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Last week I was privileged to present an invited talk (PDF here) to the Winter Roundtable of the the Pacific Pension & Investment Institute in Pasadena, CA. The PPI meeting includes about 120 senior asset managers representing about $25 Trillion in investments. Their focus is on long-term investing with many managing the retirement funds of private sector and state employees.
They had originally intended the climate change session to be a debate, but after numerous inquiries were unable to find anyone who was willing to oppose me.
Like most people, these asset managers represent a wide variety of views on climate change, but what they have in common is they are under increasing pressure to make “sustainable investing” a significant fraction of their portfolios. Some managers view this as an infringement on their fiduciary responsibility to provide the highest rates of return for their customers. Others believe that sustainable investing (e.g. in renewable energy projects) is a good long-term investment if not a moral duty. Nearly all have now divested from coal. Many investment funds now highlight their sustainable investments, as they cater to investors who (for a variety of reasons) want to be part of this new trend.
My understanding is that most investment managers have largely been convinced that climate change is a serious threat. My message was that this is not the case, and that at a minimum the dangers posed by human-caused climate change have been exaggerated. Furthermore, the benefits of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (e.g. increased agricultural productivity with no sign of climate change-induced agricultural harm) are seldom mentioned. I showed Bjorn Lomborg’s evidence for the 95% reduction in weather-related mortality over the last 100 years, as well as Roger Pielke, Jr’s Munich Re data showing no increase in insured damages as a fraction of GDP.
One meeting organizer took considerable professional risk in insisting that I be invited to provide a more balanced view of climate change than most of the attendees had been exposed to before, and there was considerable anxiety about my inclusion in the program. Fortunately, my message (a 30 minute PowerPoint presentation [pdf here] with a panel discussion afterward) was unexpectedly well-received. An e-mail circulated after the meeting claimed that I had “changed the dynamic of future meetings.” The Heartland Institute was also involved in making this happen.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gave a speech at the first night’s dinner, in which he (as you might expect) mentioned the challenge of climate change, reducing “carbon” emissions, and his young daughter’s anxiety over global warming.
The experience for me was gratifying. Even those few participants who disagreed with me were very polite, and we all got along very well. In what might be considered a bit of irony, on my flight to LAX we flew past the failed Ivanpah solar power facility southwest of Las Vegas, which produced a blinding white light for about 5 minutes.
Roy, congratulations on defending your views. Am glad to hear your points had good reception. Looking forward to seeing you again soon.
Wayne
Arming these people with a comprehensive understanding of the true state of climate science is essential for them to resist the panicked reaction of clients to the relentless propaganda. They ought to have at their fingertips a reasoned response backed up with sufficient comprehensible information to any pressure from those who would destroy wealth and wreck our economy due to ignorance or bad intentions. Good job and thanks for taking this on.
Early in the pitch, I read the following:
“1. The climate system has warmed in recent decades, with 2010-2019 the warmest decade in the instrumental record (last ~150 yrs).”
My comment:
The records are almost entirely the Northern Hemisphere before 1920.
And non-global to 1979.
And near-global since 1979 (UAH)
The lack of global coverage, not to mention huge amounts of infilling and adjustments, MUST BE DISCUSSED to avoid giving the impression that pre-1979 data are worthy of scientific study, and conclusions.
.
.
.
“2. At least some (most?) of this warming is due to increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel burning.”
MY comment:
No one knows what percentage of warming is caused by humans.
“At least some (most?)” is not precise, and not scientific.
Precise is “no one knows”.
.
.
.
“3. Warming should continue into the future.”
My comment:
You have no idea what will happen in the future.
I have no idea what will happen in the future.
No one knows the future climate.
How many decades of wrong climate predictions are required before it becomes obvious that climate predictions are very unreliable?
I stopped reading the pitch after these points.
A good scientist would have discussed data quality and the great difficulty of correctly predicting the future climate.
This reads like “lukewarmer” material, not real science, where “WE DON’T KNOW” is always an acceptable answer, and theories do not become facts because there is a “consensus”.
Richard Greene: Of course it reads like lukewarmer material, because I AM a lukewarmer. It’s too bad you were so easily triggered by one slide… if you would have continued, I devoted 3 slides to the fact that all warming *could* be natural, and we would never know it. *Your* points verge on denying that warming has occurred or that humans are probably responsible for at least some of it. Of course, as you suggest, science is never certain… but if you would like to wager that it will NOT warm further in the coming X number of years, I’ll take some of that action. The audience in this case spend a lot of time mitigating risk, and they are not that interested in waiting for scientific “proof” to be provided, which in the case of global warming will probably never occur.
“I AM a lukewarmer”
Never fear — that can be cured !
Does this mean I have to read the WHOLE report before I go berserk about it ?
Okay, I read the rest of the report a nd it was very good BUT could have used a few slides of climate doom predictions in the past 50 years that have been consistently wrong.
Next time I will not read only three pages of a report and go berserk.
I will read ONE page and go berserk.
I don’t deny anything — It has been warmer in the past 40 years, and in the past 325 years too — how much warming extra CO2 caused I do not know.
But we have VERY rough non-global measurements before UAH data in 1979.
I do celebrate the warming since the 1970s, and pray for more.
This planet supports MORE life when there is more CO2 in the atmosphere and the higher latitudes are warmer.
So I prefer global warming, over global cooling, which are the only two choices !
My plants are thankful for more CO2 in the air too
I try to give the correct answer about the climate, even when the correct answer is “no one knows”. That does not embarrass me. But then I only have a BS degree. It seems that people with PhD’s are unwilling to ever say “I don’t know” or “No one knows”. They prefer to guess, or join the consensus, even when a consensus means nothing in real science.
I thank you for the UAH data, as it is near global, and measured where the greenhouse effect actually occurs. I believe the climate alarmists consider UAH somewhat of a check and balance that prevents excessive adjusting (warmer, of course).
Mitigating risk?
There is no additional risk from a mildly warming planet — we have 325 years of mild global warming since the 1690s to prove that.
The ONLY risk is a global gross overreaction to a non-existent climate problem — attacking reliable, consistent, inexpensive sources of electricity, and wanting to replace them with unreliable, inconsistent and expensive solar and wind power.
THAT is an existential threat !
Next time I will not read only three pages of a report and go berserk.
I will read ONE page and go berserk.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
First chuckle of the day (-:
“Does this mean I have to read the WHOLE report before I go berserk about it ?” Isn’t it a common courtesy?
My jokes may not be world class … but your sense of humor is missing in action.
A well written report starts with a summary, then provides details supporting that summary, and ends with a repeat of the summary, plus next steps, if any.
If the first few pages of a report make no sense, there is no logical reason to continue reading — there are far too many articles, reports and studies to be read … for anyone with sense to continue wasting time reading a loser.
Funny thing is that Mr. Spencer’s UAH satellite data are important MAINLY because the surface global average temperature compilations are so bad … and that fact should be mentioned at the beginning of any thorough report about the global average temperature.
It is possible that warming from 1880 to 1979 did not exist at all … or was double the claimed warming — because the starting point in the 1800s had poor Northern Hemisphere coverage, almost no Southern Hemisphere coverage, and 1800s thermometers tended to read low.
Are the real time temperature surface temperature data before 1979 worthy of a scientific conclusion — I say “no”.
By the way, I only read the first sentence of YOUR comment before going berserk !
Richard, thanks for reading two sentences. For God’s sake, this is a blog post. Criteria of the Writer’s Guild might apply here, but I prefer timely posts with some blemishes.
That was one of the best presentations made by a scientist to a nonscientist group that Ive seen on this issue. Well done! You factually countered every claim made by the AGW crowd.
Dr Spencer thanks for your efforts to prepare this and present. Just one comment… you say in the paper we don’t know what is causing the warming. CO2 is given as a potential man made cause, would it have made sense to include the potential natural cause? (longer period solar cycles of 60, 84, 210, 365-420 years) Most of the public really has no idea just how active the sun has been in the last 7 solar cycles compared to the last 24 as a whole. Even the last solar cycle.
I only had 30 minutes. I could have talked for 3 hours and still not covered important points. I didn’t even have sea level rise in the presentation (but I got it in during the discussion).
I hadn’t read this far in the comments when I commented below. I apologize for that.
I understand. Yeah, sea level is quite important as regardless of man made or not, it is changing, but doing so in a unique way at every location around the world. Therefore we can’t cover the situation with blanket policy. The sea level at each location needs to be studied and building codes set so that all new structures are safe for at least 200 years or even more.
I have not sold my ConocoPhillips stock, so I guess those small dividends will have to suffice because I get no deniers check from Exxon. Seriously divestment is just plain insane. You want an example of Russian meddling in our elections look at how Putin opposes fracturing. https://www.forbes.com/sites/daneberhart/2019/12/02/kremlin-meddling-shows-value-of-natural-gas-supplies-fracking/#7445b100462a
Congratulations. Interesting, that they could not find one settled scientist to discuss the climate emergency in your presence.
The picture of a place where roasted squabs fly into your mouth is indeed Ivanpah, very much alive and roasting. The failed one is Crescent Dunes, some 150 miles north.
I say “failed” because Ivanpah failed to produce anywhere near what it was contractually required to produce, and is only being kept on life support by Green politics.
Took them a while, but it is indeed making the power as planned. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-01/nrg-s-massive-california-solar-plant-finally-making-enough-power
From the photo, I’d say that Ivanpah is very much 2/3rds alive.
I have no idea why the middle unit is obviously offline.
Ric,
Nearly every time I pass by Ivanpah, either on an airline flight or driving by on the 15 freeway to Vegas, it seems one of the three towers is offline. Once I saw two of the towers offline. Recall seeing all three operating simultaneously only once.
I thought from the outset you would be the perfect choice for a talk by a single presenter. Unlike most participants in this sordid field, you are the best at presenting your understanding, your lack of understanding, and fairly represent all the other sides. Well, those sides that are worth mentioning.
And it looked like you talked to the perfect group – one interested in learning, not one wanting to be swayed.
“Profits of Doom” – great title! I bet that gave you a lot of “first impression” brownie points.
Dr. Spencer,
Thank you so much for that presentation. I passed on the link to my Federal political representative here in my part of Alberta, Canada. He is quite interested in the actual science of climate. I have been to a number of round table meetings with him and he always enjoys discussing and gaining more knowledge of the science.
