 ppm for the 1945 to 1975 and finally a rise of 0.94 deg C with a CO2 increase of 71 ppm until 2016 (NASA Goddard global land-ocean temperatures with 5-year lowess smoothing). Where is the temperature-CO2 correlation?
Paul Tikotin argues for modeling, instead of extrapolation from history. Go find the graph from Professor Christy from the University of Alabama. He plotted the average of 102 CIMP5 model runs predicting mid-tropospheric temperatures from 1977 on until 2014 and compared actual balloon data sets. Model scenarios show up too high by a factor of 5.4! So much for confidence in modeling.
Lastly there is the assertion of temperature increase attribution to CO2 rise, while forgetting the much more significant water vapor and cloud effects. Reciting Bjorn Stevens: “The mountains of water vapor slowly moving across the sky are the bane of all climate researchers. First of all, it is the enormous diversity of its manifestation that makes clouds so unpredictable. Each of these types of clouds has a different effect on climate. And above all: they have a strong effect…. If the fractional coverage of low-level clouds fell by only four percentage points, it would suddenly be two degrees warmer worldwide.”
Sure, water is a powerful actor. That does not mean CO2 is not an actor at all. Is that the case and if so, to what extent is the question.
If you don’t buy into the discussion over CO2s place in the climate system then of course, you won’t be interested in the discussion of carbon budgets.
Why do you think this article is here at all and why would you bother commenting? Surely a simple “irrelevant” would do. Of course, you may have a deeper insight and explain where scientists have got it wrong and why someone like Judith Curry, for example, is mistaken.
Figure 4 is what I call the impossible pyramid: https://www.cfact.org/2019/12/02/the-uns-impossible-climate-action-pyramid/
Politically, economically, socially and physically impossible (absent nuclear war).
Heavy winter attack in central US.
https://files.tinypic.pl/i/00995/hv59o4oy4kvf.png
A fast-moving cyclone attacks the US from the northwest.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/webAnims/tpw_nrl_colors/namer/mimictpw_namer_latest.gif
This carbon budget game is about to get hairier, because the new generation of models has CO2 sensitivity of around 6 degrees C. AR6 has to decide whether to take them seriously or not, with not being hard.
See https://www.sciencenews.org/article/why-climate-change-models-disagree-earth-worst-case-scenarios
The IPCC will choose its path with AR6.
About 40% down on this page:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/cmip6-the-next-generation-of-climate-models-explained
The spread increases from the 5s to the 6s. The uncertainty using only the 6s is greather than the AR5 assessment. I do not call this progress. The CMIP 6s our worse than the 5s compared to only the AR5. AR5 has a broader spreader than the CMIP 5s. With the 6s, the spread is now greater than AR5. To the extent the CMIPs drive the AR’s assessment of sensitivity, the situation is worse. I expect the next assessment to have a broader range. Unless the relative weight of historical, increases for the assessment. This would make sense. The more bleeped up the CMIPs, the more you rely on something else. This is not to throw the CMIPs away. It is to realize they aren’t doing the job. The IPCC’s problem is sales. CMIP. Can’t sell that except to some scientists. Warmest year ever. Can sell that. The IPCC needs to sell the historical. Which means things like the Lewis and Curry study. This tells us something. One of our strongest cards to play is historical. They play something else.
Sales!?
I stand on street corners making a motza (Australian fortune) selling IPCC reports. Inundated!
And not one buyer has asked about CMIP.
Where do you het your ideas on selling?
Paul Tikotin:
The IPCC is selling. Summary for Policymakers. Use this. They can sell history or sell predictions and projections. Above if one looked at the plot at the link, comparing the CMIP5s and 6s to AR5, you’ll see their projections are harder to sell in my opinion if based substantially on the 6s. I ask, what are policymakers supposed to buy? New stories? Celebrities opinions? I bought the IPCC’s two middle emission scenarios for SLR through about 2090. 2.3 inches per decade. They sold it. I bought it. Evidence of buying is found on people’s rooftops and in windy rural areas. The $64 question is what does one sell? The correct answer earns one a participation trophy. The answer I am looking for is a broad one. Think of whom one is selling to.
” 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 (see ref. 26).” https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709
I wish people would learn something about modelling before indulging in such empty vessel rattling.
Here’s a new one from a doyen of climate modelling.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/49/24390.short?rss=1
Thunderstorm line separates Arctic air masses from the warm from Gulf of Mexico.
http://en.blitzortung.org/live_lightning_maps.php?map=30
The whole argument in this paper is predicated on the assumption that more stringent mitigation raises costs of mitigation. This is not necessarily true. I have repeatedly argued, with substantial modeling and business research evidence behind my argument, that costs might fall. The reasoning: 1) new technological breakthroughs; 2) use of revenues from carbon taxes to fund low-GHG research; and 3) economies of specialization and scale.
The ocean remains a net carbon sink. A reduction in solubility results in more CO2 remaining in the atmosphere due to reductions in the physical and biological carbon pumps.
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/3-s2.0-B9780123744739002721-gr1.jpg
“The global carbon cycle. Arrows indicate fluxes of carbon between the various reservoirs of the atmosphere, lithosphere, terrestrial biosphere, and the ocean. All stocks are expressed as 1015 g C. All fluxes are decadal means and expressed as 10^15 g C y−1.”
Of the approximately 130 ppm of CO2 that’s been added since 1900, what percentage of that 130 ppm is “human” caused — realizing the additional contribution of CO2 out-gassing from slowing rising ocean temperatures?
It is very bemusing to see the avid discussion of a preposterous assumption – that lowering atmospheric CO2 will change climate in the desired direction. There is zero historical evidence for that, and zero too for our ability to change the level of atmospheric CO2, as shown by the natural experiment of 1929-1931, when human CO2 production declined by 30%, atmospheric CO2 continued its languid rise, and global temperature continued to rise until WWII produced that ungodly amount of CO2, continued into the postwar reconstruction, and temp fell slightly but enough to generate alarms about THE COMING ICE AGE – see Time and Newsweek and ScienceNews in the early ’70s.
Again we hear that CO2 is the highest it’s been in 3 million years – and during the last million years we have seen 8 glaciations and 8 interglacials including the current, with no preceding CO2 changes.
Again we see beard-stroking alarm at the human output of CO2, without noting that it amounts to less than 5% of the annual contribution. We even see attribution to humankind of the total increase in CO2 since 1850, without regard to natural sources. And again we see no recognition of the marked increase in agricultural production attributable to the CO2 increase since 1950. And coccolithophores in the oceans are thriving.
We also see no recognition of the exponential decay of the GHG effect of CO2, as noted by Arrhenius, with 50% in the first 20 ppm. We are in the fifth half-life of that decay, so theoretically the next doubling to 800ppm will increase its effect by less than 2%. Also neglected is the Stefan-Boltzmann equation with an increase in land surface temperature producing outgoing IR at the fourth power of the increase. So the increase of 1K will produce a 1.3% increase in outgoing IR for a 0.3% increase in land surface temp.
Yes, CO2 is the highest in the last 3 million years; but 120,000 years ago, the Eemian, the temperature was 2C higher, sea level was at least 6 m higher, and CO2 was 280 ppm. The correlation of CO2 to global temperature is quite good, about as good as the correlation of sex and marriage, and both demonstrate correlation without causation.
There is a good discussion here http://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijaos.20190301.13.pdf of the flow of CO2 globally.
Excellent overview. Regarding the “2C higher” comment … the NEEM project discovered the Greenland Eemian period was “8C” higher than today.
With root zone water storage – the change is the gains and losses above and deep percolation loss below. The root zone should be full of deep roots, fungi, worms, nematodes, etc. That facilitates breakdown of substrate to release nutrients – and intercepts, infiltrates and stores rainfall. Good for food security, flood and drought resilient agriculture, dry weather flow in streams, biodiversity, aquifer recharge and reducing sea level rise – as much as that is. And good to sequester 333 GtC – or some 157 ppm CO2 removed from the atmosphere – (Rattan Lal) by adding to carbon in soils with modern management practices and with reclaiming desert and restoring rangeland, wetland and woodland. This is a core climate objective of governments globally with blue and 4 per 1000 soil carbon initiatives. More important is the millions of farmers on board realizing lower input costs and higher productivity.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/this-equation-is-used-to-balance-the-change-in-soil-water-storage-in-the-root-zone-of-a.png
dS/dt = inflows – outflows
where S is water volume in the root zone – which is a linear function of soil organic content. Just one way – there are many – of increasing rooting depth and terrestrial biomass is to dream of bison.
Jim, Interesting link to the article about anthropogenic CO2 only making up a smaller portion of the CO2 increase. Any comments anyone on the relevance of the approach presented there?
Sources and sinks.
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/3-s2.0-B9780123744739002721-gr1.jpg
Hard to know if Greenland is representative of global temperature. But thanks for that.
Farming techniques and bison dreams seem a bit peripheral to this discussion.
“Why the CO2 reduction pathways are too stringent”
Sequestering 333 GtC – or removing some 157 ppm CO2 from the atmosphere – by adding to carbon in soils with modern management practices and with reclaiming desert and restoring rangeland, wetland and woodland is much more to the point than sky dragon slayer nonsense.
Ellison, really, you must stop the handwaving aspersion-casting anathematizing and provide something substantive.
Not that there’s anything wrong with sequestering carbon – it does after all come back as vegetation rots – but it doesn’t affect the balance. Which at this time, at these levels, is all to the good. So far.
Oh Jimmy – you can’t possibly have watched the video in the time elapsed. The point is to reverse carbon loss from soils and vegetation. Using modern management techniques to increase soil and vegetation carbon stores in healthier soils with higher productivity, lower input costs, a flood and drought resilient agriculture, increased dry weather flow in streams, decreased downstream flooding, enhanced biodiversity, aquifer recharge and reducing sea level rise – as much as that is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMZ9sABonRs
And I can’t do less that call your views more generally sky dragon slayer nonsense – not engage with you on these things as a waste of time – and you may take it as you wish.
I like bison and vegetation – they both taste good. Regarding CO2 … anyone know what percentage of today’s atmospheric CO2 (about 413 ppm) is human-caused?
A better question is how much of the annual increase is from anthropogenic sources.
Elly, it’s a lovely video, and I’m all in favor of good farm practice. It just doesn’t have anything to do with CO2 mitigation. Freeman Dyson might argue with that, but he would agree that there’s no point in CO2 mitigation at this time, at these levels. We will admit that the increased vegetation, the greening of the world since 1950, may have a lot to do with some degree of CO2 slowing, FWIW. Thank you for acknowledging that you have nothing substantive to contribute.
@shewchuck, we currently produce 4 to 5% of the annual contribution to atmospheric CO2.
I was avoiding academia in favor of real farmers. In refutation of Jimmy’s ill informed conviction that nothing can be done. But let me try this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mbSzIojsRQ
From which I took this screen grab.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/lal-c-sequestration.png
Net carbon fluxes from oceans and land are minor. Looking at only one side of the equation is utter nonsense. Anthropogenic emissions are some 200% of the annual increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It’s called a carbon cycle for a reason.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ContentFeature/CarbonCycle/images/carbon_cycle.jpg
Here’s a very smart farmer.
Thanks Jim. This is the first specific value (range) I’ve seen, and it’s logical based on the relative increase in current emissions as extrapolated from the IPCC’s “The Scientific Basis” estimate of 3.4% back in 2001.
I agree that any further CO2 warming has essentially reached its logarithmically diminishing heating significance and any more is insignificant. On a related issue … regarding the approximately 130 ppm of CO2 added since 1900 … what percent do you think is human-caused? Back in 2014, Spencer’s model estimated it was about 61%. There are probably other sources we have yet to discover — such as under-sea ridge venting — which are not necessarily constant.
RF = 5.36 X ln (C/Co) – for a doubling of CO2 – any doubling – the forcing is 3.7 W/m2.
Because atmospheric concentrations are increasing exponentially – the forcing curve is approximately linear.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/public/2016-07/climate-forcing-figure1-2016.png
As we are emitting some 9 Gigatonnes as C per year – and the atmosphere concentration is increasing at some 4 GtC/yr – one must assume that there are sinks as well as sources.
Wow. This is just arithmetic. I’ll paste it again. Human emissions of CO2-e is some 33 Gt – or some 9 GtC. We are left with some 4GtC of CO2-e accumulating in the atmosphere. Emissions can be quantified relatively precisely and gas concentrations measured. There is more carbon being emitted by people than is accumulating in the atmosphere. The working hypothesis is that human sources have something to do with it.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ContentFeature/CarbonCycle/images/carbon_cycle.jpg
“This diagram of the fast carbon cycle shows the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and oceans. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, and red are human contributions in gigatons of carbon per year. White numbers indicate stored carbon. (Diagram adapted from U.S. DOE, Biological and Environmental Research Information System.)”
And if Jimmy wants substance – there is 150 years of it.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Principles-of-Planetary-Climate-Pierrehumbert/3a2f5bd12831e768cd49da1184f2aeff82dff49c
… We are left with some 4GtC – or 2 ppm CO2-e – accumulating in the atmosphere…
“… and zero too for our ability to change the level of atmospheric CO2…” 😊
I was talking about evidence, not about possibilities. The natural experiment of 1929-1931 was dispositive but not conclusive.
You’re having trouble with this, aren’t you?
I see no evidence that you have supplied any evidence. It may have been in one of your many comments that have disappeared. 😊
The only natural global experiment occurred 1929-1931. It had the possibility of showing that decreasing our output of CO2 by 30% had a measurable effect on atmospheric CO2. Instead, it showed that our diminished output had no effect whatsoever.
WWII and the post war reconstruction was the source of a large increase in our CO2 production – not quantified so far as I know. Atmospheric CO2 almost stabilized from 1945-1960 and temperature declined. Declined enough to warrant raising alarms about the Oncoming Ice Age! – see Time and Newsweek and ScienceNews in the early ’70s.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/
http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf
Time has of course obliterated its similar article http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,944914,00.html although the rep refers to it here: https://time.com/5670942/time-magazine-ice-age-cover-hoax/
“Newsweek article on the next ice age, published back in 1975, gets a lot of the attention, though TIME did a version of the story, as did a number of other media outlets.”
Of course, you really shouldn’t ask for evidence of absence, should you… Logic is not your strong suit.
I was wondering who was responsible for the disappearing of my perfectly innocuous comments. About time you owned up.
Did anthropogenic CO2 emissions decline by 30% and what were the atmospheric measurements? What were the land use changes in the period? Why ignore sources of intense annual to decadal internal variability? Sounds more like motivated narrative to support a tinpot theory than evidence.
… zero too for our ability to change the level of atmospheric CO2, as shown by the natural experiment of 1929-1931, when human CO2 production declined by 30%, atmospheric CO2 continued its languid rise, and global temperature continued to rise…
I just thought that the 1929-31 experiment was too silly to mention. But it is hilarious. 🤣
jimmww,
” There is zero historical evidence for that, and zero too for our ability to change the level of atmospheric CO2, as shown by the natural experiment of 1929-1931″.
But it is a wonderful historical evidence. We have to collect every bit of historical evidence that the CO2 400 ppm atmospheric content cannot influence the orbital forced warming trend.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
This I clarify is not Milankovic but Christos’ notion that it is the velocity of spin – not energy – that determines planetary temperature.
“A Planet Effective Temperature Complete Formula:
Te = [ Φ (1-a) S (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴ (1)
My name is Christos J. Vournas, M.Sc. mechanical engineer.
I launched this site to have an opportunity to publish my scientific discoveries on the Climate Change.
I have been studying the Planet Earth’s Climate Change since November 2015; I have been studying it for four years now.
First I discovered the Reversed Milankovitch Cycle.
Then I found the faster a planet rotates (n2>n1) the higher is the planet’s average (mean) temperature T↑mean:
Tmin↑→ T↑mean ← T↓max
when n2>n1 (it happens because Tmin↑ grows faster than T↓max lessens)
The further studies led me to discover the Rotating Planet Spherical Surface Solar Irradiation Absorbing-Emitting Universal Law and the Planet Effective Temperature Complete Formula.”
Will wonders never cease. Jimmy is in good company – birds of a feather.
Thanks, Chris. It is evidence even though it is a one-off and hard (but not impossible, alas) to replicate. It could be contested with countervailing evidence which of course, is lacking. And highly unlikely to be found.
And of course then there’s the exponential decay of CO2’s GHG effect, 50% in the first 20 ppm…
Why don’t you try it Jimmy.
Why thank you, Elly.
Nice sales pitch. The physics of course has never been in dispute, just the question of causal relationship at this time, at these levels. Which depends on historical data which you for some reason keep ignoring.
Why could that be? You might take a look at Feynman: https://youtu.be/0KmimDq4cSU
The drier upper atmosphere levels – where energy leaves the planet – are not remotely saturated. And the hypothesized mechanism:
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/slowed-photon.gif
Has been observed from space:
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/harries.png
You seem to do nothing but dispute physics. It may be unintended irony. Here’s evidence effective – after adjusting for atmospheric effects – radiative forcing.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/harries.png
And these are not the only variations in climate. Making your 1929-31 experiment – for which you don’t provide your evidence – frankly ludicrous. I think I will go back to ignoring you now.
Dam…
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/Fig8-18-1-1024×643.jpg
Oh and as Feynman said – observation trumps tinpot theory.
Yes, do ignore, please.
Try this: https://reneweconomy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/rsz_screen_shot_2014-05-21_at_125452_pm.jpg
and this
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/files/2018/10/CO2-emmissions-and-slumps-768×543.jpg
Noe there is just land use and atmospheric concentrations to account for. With some numbers not just blather. Just assume that there was in the order of a couple of parts per million reduction in emissions over the Great depression – and half that stayed in the atmosphere. It that measurable within the limits of precision at the time against an atmospheric concentration of 300 odd ppm? Or ain’t you got a clue?
Now, Elly, you’re the one propounding theory as omnipotent. I’m only looking for observational data to evaluate. I’ve never had any problem with physics. I haven’t proposed any theories. You might note that CO2 is not the only driver for temperature. There’s eight others which helps to explain the ups and downs and the lack of causality for CO2.
You might note too that the graph for anthropogenic CO2 looks quite different to the graph for total CO2.
There is hypothesis and empirical observation. That’s how science is done.
There are a number of greenhouse gases as shown in the Harries et al graph. .
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/harries.png
The atmosphere is a pool with 420 ppm CO2 – and that is changing by 2 ppm/yr. But it is not simply monotonic increasing. Get some perspective Jimmy.
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fncomms13428/MediaObjects/41467_2016_Article_BFncomms13428_Fig1_HTML.jpg
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13428
Your overhyped greening. There should be much more of it – helped along by better land and water management.
But – if I can ask you to stick to a thread it would make it easier both to navigate and ignore.
You might note – btw – how significant carbon dioxide and methane are in the bottom panel. So much for saturation. I keep shooting them down and they pop up again. You’re like a whack-a mole. 😊
Gee, Elly. I’m not sure you can read your own graphs.
And of course they have nothing to say about observation. That’s history, about which you have no interest at all, apparently.
So there should be more greening? Should be? Do you have any idea how that sounds? Are you in never-never land?
Who has mentioned saturation? Only you, poor chap.
Please, if you can help with land management and hydraulic control, please do. And then silence. You’re not helping.
Go back to ignoring, I pray.
Another comment to be trashed in due course Jimmy? 🤣
“We also see no recognition of the exponential decay of the GHG effect of CO2, as noted by Arrhenius, with 50% in the first 20 ppm. We are in the fifth half-life of that decay, so theoretically the next doubling to 800ppm will increase its effect by less than 2%.”
“Are you in never-never land? Who has mentioned saturation? Only you, poor chap.”
So it survives I see despite all rights. The comment is 100% aspersion. As for CO2 saturation in the absorption bands – I suppose I could give Jimmy the benefit of assuming that he doesn’t understand what he is saying and not that he is being deliberately disingenuous and disparaging.
And I think he will find that it was Ångström rather than Arrhenius who did a too simple experiment and suggested that reducing CO2 concentration in a tube didn’t affect IR transmission much. Still better science in 1901 than Jimmy’s half life narrative.
Wow. You didn’t even check wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect_as_cause_for_ice_ages
The corrected version of Arrhenius’ calculation can be done properly today and if you neglect the effect of H2O in all forms on the atmosphere, the temperature increase from CO2 doubling is gonna be around 1 °C. Note that Arrhenius’ result was about 5-6 °C, about twice the IPCC value. But his numbers were completely wrong.
You can do the MODTRAN calculation today and look at the result:
https://i2.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/co2_modtrans_img1.png
Have fun.
The linearized math for the no feedback temperature increase is simple.
ΔTs=−R/λ = 1.2 K
ΔTs – is the surface temperature change
R – the radiative forcing change = 3.7 W/m2 from line by line radiative transfer equations.
λ – the Planck feedback = -3.1 W/m2/K
1.2 K is known as the no feedback response. If we add a water vapor feedback it is around a 3K increase.
See this on feedbacks – http://www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/brose/classes/ATM623_Spring2015/Notes/Lectures/Lecture03%20–%20Climate%20sensitivity%20and%20feedback.html
A model perhaps closer to Arrhenius is discussed here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealized_greenhouse_model
Arrhenius calculated the effect of halving or doubling ‘carbonic acid’ with a temperature feedback from ‘aqueous vapor’.
see – https://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
But perhaps a more modern exposition is a better bet.
e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160932716300308
Arrhenius calculated with crude data and crude methods a temperature increase or decrease of 5-6 K for doubling or halving CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. It is within the range of modern estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=Ymn3LUZIBuI&feature=emb_logo
But then of course carbonic acid is a control variable – μ – for triggering Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics in our nonlinear world. And not a knob at all.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/bifurcations.png
Arrhenius calculated with crude data and
crudesimple methods…Excellent. You’ve discovered the exponential decline of the GHG effect of CO2. Now all you need to do is calculate the effect of the next doubling to 800 ppm. It’s easy.
CO2 is not in control of climate at this time at these levels. And we are not in control of CO2.
It’s an asymptote that shows no sign of levelling out anytime this century. By then there may be other feedbacks.
e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1
Energy systems are the sum of multiple components, which include input (solar, cosmic, etc.) , storage (oceans, land mass, atmosphere, etc.) and dissipation (clouds, water vapor, etc). Systems like these are really a hybrid of multiple impulse functions with varying length tails based on the composition and structure of the materials involved.
CO2 is not in control.
In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’
Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics in the thermodynamically nonequilibrium Earth system suggests that the system is pushed by greenhouse gas changes and warming – as well as solar intensity and Earth orbital eccentricities – past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact in changing spatiotemporal chaotic patterns with multiple negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation.
As long as you have a physical mechanism for change – and can walk and chew gum at the same time – Jimmy.
So if you’re having trouble calculating the GHG effect of doubling CO2 from 400 to 800, the MODTRAN program, moderated by U of Chicago, will do that for you.
And please don’t be rude. Moderator?
Surely MOTRAN isn’t too difficult for you?
Can you not chew gum and walk at the same time?
Quoting out of context is a bad faith argument – Jimmy. As long as you have a physical mechanism for change – and can walk and chew gum at the same time – Jimmy. Is what I said. Meaning that of course there is not one determinant variable in such a complex system.
But do you doubt the result based on line by line radiative transfer equations and projected greenhouse gas and aerosols emissions and land use change? This is the basis for AR6. And classic liberals had better get used to it and devise a better strategy that the old and discredited furphy of CO2 saturation. I noticed Ted Nordhaus advising to ignore both skeptics and alarmists in a new centrist alliance. Ignoring fanatics of any stripe is a great idea.
Besides which – what you have shown is not MODTRAN at all but something copied from somewhere at WUWT. That still shows downward radiation increasing at about the same rate as it has from 280 ppm. What is it that you imagine you are seeing?
Sigh. I had hoped you were competent to either know of, or be able to find, the site.
But here, poor soul, here it is:
http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
Try to decipher it. I know you can do it.
So, Elly, just to be clear. Don’t dance around. Your response should take the form of … By my calculation, doubling CO2 to 800 ppm should increase its GHG effect by xxx – with xxx being your percentage. Again, I urge you to avail yourself of the MODTRAN program. Everyone uses it, you know.
Everyone uses it but you apparently. Any everyone is using the SSP.
Splendid. So you may possibly, if suitably moved, by competent to respond to … So, Elly, just to be clear. Don’t dance around. Your response should take the form of … By my calculation, doubling CO2 to 800 ppm should increase its GHG effect by xxx – with xxx being your percentage.
Compliments are not your usual mode Jimmy.
What do you imagine you are seeing in this curve – copied by you from WUWT – that may or may not have been compiled from MODTRAN? And how on Earth do you think it trumps the SSP projections?
https://i2.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/co2_modtrans_img1.png
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0959378016300681-gr5_lrg.jpg
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0959378016300681-gr5_lrg.jpg
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378016300681
BTW – you need to stop repeating things or people might get the wrong idea.
Boy, you’ve really got the moderators here, don’t you.
But to be fair, they did remove your insult of ponce and my response.
But to continue on topic, here’s the MODTRAN site you couldn’t or wouldn’t find: http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
And no, it doesn’t trump anything actually pertinent. It does require one – that would be you – to devote himself – did I use the right pronoun? – to the unique calculation of CO2 GHG effect with no confounding influences.
So, Ellison, your response should take the form of … By my calculation, doubling CO2 to 800 ppm should increase its GHG effect by xxx – with xxx being your percentage.
What say you?
I answered Jimmy’s question – more than doubled current forcing under SSP5 by 2100. I suspect that SSP5 is intended as a cautionary tale. But it is the fastest way to human progress, climate change mitigation and adaptation. It cannot be advanced with quixotic delusions of CO2 saturation, outgassing as the cause of atmospheric CO2 increase or any of the other nonsense peddled as skeptic science around here.
“SSP5 Fossil-fueled Development – Taking the Highway (High challenges to mitigation, low challenges to adaptation)
This world places increasing faith in competitive markets, innovation and participatory societies to produce rapid technological progress and development of human capital as the path to sustainable development. Global markets are increasingly integrated. There are also strong investments in health, education, and institutions to enhance human and social capital. At the same time, the push for economic and social development is coupled with the exploitation of abundant fossil fuel resources and the adoption of resource and energy intensive lifestyles around the world. All these factors lead to rapid growth of the global economy, while global population peaks and declines in the 21st century. Local environmental problems like air pollution are successfully managed. There is faith in the ability to effectively manage social and ecological systems, including by geo-engineering if necessary.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378016300681
No, you did not answer my question. I have not discussed saturation, the question which you would apparently prefer to answer.
Your response should take the form of … “By my calculation, doubling CO2 to 800 ppm should increase its GHG effect by xxx – with xxx being your percentage.”
You can use the MODTRAN program if you need to, or just do the calculation yourself.