Thanks again.
“One meeting organizer took considerable professional risk in insisting that I be invited to provide a more balanced view of climate change than most of the attendees had been exposed to before, and there was considerable anxiety about my inclusion in the program.”
Let me guess – he’s quite happy with the outcome. How much of it is relief and how much is confirmation that you were the right choice?
Good for you Roy.
What exactly is a sustainable/renewable energy investment?
What qualifies that terminology?
Biofuels (mostly burning wood and dung as an energy source) constitute the vast amount of documented/claimed green/clean/renewable energy which is wrongly placed in that category IMHO. Heck,the EU doesn’t even really consider the CO2 emitted from burning wood pellets in the calculations in any realistic or generally accepted accounting principle way.
After decades of massive subsidies and deplyments in wind and solar, that part of the renewable category has not yet even provided 3% of the yearly global energy needs (IEA reports). If you consider the fossil fuels required (can’t even make solar/wind equipment with the power those technologies generate) to source and manufacture those energy solutions, they aren’t that green in the end. Let alone destroying vast ecosystems to install them on any kind of utility scale and directly impacting local climates.
So, how sustainable are sustainable energy investiments?
Hmm, in the US, according to EIA, wind has caught up to hydro, solar expected to do so in 5 y, and all renewables have surpassed coal.
As an investor it would be a big mistake to ignore these trends.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42655
The term Global energy demand is not just about US electricity.
Nate,
Coal has been switched to natural gas for the last few decades. One of the reasons CO2 emissions in the USA declined during that time.
It’s my understanding hydro was long ago maxed out in a practical sense…
To be fair, these are projections and I’m skeptical of solar. Much harder to use solar as a primary energy source because its binary. Averaging of wind over large areas may make more sense. But, a lot can happen in 30yrs…
If oil and gas remain plentiful and renewables remain expensive, they project a much lower curve. Either way they project renewables well behind carbon-based sources 30yrs from now.
Barry
I understand, but the US, is one of the large countries where your premise of heavy investment applies.
As often the case, it shows what is possible with such large investment, that has resulted in self sustaining industries.
Have a peek at this and filter Energy Topic to Energy Consumption and filter the Indicator to Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES) by Source, which is at the bottom of the drop down list. That will provide perspective on the effectiveness of wind and solar on global energy (not just electricity) demand. Hard to see it, but it is there. This page defaults to coal, so filter selections must be made.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics?country=WORLD&fuel=Energy%20supply&indicator=Coal%20production%20by%20type
Ok, If your point is that the rest of the world is lagging on % renewables compared to EU and US at this moment then yes.
It is a snapshot in time.
Much of the world is not as rich and tech advanced as the US and EU.
Consumption of All modern energy sources at some point in time grew rapidly first in the developed world.
At some point in time: coal was only important in UK,
Natural gas only US
Nuclear only US, Russia, UK and France.
Historically in the US, it seems to take ~ 30 y for a new energy source to ramp up to a large percentage.
Nate says:”Much of the world is not as rich and tech advanced as the US and EU.”
Well while you dispense investment advice you probably should add the caveat that the performance of wind and solar has been heavily influenced by subsidies. Thus your advice is somewhat like hawking a salted gold mine.
Right Bill, best to keep your investments in coal, and VHS recorders, and bar matches.
But yes all major energy sources we have today were initially govt subsidized.
Consider Hoover Dam, rural electrification, Nuclear reactors, the oil and gas exploration tax credits, mining on federal lands.
The subsidies on wind and solar will phase out. Because they are already competitive in the best locations.
Your read too much political fiction Nate.
Hoover Dam wasn’t subsidized it was built by the government and its energy sold by the government. You can’t invest in Hoover Dam, never could.
Rural electrication isn’t an energy source its an energy delivery system. And it delivers solar and wind power as well.
Mining on federal lands isn’t a subsidy at all. The federal lands exist solely for the prevention of extraordinarily low purchase prices of huge tracts of lands falling into private hands. It was too late east of the Mississippi and 100 years ago the government reached out to preserve public lands and today rents and leases lands for a variety of compatible purposes.
Oil and gas subsidies are very small and most of what are called subsidies like cost depletion aren’t subsidies at all. Fossil fuels have unique and huge excise taxes far exceeding any subsidies. The miniscle percentage depletion allowance for small producers on their first 1000 barrels of oil basically only compensates for the market effects from excise taxes and only for very small producers.
And nuclear subsidies are peanuts per unit energy compared to renewables which would cost about 43% more without subsidies.
So you can come in here and promote salted investments without proper caveats all you want. . . .as long as you aren’t involved in or associated with anybody actually selling them. But anybody would be a fool to listen to your ignorant spiel. The only people making money on these deals are swamp creatures.
Good job missing the point, Bill, its all govt support for energy and energy infrastructure. Thats the historical pattern. But you hypocrites object to the same for renewables.
No Nate you are missing the point. The only point I made was that renewables are receiving far and away more government support than any other technology ever got. You insist on equating 1 dollar as the equivalent of 10 or more dollars and that is deceptive. As I said you can tout that nonsense all day long as you aren’t associated with the selling of such investments. If you are associated then you would be risking prison time. In response you suggested I should stick with coal investments. Sorry Charley I have no coal investments as much as you would like to try to make an excuse for yourself.
What I have been invested in over the past 20 years is natural gas Its only gone up 700%.
Renewables have been a gold mine for swamp creatures and a disaster for investors and taxpayers.
Bill,
“renewables are receiving far and away more government support than any other technology ever got”
Nonsense.
Hoover Dam 100% govt support according to you. Same for others.
Rural electrification TVA 100% or nearly.
Nuclear: 100 % of R&D was govt funded.
Pls show us a cite that supports your assertion.
Bill,
If you notice, my post simply stated investors should not ignore renwable growth.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/02/my-presentation-to-the-pacific-pension-investment-institute/#comment-435857
Both gas and renewables growth abs*orbed equally the coal loss of market share.
Nate says: ”If you notice, my post simply stated investors should not ignore renwable growth.”
No investors should extremely cautious on investing in renewables, learn the technologies, and beware that growth is heavily subsidized within the swamp.
Nate says: ”Hoover Dam 100% govt support according to you. Same for others.”
An apples and oranges comparison. Hoover dam is a wholly-owned government project, one that the private sector lacked the rights to develop and one that one cannot invest in even today.
Nate says: ”Rural electrification TVA 100% or nearly.”
Yet another apples and oranges comparison. Rural electrification benefits all sources of energy, even moreso for technologies like industrial renewable projects that deliver energy 100% via the electric grid.
Nate says: ”Nuclear: 100 % of R&D was govt funded.”
Even yet another apples to oranges comparison. Nuclear R&D was primarily for national defense. And civilian use nuclear was supported by R&D in the same manner all technologies are supported.
The only subsidies I am saying are out of control are the subsidies actually affecting growth of economically unsustainable technologies. Nuclear never needed such market incentives because the R&D actually demonstrated it to be cost effective and the only reason its not cost effective today is politics and ignorance.
As I said you read too much political fiction to a point you fail completely to comprehend the problem. Renewables aren’t ready for primetime and massive government subsidies.
Funding this junk is totally swampy business.
I am actually a promoter of certain renewable technologies, technologies that are cost effective. Most of them are very small scale, like at the individual business or residence. The reason for that is large industrial projects must sell their output into a grid delivery system that requires markups to support the grid. If you examine your electricity bill over the years thats more than 50% of your bill. To fit renewables into that requires about a 40% subsidy while fossil fuels, including bearing climate change motivated taxation, establishes the current baseline.
Converting fossil fuels into electricity at the individual consumer level isn’t cost effective either for most small scale uses because of efficiency losses in the process and the cost of delivering fossil fuels to the consumer.
So an ignorant look at the entire issue just simply isn’t able to discern the important issues and thus people who wish to profit off this stuff looks to the government for assistance.
Bottom line politics has the government spending people’s money on immature technologies. If this problem is to be solved it should end all price support subsidies and if we are really concerned about climate change the money should be spent on R&D instead. However, I am unconvinced that we need to spend an extraordinary amount on R&D because I fail to see the problem.
As usual Bill, long on opinion, short on facts.
Now matter how you slice it and cherry pick it, govt support for new energy technology and infrastructure, particularly at the start, has been the pattern and a successful one.
The fact that wind and solar are now @ or below the competitive price point of $1/Watt suggests a successful policy.
But if you simply dont like getting your Watts from sunshine, fine, let other people choose to
Meanwhile the current administration continues to find new ways to support coal pollution.
If there were a shred of truth to the BS you are spreading, what would continuing subsidies be for Nate? Swamp payoffs?
If what you said were true we could end all subsidies today. But unfortunately it is not true and you are just ignorant.
I gave you the facts above. Making photovoltaic cells at a dollar a watt does not cover many of the costs I have provided you from maintaining the electric grid, providing for storage of power during times the sun isn’t shining, and installation costs.
However, hobbyists can pretty much break even with the technology and if really resourceful they can even turn a small return on cash out by smart shopping for components and by refurbishing old non-working components. It has to be a labor of love though because you aren’t going to get paid for building, installing, refurbishing or maintaining any of it. Those costs triple the cost of the actual solar cells and you bit on that rotten apple because you wanted to.
“Those costs triple the cost of the actual solar cells and you bit on that rotten apple because you wanted to.”
More fake numbers shamelessly pulled out of your ass, Bill.
“what would continuing the subsidies be for?”
“The (30%) Solar Investment Tax Credit, or ITC, is available for solar panel systems on both residential and commercial properties. After this year, the tax credit drops to 26 percent for projects that begin construction in 2020 and 22 percent for projects that begin in 2021.”
As I accurately stated, they are being phased out.
“Making photovoltaic cells at a dollar a watt does not cover many of the costs I have provided you from maintaining the electric grid, providing for storage of power during times the sun isnt shining, and installation costs.”
The $1/Watt I was referring to was for utility scale. Because that is the one that should be competitive with other large power plants.