Here’s an example of what can be done:
https://i2.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/co2_modtrans_img1.png
Another distraction you point to in an attempt to avoid the question is the SSPs, which are devoted pretty much to nitrogen balance and eutrophication with some attention to the effect of CO2 mitigation on that.
“We find that some scenarios that are beneficial in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., SSP1-2.6 and SSP4-3.4) may result in massive increases in nitrogen loading, pointing to exacerbated eutrophication as an unintended consequence of climate mitigation. High-emission scenarios (e.g., SSP5-8.5) could lead to modest amelioration of eutrophication within the continental United States.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08884-w
That is of course an important discussion, but not related to the exponential decline in the GHG effect of CO2, which is what you have attempted to deny. Quite unsuccessfully, I might add.
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0959378016300681-gr5_lrg.jpg
That’s huge spread of possibilities. One of them must be right, right? You will of course choose the one you wish to believe, impelled by your devotion. There is a decent possibility that none of them are realistic, although the extremes really should encompass every outcome. Right?
Meanwhile, there’s that exponential decline in CO2’s GHG that remains for you to acknowledge.
That decline of course is real. The models are speculative.
And while you’re strolling through ModelLand, you might consider this:
http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/journalarticles/2019-40/version_1/count
The MODTRAN process is compared with actual observation – fancy that! – and fits quite well.
http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/modtran_iris.jpg
“MODTRAN results (red) compared with data (solid black) from the Nimbus 3 IRIS instrumentfrom Hanel et al., 1972)”
This one I posted above. It compares IRIS and IMG. It works because these instruments viewed the Earth through narrow apertures. Greenhouse gases randomize photon paths – some photons going off in all directions evade the field of view. Changes in greenhouse gas concentrations can be inferred from snapshots taken at different times. Simulations of emission spectra by line by line radiative transfer equations are accurate. Panel C tells the story of changes in trace gas concentration between 1970 and 1997.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/harries.png
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12065270_Increases_in_greenhouse_forcing_inferred_from_the_outgoing_longwave_radiation_spectra_of_the_Earth_in_1970_and_1997
These are emission scenarios. Forcing is calculate in the usual through line by line radiative transfer equations such as MODTRAN is based on. These are inputs to comprehensive climate models – not outputs.
As for models – I have discussed these often enough.
e.g. https://judithcurry.com/2020/01/17/explaining-the-discrepancies-between-hausfather-et-al-2019-and-lewiscurry-2018/#comment-907961
The atmospheric IR absorption bands are far from saturated. Not even close at higher and drier altitudes. I can’t be clearer without repeating what I have already said.
The SSP are emission scenarios – and I nominated SSP5 as the most fruitful and pragmatic scenario. Forcing is calculated by line by line radiative transfer equations just like in MODTRAN. These are inputs to comprehensive climate models and not outputs.
I have written about models often enough.
e.g. https://judithcurry.com/2020/01/17/explaining-the-discrepancies-between-hausfather-et-al-2019-and-lewiscurry-2018/#comment-907961
The IR atmospheric absorption bands are far from saturated. Not even remotely at higher and drier altitudes. But I have said that.
I mentioned those sources not because I thought you’d be interested – I know better – but for anyone else who might be interested.
But enough theory. Let’s get back to the absence of any historical evidence that CO2 controls climate – not even on the upswing, and certainly not on the downswing. You really don’t like the natural experiment of 1929-1931, do you. (Or any historical data, for that matter.) That really should have some influence on your choice of SSP model. The earth would be so much better off without CO2 mitigation. But no. Elly has faith.
We know there was some anthropogenic forcing last century. You can calculate it in MODTRAN. 🤨
http://old.futureearth.org/sites/default/files/images/PAGES_Composite_Temperature.png
Set against a backdrop of intense internal Hurst-Kolmogorov variability. The latter idea based originally on 849 years of a Nile River flow record. That alone should give Jimmy pause – but anything less than an oncoming train is unlikely to.
My pragmatic strategy – closest to SSP5 in principle but incorporating much more immediate and effective mitigation strategies – centers on efforts to accelerate energy innovation, build resilience to extreme weather, and pursue no regrets pollution reduction measures. A multi-gas and aerosol strategy is required – carbon dioxide, CFC’s, nitrous oxides, methane, black carbon and sulfate. Along with ongoing decreases in carbon intensity and increases in efficiency and productivity. And technical innovation across sectors – energy, transport, industry, residential and agriculture and forestry. Economies don’t stand still. They progress or die. And only rich economies can afford environments.
Carbon is much more productive when returned to soils and ecosystems than in the atmosphere. 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.
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 and environmental impacts, replacing cooking with wood and dung with better ways of preparing food and developing better and cheaper ways of producing electricity,
There are ways to a bright future for the planet, its peoples and its wild places – but these need to emerge bottom up in a broad context of economics and democracy, population, development, technical innovation, land use and the environment. And it isn’t rocket science.
The historical use of MODTRAN seems to be wrong. What happened to the characteristic Medievil Warm Period hump? Doesn’t the data trump the simulation?
That’s a PAGES 2K temperature graph. What I was suggesting was that warming last century correlates with anthropogenic CO2.
Medievil Warm Period hump
Prior to Mann, can you point to the scientific work that established the existence of MWP hump?
1. I have shown temperature data over 2000 years with an obvious correlation last century with atmospheric CO2 concentration.
2. We are emitting to the atmosphere some 9 gigatonnes (as carbon) of greenhouse gases per year – and the atmospheric increase is some 4 GtC/yr. The obvious inference reached by people the world over is that we are overwhelming natural sinks.
3. I haven’t played with MODTRAN for years and years – and I see no reason to now.
4. RF = 5.35 ln (2) = 3.7 W/m2 for a doubling of CO2. There are other formulas for other gases.
5. The rate of increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases has been exponentially increasing – giving an approximate linear increase in forcing.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/public/2016-07/climate-forcing-figure1-2016.png
6. The CO2 IR window is in no danger of slamming shut anytime soon. Your WUWT curve is – as I have said – a horizontal asymptote rather than an exponential decay function.
https://www.freemathhelp.com/images/lessons/asymp4.png
The secret to avoiding moderation – btw – is to find a balance with things of scientific substance, make it original and expressive and to not flog a dead horse. The latter just bores everyone silly.
A note on moderation: insults and content free bickering is the #1 way to get your comment deleted. Flogging your (off topic) hobby horse with repetitive comments on a guest thread is the next easiest way to get your comment deleted.
Many many people read this blog (including the comments), orders of magnitude more than the number of commenters here. These include congressional staffers, journalists, and academics. I look at the comments from their perspective, while at the same time trying to encourage the more thoughtful commenters here.
Back in the early days, the blog was unmoderated – I didn’t want anyone to feel their perspectives were being censored. But the comment threads turned into a cess pool. At this point, I check in ~ 3X/day to moderate comments.
Thanks to all for your continuing contributions.
Judith
Thanks for this blog, the articles and your efforts on moderation. There are sometimes bun fights that go on for days, mostly within acceptable boundaries, but sometimes one of the buns is dipped in hot tea and hurts the recipient..
Mostly though it is a robust tea party and the buns, rock cakes and scones remain safely on the table
tonyb
Thanks, Judith. I had figured that out, but thought that I might be able to give as good as I got. Should I offer a count of the number of land management discussions and videos that are repetitively introduced into the climate topics?
Best to ignore silliness and barbs, rather than escalating
Restoring carbon to terrestrial systems a key component in drawing down atmospheric CO2. None of the videos are repeated here. Rattan Lal at Nobel Conference 54 I have linked before – for his academic standing in soils research and practical experience. And carbon cowboys for the production values. For the most part the videos are real farmers and real farms. From around the world – but focusing on the US under this post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY9YVwJZDvw
I have been far too drawn into challenging sky dragon slayer memes repeated endlessly here with far more disparagement than substance.
OK Judith. I thought it was irony. I’ll try to do better.
If one part of the diagram is wrong then the rest is suspect. I’m not going to take a bite out of a rotten apple.
You have confused apples and oranges.
1. Yes, as I have said CO2 and temperature correlate about as well as sex and marriage. No causality at this time at these levels.
2. We are not overwhelming anything. Our contribution to the annual CO2 input is less than 5%.
3. From your previous responses, I believe you had no idea the MODTRAN existed. This is supported by your refusal to acknowledge the exponential decay of the CO2 GHG effect. For some reason, you keep bringing up saturation. The theory is less important than the fact.
4. Interesting prediction. Any evidence for it? I thought not.
5. No. There is no exponential increase on the graph.
6. Ah. You attempt to distinguish an asymptote from an exponential decay? Now you’ve betrayed yourself.
7. Try to be a bit more knowledgeable. Please.
Exponential decay of the form y = (1-b)^x
https://mathbitsnotebook.com/Algebra1/FunctionGraphs/expdecay2.jpg
A hyperbolic asymptote of the form y = 1/x.
https://www.math24.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/asymptote-of-hyperbolic-function.svg
Courtesy of Ray Pierrehumbert – the Halley Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. Whose principles of planetary climate I have recommended to Jimmy. It is based on “CO2 absorption data found in the HITRAN spectroscopic archive. This is the main infrared database used by atmospheric radiation modellers. This database is a legacy of” military work on infrared transmission at high altitudes.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/CO2Abs4x.jpg
The pink is the frequencies at which the atmosphere is optically thick at CO2 levels of 300 ppm. The absorption factor is a function of added CO2 such that when the product of the absorption factor and the added CO2 equals one – the atmosphere is optically thick at that broader frequency band. Thus for 1200 ppm an absorption factor of >1/4 means the atmosphere is optically thick. The region of the absorption band made optically think with 4xCO2 is shown in the yellow bands. The logarithmic scale of the absorption factor shows that the IR absorption band is not saturated with 10,000 times preindustrial CO2 levels.
I try to be more knowledgeable every day. I guess that’s the difference.
Yaas. You fail to note that the curve for Exponential decay of the form y = (1-b)^x asymptotes to zero at infinity. Now I expect you should be able to see the relationship. We’ll see.
Nothing wrong with Pierrehumbert’s physics. Whether the exponential decline in CO2 GHG depends on saturation or not is beside the point.
The difference is the rate of change at progressively higher x values.
Right on, John.
The Medieval Warm was evidenced by vineyards in the north of England; Viking settlements in Greenland, with farming not possible today, with graves just now beginning to be uncovered; grapes are presently grown in Germany up to elevations of about 560 m, but from about 1100 A.D. to 1300 A.D., vineyards extended up to 780 m, implying temperatures warmer by about 1.0–1.4 °C (Oliver, 1973). Wheat and oats were grown around Trondheim, Norway, suggesting climates about 1 °C warmer than present (Fagan, 2000); sea surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea were approximately 1 °C warmer than today; three churches, one large estate, and 95 farms have been excavated on the west coast of Greenland, mostly under permafrost. Oxygen isotope data from the GISP2 Greenland ice core clearly show a prominent MWP. Oxygen isotope studies in Greenland, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Tibet, China, New Zealand, and elsewhere, plus tree-ring data from many sites around the world, all confirm the existence of a global MWP. Soon and Baliunas (2003) found that 92% of 112 studies showed physical evidence of the MWP. And the most rapid rise in the historical record (CET and Armagh) was 1680-1720, with no preceding CO2 change.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/medieval-warm-period
Jim. Thanks for the MWP link. It provides a great overview from several data perspectives. On a related note … once Greenland warms up enough, wouldn’t be interesting to see if the Vikings return and reclaim their old settlements. It would make a more realistic climate movie … unlike “The Day After Tomorrow” film which contains polar vortex cyclones spinning in the wrong direction. But with Eric the Red at the helm of a Viking ship, it would be an eye-opening historical re-enactment. Instead of unnecessarily fretting over polar bears (which are multiplying as thoroughly documented by Susan Crockford), it would show how civilizations expand and grow during warmer climates — and that’s why they’re often called the “optimum” climates. After all, we are warm blooded.
John
I wrote an article carried here some 8 years ago regarding the MWP/LIA
https://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
There are some 150 references to the events. I think jch is just being provocative. He would do well to revisit , Lamb, Jones, Groves, Rosen, E Roy Ladurie, Budyko who among very many others wrote extensively on the MWP. As Jim pointed out above to this day-as on Upland Dartmoor-trees/crops can not be grown at the same height as they were in the past, especially the period around 850 to 1200 AD.
If you like Viking culture ‘The Viking world’ by Spinks chronicles in great detail, using numerous references, the evolution of the Vikings in a warmer Greenland
tonyb
Yes, John, it would be fun to return the climate to Medieval Warm levels. Mankind flourished amazingly in those years: art, literature, architecture, music… Even more fun if we could actually control the climate: OK, it’s been warm enough for the last century, let’s turn it down just a bit…
Alas, “Scientifically it is sheer absurdity to think we can get a nice climate by turning a CO2 adjustment knob. Many confuse environmental protection with climate protection. it’s impossible to protect the climate, but we can protect the environment and our drinking water. On the debate concerning alternative energies, which is sensible, it is often driven by the irrational climate debate. One has nothing to do with the other.”
-Klaus-Eckhart Puls.
Thanks, tonyb. Good article.
An odd segue from CO2 to Vikings and polar bears. And although the CO2 absorption window remains wide open – CO2 concentrations have cycled through glacial lows to interglacials highs over 800,000 years – until last century – and so may be discounted as a significant factor in the MWP and LIA. For the NH – indirect solar modulation of polar vortex blocking patterns may provide a partial answer. With a slightly variable sun and warming oceans and atmosphere – the spatio-temporal evolution of these flow patterns is highly uncertain.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DWkJ5AFWsAAPvHO.jpg
“Motivated by recent relatively cold winters in the UK, we investigate the possible connection with solar activity. We identify regionally anomalous cold winters by detrending the Central England temperature (CET) record using reconstructions of the northern hemisphere mean temperature. We show that cold winter excursions from the hemispheric trend occur more commonly in the UK during low solar activity, consistent with the solar influence on the occurrence of persistent blocking events in the eastern Atlantic.” https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024001/meta
AMOC is implicated in the initiation of glacials – marine strato cumulus cloud dissipation in planetary hyperthermals and mass extinctions.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/smeed-fig-72-e1518284539722.png
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/cloud-computation.png
“As our nonlinear world moves into uncharted territory, we should expect surprises. Some of these may take the form of natural hazards, the scale and nature of which are beyond our present comprehension. The sooner we depart from the present strategy, which overstates an ability to both extract useful information from and incrementally improve a class of models that are structurally ill suited to the challenge, the sooner we will be on the way to anticipating surprises, quantifying risks, and addressing the very real challenge that climate change poses for science.” https://www.pnas.org/content/116/49/24390
Our best option in uncertainty is to build prosperous and resilient communities in vibrant landscapes with 21st century systems, science and technology. ‘Shared socioeconomic pathway’ No. 5 with carbon cowboys and nuclear engines.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/viking.jpg
Excellent. Now you should be ready and able to acknowledge the exponential decline of the CO2 GHG effect.
Carl-Otto Weiss is retired now, giving him time to devote to the spectral analysis of climate data, something he says has not been satisfactorily looked at. With two colleagues, a mathematician/statistician and an astronomer, he published this paper https://benthamopen.com/FULLTEXT/TOASCJ-11-44 “Spectral Analysis Of Climate Data Shows: All Climate Change Is Due To Natural Cycles”.
A video recap of the somewhat demanding paper is here: https://schillerinstitute.com/media/carl-otto-weiss-le-changement-climatique-est-du-a-des-cycles-naturels/
Oh yeah, charts…
https://a.disquscdn.com/get?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbenthamopen.com%2Fcontents%2Ffigures%2FTOASCJ%2FTOASCJ-11-44_F3.jpg&key=61zN4yZa-kEI3HieNYrcJw&w=600&h=310
(Color online) Upper panel: Global temp record G7 (grey), running 31-year average of G7 (blue), sine representation of G7 with three sine functions of the periods 1003, 463, and 188 years (green), with four sine functions including the period ~60 years (red), continued to AD 2200. The parameters of the sine functions are given in Table 3. The Pearson correlation between the 31 year running average of G7 and the three-sine representation (green) is 0.84, for the four-sine representation (red) 0.85. Lower panel: G7 (grey) together with the sine functions of 1003, 463, and 188 – year periods continued until AD 2200 (equal sine amplitudes for clarity).
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d29412c3f57377795cf3b40250d7185054c4a3030dae949d79ca1151483b274a.jpg?w=600&h=342
Europe and Antarctica exhibit the same pattern.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a1e2534fbbe290ef4f47249bc5e44101fcab82baf47e05d505dab634d315a49d.jpg?w=600&h
Spectral analysis shows the major components of the cyclic data.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/257087719d47f07004fe6e6c74830a6e3ba5bbafd045378356b4bf56e9371986.jpg
His analysis makes a prediction about the next 50 years (at least)
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a6afc13d4be8fa80395956426d6621df78fa2602f1cb50d54e02f23b25b2957.jpg?w=600&h
His prediction (c) is compared to the “mainstream science” (a) predictions. We should know within the next decade.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b234439d2b0f0d6eacbc2fe759545be64557bdd1da67d70cf0dbda9bfbe9ba92.jpg?w=600&h
His conclusions are straightforward.
All radiative emission to space is, by definition, a cooling process. The only way our planet can shed energy is via radiative emission to space.
N2 and O2, comprising ~99% of the atmosphere, are homonuclear diatomics and therefore have no net magnetic dipole, rendering them unable to effectively emit (or absorb) IR. Thus the only way they can cool is via conduction by contact with a cooler surface, or via transfer of their translational mode energy to the vibrational mode quantum state energy of radiative molecules.
The radiative cooling of air via solely translational mode energy converting to radiation
CO2{v20(0)} (at 288K+) + CO2{v20(0)} (at 288K+) -> CO2{v20(0)} + C02{v21(1)} -> CO2{v20(0)} + CO2{v20(0)} + 667.4 cm-1
You’ll note the above interaction is a direct conversion of translational mode energy (which we perceive as temperature) to 14.98352 µm radiation. This directly cools the air, and the effect is significant, since nearly all the translational mode energy is converted to radiation, leaving the CO2 molecules at a very low temperature, whereupon they absorb energy by colliding with other atmospheric constituents. The effect begins taking place significantly at ~288 K, the temperature at which the majority of the molecules will have sufficient translational mode energy to convert to vibrational mode energy.
288 K also happens to be the stated average global temperature… that is not a coincidence, it is a mechanism long known, partly a result of CO2 radiative emission ramping up at ~288 K. As CO2 concentration increases, this effect will become more pronounced, increasingly damping any temperature excursions above ~288 K by increase of radiative emission via this interaction, and below ~288 K by reduction of radiative emission via this interaction.
It is not necessary for CO2{v20(0)} to collide with another CO2 molecule for this interaction to take place, any other molecule will do… the Equipartition Theorem dictates that all atmospheric constituents at the same temperature will have the same translational mode energy. So in reality, the above interaction could be represented thusly:
X (at 288K+) + CO2{v20(0)} (at 288K+) -> X + C02{v21(1)} -> X + CO2{v20(0)} + 667.4 cm-1
where X is any atmospheric molecule.
Further, you’ll note that if a CO2 molecule is already in the CO2{v21(1)} vibrational mode quantum state, a collision at just 0.1 K higher temperature (ie: ~288.1 K) can excite it to the CO2{v22(2)} state, whereupon it can emit a 14.97454 µm photon to de-excite to the CO2{v21(1)} state, and a 14.98352 µm photon to de-excite to the CO2{v20(0)} state.
Even further, you’ll note that if a CO2 molecule is already in the CO2{v22(2)} vibrational mode quantum state, a collision at just 0.1 K higher temperature (ie: ~288.2 K) can excite it to the CO2{v23(3)} state, whereupon it can emit a 14.96782 µm photon to de-excite to the CO2{v22(2)} state, a 14.97454 µm photon to de-excite to the CO2{v21(1)} state, and a 14.98352 µm photon to de-excite to the CO2{v20(0)} state.
This implies that for temperatures above ~288 K, more of the translational energy of atmospheric molecules will flow to CO2 vibrational mode quantum state energy, rather than vibrational mode quantum state energy of CO2 flowing to translational energy of other atmospheric molecules, simply for the fact that at and above that temperature, the combined translational energy of two colliding molecules is sufficient to excite the CO2 vibrational modes. This increases the time duration of CO2 vibrational mode quantum state excitation and therefore the probability that CO2 will radiatively emit, breaking LTE. Therefore the energy flow is to CO2, not from it.
In other words, at and above ~288 K, the combined translational mode energy of two molecules is higher than C02{v21(1)} vibrational mode energy, and therefore energy will flow to CO2 from other atmospheric molecules’ translational mode energy during molecular collision, simply because CO2 can radiatively emit that energy and break LTE, rather than that energy flowing back to other molecules.
Satellites see CO2 and (a bit of) water vapor radiating at the temperature of the lower stratosphere (at the ‘characteristic-emission surface’ altitude, or just less than one optical depth from TOA for any given wavelength) all over the planet. This is because ozone (O3, excited by incoming solar radiation) and collisional processes excite nitrogen (N2) to its {v1(1)} (symmetric stretch) vibrational mode, and N2 then transfers energy to the {v3(1)} (asymmetric stretch) mode of CO2 via collision as shown in the image, whereupon the vibrationally excited CO2 partially de-excites by dropping from the {v3(1)} (asymmetric stretch) mode to either the {v1(1)} (symmetric stretch) mode by emitting a 10.4 µm photon, or to the {v20(2)} (bending) mode by emitting a 9.4 µm photon.
This is the same method by which a CO2 laser works… the laser filling gas within the discharge tube consists of around 10–20% carbon dioxide (CO2), around 10–20% nitrogen (N2), and a few percent hydrogen (H2) and/or xenon (Xe), and the remainder helium (He). Electron impact vibrationally excites the N2 to its first vibrational mode quantum state {v1(1)}, the N2 collides with CO2, the CO2 becomes excited in the asymmetric stretch vibrational mode quantum state {v3(1)}, and de-excites to its {v1(1)} or {v20(2)} vibrational modes by emission of 9.4 µm or 10.4 µm radiation (wavelength dependent upon isotopic composition of the CO2 molecules) as described above. The helium is used to fully de-excite the CO2 to the {v20(0)} ground state after it’s radiatively de-excited to maintain population inversion (which is necessary for stimulated emission), but this is unimportant to the process of energy transfer from vibrationally excited N2 to CO2 in the atmosphere. The process by which the N2 becomes vibrationally excited (in the case of a CO2 laser via electron impact; in the atmosphere via translational-to-vibrational collisional processes and via vibrational-to-vibrational collisional processes with solar-excited O3) is similarly unimportant… the concept of energy flowing from N2 to CO2 is the same. Laser wavelength can be tuned by altering the isotopic ratio of the carbon and oxygen atoms comprising the CO2 molecules in the discharge tube, with heavier isotopes resulting in longer wavelength emission.
The Boltzmann Factor shows that ~10.26671% of N2 molecules are in the N2{v1(1)} excited state at 288 K due to collisional (t-v) processes. That’s 195 times more excited N2 molecules than all CO2 molecules (vibrationally excited or not).
So… Does that help explain the exponential decline of the CO2 ghg effect?
I think you confuse the kinetic theory of gases with the quantum theory of electron orbital excitation.
I think you confuse your unhappiness with the exponential decline of CO2 effect with some kind of refutation rather than mere emotional rejection.
If as suspected solar activity evolves in response to an incalculable solar system N-body orbital problem – and this is further modulated through internal fluid dynamics of the Sun – cyclic behavior as such is impossible. How far it departs from the cyclical expectations of classical mechanics is unknowable – but depart it does. Solar variability as well triggers nonlinear responses in the planetary system. In geophysical data the reality is Hurst-Kolmogorov effects – regimes and abrupt shifts. Wavelet analysis – as above – will give you broad spectral peaks – but this is just math and not proof of anything. Geophysics is required to understand the climate system and how it may change in future. Nor do cycles say anything about how greenhouse gases may perturb flow and change turbulent patterns in Earth’s spatio-temporal chaotic flow field. It may change them a little or a lot – it depends.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2017/12/10/the-illusion-of-climate-cycles/
So you agree with Carl-Otto Weiss then?
About the whole kit and kaboodle being a Markovian process evolving dynamically moment by moment? That not what they said.
The Earth without greenhouse gases would emit radiation in accordance
with the Planck distribution for a blackbody. Atmospheric parcels of a specific temperature have a Maxwell Boltzmann molecular velocity distribution. Energy is equipartitioned between vibration and translational modes the number of which depend on the degrees of freedom of the specific molecule. All in accord with the kinetic theory of gases and contrary to Jimmy’s thesis.
The difference with greenhouse gases is the absorption and emission of photons in specific frequency bands with quantum jumps in electron orbits. Internal states of excitation and relaxation. Photons are emitted in random directions and the ones that go down further warm the surface of the planet. The planet will warm enough such that emissions are restored in accordance with the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/595px-atmospheric_transmission.png
Can enough greenhouse gas molecules be put into the atmosphere such that further interactions with emitted photons is not possible? This is known as saturation and is not remotely possible. The system approaches saturation on molecule at a time. It is not remotely an exponential approach to zero effect. At this time and for the foreseeable future the absorption window remains wide open. Again contrary to Jimmy’s thesis.
Regarding your comment … “Photons are emitted in random directions and the ones that go down further warm the surface of the planet” … can you explain how downward photons warm the planet?
Photons are quanta of energy – E = hf – where h is the Planck constant and f is the frequency. In the space between atoms it is a wave – when absorbed it is a particle. It is heat radiated downward.
But I’d lay odds that you are one of those who don’t believe that can happen because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics – and that this question is the lead up to a gothcha. Don’t bother.
John, Elly is actually right. Vibrational mode characteristic of radiative molecules means that they re-radiate energy absorbed at a specific frequency at the same frequency in a random direction, which somewhat less than half the time is downward. That’s unless they bump into something (N2 or O20before they radiate which in the bottom 10m of the atmosphere, that would be predominant. And since it’s IR going down, it does indeed warm the impacted surface and on land if that raises the temperature of the surface, it is re-radiated back out at the fourth power of the temperature increase. So an increase of 1K will produce a 1.3% increase in outgoing IR for a 0.3% increase in land surface temp.
On 72% of the planet, of course, IR is absorbed by the top few microns of water which increases evaporation, removing 540 cal/gm from the ocean, and depositing it on recondensing in the upper troposphere, where it has a much shorter journey out to space.
Of course, you might not get the Rest of the Story…
“All physical substances in solid, liquid, or gaseous states can emit energy via a process of electromagnetic radiation because of vibrational and rotational movement of their molecules and atoms [2]. The intensity of such energy flux depends upon the temperature of the body and the nature of its surface [3]. The radiation occurs at all temperatures, with the rate of emission increasing with the temperature.”
j* = σT^4
σ = 5.67 x 10^ – 8
T is in Kelvin – and it makes an exponential difference whether you plug in 288 or 300 as a base temperature say. But a simple calculation.