It INCLUDES installation costs and some of the other costs you mentioned.
https://assets.greentechmedia.com/assets/content/cache/made/assets/content/cache/remote/https_dqbasmyouzti2.cloudfront.net/content/images/articles/NREL_PV_pricing_snapshot_1722_994_80.jpg
Nate,
The best case ($1.03/W-pk) is the cost of the solar panel installation, and it’s likely in the SW USA. To get that energy to the average consumer on the grid one needs transmission lines and ~2-3x the amount of solar cells along with an enormous battery system (very expensive).
One could build a solar installation near a large city in the NE USA but the cost of the solar panel installation just went up by ~3x because the solar resource is much lower.
Instead of battery systems and 2-3x the amount of cells, one could convert the whole grid to a smart grid with real time pricing. The cost of the whole system just went up by multiple trillions… and even then, if the percentage of power on the grid from solar gets too high, it may not be good enough due to it’s binary nature. There is ‘0’ energy collected overnight.
What really matters for solar is not $/W-pk (although it is important) but cents/kW-hr. I’ve heard it said something to the effect even if the solar panels were free it would still be too expensive…
Barry
$/W-pk (although it is important) but cents/kW-hr. Ive heard it said something to the effect even if the solar panels were free it would still be too expensive”
“Ive heard” why not find actual data? This is hearsay.
I agree that capacity factor matters as well. Only a bit lower for solsr than fossil fuels, because ff power plants not generating in middle of night.
Batterys not needed most of the time
“consumer on the grid one needs transmission lines”
Do other power plants not need transmission lines as well?
What other red herrings you guys got?
Nate,
The power on our grid is constant (on the timescale of seconds/minutes). The power from a solar installation is binary. To utilize all the power all the time coming from the solar cells (instead of throwing it away sometimes) one must have either another system to convert or a fully functioning smart grid.
One option for the other system is a backup generator, but from a cost perspective, why have the solar cells.
The other option is a storage system. Even if the storage system were free one would need 2-3x the amount of solar cells to get a constant power throughout the day (solar installation rated output, accounting for both day/night and clouds/rain during the day).
Batteries may not be needed for smaller (i.e. residential) systems that can supply energy when the sun shines but switch back when no sun. I was under the impression you were talking about much larger utility scale. The grid can’t handle 1GW of power coming online/offline due to nighttime or clouds.
Every plant needs transmission lines, but for most types of plants (nuclear, coal, gas), they can be located most anywhere without having the output affected. Not true for solar, it will depend on location. Go to Wikipedia’s website on Solar Irradiance. Solar resource in Chicago or New York is much less than Arizona. If you put the solar installation in New York, the cost in cents/kW-hr must be scaled by the solar irradiance (much more expensive). Or, you could get the energy from the SW and use very long transmission lines.
Barry
Nate says: ”The (30%) Solar Investment Tax Credit, or ITC, is available for solar panel systems on both residential and commercial properties. After this year, the tax credit drops to 26 percent for projects that begin construction in 2020 and 22 percent for projects that begin in 2021.”
Nate I asked why aren’t they just flat cancelled! If solar is competitive you could end the subsidies tonight, not phase them a little bit at a time.
the only thing I said was that investing in renewables is profitable for the well connected. . . .the guys directly receiving a whole variety of federal, state, and local incentives (besides the ITC) Everybody else should be looking at it like a salted gold mine. That doesn’t mean there are no good investments in renewables even for the not so well connected, I just said if you are considering it be prepared with a whole lot of homework. Even salted goldmines occasionally produce like blind squirrels.
Nate says: ”Meanwhile the current administration continues to find new ways to support coal pollution.”
What are you talking about Nate? I haven’t paid attention but thought that all Trump was doing was eliminating automatic requirements of reducing co2 emissions and replacing it with a plan that evaluates each new project to upgrade plants to curb CO2 and other pollutants in a practicable manner as required by the current clean air act.
It might be better said that Trump administration continues to find ways to lessen the burden of invasive government and crusading environmentalism against coal plants in general. Thats not support thats putting the sword back into its scabbard and allowing markets and consumer choice determine the outcomes.
I’m surprised they couldn’t get Bill Nye. “But, it’s the rate of warming.”
That deserves a “like” button.
They probably couldn’t afford Bill Nye.
Impressive and fair, Doctor Spencer.
“They had originally intended the climate change session to be a debate, but after numerous inquiries were unable to find anyone who was willing to oppose me.” ….
That is the most telling, and sobering comment in the whole piece. Couldn’t they even find a member of the disinvestment crowd, or of extinction rebellion, to speak? Can we know more about this? Of course, if the participants were made aware of the reasons for a catastrophist ‘no show’, they would be smart enough to draw some important conclusions from it. Their investment decisions will still be made under pressure from the ‘moral imperative’ of the CAGW movement, of course, but the weight of your message will not have been ignored by these very influential folk. Well done.
Excellent! I perceive the whole experience as being extraordinarily positive. That you were even invited to present a non-“consensus” view is a “+”. That it was well received by an important group is a “+”.
There is faint light at the end of a very long tunnel.
I liked the PDF, I can agree with most of the conclusions.
My dislike is using a few decades of data to generate fear in the Public. It is the most clever of mental manipulations, on NPR they constantly have fear stories about how terrible climate change is at this time. They do blame all bad weather events on climate change.
A few years ago a temporary heat wave in Moscow (caused by a well known weather phenomena, blocking) was attributed to climate change. Now Moscow weather is back to normal so they have to go to Australia. When you have the whole globe at your disposal you can always find some really terrible weather pattern.
The sad thing is when you look at a longer historical view you find all the hype is most terrible and annoying science. Australia has evidence of much more severe droughts than the one that triggered the fire. California has evidence of decades of drought not just a few years. The worst thing about climate science is the fanatics will not do science. That is the case for both sides. You seem to be in the rational middle and can view the data with sober judgement. Most cannot do this. You have the deniers who make up their own science to fit their twisted views and you have the fanatics that believe every bad weather report and are convinced it is all over.
” They do blame all bad weather events on climate change. ”
Maybe some do! I don’t.
I see no more than the little fact that in the top 100 warmest months of Moscow’s raw time series since around 1937, over 50 are from the 200-2019 period.
And I see no more than the little fact that we experience in Northern Germany the third supermild winter in sequence (with Jan and Feb between 5 and 10 C above mean). And between them, two superwarm summers.
Not that I would complain, oh no! Just wondering a bit, especially about westerly winds all the year. We never have experienced such things in the last 50 years.
Climate change? No se.
Hey Dr. Spencer, I know why nobody wanted to debate you. They saw what Dr. Gavin Schmidt did on the John Stossel show several years ago. So, they are simply following his “lead.”
Real scientists don’t debate deniers. What’s the point?
Hey Scipio, are you saying Dr. Gavin Schmidt is a real scientist and Dr. Roy Spencer isn’t?
“Slow warming is occurring, probably mostly from CO2, but there is no climate “crisis” or “emergency.””
Where is your evidence that any warming is being caused by an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Why do I feel ‘sold out’?
“Where is your evidence that any warming is being caused by an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Why do I feel ‘sold out’?”
******
Roy answered that in a earlier post.
Sea level is probably the biggest scare that the alarmists have, the specter of coastal cities inundated by rising seas is a powerful message. A “Popular Claims/The Empirical Reality” bullet point regarding sea level was missing from the PowerPoint presentation.
Another “Popular Claims/The Empirical Reality” bullet point that was missing was Methane. The Global Warming Potential number for methane, currently a scary 85 times more powerful than CO2 as stated in the popular press, needs to be translated into the reality of what the actual temperature rise due to increasing methane over time would be. An answer to that in degrees Celsius is strangely missing on any internet search you might endeavor to attempt.
Several cities around the country have begun to ban natural gas in new residential construction. This will no doubt escalate into requiring gas shut off when property is bought and sold, and spread to many more cities and states.
Why shouldn’t coastal cities be concerned about sea level rise? Did you see Wednesday’s article in WaPo about Boston’s sea level rise?
Scipio says:
February 19, 2020 at 10:55 PM
Why shouldn’t coastal cities be concerned about sea level rise? Did you see Wednesday’s article in WaPo about Boston’s sea level rise?
Here’s a link to the Washington Post article
Boston harbor brings ashore a new enemy: Rising seas
where they say:
And as climate change accelerates, the pace of sea-level rise in Boston is expected to triple, adding eight inches over 2000 levels by 2030, according to a report commissioned by the city. The ocean might climb as much as three feet above 2013 levels by 2070, the report said.
New phraseology. I guess that means 8 inches in 30 years, and 36 inches in 57 years which comes to 6.8 mm/year and 16 mm/yr respectively. A quick trip to the Boston tide gauge annual data from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) and a short Excel analysis shows that sea level rise over thirty year periods since 1920 has been as high as 5 mm/year by the early ’50s, and as low as 1 mm/year in the early ’90s. The current rate for the last 30 years is 4.7 mm/year. Figuring out the overall acceleration using the (v2-v1)/t=a formula we all learned in 12th grade physics it comes to 0.046 mm/year² which extrapolates out to 13 inches over the 2013 to 2070 time period. Which is half of what Steven Mufson of the Post said the Report Commissioned by the City said.
Dr. Spencer’s PowerPoint talked about Popular Claims and Empirical Reality i.e., the Washington Post and the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level. You can decide if the report that the city of Boston commissioned reflects reality or not. Me? I think the people who write such reports more or less ask the mayor what he wants it to say before they ever write word one.
using the (v2-v1)/t=a formula
That’s not how to calculate acceleration. !!
Obviously.
Hint: Take the second derivative of the quadratic fit.
Roy,
On page 5, you say “Warming should continue into the future.”
What is this basis for this statement? I’m not saying it can’t or won’t continue, but only that there isn’t sufficient evidence to claim it *should*.
My guess would be due to the recent trend. But Dr. Spencer also said it isn’t anything to get alarmed about. Which is what the BIG DEBATE is all about.
It’s because Roy understands that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that traps heat, unlike most of those here (the deniers).
Learn something.
Yes, CO2 is a GHG whose increase should cause some push in the warming direction, but how does this translate into evidence that it *should* continue warming?
But you JUST SAID it would cause “some push” in the warming direction.
What exactly does “some push” mean??
Is CO2 the only thing that can cause a change in temperature? No, of course not. Therefore, just because it’s increase should cause some push in the warming direction doesn’t mean the climate should warm.