Radiation is in waves – in all directions. Except at the surface where heat moves down by conduction. But as a whole energy moves from a warmed Earth to a cold space.
At the surface energy is transported by conduction, convection and radiation. Over land – neglecting conduction because of the distance between air molecules – the energy at the surface is a balance of latent and sensible heat and the balance depends on soil moisture. Over oceans there is a cool 100 odd microns thick skin formed as radiant losses are much faster than ocean mixing that brings more warm water to the surface. Evaporation depends on surface temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and droplet formation. If there is a change at the surface in the balance with more latent and less sensible heat – it means that energy takes longer to get to the tropopause. The reverse of the skeptic echo chamber meme.
But this is all a different process to the quantized excitation and relaxation of electron orbits in greenhouse gases. Although – as Feynman said – if you think you understand quantum mechanics – you don’t. Jimmy thinks he understands. He doesn’t.
Robert … regarding the “gothcha” response wrt to the 2nd Amendment … I am hoping you are correct as that would solve the energy crisis — at least for heating homes, etc. And I am hoping you could maybe provide an example. Any example would help, since every time I get cold I have to find a warmer heat source to get warm.
You mean the 2nd law of thermodynamics I presume. And indeed you do turn out to be one of those.
Robert. Thank you for the wording correction — a good lesson in proof reading. However, my question remains regarding your comment, “Photons are emitted in random directions and the ones that go down further warm the surface of the planet.” Can you explain how downward photons warm the planet? Or a simpler approach, can you provide a working example of a cooler object heating up a warmer object? If so, then we can co-author the 1st Amendment to the 2nd Law.
A heat engine. As a youngster I was quite taken with a gas fridge. The flame burning beneath it cooled it. As we know, that means the environment outside the fridge was heated. Heat engines can be either artificial or natural.
Paul. So … by burning more fossil fuel we can cool the earth. Sounds good. It even produces more CO2, which the plants will love. However, the Al Gore fan club may have problems with that. You may be able to save the day (and planet) if you can reference a controlled scientific study which details how this heat engine, using the “radiant heat transfer process” (or photons), allows a cooler object to heat a warmer object.
It’s not my thesis, Elly. It’s embodied in the MODTRAN app that you’ve just discovered (you’re welcome). The physics is clear (though the earth is not a black body), and the observations are also clear.
Phil Jones was honest enough to note that the rates of warming of the last three warmings since the emergence from the LIA (without preceding CO2 change) – 1860-1880, 1910-1940, 1975-1998 – are statistically indistinguishable despite the gentle and unremitting rise in CO2 over the period. The first was before man emitted significant CO2 and the last when our output had increased markedly (a 50:1 ratio of man’s Co2 emission between the start of the first warming and last – http://www.debunkingclimate.com/co2_rate_of_warming.html.
You will predictably disparage that source without noting that the math is correct and the Jones quote is correct.
Real radiative transport modellers use HITRAN. The greenhouse gas absorption bands are not saturated at 10,000 times current levels. But I have said that.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/CO2Abs4x.jpg
As for internal decadal variability – that’s where I started decades ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VbgzCahx8o
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6
That’s Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics apparent in geophysical time series – and dynamical complexity reveals a system sensitive to small changes. Natural decadal temperature variation mostly relates to cloud reorganization over the upwelling region of the Pacific. Driven by changes in polar annular modes that are modulated by solar variability.
If you read some of my comments – rather than repeating your simple and erroneous motivated memes – you might learn something. Probably not.
What emotionally motivated memes could you possibly be referring to?
I’ve read your comments. Some of them are very good. I think mine are better, but I’m biased.
Could you be a bit more specific?
That’s – as I actually said – simple and erroneous motivated memes. If you are going to quote me get it right.
We also see no recognition of the exponential decay of the GHG effect of CO2, as noted by Arrhenius, with 50% in the first 20 ppm. We are in the fifth half-life of that decay, so theoretically the next doubling to 800ppm will increase its effect by less than 2%.
It was rather Angstrom’s assistant Herr Koch. Who got it wrong. As do you in assuming a constant rate of decay. It quite obviously is not.
“Again we see beard-stroking alarm at the human output of CO2, without noting that it amounts to less than 5% of the annual contribution.”
On one side there is 9 Gt of emissions as carbon per year – on the other there is 4 GtC accumulating in the atmosphere. With the rest presumably disappearing into ocean and land sinks. I don’t trust you with simple addition and subtraction let alone anything more advanced.
“Phil Jones was honest enough to note that the rates of warming of the last three warmings since the emergence from the LIA (without preceding CO2 change) – 1860-1880, 1910-1940, 1975-1998 – are statistically indistinguishable despite the gentle and unremitting rise in CO2 over the period.”
Well – if you have read my comments on Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics and the Pacific state – why bring it up at all?
There was a weird attempt at physics in which you tried to explain quantum mechanics in terms of a technically incorrect version of the kinetic theory of gases – and a paean about my Viking ancestors – but that’s about it.
Oh goody.
“It was rather Angstrom’s assistant Herr Koch. Who got it wrong.”
Actually, Angstrom got the credit, as senior author…
“As do you in assuming a constant rate of decay.”
That’s absurd. On the contrary, I have assumed the exponential decay so many times on this page that it’s incomprehensible how you can possibly say that. You clearly don’t understand the half-life of exponential decay. Again, please quote my words. I’ll try to help.
You say my: “… the human output of CO2, without noting that it amounts to less than 5% of the annual contribution” is contradicted by your “On one side there is 9 Gt of emissions as carbon per year – on the other there is 4 GtC accumulating in the atmosphere.” That is not a contradiction of my statement. Please make a relevant statement.
“Well – if you have read my comments on Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics and the Pacific state – why bring it up at all?”
Well because it indicates that CO2 at these levels hasn’t dictated any changes in climate at all. HK certainly doesn’t contravail against that.
“…a technically incorrect version of the kinetic theory of gases ” Once again, you do not or cannot quote any statement that you can possibly disagree with.
Just a correction of one of your many errors Jimmy – it wasn’t Arrhenius and Herr Koch did the work.
Let me help you out Jimmy. The exponential decay function is – as I have said.
Y = (1-b)^X
You assume that b is constant. It isn’t. You further assume that the decay function is applicable. It isn’t.
It certainly is a contradiction. The net carbon dioxide flux to the atmosphere from oceans and land is negative. Take a remedial course in addition and subtraction Jimmy.
And then we get back to being able to walk and chew gum at the same time. AGW occurs against a backdrop of vigorous internal variability.
You should – as I have already suggested – review the law of equipartition of energy and learn something about Maxwell Boltzmann velocity distributions.
\e.g. https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry_Textbook_Maps/Supplemental_Modules_(Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry)/Kinetics/Rate_Laws/Gas_Phase_Kinetics/Maxwell-Boltzmann_Distributions
Good grief!
“You assume that b is constant. It isn’t.”
I never said that.
“You further assume that the decay function is applicable.”
Which decay function are you referring to? I certainly do assume that an exponential decay has a half-life.
And you don’t…
This is getting tiresome.
We also see no recognition of the exponential decay of the GHG effect of CO2, as noted by Arrhenius (not), with 50% in the first 20 ppm. We are in the fifth half-life of that decay, so theoretically the next doubling to 800ppm will increase its effect by less than 2%.
Thus b is 0.5. Really Jimmy – your basic math is atrocious. And going around in circles is making me dizzy.
Scenarios are about future emissions – forcing emerges from line by line radiative transfer equations at those concentrations. Just like MODTRAN – but with the better HITRAN version.
Jaysus.
Scenarios are speculations. Based on models that may or may not have been validated by observation. They are as valuable as predictions of election results. Good for reflection, though.
As Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George) said in Little Big Man,
“Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Pick one Jimmy. None of them have zero additional forcing based on HITRAN line by line radiative transfer calculations.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/forcing.png
Oh – but I forgot – the response to greenhouse gases is ‘exponentially declining’.
“Oh – but I forgot – the response to greenhouse gases is ‘exponentially declining’.”
Golly. You think that other GHGs than CO2 are also in exponential decline? Please cite your evidence. Are you for real?
Oh Jimmy – nothing is in exponential decline. I was being sarcastic.
Let me know if it ‘contravenes’ observations of ‘exponential decline’ of forcing.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/public/2016-07/climate-forcing-figure1-2016.png
“Pick one, Jimmy”?
A model is just a model. Based on theory based on some degree of evidence, but not in any event proper for contravening observation. Why should I pick one? Or any? Why not just look at the historical data and come to a reasonable conclusion?
Indeed, why don’t you? You didn’t really understand Feynman, did you?
“Thus b is 0.5.”
As indeed it is. It will change with different exponential processes.
What’s your problem?
Please quote the words or statements that you disagree with.
Oh – and there was this.
With two colleagues, a mathematician/statistician and an astronomer, he published this paper https://benthamopen.com/FULLTEXT/TOASCJ-11-44 “Spectral Analysis Of Climate Data Shows: All Climate Change Is Due To Natural Cycles”.
When the paper in the link is “Harmonic Analysis of Worldwide Temperature Proxies for 2000 Years”
What’s your deal jimmy? 🤣
JC SNIP
Here’s another for you to chew on:
http://www.clim-past.net/9/447/2013/cp-9-447-2013.pdf
No really – it was just that you were hiding one cover,
“Harmonic Analysis of Worldwide Temperature Proxies for 2000 Years”
Under another,
“Spectral Analysis Of Climate Data Shows: All Climate Change Is Due To Natural Cycles”.
JC SNIP
Here’s one I prepared earlier – https://watertechbyrie.com/2017/12/10/the-illusion-of-climate-cycles/
It seems to me futile to discuss “CO2 reduction pathways” when we don’t even understand the pathways to the Ice Ages.
Judith, my compliments for your running of the website. Many – most? – others are limiting comments in number or in days or altogether, requiring letters to the editor, which never see the light of day. I expect that is probably due to not wanting to deal with contrary opinion, but also likely is running out of server space. This one might be knocking on the door for size. Your forbearance, and your tolerance, are admirable.
A Fourier transform decomposes a time series into constituent frequencies? I have degrees in engineering and science. What do you have Jiminy?
Ok, let’s wind this up. It’s ScenarioMan vs DataMan.
Here’s the platform:
1. Granted that water vapor and CO2 and the other GHGs are essential to warming the world above the Stefan-Boltzmann equilibrium, why don’t they correlate properly (i.e. causatively) with the major swings in climate over the past 3 million years? The end-Ordovician (Hirnantian) Ice Age, 440 million years ago, began when CO2 was over 4,000 ppm and lasted a little more than a million years. At the end of that time, with 85% of marine life extinct, when the frigid oceans had inhaled atmospheric CO2 to around 3,000 ppm, the globe suddenly began to warm up, getting back to the previous 22°C with astonishing speed. We don’t actually know why it cooled so fast and so far, or why it warmed so fast and so far. After all, that was the time of the Cool Young Sun, 96% of today’s irradiance. It’s not just The Pause that doesn’t fit the model.
2. The earth has spent half of the previous 550 million years around 25°C, looking like there’s a tight lid at that number. Why doesn’t that entail strong negative feedback and no “tipping point”?
3. We don’t know why the P-T extinction warming (to at least 28°C) occurred so fast, nor why it was so brief. What brought the temperature down to 22°C again? Why didn’t it “run away”?
[[Cold extermination: One of greatest mass extinctions was due to an ice age and not to Earth’s warming – “Summary: The Earth has known several mass extinctions over the course of its history. One of the most important happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago. Over 95% of marine species disappeared and, up until now, scientists have linked this extinction to a significant rise in Earth temperatures. But researchers have now discovered that this extinction took place during a short ice age which preceded the global climate warming. It’s the first time that the various stages of a mass extinction have been accurately understood and that scientists have been able to assess the major role played by volcanic explosions in these climate processes.”]]
4. Why is the lowest temperature around 12°C? When “snowball earth” occurs, with glaciers almost down to the equator, why doesn’t the albedo force more cooling, more ice, more albedo, and more cooling down to the Stefan-Boltzmann equilibrium of 255K (0°F)?
[Here’s an interesting discussion of that:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/09/an-engineers-explanation-of-climate-change/%5D
5. In other words, why has the earth’s temperature been so stable, mostly ranging from 285K to 295K [excluding excursions of 280-300K] since the end of the Archean Eon 3.5 billion years ago? That’s a median of 290K (62°F), ±2% or so. Climate stability needs an answer, not climate change.
–Over the last 150 years, the average temperature has only varied by plus or minus 0.3%. For a system as complex and ever-changing as the climate, this is nothing short of astounding.–
6. And then, if CO2 is currently close to the lowest it’s been for the last 550 million years, why is it dangerous to produce more? 50% of the CO2 greenhouse (misnomer) effect is in the first 20 ppm, and it declines exponentially after that. The emergence from the last glaciation 14,500 years ago was not preceded by CO2 change. The Younger Dryas a few thousand years later was a very rapid cooling succeeded by a very rapid warming, neither reversal preceded by CO2 change. The Holocene Optimum was not preceded by CO2 change, and we’ve been cooling since then. The interval Minoan Warm, Roman Warm, and Medieval Warm and the current Modern were not preceded by CO2 change.