The prediction of continued warming comes from analyzing the net effect of all forcing agents and from the observation of the energy imbalance from oceanic heat content measurements.
The net effect of all forcing agents is not known. Oceanic heat content doesn’t say anything about energy imbalance, positive or negative.
“Oceanic heat content doesnt say anything about energy imbalance, positive or negative”
The TREND in OHC does have something to say about it. The positive trend says there is a growing energy imbalance– a net energy flux imbalance.
The trend in ohc does not say there is a growing energy imbalance. What it says is there is increasing energy in the oceans and that has been caused by an energy imbalance that will continue until the imbalance is eliminated. It says nothing about if the imbalance is growing or shrinking. What you need to do is to turn on your own brain and start looking at the entire suite of possibilities rather just making illogical leaps of faith simply because some politician wants you to.
RW, The net effect of all forcing agents is known. It may not be known with 100% certainty, but it is known nonetheless. Please review IPCC AR5 WGI chapter 8 for a summary of radiative forcing agents.
You’re a real piece of work BGDWX. You just drink the Kool Aid and regurgitate it. IPCC data has been shown by Berry to be wrong. Why don’t you go over there and show Berry where he’s wrong?
The IPCC does not do original research. They just collate and summarize it.
3 guys who conflate residence time and adjustment time say the Bern model is wrong. Their model is inconsistent with observations. We’ve gone over this. On the flip side more than 800 studies referenced in IPCC AR5 WGI chapter 6 are consistent with it and observations.
Nevermind that this has nothing to do with radiative forcing.
bgdwx,
“RW, The net effect of all forcing agents is known.”
No, they’re not. What you’re referring to is radiative forcing of atmospheric GHGs. I’m referring to forcings, i.e. things/mechanisms, that cause climate change. We do not know them all, let alone all well enough to quantify their effects.
Thus, there is not support to think warming *should* continue. A warming push from GHGs *should* continue — yes, but not necessarily warming. The direction of change the climate takes is the sum of all the influences, cooling and warming, natural and anthropogenic.
Roy should know better and be more careful with his statements like this.
RW,
I’m talking about any agent that provides a radiative force on a planetary scale. This includes GHGs, but is not limited just GHGs. IPCC AR5 WGI ch. 8 discusses them and provides estimates of the magnitude of each.
I do agree that the climate system is driven by the net affect of all forcing agents. That was actually my point and I thought I made that clear when I mentioned “net effect of all forcing agents” in my post above.
And when you analyze the net effect of all forcing agents it is an expectation that the warming will continue. Now, if you believe that one particular forcing agent will be more/less in the future as compared to what the consensus says then we can certainly discuss that. In fact, the expectation of future forcing is so uncertain that the IPCC handles this with representative climate pathway (RCP) scenarios and runs the numbers for each.
bdgwx says: ”The IPCC does not do original research. They just collate and summarize it.”
Thats a total misconception bdgwx. The IPCC has been found to harbor conflicts of interest between politically-appointed lead authors and their own and their own institutions work.
That would not be “collating” that is being “selective”. E.g. the only science thats related to is political science.
bdgwx,
“And when you analyze the net effect of all forcing agents….”
As I said, this is what is not known, and thus the net direction, i.e. the actual direction, of future change cannot be determined.
It’s not even known if the net anthropogenic influence is warming. It may be, but even if it is, this doesn’t mean the climate *should* warm.
To sum this up, Roy should have said the warming *could* continue instead of *should* continue.
RW,
What I’m saying is that it is known. Again, IPCC AR5 WGI ch. 8 has provides estimates for the various forcing agents and their net effect with a narrow enough uncertainty envelope that conclusions can be made with confidence.
“What Im saying is that it is known. Again, IPCC AR5 WGI ch. 8 has provides estimates for the various forcing agents and their net effect with a narrow enough uncertainty envelope that conclusions can be made with confidence.”
And it’s absolutely incorrect. All the influences on the climate system that cause changes are not known. For every one influence we think might have identified, there are probably at least two more yet to be discovered. Not only would all of them have to be fully known, they would all have to be precisely quantified in order to get the net effect. We can’t even precisely quantify the ones we know, let alone the ones we don’t.
RW,
Do you have reason to believe scientists have overlooked a significant forcing agent?
Do you have reason to believe forcing agents with a magnitude < 0.01 W/m^2 are essential in estimating the net radiative forcing?
What justification can you use to convince people that 100% perfect understanding is necessary to draw conclusions? Do you employ the same rule for other disciplines of science or just climate science?
bdgwx says: ”Do you have reason to believe scientists have overlooked a significant forcing agent?”
Yes depending upon how you define “forcing agent”. A agent in common parlance means the guy that arranges the show but doesn’t host the show. Under that definition “forcing agent” would mean “anthropogenic emissions” in the theory that attempts to assign all change including natural change on mankind then proceeds to assume that the natural greenhouse effect only needs CO2 to have come about, a theory completely devoid of evidence beyond the fact that CO2 is a factor in the greenhouse effect.
bill, A forcing agent is anything that can lead to a perturbation in Earth’s energy budget either directly or indirectly.
bdgwx says: “bill, A forcing agent is anything that can lead to a perturbation in Earths energy budget either directly or indirectly”.
With that my answer is yes probably several times over. Anything that affects clouds, ice, or even ocean currents is going to do that on many time scales. You may want to modify that and say on some minimal times scale to fit the popular concept being sold recently that such perturbations must be of some number of years to qualify as “climate change” vs just weather which is climate change on many scales.
Also to be thorough you probably should say “has or can” in replace of “can”. Some perturbations may be completely saturated by basic earth physics and thus not capable of change itself without a different driver that may or may not occur in the future. . . .like in requiring a major change in the overall mass or volume of the atmosphere. Many small such changes are occurring all the time but may not be measurable in terms of climate defined as change in mean global temperature.
One would think most of the Gaia worshipers out there would understand that the earth is as the living organism they believe it to be is at least as complex as the living organisms that live upon its surface and in its seas.
With over 30 years policy/science experience its apparent to me there is no group of people on the face of the earth that isn’t susceptible to adopting poorly vetted beliefs about the nature of the world.
In fact one of the central tenets of the demand for climate action is founded in the idea we don’t have time to wait because organisms adapt too slowly in face of the schedule these folks ascribe to. I would suggest then that they haven’t considered that that implies that mankind has not evolved very far from being susceptible to earth shaking wrong headed ideas. But I have little doubt you believe that’s only other people.
Ex.cellent presentation but leaves the percep.tion that increasing CO2 is causing warming and, unless humans stop using fossil fuels, no end is in sight.
How many non-engineering/science types are even aware that water vapor is a greenhouse gas? Hardly anyone seems to be aware that WV has been increasing 1.47% per decade which is faster than possible from temperature increase (feedback). There is a limit to how much WV the atmosphere can hold and/or a limit to how much more land area can be economically irrigated (increased irrigation area is the source of about 96% of the increased WV) so there is a limit to GW.
Are you not the same Dan Pangburn who predicted marked global cooling starting around 2013? And were not those predictions revisions of earlier predictions of imminent global cooling?
What happened?
JW
Jim,
I discovered the influence of water vapor and that it has been increasing (worldwide average trend) about 1.47% per decade. Last TPW report in Jan 2020 is that it is still increasing. Also discovered Hitran database which, with a little analysis, demonstrates that WV increase has been about 10 times more effective at increasing ground level temperature than CO2 increase.
D. Pangburn
I notice that you didn’t answer to J. W.’s question…
Dan Pangburn, ever afraid to publish. The sign of an amateur.
JW — Interesting. Gotta a link?
Pangburn wrote:
“Hardly anyone seems to be aware that WV has been increasing 1.47% per decade which is faster than possible from temperature increase (feedback).”
You have no data or proof of your claims. If you think we’re just going to take your word for it, your are deluded.
“WV has been increasing 1.47% per decade which is faster than possible from temperature increase (feedback).
That turns out not to be the case.
Atmospheric water vapour increases by 7% per degree Centigrade.
1.47% per decade would correspond to a temperature increase of 1.47/7=0.21C per decade.
That the water vapor trend is inconsistent with the UAH temperature series and consistent with pretty much all the others suggests there might be a problem with the UAH trend.
This would not post yesterday. Apparently I am allowed to post only once a day so this is it for today.
Ent,
It does not work quite like that but thanks for the rough confirmation
Take your pick of linear trends of C degrees per de.cade for reported temperatures.
RSS 0.020
GISS 0.020
NOAA 0.0197
Had.CRUT4 0.017
UAH 0.013
Dan
I hope that you are not claiming that a 0.01C difference between the rates of temperature change derived from temperature records and from water vapour is significant. The old statistician in me is well aware that the difference is within the confidence limits of the data.
I see no significant difference between your water vapour data and everyone elses. If you want to convince me that the difference is significant, you will need to at least let us know the confidence limits you are using.
Dan
Did you notice that all the temperature data you put up was annual rates, not decadal rates. Thus RSS and GISS record 0.02C/year and 0.2C/decade. UAH records 0.13C/decade.
I calculated 0.21C/decade from your water vapour data, which is a close match to the 0.2C/decade of RSS and GISS.
Ent,
What is the confidence that GW has been significantly contributed to by CO2?
The IPCC lists the confidence of CO2’s radiative forcing contribution to global warming as very high. The only other entry with a confidence that high is for nitrous oxide.
Based only on the temperature comparisons above, The odds are less than 50%.
And it is total BS. Berry has shown their carbon budget model is preposterous.
At least 800 studies show that the Bern model provides a far better estimate of adjustment time than any other. Berry doesn’t even provide an estimate for the adjustment time. So in that respect it is infinitely worse than the Bern model.
It’s moot in this context anyway because CO2 can and does still have a positive radiative force regardless of which actor is responsible for the mass increase in the atmosphere. It still causes warming regardless of whether nature or humans put it in the atmosphere.
And, Berry has shown only one mathematical falsification of the IPCC’s Bern model. That’s all it took.
How can you falsify the Bern model if you don’t even provide an estimate for the adjustment time?
I will say this…if you can find me an occurrence of a 130 ppm ‘ish increase in CO2 which relaxed by 63% in ~16.5 years I’ll definitely perk up and take a look.