The current emergence from the Little Ice Age began around 1840, before man’s CO2 production took off in 1880 – and it cooled after that to 1910 (the “Dalton Dip”)
[https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/maunder-minimum-climate-change.962568/], succeeded by a significant warming from 1910 to 1940, during which human CO2 production declined 30% in the first years of the Great Depression. WWII produced quite a bit of CO2, but the world COOLED from 1941 to 1965, initiating alarm about a coming Ice Age. CO2 has continued its steady increase at a modest rate after that without a statistically significant increase in global temperature.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/2430958-if-global-warming-true-why-did-3.html
So there’s no reason to propose that CO2 controls global temp, either up or (most certainly) down, starting from the levels we now have. There is, of course, the magical thinking that leads to Cargo Cult Science. That could be simple devotion to the Climate God — if we build it He – She? – will come.
The morality of the desired end justifies any necessary deceit, fraud, and coercion along the way. The corollary is “It is immoral to interfere with this care for the planet’s welfare by dissenting on the evidence.” And of course it’s flattering to our notion of self-importance to think that WE can change the climate of the earth. Another version of the Ptolemaic system. We’re special. Cf: Canute, King.
In other words, there is no evidence – EVIDENCE – for CO2 agency in climate change at this time, at these levels.
Two thumbs up for Jim and one pinocchio for King Canute – and anyone else who claims they can stop the seas from rising. As soon as we fully understand what drives the Ice Age cycles, then maybe (but unlikely) we’ll then be able to somehow alter those cycles.
jimmww | January 27, 2020
Here’s the platform:
1. Granted that water vapor and CO2 and the other GHGs are essential to warming the world above the Stefan-Boltzmann equilibrium, why don’t they correlate properly (i.e. causatively) with the major swings in climate over the past 3 million years?
–
Swings are due to changes in forcing external, water vapor etc are not the causes.
2. The earth has spent half of the previous 550 million years around 25°C, looking like there’s a tight lid at that number.
–
Your point 1. Contradicts your point 2. Major swings in past 3 million years is not a “tight lid”
–
3. We don’t know why the P-T extinction warming (to at least 28°C) occurred so fast, nor why it was so brief. What brought the temperature down to 22°C again? Why didn’t it “run away”?
–
Irrelevant.
4. Why is the lowest temperature around 12°C? When “snowball earth” occurs, with glaciers almost down to the equator, why doesn’t the albedo force more cooling, more ice, more albedo, and more cooling down to the Stefan-Boltzmann equilibrium of 255K (0°F)?
–
Distance from sun.
Albedo not high enough to reflect enough heat away.
5. In other words, why has the earth’s temperature been so stable, mostly ranging from 285K to 295K [excluding excursions of 280-300K] since the end of the Archean Eon 3.5 billion years ago? That’s a median of 290K (62°F), ±2% or so. Climate stability needs an answer, not climate change.
-distance from sun.
6. And then, if CO2 is currently close to the lowest it’s been for the last 550 million years, why is it dangerous to produce more?
–
The bye products of producing more, mainly more people to house feed and transport, can be quite dangerous to people affected by mining and environment changes.
If you walk one step away from a cliff edge it is not wise to walk 2 steps back.
50% of the CO2 greenhouse (misnomer) effect is in the first 20 ppm, and it declines exponentially after that.
– Something wrong scientifically in that
““The morality of the desired end justifies any necessary deceit, fraud, and coercion along the way.”
Does that justify the use of such measures by both sides?
I’m proposing there’s a semi-tight lid at 285K and 295K that pops to brief excursions to 280 or 300K where they clamp down. There is no runaway.
Distance from the sun does not explain any of the questions. The S-B equilibrium is 255K
You’re right of course that if we become more materially successful, allowing more people to survive, the earth will be manipulated (plundered?) a bit more. Perhaps you can do something about that.
But CO2 does not drive the climate, historically.
Jimmy
“Distance from the sun does not explain any of the questions. The S-B equilibrium is 255K”
–
Which is why the lowest temperature is around 12°C.
Put the earth out at Mars colder. In at Venus warmer.
Different SB equilibrium.
–
Given the make up water and CO2 on the earth surface will lead to a climate in the 12- 18 C range.
I notice your 280 C figure negates your comment about the floor being 12 C..
CO2 added artificially will change the forcing a little bit
Accept the science and fight on the how much and how harmful probable exaggerations
Science starts with observation, proceeds with hypothesis, tests, replication, and resistance to refutation. There is no historical evidence that CO2 has ever induced a climate change.
“Which is why the lowest temperature is around 12°C.” Please explain the connection.
Jim, and all others reading this blog: Is it a scientifically undisputed fact, as Jims summary above indicates, that there is no historical period in which
CO2 has been proven to be the “controlknob” to climate before 1975?
Do the alarmists refer to other data contradicting Jimms summary ?
Hojjo, I guess maybe I can be repetitive too:
“Scientifically it is sheer absurdity to think we can get a nice climate by turning a CO2 adjustment knob. Many confuse environmental protection with climate protection. it’s impossible to protect the climate, but we can protect the environment and our drinking water. On the debate concerning alternative energies, which is sensible, it is often driven by the irrational climate debate. One has nothing to do with the other.”
-Klaus-Eckhart Puls.
hojjo. I agree, CO2 is not the control knob. Regarding the “historical period,” Judith posted an excellent article by Javier called “Nature Unbound I: The Glacial Cycle” which thoroughly discusses the Ice Ages and CO2 relevance.
https://judithcurry.com/2016/10/24/nature-unbound-i-the-glacial-cycle/
While the article is thorough, it is also long. The entire article is fascinating. But, if you just want the bottom line, start at the section called “Role of CO2 in the glacial cycle.”
Agreed, John. That’s a good job. Javier’s a good man.
After finding Javier’s first essay on climate, I discovered Javier’s other 9 essays. I then spent about a week of marathon day/night reading, including his comments. I am absolutely amazed at the depth and breath of Javier’s knowledge, including his ability to succinctly present complex information in a logical manner, while at the same time competently and respectfully responding to criticisms. I want to PUBLICALLY THANK JUDITH for posting Javier’s essays.
jimmww: “1. Granted that water vapor and CO2 and the other GHGs are essential to warming the world above the Stefan-Boltzmann equilibrium, why don’t they correlate properly (i.e. causatively) with the major swings in climate over the past 3 million years?”
Water vapor and CO2 and the other GHGs are NOT essential to warming the Earth above the Stefan-Boltzmann equilibrium.
They do NOT warm Earth’s surface, water vapor and CO2 and the other GHGs are only trace gasses in Earth’s System.
Here is the entire New Earth’s Without-Atmosphere Effective Temperature Calculation.
1. Earth’s Without-Atmosphere Effective Temperature Calculation:
So = 1.362 W/m² (So is the Solar constant)
Earth’s albedo: aearth = 0,30
Earth is a rocky planet, Earth’s surface solar irradiation accepting factor Φearth = 0,47 (Accepted by a Smooth Hemisphere with radius r sunlight is S*Φ*π*r²(1-a), where Φ = 0,47)
β = 150 days*gr*oC/rotation*cal – is a Rotating Planet Surface Solar Irradiation Absorbing-Emitting Universal Law constant
N = 1 rotation per day, is Earth’s sidereal rotation period
cp.earth = 1 cal/gr*oC, it is because Earth has a vast ocean. Generally speaking almost the whole Earth’s surface is wet. We can call Earth a Planet Ocean.
σ = 5,67*10⁻⁸ W/m²K⁴, the Stefan-Boltzmann constant
Earth’s Without-Atmosphere Effective Temperature Complete Formula Te.earth is:
Te.earth = [ Φ (1-a) So (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴
Τe.earth = [ 0,47(1-0,30)1.362 W/m²(150 days*gr*oC/rotation*cal *1rotations/day*1 cal/gr*oC)¹∕ ⁴ /4*5,67*10⁻⁸ W/m²K⁴ ]¹∕ ⁴ =
Τe.earth = [ 0,47(1-0,30)1.362 W/m²(150*1*1)¹∕ ⁴ /4*5,67*10⁻⁸ W/m²K⁴ ]¹∕ ⁴ =
Τe.earth = ( 6.914.170.222,70 )¹∕ ⁴ =
Te.earth = 288,36 Κ
And we compare it with the
Tsat.mean.earth = 288 K, measured by satellites.
These two temperatures, the calculated one, and the measured by satellites are almost identical.
This Planet Effective Temperature Complete Formula
Te.planet = [ Φ (1-a) So (1/R²) (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴
successfully calculates all the other planets’ and moon’s effective temperatures in solar system. And each time the results are confirmed by the satellites very precise measurements.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
“Human-driven warming is superimposed on the relatively cold pre-industrial ‘icehouse’ climate state, with ice sheets several kilometres thick on both poles. Such icehouse climate states are relatively rare over the last 4.5 billion years; the most recent interval with similar levels of continental glaciation as today was the Carboniferous approximately 300 Ma [5]. By contrast, for much of Earth’s history, ‘greenhouse’ climate states predominate. These are globally warm intervals characterized by a lack of polar ice caps. The gradual cycling between these two climate states occurs on 100 Myr time scales associated with the growth and destruction of super-continents, i.e. at rates much slower than anthropogenic climate change.” https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2017.0086#d3e1258
65 million years ago the continents in the northern hemisphere were pretty much where they are now. South America had yet to separate from Antarctica some 34 million years ago. Shoaling of the Isthmus of Panama initiated glacials and interglacials some 2.58 million years ago. Something – some resonance in the Earth system perhaps – changed the beat some 800,000 years ago to quasi 100,000 year cycles. The time series is littered with tipping points at all scales. It is the core property of Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics observed in geophysical time series. It is not at all certain that warming and a surface freshening might not – with reduced deep water formation in the North Atlantic – tip the planet with ice sheet feedbacks into a new glacial.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/cloud-temp.jpg
CO2 levels at the PETM were perhaps at 1000 ppm – although there is substantial imprecision in the data. This seems insufficient to create temperatures suitable for crocodiles within the Arctic Archipelago. The explanation involves CO2 from volcanoes, a positive marine boundary layer (MBL) stratcumulus cloud feedback, a proliferation of life in the oceans, decay and anoxia, a mass extinction, a drawing down of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as dead marine organisms sank to the bottom and a transient cooling. It will all work out in the end.
Tapio Schneider from Caltec here describes some fine scale modelling of MBL stratocumulus over the Pacific. Fine scale computing over small areas allows the use fundamental equations of state rather than semi-empirical parameterizations. Doing it over the planet would require 3 million times more computing power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlnGQkT0rQs
A MBL stratocumulus cloud feedback over the Pacific upwelling region is seen in satellite data. Warming in SW and cooling IR in CERES data. Extrapolating that to Pacific states over a century and more is an explanation for decadal to millennial warming and cooling of atmosphere and oceans.
https://www.mdpi.com/climate/climate-06-00062/article_deploy/html/images/climate-06-00062-g002-550.jpg
A greenhouse gas mechanism too has been observed from satellites.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/harries-2001.png
There is no single cause of climate change – it is a complex dynamical system. In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’
I have provided reams of data. Jimmy has a plot purloined from WUWT. As for scenarios – I have deliberately made an unmistakable point to endorse SSP5 as the clearest path to social progress and mitigation and adaptation.
“Fossil-fueled Development – Taking the Highway (High challenges to mitigation, low challenges to adaptation)
This world places increasing faith in competitive markets, innovation and participatory societies to produce rapid technological progress and development of human capital as the path to sustainable development. Global markets are increasingly integrated. There are also strong investments in health, education, and institutions to enhance human and social capital. At the same time, the push for economic and social development is coupled with the exploitation of abundant fossil fuel resources and the adoption of resource and energy intensive lifestyles around the world. All these factors lead to rapid growth of the global economy, while global population peaks and declines in the 21st century. Local environmental problems like air pollution are successfully managed. There is faith in the ability to effectively manage social and ecological systems, including by geo-engineering if necessary.” With aggressive mitigation by soil carbon cowboys with nuclear engines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGvVli0OTrQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kOeFHNpqV0
To paint me as other than committed to economic freedom and democratic systems is bad faith argument from a zealot. The future is cyberpunk I firmly believe.
See the future is cyberpunk.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/65-million-years-temps-co2.png
https://watertechbyrie.com/2015/10/19/cyberpunk-is-the-future/
Robert:
“65 million years ago the continents in the northern hemisphere were pretty much where they are now. South America had yet to separate from Antarctica some 34 million years ago. Shoaling of the Isthmus of Panama initiated glacials and interglacials some 2.58 million years ago. Something – some resonance in the Earth system perhaps – changed the beat some 800,000 years ago to quasi 100,000 year cycles. The time series is littered with tipping points at all scales. It is the core property of Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics observed in geophysical time series. It is not at all certain that warming and a surface freshening might not – with reduced deep water formation in the North Atlantic – tip the planet with ice sheet feedbacks into a new glacial”.
The Hurst-Kolmogorov equations are for the fluids.
We are dealing here with the Planet SURFACE Radiative Equilibrium Temperature.
Ice sheet feedbacks are negative feedbacks. Ice sheets have a warming effect on the Earth’s energy balance, and not a cooling effect, as you suggest.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
You Wrote:
Ice sheets have a warming effect on the Earth’s energy balance,
You have a long way to go to explain that.
I have an ice chest, I want to watch you warm it by putting ice in if.
288 K also happens to be the stated average global temperature… that is not a coincidence, it is a mechanism long known, partly a result of CO2 radiative emission ramping up at ~288 K. As CO2 concentration increases, this effect will become more pronounced, increasingly damping any temperature excursions above ~288 K by increase of radiative emission via this interaction, and below ~288 K by reduction of radiative emission via this interaction.
Jimmy’s Stefan-Boltzmann equilibrium. It is pure fantasy physics – as so much crude and eccentric skeptic ‘science’ is. Energy emissions don’t ramp up at 288 K. There is nothing special about 288 K. The world has been much warmer and much colder. And transitions – in temperature, hydrology and biology – have been rapid and sometimes extreme. Well known from ice cores and other proxies. It is the result of dynamical complexity in the Earth system and is not confined to fluid mechanics. Change may be unavoidable and surprises inevitable.
e.g. https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm
http://www.climateplus.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Temperatures_Capture_600.jpg
What matters for me is the path to the future. We make changes to the Earth system – its energy dynamic, biology. hydrology. land surface, chemistry… Quite obvious changes in a system sensitive to small changes. Just something to keep in mind. Because we can and are pragmatically addressing those changes. New industrial chemistry, precision agriculture and water sensitive cities, pollution reduction, reclaiming desert and restoring soils, grassland, forests and wetlands.
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/images/18.3110ee8c1495db74432636f/1459560224012/PB_FIG33_media_11jan2015_web2.jpg
It is not a matter of stopping the tide but of going with the flow. “There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life. Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”
There are ways to a bright future for the planet, its peoples and its wild places – and these are emerging bottom up in a broad context of economics and democracy, population, development, technical innovation, land use and the environment. There is a stark choice in which narratives of catastrophe and economic, environmental and social collapse have no place. Which future is for you and your children? Economic collapse, civil strife, war – or prosperous and resilient communities in vibrant landscapes?
Elly, you’re increasingly repetitive.
Yes, ” We make changes to the Earth system”. Climate is not one of them. So far. A global nuclear exchange, of course, could do it.
“pure fantasy physics”? What’s wrong with it other than your displeasure? So then you can explain why there’s not been a tipping point either on the upswing or the downswing? I thought not.
JC SNIP
A “small forcing can cause a small [climate] change or a huge one.”
— National Academy of Sciences, 2002, Abrupt climate change: inevitable surprises, p74.
“We present a generic phase diagram to explain the generation of dragon-kings and document their presence in six different examples (distribution of city sizes, distribution of acoustic emissions associated with material failure, distribution of velocity increments in hydrodynamic turbulence, distribution of financial drawdowns, distribution of the energies of epileptic seizures in humans and in model animals, distribution of the earthquake energies). We emphasize the importance of understanding dragon-kings as being often associated with a neighborhood of what can be called equivalently a phase transition, a bifurcation, a catastrophe (in the sense of Rene Thom), or a tipping point. The presence of a phase transition is crucial to learn how to diagnose in advance the symptoms associated with a coming dragon-king.” Didier Sornette
It is also called abrupt or rapid change – as in the American Institute of Physics link to their ‘Discovery of Global Warming – Rapid Climate Change’ page, In case you have forgotten.
https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm
Dragon-kings are outliers – outsized events beyond power law distributions in a broad class of complex dynamical systems – from economics to biology, hydrology and climate. They emerge when spatio-temporal chaotic patterns shift. As they do on scales of micro-eddies to atmospheric rivers and polar vortices.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/pdoenso.jpg
Pacific Ocean patterns shift at decadal:
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/pdo.png
To millennial scales:
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/tsonis-2009-figure-1.png
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/enso-wavelet-analysis-e1580160550247.png
causing megadrought and megafloods across the planet. With a sophisticated use of Fourier wavelet analysis. Moy et al (2002) present the record of sedimentation shown above which is strongly influenced by ENSO variability. It is based on the presence of greater and less red sediment in a lake core. More sedimentation is associated with El Niño. It has continuous high resolution coverage over 12,000 years. It shows periods of high and low El Niño intensity alternating with a period of about 2,000 years. There was a shift from La Niña dominance to El Niño dominance that was identified by Tsonis 2009 as a chaotic bifurcation – and is associated with the drying of the Sahel. There is a period around 3,500 years ago of high El Niño intensity associated with the demise of the Minoan civilisation (Tsonis et al, 2010). Red intensity exceeded 200. Red intensity in the 1997/98 El Niño was 99. It shows ENSO extremes considerably in excess of that seen in the modern period.
The latest Pacific Ocean climate shift in 1998/2001 is linked to increased flow in the north (Di Lorenzo et al, 2008) and the south (Roemmich et al, 2007, Qiu, Bo et al 2006)Pacific Ocean gyres. Roemmich et al (2007) suggest that mid-latitude gyres in all of the oceans are influenced by decadal variability in the Southern and Northern Annular Modes (SAM and NAM respectively) as wind driven currents in baroclinic oceans (Sverdrup, 1947). SAM and NAM as I said – are modulated by solar variability. But also by internal feedbacks involving atmospheric circulation in which atmospheric temperature plays a part.
Yes, there are dragon-kings and black swans.
So? What do you suggest to be done about that besides whining?
The Stefan-Boltzmann equilibrium of course is 255K, not 288.
Are you perhaps mistakenly referring to the Boltzmann Factor which “shows that ~10.26671% of N2 molecules are in the N2{v1(1)} excited state at 288 K due to collisional (t-v) processes. That’s 195 times more excited N2 molecules than all CO2 molecules (vibrationally excited or not).” Try to get things right, please.
<i288 K also happens to be the stated average global temperature… that is not a coincidence, it is a mechanism long known, partly a result of CO2 radiative emission ramping up at ~288 K. As CO2 concentration increases, this effect will become more pronounced, increasingly damping any temperature excursions above ~288 K by increase of radiative emission via this interaction, and below ~288 K by reduction of radiative emission via this interaction.
255 K is a simple calculation based on assumed constant SW absorption and
S-B calculated emissions. The real planet is never in equilibrium.
Boltzmann postulated that Ethermal=kBT
The proportionality factor is kB – the Boltzmann constant. Dinitrogen at any temperature emits energy in waves. The a warmer planet emits more energy is not a mystery. It is called the Planck feedback – -3.2 W/m2/K. But this is not the quantized absorption and relaxation of greenhouse gas molecules. And there is nothing magical about 288 K.
But you ask me about tipping points – and then admit to dragon-kings and dismiss them in the same sentence. What to do about them are things I have discussed endlessly. It involves decision making – reducing pressures on diverse natural systems – under risk and uncertainty.
“This pragmatic strategy centers on efforts to accelerate energy innovation, build resilience to extreme weather, and pursue no regrets pollution reduction measures — three efforts that each have their own diverse justifications independent of their benefits for climate mitigation and adaptation. As such, Climate Pragmatism offers a framework for renewed American leadership on climate change that’s effectiveness, paradoxically, does not depend on any agreement about climate science or the risks posed by uncontrolled greenhouse gases.” https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/climate-pragmatism-innovation
Darn! I just noticed that you’re back in insult mode without specification:
“slippery dissimulation” -? Are you calling me a liar? Hell, I’m not even wrong… yet. But the day is young.
“Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.” https://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/3#14
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/bifurcations.png
Ah yes, the butterfly effect. Quite true. So?
“an abrupt climate change occurs ” is not a tipping point.
We emphasize the importance of understanding dragon-kings as being often associated with a neighborhood of what can be called equivalently a phase transition, a bifurcation, a catastrophe (in the sense of Rene Thom), or a tipping point. The presence of a phase transition is crucial to learn how to diagnose in advance the symptoms associated with a coming dragon-king.” op. cit.
In fact – call it whatever you like Jimmy.
No I am not insulting just telling the truth.
Really? Were you telling the truth when you said:
Robert I. Ellison | January 22, 2020 at 10:10 pm
And I think he will find that it was Ångström rather than Arrhenius who did a too simple experiment and suggested that reducing CO2 concentration in a tube didn’t affect IR transmission much. Still better science in 1901 than Jimmy’s half life narrative.
–Robert I. Ellison | January 23, 2020 at 10:27 pm | Reply
It’s an asymptote that shows no sign of levelling out anytime this century.
–Robert I. Ellison | January 25, 2020 at 2:13 am
The CO2 IR window is in no danger of slamming shut anytime soon. Your WUWT curve is – as I have said – a horizontal asymptote rather than an exponential decay function.
–Robert I. Ellison | January 27, 2020 at 2:43 am |
Oh Jimmy – nothing is in exponential decline.
In the quote from above “There was a shift from La Niña dominance to El Niño dominance that was identified by Tsonis 2009 as a chaotic bifurcation – and is associated with the drying of the Sahel. There is a period around 3,500 years ago of high El Niño intensity associated with the demise of the Minoan civilisation (Tsonis et al, 2010).” , the dragon king was not climate change. Climate change only followed behind.
In the abstract Tsonis say ” — We show that a change in the dynamics of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system occurred around 3000 BC, –“. A nearer date is 3550bce for the Sahel. However there were two other D Kings at ~3200bce and ~2345bce. In between which Cretan civilisation began, – and ended- (Quote Tsonis) “approximately 2700 to 1450 BC on Crete,”. Again ‘climate change was a sequitur.
Correlating research from various avenues identify the ‘species’ of the DK’s, such as here https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2019/08/12/searching-evidence-deaths-tsunamis-and-earth-dynamics/
The mentioned link in the above post from RIE from ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’ mentions the Bible which relates an older story in a distorted manner. Plato was far more correct for he states that it is the result of a declination of the heavens moving around the earth, – which would be a very astute observation.
No no. Dragon Kings – east, west. north and south – inhabit castles at the four corners of the China Sea where they are guarded by crab generals and shrimp soldiers. They bring uas storm and flood at their whim. 😊
Oh, and that nonsense about Angstrom/Koch, not Arrhenius?
“Just a correction of one of your many errors Jimmy – it wasn’t Arrhenius and Herr Koch did the work”
They were attempting to refute Arrhenius, and failed. Some years before, Arrhenius had formulated his rule:
“if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.”
Arrhenius is referring to CO2 as carbonic acid (which refers only to the aqueous form H2CO3 in modern usage). The following formulation of Arrhenius’s rule is still in use today: Δ F = α ln ( C / C 0 ).
Oops. Wrong again, Elly.
If you recall I used that formula in relation to doubling of CO2 – and used the terms carbonic acid and aqueous vapor – as well as linking to the original 1901 (?) paper.
Δ F = 5.35 ln (2) = 3.7 W/m2 for a doubling
And you dismissed it as a prediction. 5.35 is the modern estimate of the constant – and as I said – there are other equations of that form for other gases. From whence we get:
Δ T = λ ΔF
What you were waffling on about as usual was your exponential decline – that you ascribed to Arrhenius – that I assumed referred to the Koch experiment and the conclusion of Angstrom and Koch that adding CO2 made little difference to the transmission of IR. Which seems closer to your position than Arrhenius’. In other words – oh so wrong.
You will note that rather than an exponential decline there is an arithmetic rise – visually indistinguishable from linear in the data I have shown you – that because of the natural log goes on for a very time. These are very basic – and approximate – climate equations. They are used today mostly on blogs and to educate children in some physical principles.
REI
Bless you for – er- seeing the brighter side of things ‘climate’, but not shying away from the ‘other view’.
The matter with Dragon kings is not what they bring; it is what they take away on their, probably, periodic appointments. And what they leave behind.
The evidence in my link, archaeology perversely keeps attributing to wars and religion. But not to visitations from DK. One case here: https://mostlymammoths.wordpress.com/tag/alaska/ That -asking how-come? – in some circles is ‘forbidden fruit’ ( but like not telling the fruit-fly the forbidden fruit contains pesticide). The common argument there is or appears to be ‘better not to know’, – but then why do cancer scans.
“You will note that rather than an exponential decline there is an arithmetic rise”
You will perhaps be competent to note that an arithmetic rise in response to a geometrical increase is an exponential (logarithmic) function. Or not.
The graph which you so kindly provided shows the process:
https://www.rapidtables.com/math/algebra/ln/ln-graph.png
You will perhaps be competent to note that the natural log function shows an exponential decline in the effect of x upon the y axis.
Or not.
I was referencing Arrhenius (1986).
1896 that is – not used to referencing much older than the 21st century – but he was almost prescient.
Ah. You deny that you denied Arrhenius as the originator of the exponential decline of CO2 effect. That’s easily checked on this page. I’ve only seen politicians do anything so silly. Wrong again.
“And you dismissed it as a prediction” No, I characterized it as a prediction. That’s not dismissive, unless you wish to dismiss all calculations of future events as futile. In your case, perhaps you should.
“your exponential decline – that you ascribed to Arrhenius – that I assumed referred to the Koch experiment …”
No, I referred explicitly to Arrhenius. You mistakenly applied that to Angstrom. Wrong again.
“rather than an exponential decline there is an arithmetic rise – visually indistinguishable from linear in the data I have shown you”
No, the arithmetic rise in in temperature is in response to a geometrical increase in CO2. So the temp rate declines with every increase of CO2. Wrong again.
How do I love thee? Let me count the wrongs…
This is fun.
(Yes, Judith, this is an exploration.)
SMH
Me
4. RF = 5.35 ln (2) = 3.7 W/m2 for a doubling of CO2. There are other formulas for other gases.
Jimmy
“4. Interesting prediction. Any evidence for it? I thought not.”
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/public/2016-07/climate-forcing-figure1-2016.png
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/forcing.png
Do you deny that climate forcing is increasing for the foreseeable future?
Bye Jimmy.
Climate forcing is a given. What actually happens is not.