This is how IPCC AR5 defined its probabilities
“The likelihood, or probability, of some well-defined outcome having occurred or occurring in the future can be described quantitatively through the following terms: virtually certain, 99100% probability; extremely likely, 95100%; very likely, 90100%; likely, 66100%; more likely than not, >50100%; about as likely as not, 3366%; unlikely, 033%; very unlikely, 010%; extremely unlikely, 05%; and exceptionally unlikely, 01%. Additional terms (extremely likely, 95100%; more likely than not, >50100%; more unlikely than likely, 0<50%; and extremely unlikely, 05%) may also be used when appropriate. "
Note that the ppobability of a causative link between CO2 and temperature is described as "Very high", ie 90%+.
The solution to the continuity equation which is actual physics is e time, not adjustment time. Berry determined e time for C14 of 16.5 years. There is no “relaxation” for 130ppm of CO2. It is a figment of your imagination. CO2 flows through the atmosphere.
BGDWX,
See edberry.com. Preprint 2 section 5.1. Falsification of the Bern Model. Theoretical 100ppm pulse.
bdgwx says: “Its moot in this context anyway because CO2 can and does still have a positive radiative force regardless of which actor is responsible for the mass increase in the atmosphere. It still causes warming regardless of whether nature or humans put it in the atmosphere.”
Thats an overstatement. CO2 both causes a retention of heat and a dissipation of heat. It “popularly” believed to be positive, but thats only because we are so ignorant of atmospheric heat retention processes we are prone to believe its the only source of the greenhouse effect. Whereas on the cooling side of things cooler heads see that its a process of give and take and it might in fact have a small net cooling effect. So in essence if you plotted out all the possibilities on a distribution curve and the number of adherents, the cooling group is very small the luke warm group very large, and the catastrophic group small but noisy. . . .screaming their arses off like a bunch of folks thinking the plane is crashing.
SPA,
e-time is not a measurement. It is the units used for a measurement. Saying that Berry is measuring e-time is equivalent to saying you’re measuring meters. What is it that you think Berry is actually measuring? Residence time, adjustment time, something else?
And when you saying Berry has falsified the Bern model understand that it is equivalent to someone claiming they have falsified the accepted Earth-Sun distance by calculating the Earth-Moon and saying, “see…nuh-uh”. It doesn’t make any sense.
And as I’ve said many times before I’m not challenging Berry’s residence time calculation. I think it’s pretty close. I’m challenging his conflation of it with the adjustment time. This is important because residence has little if any relevance to CO2’s radiative forcing. That’s because the radiative forcing is a product of the total mass in the atmosphere; not of the specific molecules that make up that mass.
Bill,
CO2 does not aid with the dissipation of heat. It slows the dissipation down.
Now you’re deflecting. We both know what e time is. It is the time it takes for the level to move 1-1/e distance to the balance level. Berry is not conflating or misunderstand your adjustment time. He is disproving it. He has falsified the IPCC’s application of the Bern Model to support the idea that all the increase in CO2 is due to anthropogenic emission. In his second preprint, section 5.1 it is there. You know it. I know it. And, Berry knows it.
Berry has also shown CO2 has no significance as a “greenhouse” gas.
Berry has shown your “pulse” argument to be conflated.
SPA: Now you’re deflecting. We both know what e time is. It is the time it takes for the level to move 1-1/e distance to the balance level.
1 meter is the distance it takes light to move in 1/299792458 of second. That tells you nothing about what I want to measure though.
More to the point here…I want to know what you think Berry is measuring. The balance level of what?
SPA: Berry has also shown CO2 has no significance as a “greenhouse” gas.
That’s a new claim. Where does he do that? I’d like to review it as well.
SPA: Berry has shown your “pulse” argument to be conflated.
That doesn’t even make any sense. Do you know what ‘conflate’ means?
Do you understand the difference between residence time and adjustment time?
Conflate-I use it as wrongly merging two ideas into one. You’re merging the significance of adjustment time into the argument as if it shows Berry’s e time is not important and adjustment time is what is important. Adjustment time is irrelevant to the argument. Residence time is how long a molecule is around. Adjustment time is the time it takes for the level to achieve the balance level. Practically speaking it is about four times e time. Berry hasn’t conflated anything.
Also, your pulse argument is conflated because you’re taking this several century window of anthropogenic emission and claiming it must be treated as a pulse because the Earth is billions of years old and man has only been here a small portion of that. Berry has shown this is false.
SPA: Residence time is how long a molecule is around.
Correct.
SPA: Adjustment time is the time it takes for the level to achieve the balance level.
The balance level of what? Mass? If so then yes. Isotope ratio? If so then no.
SPA: Practically speaking it is about four times e time. Berry hasn’t conflated anything.
So it’s 16.5 * 4 = 66 years? In other words it takes 66 years for the mass (in units of ppm) to relax 63%? And why would it necessarily be 4x the residence time? What physical process necessarily causes it to be this way?
SPA: You’re merging the significance of adjustment time into the argument as if it shows Berry’s e time is not important and adjustment time is what is important.
That’s because residence is not important in the context of global warming. The reason is because CO2’s behavior with the infrared part of the spectrum does not depend on the specific type of molecules. All it depends on is the total amount of molecules there are.
Don’t get me wrong…residence time is important for other things like radiocarbon dating. It’s just not important if you want to estimate radiative forcing.
SPA: Also, your pulse argument is conflated because you’re taking this several century window of anthropogenic emission and claiming it must be treated as a pulse because the Earth is billions of years old and man has only been here a small portion of that. Berry has shown this is false.
First, I’ve not used the word ‘pulse’ after you requested me to stop using the word.
Second, a ‘pulse’ is just an increase in something. Are you saying that Berry has shown that the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere didn’t increase? Where did he ever say that?
No, adjustment time as you’re using it is the time for the mass to go to the balance level, not 0.63 of the balance level. This has nothing to do with isotopic decay. That’s all Berry has been talking about is mass. The continuity equation is a MASS balance equation. And, yes your adjustment time for C14 for mass is 64 years. DOESN’T CHANGE ANYTHING.
SPA: No, adjustment time as you’re using it is the time for the mass to go to the balance level, not 0.63 of the balance level.
Lets be precise if adjustment time is expressed as half-life it is a 50% relaxation. If it is expressed as e-time it is a 63% relaxation or 37% of the original increase.
And balance level is the total mass of all CO2 prior to the increase.
SPA: This has nothing to do with isotopic decay.
That is correct. Adjustment time has nothing to do with isotopic decay. Note that there are two concepts here. Radioactive decay and isotopic ratio decay. Neither are relevant to adjustment time. BTW…both have different lifetimes so don’t conflate these concepts either.
SPA: That’s all Berry has been talking about is mass.
He quite clearly is basing his thesis on carbon-14 ratios and not on the total mass of carbon.
bdgwx says:”CO2 does not aid with the dissipation of heat. It slows the dissipation down.”
Probably true. However, how much slowdown is a key issue and thats very poorly understood other than it may be the case that the slowdown was far greater with much lower concentrations of CO2 as far as the surface affects are concerned when it was a case of absorbing in the first layer. Once the layers below the latest absorbing layer become airbourne its a different ball game because of the fluidity of those layers.
Great photo!!
I played golf at Primm Valley Golf NV which you can see in the bottom right corner of your photo. The road into the course curves around the barrier fence for Ivanpah. The deleterious effect on a beautiful ecosystem there can be appreciated from the air, but it is an expansive scourge on the landscape.
The 15th tee has you aiming at one of the towers. Definitely wear eye protection when lining up your shot.
I was not aware it had failed, but it was obvious that the entire site was useless by late afternoon with mountains looming to its west.
Another gleaming example of the quixotic malthusians with their end-of-world sandwich boards.
Yeah, and if you ever encounter any problem you should not solve it but give up completely and never try anything else ever.
Well it depends whose money is being used.
Ivanpah solar received a generous loan guarantee, tax credits and contracts well in excess of the market rate all at the expense of US taxpayers and still went belly-up.
There is a concept in economics called the ‘sunk cost fallacy’ or ‘irrational escalation of commitment’.
Ivanpah is in operation. By “failed” Dr Spencer means operating (currently) at about 85% of it’s projected output.
“Sunk cost fallacy” doesn’t apply to a capital intensive project once it is in operational unless the operating costs are higher than that of a viable alternative. Maybe it shouldn’t have been built, but it’s not clear that it should be shut down now that it exists.
Chris Hanley
Try – just for a moment – to imagine what would have happened to the nuclear industry if it had never obtained any national financial support anywhere on Earth.
How many nuke plants would, do you think, be operating right now?
maybe lots.
can we bury the waste in your backyard?
Scipio says: ”maybe lots. can we bury the waste in your backyard?”
Absolutely!! In fact you probably wouldn’t even notice the rent charge for the land use on your energy bill.
Are you still apologizing for Rush Limbaugh and his homophobia?
Dr. Roy,
What a persuasive presentation. While we may diverge on details you have total command of the “Big Picture”.
What amazes me is that Scott Denning did not show up given that he lives nearby.
The CO2 warming theory is based on a completely idiotic model where the sun is always shining the ground is always warmer the air is always the same
On the real planet In real world of fizzix , you cannot warm the air by mixing a heat conducting gas into it.
I have learned and known this since 1979 , but others are catching on now – finally
https://bit.ly/3bTnpx8
Eben
“On the real planet In real world of fizzix , you cannot warm the air by mixing a heat conducting gas into it.”
Where did you see anybody pretending such a Schmarrn?
You always pretend things other would write, but never show where you got the stuff from.
That is not sound, to say it politely.
Ground breaking paper you found there Eben:
https://tinyurl.com/utm2hzo
Susan Crockford was fired soon after she published that paper on polar bears:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/20/susan-crockford-fired-after-finding-polar-bears-th/
In academia these days you can get fired for publishing sound research or even opinion if it undermines what the GAGW Mafiosi claim.
Thankfully they have not managed to get Spencer and Christy fired……yet.
GC, Tenure, which is awarded for an excellent record of scholarship, is rewarded with academic freedom protection. No such protection for the untenured.
Adjunct faculty are unpaid and untenured and serve at the pleasure of the administration. It is simply a loose association. Its hard to know the cause of its cancellation . Presumably anything that reflected negatively on the reputation of the university.