Here you are:
–Robert I. Ellison | January 22, 2020 at 10:10 pm | Reply
“We also see no recognition of the exponential decay of the GHG effect of CO2, as noted by Arrhenius, with 50% in the first 20 ppm. We are in the fifth half-life of that decay, so theoretically the next doubling to 800ppm will increase its effect by less than 2%.”
“Are you in never-never land? Who has mentioned saturation? Only you, poor chap.
…
And I think he will find that it was Ångström rather than Arrhenius who did a too simple experiment and suggested that reducing CO2 concentration in a tube didn’t affect IR transmission much. Still better science in 1901 than Jimmy’s half life narrative.
–Robert I. Ellison | January 23, 2020 at 10:27 pm | Reply
It’s an asymptote that shows no sign of levelling out anytime this century.
–Robert I. Ellison | January 25, 2020 at 2:13 am
The CO2 IR window is in no danger of slamming shut anytime soon. Your WUWT curve is – as I have said – a horizontal asymptote rather than an exponential decay function.
–Robert I. Ellison | January 27, 2020 at 2:43 am |
Oh Jimmy – nothing is in exponential decline.
Versus
–jimmww January 24, 2020 at 2:45 pm
No, you did not answer my question. I have not discussed saturation, the question which you would apparently prefer to answer.
Your response should take the form of … “By my calculation, doubling CO2 to 800 ppm should increase its GHG effect by xxx – with xxx being your percentage.”
–jimmww | January 24, 2020 at 3:59 pm
Meanwhile, there’s that exponential decline in CO2’s GHG that remains for you to acknowledge.
–jimmww | January 25, 2020 at 1:21 am
I can of course be corrected by actual data, always lacking from Elly – except in regard to land management, on which he has excellent recommendations. And which alas are not pertinent to:
1) Is CO2 in control of climate, and
2) Are we in control of CO2.
And he still has not acknowledged the exponential decay of the GHG effect of CO2
–jimmww | January 24, 2020 at 3:05 pm
…not related to the exponential decline in the GHG effect of CO2, which is what you have attempted to deny. Quite unsuccessfully, I might add.
–jimmww | January 25, 2020 at 4:34 am
Ah. You attempt to distinguish an asymptote from an exponential function? Now you’ve betrayed yourself.
–jimmww | January 25, 2020 at 11:40 pm | Reply
Excellent. Now you should be ready and able to acknowledge the exponential decline of the CO2 GHG effect.
“For carbon dioxide, as has already been mentioned, parts of the spectrum are already so opaque that additional molecules of carbon dioxide are even less effective, the forcing is found to be logarithmic in concentration.” IPCC, Radiative Forcing of Climate. (2007)
So you’ve learned that CO2 GHG effect has an exponential decline, that a logarithm is an expression of an exponential process, and that an asymptotic process is an exponential one.
And you’re welcome for the introduction to Arrhenius.
Arrhenius was mentioned in the FAR – which I read in 1990. The name has come up a few times since. Arrhenius used measurements by Langley of moon beams at various angles to calculate the absorption of masses of carbon dioxide and water vapor. He then used the Stefan-Boltzmann equation – with estimates of albedo – to calculate temperature changes in latitudinal bands with different concentrations of greenhouse gases. It was a seminal study. The simple formula involving the log of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere came much later. I don’t know why you imagine that your jimmy come lately discovery of the name comes as any great revelation. But such assertions are a bit of a habit with you and I wish you would stop.
Solely in the interest of mathematical precision.
An exponential function – e^x – is the inverse of the log function – ln (x). With exponential decay – on the other hand – y = (1-b)^x. The difference in practical terms for climate change is the logarithmic rate at which saturation of absorption bands is approached. Note the log scale on the LHS.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/CO2Abs4x.jpg
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument-part-ii/
But the Arrhenius reality is an arithmetic addition of 3.7 W/m2 for a CO2-e doubling. And the temperature change is:
Δ T = λ ΔF
If only we knew what λ was against a backdrop of dynamical complexity of climate – butterflies but not tipping points apparently.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/unstable-ebm-fig-2-jpg1.jpg
Solutions of an energy-balance model (EBM), showing the global-mean temperature (T) vs. the fractional change of insolation (μ) at the top of the atmosphere. (Source: Ghil, 2013)
jim
I did some research on Arrhenius around 10 years ago. Do I remember correctly that he drastically revised downwards the effect of co2 from his original 1890’s calculation, during a paper he have in Edinburgh around 1905?
Were his calculations based on the likely temperatures at the Arctic, so this exaggerated arctic amplification was the one commonly quoted in future comments about the effects of co2?
He came from Uppsala where the temperature records starting around 1720 show an intriguing upwards trend similar to CET. The botanical gardens there were growing plants that it had not been possible to grow for several hundred years in Sweden, as the warming climate from the depths of the LIA around 1695 started to take effect.
tonyb
Tonyb, you’re right, Arrhenius did not have the facts quite right, and his formula has been refined over the century. But the relationship was correct. Like many marriages.
You are not only repeating yourself but repeating your repetitions.
Using the simple formula for CO2 – in your example of doubling from 400 to 800 ppm CO2:
ΔF – 5.35 ln(800/400) = 3.7 W/m2.
Surely that’s a bottom line even you can recognize.
A natural log function – but not the one I was looking for.
https://i2.wp.com/longitudinal.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Screen-Shot-2019-09-17-at-6.28.29-PM.png
You really didn’t notice that your previous graph https://www.rapidtables.com/math/algebra/ln/ln-graph.png
was a natural log expression? And shows the exponential decline of effect with rising concentration (or whatever the value is on y axis)?
And the count goes on…
Maybe this one will show up
https://in-this-together.com/img/IPCC/IPCC006.gif
and this from our Chinese colleagues
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41467-019-12357-5/MediaObjects/41467_2019_12357_Fig5_HTML.png
Yes Jimmy – unlike some I actually do look at references. Although I wasn’t able of course to get to the science – as opposed to pretty pictures – from your link. The mid-Pleistocene transition has no adequate explanation. Perhaps slight changes in external stochastic triggers or subtle changes in Earth system resonance with migrating continents. But if it’s not CO2 – a priori unlikely IMO – it must be something else.
” But if it’s not CO2 – a priori unlikely IMO – it must be something else.”
Excellent!!
Now we’re getting somewhere. Apply that same thought to Hirnantian Ice Age, the eight glaciations and interglacials in our current Ice Age, the emergence from the LGM, the emergence from the Younger Dryas, the progress to the Holocene Optimum, the decline in global temp since then interrupted by the Minoan Warming, the Roman warming, the the Medieval Warming, and the Modern. You’ve got it!
If you find the sources hard to read on those graphs – or pretty pictures as you dismissively call them – you can look for the same data on sources of your choice. They’re quite generally available.
It is the same curve Jimmy. Different scales and starting point. But both are ln(x) plots. The region of interest is 280 ppm up.
The natural logarithm ln(x) is the inverse of e^x – as I said. And the instantaneous rate of change in the slope of the curve is 5.35/x and not 0.5^x of your exponential decay function.
And the rest is the can’t chew gum and walk problem again and again and again. Bye Jimmy.
Trying again – Funny, Elly, that you didn’t figure out that the CO2 effect decline could as easily be called logarithmic as exponential.
The instantaneous rate of decline for one is 1/x and for the other (1-b)x – where b is the decay rate. Simple calculus. We can easily see what it means for future climate forcing. Math and not semantics Jimmy.
Judith, my graphs have disappeared, along with ellison’s responses and my responses to him, all of them very civil on my part. Wherein have I sinned?
Elly, here’s the Chinese article that you liked
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12357-5
and the graph
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41467-019-12357-5/MediaObjects/41467_2019_12357_Fig5_HTML.png
and your response:
” But if it’s not CO2 – a priori unlikely IMO – it must be something else.”
and mine:
Excellent!!
Now we’re getting somewhere. Apply that same thought to Hirnantian Ice Age, the eight glaciations and interglacials in our current Ice Age, the emergence from the LGM, the emergence from the Younger Dryas, the progress to the Holocene Optimum, the decline in global temp since then interrupted by the Minoan Warming, the Roman warming, the the Medieval Warming, and the Modern. You’ve got it!
I did suggest external stochastic triggers for the Mid pleistocene transition – or perhaps subtle changes in Earth system resonance. Let me know if you ever get beyond insisting that climate is not all CO2.
The issue is that this discussion is going nowhere, is not of general interest, is dominating the thread and is rather off topic. I do appreciate the improved civility tho.
I agree, Judith. Thank you.
May I assume that the page is closed for further comments?
No, but please do not engage in beating a hobby horse that is going nowhere in the discussion. Commenters make mistakes, and they often disagree. Point out the mistake, state your disagreement and then move on. Thank you.
Gotcha. Will do.
The conclusion from those authors was:
“As a consequence, our results do not support the supposition that the decline of pCO2 lead to the onset of the MPT.”
Of course, I’m not implying that a CO2 change cannot induce a climate change. I’m just saying that it never has, taking “change” as meaning a reversal of trend.
These authors were looking at CO2 levels with a new methodology because of the interplay between CO2 and climate over long time scales, They noted that levels didn’t vary significantly over the mid Pleistocene transition. You do know what that is don’t you?
“Quantifying ancient atmospheric pCO2 provides valuable insights into the interplay between greenhouse gases and global climate. Beyond the 800-ky history uncovered by ice cores, discrepancies in both the trend and magnitude of pCO2 changes remain among different proxy-derived results. The traditional paleosol pCO2 paleobarometer suffers from largely unconstrained soil-respired CO2 concentration (S(z)). Using finely disseminated carbonates precipitated in paleosols from the Chinese Loess Plateau, here we identified that their S(z) can be quantitatively constrained by soil magnetic susceptibility. Based on this approach, we reconstructed pCO2 during 2.6–0.9 Ma, which documents overall low pCO2 levels (<300 ppm) comparable with ice core records, indicating that the Earth system has operated under late Pleistocene pCO2 levels for an extended period. The pCO2 levels do not show statistically significant differences across the mid-Pleistocene Transition (ca. 1.2–0.8 Ma), suggesting that CO2 is probably not the driver of this important climate change event."
Uh. Yeahhh. Their conclusion is their conclusion.
“The pCO2 levels do not show statistically significant differences across the mid-Pleistocene Transition (ca. 1.2–0.8 Ma), suggesting that CO2 is probably not the driver of this important climate change event.”
Indeed, CO2 levels were higher at the start of the Pleistocene, descending through MPT until recently. I must admire your devotion.
On the assumption they may have been lost –
https://in-this-together.com/img/IPCC/IPCC006.gif
and
https://klimatsans.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/160101-Hertzberg-Depressionen.jpg
and
https://i0.wp.com/www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/web_figures/hadcrut4_annual_global.png
and: LOGARITHM (mathematics) For a number x, the power to which a given base number must be raised in order to obtain x. Eventually you may be forced to acknowledge that a logarithm expresses an exponential relationship. But as we can see with CO2 forcing, sometimes a forcing has no effect.
Please note that the sources are listed on the graphs.
This should not be necessary, but please note that the base for the logarithm is commonly 10, 2 or e.
“Where does the IPCC Logarithmic Function come from?
The 3rd assessment report (TAR) and the 4th assessment report (AR4) have an expression showing a relationship between CO2 increases and “radiative forcing” as described above:
ΔF = 5.35 ln (C/C0)
where:
C0 = pre-industrial level of CO2 (278ppm)
C = level of CO2 we want to know about
ΔF = radiative forcing at the top of atmosphere.
(And for non-mathematicians, ln is the “natural logarithm”).
This isn’t a derived expression which comes from simplifying down the radiative transfer equations in one fell swoop!
Instead, it comes from running lots of values of CO2 through the standard 1d model we have discussed, and plotting the numbers on a graph:
https://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/log-graph-myhre-co2.png ‘
From ‘New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases’, Myhre et al, Geophysical Research Letters (1998).
The graph reasonably closely approximates to the equation above. It’s very useful because it enables people to do a quick calculation.
E.g. CO2 = 380 ppm, ΔF = 1.7W/m2
CO2 = 556ppm, ΔF = 3.7 W/m2
Easy.” https://scienceofdoom.com/2010/02/19/co2-an-insignificant-trace-gas-part-seven-the-boring-numbers/
“Quantifying ancient atmospheric pCO2 provides valuable insights into the interplay between greenhouse gases and global climate.”
The Earth system – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, heliosphere and lithosphere – changes over moments to eons – as these systems interact in dynamical complexity to produce abrupt and unpredictable change. Helios is almost constant – with perhaps indirect butterfly triggers for observed far reaching pattern changes – climate hydrology and biology – in energies cascading through subsystems.
The atmosphere is a primary driver of the planetary energy dynamic. The other term in Earth’s global energy equation being albedo, or reflectance, that together with a constant Helios determines the amount of energy coming to Earth. Carbon dioxide and water vapor keep the planet at a habitable temperature. Carbon dioxide changes with volcanoes, biology and slow silicate weathering – and in the last century as humans have industrialized fueled by coal and natural gas – changing atmospheric temperature from 1st physical principles based on a century and a half of empirical observation – and water vapor follows. Albedo changes with ice, dust, cloud and vegetation.
“In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, not withstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.” Isaac Newton
This post does not dispute the underlying science of climate change – just the amount of carbon that can be added to the atmosphere before crossing some arbitrary threshold. The world is – however – nonlinear and entering uncharted territory far beyond these simple calculations.
“Remember, then, that scientific thought is the guide to action; that the truth at which it arrives is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we can act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.” William Kingdon Clifford, The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885)
The solution as always is economic freedom fostering entrepreneurial innovation and human progress founded on uncertain but compelling science.