@Nate,
Are you suggesting that Susan Crockford’s paper on polar bears is false in some way?
No way to know the cause. Might be her blog.
According to NYT
” Dr. Crockford frequently referenced a 2007 report he (Alsup) prepared when he was the federal government’s polar bear project director in Alaska. The report projected that if the rise of global temperature continued unabated, two-thirds of the world’s polar bears could be lost by the middle of this century.”
“By that time, climate models suggest, September sea ice in the Arctic could decline to an area of one million square kilometers or less.”
“But Dr. Crockford often asserts on her blog that sea ice has already declined to the projected mid-century levels and that the polar-bear population has not decreased by two-thirds.”
“Dr. Amstrup, however, said that according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the average September sea ice extent for the years 2007 to 2017 was 4.5 million square kilometers, ‘nowhere near the low levels projected it would be by the middle of the century.’
‘To say that we already should have seen those declines now when were not nearly to the middle of the century yet is absurd,’ he said.
@Chris Hanley
While you fret about the $2.2 billion it cost to build Ivanpah, and the terrible burden on taxpayers, consider the following:
Annual spending, USA
$253 billion, alcohol
$80 billion, tobacco
$65 billion, soft drinks
$53 billion, marijuana
$9 billion, Halloween candy and costumes
Snape
You unluckily forgot the most expensive point:
https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/most-expensive-military-projects-that-went-nowhere.html/
I mean here of course in relation to its usefulness.
Some might say: but Snape’s list contain only useless expenses!
That exactly is the point where I disagree.
Snape [ctnd]
Oh Noes! It was the wrong link, the previous one had shown so cheap:
https://www.ranker.com/list/biggest-military-wastes-of-money/mike-rothschild
Bin,
Those are good examples of wasteful spending, but did you know that Germans spend more than $4 billion a year to watch people kick a little ball around?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-13/germany-s-soccer-boom-provides-bright-spot-for-clouding-economy
Yes. But that’s useful at least for them.
My examples weren’t for anybody.
Snape…”did you know that Germans spend more than $4 billion a year to watch people kick a little ball around?”
It’s actually a bag of wind. Soccer used to be a good game till the players lost their ball skills and resorted to running around and falling down every time they get tackled. Germany had some great teams in the 1970s.
My wife’s team was great in the 90’s. The 1890’s.
She spends far too much time on their blog.
https://www.readytogo.net/smb/threads/settle-an-argument-the-hokey-cokey.1507712/page-2
I was hoping to lighten things up by poking fun at soccer. I encouraged my kids not to play such a goofy sport.
Bindidon
Above you responded to my post about the Moscow heat wave.
Using your abilities I did my own research.
Here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Moscow
Moscow long term climate for July averages 69.1 F (daily mean)
I used this resource:
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/russia/moscow/historic?month=7&year=2019
I compiled the July daily averages for the 10 years covered by the data.
2010 79 F (the year of the extreme heat wave)
2011 74
2012 70
3013 66
2014 70
2015 65
2016 70
2017 64
2018 69
2019 62
10 year average is 68.9 F very close to the long term average. Roy Spencer is most correct when he claims the warming is so small no one would notice it except for the blaring media convincing millions a disaster is coming. I am not sure the source of you information, mine does not show what yours does.
Norman
Sorry for clearly contradicting you again (this time with real data).
” Using your abilities I did my own research. ”
1. Research? You call a simple look at Wiki ‘research’ ? Aha.
2. Only ‘skeptic’ people – I mean those trying to minimise any substantial warming – use heat waves, or at least restrict their ‘research’ on summer maximum temperatures.
Anybody having a bit of a clue will rather have a closer look at how winter minima behave.
*
Here is a chart generated using Moscow’s GHCN daily record
https://tinyurl.com/tuhwq7y
comparing the winter minima and the summer maxima during 1950-2017 (years with lots of holes were eliminated, especially 2018 and 2019):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14bGtlZp4HevY0x5_rlBkgNeSv8jKBjzq/view
Even about the summer maxima’s trend I did wonder, I thought it would be flat.
Instead it is, for 1950-2017:
0.24 +- 0.06 C / decade, and… 0.40 since 1979.
The winter minima trend is:
0.69 +- 0.15 C / decade, and 0.67 since 1979.
And Superscientist Norman tries to tell us from far away: ‘no substantial warming’… Oh Noes.
*
I learned a lot from Roy Spencer, Norman. He is a silent, but very effective teacher.
*
Last not least, the very best in your comment was the strange urge of all these Americanocentrics to still delight us with their Fahrenheits, and that in… 2020!
Bindidon
I am not sure where you are going with your posts. I do strongly believe you did not understand the nature of my original post and are on some tangent that has nothing to do with my point.
To clarify. I do not like the media using every bad weather event to manipulate the Public into an “alarmist state” (meaning do something soon or perish in a nightmare world of horrifying weather).
The Moscow Heat wave was one such example, there are many many more.
I am not trying to prove the Globe is NOT warming by taking Moscow July temperatures over a 10 year period. I am showing that the Moscow heat wave was a weather anomaly. Extreme weather is happening somewhere on the large globe, flood, drought, hail, wind, snow, ice, lightning, fires. Using this to manipulate the Public is what I am opposing.
It was in response to the linked PDF in the article. Roy Spencer shows the popular beliefs about weather events and then shows that the “alarmist” claims are not supported by the empirical data.
That is what I was doing with the Moscow heat wave. One hot summer does not make a pattern of horrible weather. If you fail to understand my point don’t blame me for you flawed assumptions of what I am claiming. like number 2 in your post.
Norman
Your complaints about alarmism are really boring.
It seems to me that you simply ignore that for each alarmist there are at least ten antialarmists doing the same work as alarmists but in the other direction.
No sea ice loss, no ice sheet loss, no glacier retreat, no warming.
And let me tell you that I participate in climate discussions since 2008, and that since then I stopped trusting in people who think they must teach me bout weather and climate in a corner where I live since over 50 years, by using… the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Jesus.
Bindidon
I think you have things backward or only go to a few denier webpages. The media (at least in the US) constantly claims nearly all bad weather events are because of Climate Change. I do not hear any loud voices opposing this message.
Except the loudest of them all. And he says its all a hoax.
Bindidon,
There is no doubt mainstream news (CNN, etc) is alarmist. Partly, this is because bad news sells. But it’s clear to me (I peruse multiple new outlets) many are in the tank for the cause. The cause is more government revenue/control and currently a lot of people still need to be convinced/motivated…
Barry
Bindidon
I am not sure about the westerly winds in Northern Germany. They seem most normal and mild winters also seem the norm. I do not live in your area but the climate seems to favor mild winters and westerly winds.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/Climate
Norman
That’s the problem with people like you… rather trusting in general, superficial blah blah than in what experienced persons tell you.
I was not speaking about Germany, Norman. Try again.
Our last winter that earned this name was … in 2010.
Btw: a typical ‘Robertson’-like answer. Thanks for your pseudo-knowledge!
Bindidon
From you post above you stated: “And I see no more than the little fact that we experience in Northern Germany the third supermild winter in sequence (with Jan and Feb between 5 and 10 C above mean). And between them, two superwarm summers.
Not that I would complain, oh no! Just wondering a bit, especially about westerly winds all the year. We never have experienced such things in the last 50 years.”
If you were not speaking about Northern Germany than why are you adding it in your post? Where you speaking of Northern France?
I am not sure what you post is accusing me of? You compare me to Gordon Robertson but the reason is not very clear. I gave you ten years of July temperatures in Moscow (the daily average is given on the page I linked to). It is valid data. Your complaint seems senseless to me, maybe elaborate so I can understand what you are getting at.
Norman…”I do not live in your area but the climate seems to favor mild winters and westerly winds”.
There’s definitely a lot of hot air in Binny’s part of Germany.
I think it is possible to see a drop in temperature as you have noted previously it is a rise in minimum temperatures not maximum temperatures. Why could we not see a fall in minimum temperatures?
digging hard, aren’t you?
Good weather documentary , and contains zero satanic CO2 gas propaganda
https://youtu.be/LO5vcaujZEI
co2 absorbs IR, whether you
like it or
not. don’t be a putz.
Scipio = David App.ell
No doubt about it!
Like I said
You throw the creep out the door he crawls back through the window, You throw the creep out the window he crawl back through the chimney
Roy, how much were you paid to talk to this group, including travel expenses?
PS: I bet you don’t answer.
Scipio, what concern of that is it of yours? Is it because you are just a snooty busybody?
@Norman
[Roy Spencer shows the popular beliefs about weather events and then shows that the alarmist claims are not supported by the empirical data.]
It is important to realize/remember that a lack of empirical evidence can be misleading.
About pg 6 PDF and chaotic system:
“Extreme sensitivity to the initial conditions of chaos was the key for Lorenz to detect chaotic dynamics in his model.
At one point this researcher wanted to reproduce a trajectory that I had previously obtained and but instead of starting the sequence from the values Initially, it was proposed to do so from an intermediate point.
For this he introduced in the numerical integration program the values of the variables for that instant of weather.
What he observed then surprised him by unexpected: the new trajectory deviated until it ended at a totally different point from the original.
This is illustrated in the following figure:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17v6L1amC5a5FrfLdhJxtSpaIJUhPZY6o/view?usp=drivesdk
Shortly after he discovered that what happened was a consequence of the fact that instead of the value Exactly of the variables, which had previously been calculated up to the 6th decimal place, only entered the first three in the program! In any non-chaotic system this would have had undetectable effects or none at all on the temporal evolution of the system.
The fact that in this case a variation in the 4th decimal place (totally outside the scope of any experimental measurement system) had such dramatic consequences on the evolution of the system was something never seen before.
This effect is known as the Butterfly Effect that said in the context of meteorological prediction studies of Lorenz:
The flutter of a butterfly today causes a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over time the evolution of the atmosphere is such that it diverges extraordinarily from the one that would have had not produced such flutter, of such way that can lead to a hurricane in Florida being generated within a month that would not have happened had it not been for the flutter. Or that a tornado does not occur that if not for the flutter that would have taken place. ” ”
From:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17uBBsQdEugSwzYnxeQtkduy5K15JGonn/view?usp=drivesdk
From Spain, I absolutly agree with Normando about this:
There is no any strong voice against agw climate change…
Again Thank you very much Dr. Spencer for your presentation and your encouraging work.
From Spain, I absolutly agree with Normando about this:
There is no any strong voice against agw climate change…
Again Thank you very much Dr. Spencer for your presentation and your brave work.
Sorry if I repeat my comment…It’s because I didn’t see It published.
From Spain, I absolutly agree with Normando about this:
There is no any strong voice against ALARMIST agw climate change…
I wanted to say!…Sorry
Adelaide
“There is no any strong voice against ALARMIST agw climate change”
There are any number of voices against AGW, saying that it is alarming , that it is a bad idea and that we shouldn’t be doing it.
Voices saying that nothing is happening and we should not be alarmed; those are getting rarer. You see it on comment threads all over, as vocal disbelievers gradually disappear from the conversation.
Entropic man
The only empirically determined evidence is that the globe is warming. Any weather related event like fires in California, floods in some location, fires in Australia, heat waves at some location, blizzards at some city have no empirical evidence supporting that the 1 C warming over a 100 years is causing these weather events to increase in frequency or become more severe. Yet publications like Scientific American or news outlets will report that a severe weather event is caused by Climate Change and things will be getting worse soon.
To be a valid science a linking mechanism must exist, something that would be factual in a world that was 1 C warmer than one that was not. Francis tried to explain this relatively slight warming would have a huge impact on the jet stream. I do not buy this as it goes against what the science had previously stated and it makes no sense logically but she does peddle this as a factual idea even though there is a lot of opposition to it in the expert circles.
If you read about jet streams before Climate Change distortion you will see that the faster jet stream has more wavy patterns. In the summer when the temperature gradient between the South and North regions, the jet stream is much slower and far less wavy, it does not move north and south much in summer months which is exactly opposite of what she claims.
And about my first comment today:
Pag 6 of Dr. Roy Spencer Pasadena Presentation’s PDF
test
Can you people use some other place to learn and practice how to use internets ?
People like you, who keep writing absolutely trivial comments all the time, can’t understand the problems all others have when fighting with this blog’s comment scanner.
You want to look like you have all the climate science figured out while you can’t manage to make a post
Eben
You are even less intelligent than people like Robertson: that is bottommost line.
You didn’t even understand what I wrote above. Any 12-year old child would, however.
Try to write something more complex, by pasting text paragraphs from scientific articles, or data lists generated by a software you wrote by your own, containing lots of non-ASCII characters, and we will see.
All you did until now is to post trivial youtubes.
I too have noticed that the more technical information/data I try to pack into a post the more likely I am to have that post get filtered. And I’ve wondered if my repeated attempts to work around the scanner could be triggering some kind of time-limited soft ban in which I can’t even get a test post like the above to go through. I’ve had to wait several hours before posting ability has been restored.
I suspect a time limit too, if you try too many times it’s hopeless. I’ve had identical posts go through later on.
It could also be broken adverts, a more bening advert might be picked later. It sometimes helps to switch to a different browser.
Even if you warmistas don’t like me . Next time you get hopelessly tangled up in the world wide web just call me I will come to the rescue.
Eben
It is not about “liking” you or not. You just have very little knowledge of the topic you post about and pretend you are much smarter than you really are and refuse to try to learn smug in your own ignorance as if this is a badge of honor. Open a textbook on heat transfer and start reading some material. Then when you post you will have some knowledge. At this time your posts contain nothing of value just empty nonsense that sounds like something a Junior High School student would post to try and think he knows the subject. You need to learn a great deal more as all of us do. The difference is you are not even attempting to learn.
Ditto using a different browser. I’ve had success getting the exact same content to go through using that strategy as well.
Incredible but true: we have here in Noerthwestern Germany, a 50 % snow forecast for the coming wednesday / thursday, that would be the very first ‘snow’ in my immediate surroundings since at least three years.
Promised: I’ll inform you if we manage to bypass the 2 mm level.
The linear trend of measured TPW is increase of 1.47 % per decade.
Applying this rate to the stated water column in MODTRAN6 with no change in CO2 and adjusting the surface temperature to achieve a constant TOA radiation flux since 1970 requires a temperature increase of 0.37 K.
This is about the same as the amount attributed to TPW in Figure 10.6 of http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com (no contribution from CO2 change)
Katherine Johnson died, aged 101!
That was a great science woman…
Do you believe in science or The Delusions of Scientism ?
Do you think climateers are any better than cosmologists ?
https://youtu.be/MTdF0N_KMgY
Eben, unclear what your point is? There are still mysteries in Cosmology. And so what?
I yeah, I forgot , for real slow people we have a children version Climateer video
https://youtu.be/eKY6lkMwZiM
Why do I bother…
The 1.47% per decade measured linear trend increase of TPW accounts for all of the average global temperature increase attributable to human activity.
You have it backwards.
The 0.2C/ decade warming trend has caused the 1.47%/decade increase in water vapour.
Ent,
You have been falsely indoctrinated. Apparently you lack the motivation and/or engineering/science skill to figure it out for yourself. If you did, you might know better.
Thank you very much for your understanding! I will try not to fail again when posting a comment … but I dare not promise!
¡ Por el amor de Dios, Adelaida !
No estás en juicio aquí .
Good news for the Coolistas!
The Ice Age Cometh
https://twitter.com/MOSAiCArctic/status/1231980712531722241
Imagine: even the strongest icebreaker in the world cannot get through Arctic’s current ice cover!
*
https://sites.uci.edu/zlabe/files/2020/02/JAXA_seaice_means_xe6.png
That’s absolutely great. Yeeepie!
For those who think I’m joking a bit: you are right.
We just need to have a quick look at the graph below
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ArNr8MnnwrdElZUSeTjRdj1iVZq7TPWD/view
and to see how the Arctic sea ice extent behaved in… 2012 (the red plot). In April, many people believed 2012 would be a good, icy year.
Thus it’s probably best to delay the Yeeepie until say October…
Well one thing for sure nothing even comes close to the seasonal loss of ice extent in 2007.
Nope, not the largest or strongest ice breaker in the world.
https://www.marineinsight.com/types-of-ships/top-5-biggest-ice-breaker-ships-in-the-world-in-2011/
your Kapitan is not listed
Thx for the hint.
I’ve been misinformed…
As I said before , the whole scam of global warming is based on showing only the last two hundred years of warming from little ice age , ones put in the context of the 10 thousand years of Holocene it completely disappears
https://youtu.be/RU5K_ZrrSMo
Like so:
https://tinyurl.com/yc35hg66
Eben
Why do you present such stoopid tube trash all the time?
You are not on Hockeschtick here, let alone on Gosselin’s TrickZone.
Didn’t you see at around 5:00 that your tube genius mentions a mean anomaly of -0.31 C for 1901-2000?
Do you have a bit of a clue of what this means?
There is only one kind of data set showing a mean global temperature anomaly around -0.3 C for that period, and their anomalies are based on the mean of… 1971-2000.
Examples: NOAA, JMA 5 degree grid.
For 1981-2010, it would be around -0.37 C; for 1961-1990, -0.09 C.
When I see such a trash, I don’t need to read further.
Its ‘author’ (quotes really needed) has the same knowledge level about anomalies and baselines as has your friend Robertson: zero dot zero.
Look at the graph presented by Svante, it is correct.
Meine Guete / Good grief, Eben!
Try harder.
Oh did he repost his mother of all fake hockey sticks chart again , where they squish the Holocene into a flat line double the last 200 years of warming and splice it at the end , yeah I have seen it before
Eben
If there has ever been a mother of all fake charts, then it is evidently the dumb tube trash you are a gullible believer of: because
you not only
– lack any knowledge in the correct data processing of time series
but also
– deliberately restrict your arguments to political/ideological stuff.
Go to position 4:51 in your stoopid trash, and compare the temperature time series for the last 170 years, allegedly based on the reference period 1961-1990.
Here is a yearly plot of the Had-CRUT4 data for the Globe, 1850-2019:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t8AgQ8aom85izcOiSceiOCVm0zHxGGR3/view
It is the original transcription of the Had-CRUT data (yearly)
https://tinyurl.com/yb2fzroz
You clearly can see that the graph you present is absolute garbage, simplest manipulation: it pretends to show the temperature data wrt the mean of 1961-1990, but… all anomalies are BELOW the 1961-1990 baseline!
That is utterly flawed.
Now, for your oh so intelligent hockey stick remark, look at this graph, showing the same Had-CRUT data as above, but for the period 0 AD – 2019 AD:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c26yRtthvXij6G_3z59Y8B07vRlKPbLk/view
How, do you think, would the red Had-CRUT plot look like, if the time axis would begin at 4600 BP?
Maybe you begin to think a bit, instead of discrediting what you never managed to understand.
Here are some graphs that suggest that the sun is playing a role in global warming: https://ufile.io/0nvhfz9h
Gregory J
Please upload your graphs using Google Drive, access much easier.
I hope they beat the arguments proposed for example in
https://history.aip.org/climate/solar.htm#S5
If they can’t manage to, then… hmmmh.
Interesting.
The creator shifted the polynomial fit curve by 100 years implying a lag between solar activity and temperature response of 100 years. There’s no justification provided for doing this so I’ll just take it as-is right now. We know from similar reconstructions that the forcing from the Maunder Minimum to present was +0.2 W/m^2 at most.
The creator also claims that 40% of the warming is the result of solar activity. Taking us up to 2020 the amount of warming since 1880 is about 1.0C now. That means 0.4C occurred as a result of +0.2 W/m^2 of force which puts the climate sensitivity at 2.0C per W/m^2.
As your can see the creator (probably unwittingly) implies a super sensitive climate. Now with the current energy imbalance of at least +0.6 W/m^2 which has developed primarily within the last 70 years this suggests that the Earth is about to embark on an aggressive period of warming where at least another 1.2C of warming is already baked in even if solar activity remains constant and GHG emissions immediately cease. Does that sound right to you?
Here is the same file uploaded on google drive. It shows solar activity vs global temperature.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ArI_mCsTPU0bkyAUXdkZ793uj4dAWynm/view?usp=drivesdk
Gregory J
You should upload the stuff in such a way that everybody has at least read-only access to it.
I’m not the only person who has recognized the effect of water vapor increase which exceeds that possible from just feedback. This shows some calculations for the U.S. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/watervaporole.htm . Calculations for the world are included in Section 6 of https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com
Bindidon, sorry for that…you should have access now.
bdgwx, Yes, I see your point. If the temperature is indeed delayed by 100 years, that means that the active sun of the 20th century will continue to add warming for decades to come.
The warming of the last 40 years is nothing more than a cumulative effect of unusually very strong last 6 solar cycles namely 18-23
Eben
I looked at the Flat Earth Society you belong to. Most horrible physics and logic I have ever seen. Really bad stuff!! I mean if you think this stuff is credible I feel really sorry for you. The only HOAX is this John Thor dude. He is able to con people like you who have no science background. His videos are really really bad. Sorry you think they have some value. They are good at cult programming with zero rational thought, no logic just appeal to some gullible people with little education.
https://www.youtube.com/user/johnthorjt/videos
The energy imbalance on the planet has been at least +0.6 W/m^2 for decades.
The energy imbalance is an instantaneous effect. The temperature response in the atmosphere that arises from it is what is lagged.
That means whatever is producing the energy imbalance is persisting and intensifying. Just to keep the energy imbalance constant the agent producing the imbalance must itself be increasing because any temperature response arising from the imbalance necessarily drives the imbalance lower as the geosphere tries to restore energy balance.
Solar activity has been constant and even declining since 1960. Whatever contribution it had to the energy imbalance went poof around that time.
Gregory J
Thanks! It’s a bit late now at GMT+1, and anyway, bdgwx gave a perfect answer.
I recall Dr. Leif Svalgaard having given very clear arguments against the 100 year shift hypothesis, but I don’t remember in which one of his papers he did that.
Bonne nuit
J.-P. D.
At most solar forcing was +0.1 W/m^2 in the 20th century. But right now the energy imbalance is at least +0.6 W/m^2 and that developed during a period in which solar forcing has gone negative.
The 100 year lag is a bit too long as well. The estimates I’ve seen for the lag are more in the 20-40 year range for the fast equilibrium climate response to pull that imbalance down to zero.
Don’t get me wrong…the Sun definitely contributed to some of the warming as we came out of the LIA, but I doubt it is as high as 40%. And after WWII it’s contribution is nearly 0% or perhaps even slightly negative. This is the period in which the anthroprogenic effect is most acute.
Bdg,
For reasons that someone competent in transient thermal analysis would understand, the peak forcing from the sun (amplified by its effect on clouds) occurred in about 2002. The solar influence has accounted for a little less than 20% of the warming since the low in 2009.
That should say the peak temperature due to forcing from the sun . .
Thats close to the same number I came up with, like at least about 1999. Not possible to accurately estimate the deep ocean effect though considering the data gap.
What evidence are you considering to conclude that the solar influence on temperatures peaked in 2002?
Bdg,
The time-integral of the forcing (from proxy of SSN anomaly) on the effective thermal capacitance of the planet.
Bindidon, thanks for that feedback! Bdgwx, 100 years does seem long, but it seemed to give the best fit to the data. And regarding the forcings, if the sun really does affect the temperature of the earth, it would probably have to be through the magnetic field and its modulation of cosmic rays.
https://bit.ly/3cf2V20
One point to consider is that the energy imbalance on the planet is instantaneous with the forcing agent. It’s only the temperature response that is lagged. If the Sun were the dominant (or even a significant) contributing factor to the energy imbalance then there should be a correlation between the observed energy imbalance and solar activity without any lag. While there was correlation prior to WWII the relationship decoupled after WWII during a period in which the warming became most acute.
Every real scientist knows the historical temperature correlates perfectly with the sun activity and the mechanism in play must different than just the Total Irradiation ,
Only climate shysterz like bdgwx keep running around claiming the sun TI change is too small to affect the temperatures
Sun activity, must be that green line here?
https://tinyurl.com/wz6oelr
Svante
Sounds good, thanks for the link.
The article I found upon a little search
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2013EF000216
is quite interesting. I must have bypassed it all the time. And it seems to contain links to the data in the supplements. That’s very good.
Yes it answers many of the questions people discuss here, for example the AMO influence and the accuracy of the instrumental record (there are statistical outliers).
Eben
What you show us here is that the more ignorant a person is, the more arrogant, aggressive and insulting s/he behaves.
Poor guy…
Eben,
If by “the mechanism in play must be different than just the Total Irradiation” then I assume you’re referring to Svensmark GCR hypothesis? No?
If so then understand that this hypothesis predicts that the Earth should be cooling. Yet the Earth continues to warm…
Now I will say that there is a variation on the Svensmark hypothesis in which high level clouds are seeded at a faster rate then low level clouds then you might expect cooling under the current solar regime. But…that’s not actually the canonical Svensmark hypothesis.
The problem is…either way GCR flux has little if any significant trend and GCRs are not effective in seeding clouds anyway.
Gregory J
I tried today to follow your lag idea, by overlaying Greg Kopp’s TSI reconstruction, Had-CRUT and JMA’s ocean heat content time series, without success.
It is simply impossible to obtain a TSI lag equally satisfying all segments of the two temperature series between 1950 and today.
Above all: the shift would then displace the TSI wrt the temperature reconstruction at the Dalton Minimum. But they perfectly fit right now.
One would have to heavily wrangle the series until the whole looks as expected. Exactly that is what Heller aka Goddard, Hockeyschtick, TrickZone and some others love to do…
Sun is evidently Earth’s major energy source. But that does not necessarily imply that it is also the one and only climate driver.
As always, the truth is far from ideological consideration.
Dan Pangburn,
Cheer up! to publish your research … The following publication is close to his vision:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2007JD008431
please see especially the introduction: 1.1
in relation to the thing before:
There are new data on the Svenmark hypothesis of July 2019
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190703121407.htm
Let’s see if I can publish it because I already did it before
Eben,
[Only climate shysterz like bdgwx keep running around claiming the sun TI change is too small to affect the temperatures]
Maybe you would trust Willis?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/04/sunspots-verse-25/
bdg…”The energy imbalance on the planet has been at least +0.6 W/m^2 for decades”.
Can you specify which form of energy is unbalanced and give proof of the cause of the alleged imbalance? The word ‘energy’ used by itself has no meaning. It describes a vague concept related a motivating force.
Thermal energy, on the other hand, describes the motivating force associated with atomic motion, both externally and internally. Electromagnetic energy describes a potential motivating force related to the motion of electrons in atoms. Where’s the balance?
Although the 1st law if generically referred to as a law of conservation of energy, it is more specific than that. The first law is about the conservation of external work and heat, and internal work and heat in atoms. The word internal energy is misleading in that it suggests something going on without specifying what it is.
Clausius spelled it out in terms of heat and work and the U in the 1st law came from him. When you refer to an energy imbalance, can you spell it out? What energy is in balance and how do you measure it?
It’s not as simple as it may sound. Our planet has arrived at it present temperature over billions of years. Due to its distance from the Sun and its unique rate of rotation and orbit around the Sun, it has acquired an average temperature related to SW solar input, LW IR output, and heat stored in the oceans, rivers, and lakes, the atmosphere, and the solid surface.
It’s far more than a straight case of heat in = heat out because the Sun is not only heating the Earth, it is also maintaining it at an average temperature some 33C above what it would be without oceans and an atmosphere. It would seem then it requires more solar input than what is required to be emitted immediately.
I see it as an insulated home. The furnace heats the home internally and insulated walls prevent the house from losing heat too quickly. If you opened all the doors and windows in mid-winter, the temperature inside would drop.
Some people are claiming trace gases in the atmosphere, including water vapour, are acting like the insulation in homes. I think that is wrong. As physicist R.W. Wood put it, the entire atmosphere absorbs heat at the surface and because 99% of it is made up of molecules that radiate poorly, the atmosphere tends to store heat. In fact, the entire atmosphere acts as an insulator with a negative temperature gradient.
I don’t think an energy balance is required. It would be over time but not instantaneously.
The energy imbalance estimate comes primarily from oceanic heat content observations. Since the hydosphere takes up >= 90% of the heat it provides a good proxy for energy imbalance. The hydrosphere takes up about 10e21 joules of energy each year. This works out to about 0.6 W/m^2. See the following links for the datasets.
Cheng: https://tinyurl.com/tn433d3
NOAA: https://tinyurl.com/jbf2xco
I like the home insulation analogy. I use it all of the time. The point of the analogy is that home insulation and GHGs are both thermal barriers that trap heat. The specific mechanism by which they do that is obviously different, but that’s not the point of the analogy.
CO2, CH4, H2O, and other polyatomic gas species are definitely thermal barriers. Specifically they impede the flow of energy carried via the infrared portion of the EM spectrum. The portion of the spectrum in which they are most effective happens to line up with the peak of the outbound Earthly radiation. The precise nature of these gas species ability to trap heat is well understood by science.
The energy imbalance is an instantaneous concept. The units are W/m^2. If you integrate this value over time and area you get total energy in units of joules. 0.6 W/m^2 works out to about 10e21 joules over a 1 year period.
bdgwx
“The portion of the spectrum in which they are most effective happens to line up with the peak of the outbound Earthly radiation.”
You certainly do know a lot more than I about that, but (luckily) I can’t agree at 100% (yet).
Because if that was the case, we probably wouldn’t be here. Earth would be a bit too hot for us (unless we were mutated to Triceratops).
If I well recall, Earth’s outgoing long wave infrared peak frequency is around 10 micron, lower than H2O’s and higher than CO2’s major absorp-tion frequencies.
This frequency is near the middle of the atmospheric window, isn’t it?
A propos absorp-tion / emission, here is a SpectralCalc chart showing H2O and CO2 for the range 1-15 mu, both scaled by atmospheric abundance, and at 10 km altitude:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15vhd-AH5FGXqonjsX6BKuyrYA_au5onY/view
We see two different CO2 bands:
– a rough spike at 4 mu;
– a weaker band at 15 mu.
Most people talk only about the 15 mu band.
To which band would you attribute the higher effect?
Bindidon,
Yeah, I mean I certainly don’t want people to get the idea that GHG active bands are a perfect match with the peak of the outbound radiation; just that they are in the general area and have a lot of overlap.
Figure 1 in the following publication was what I was thinking of.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844018327415
Thx for the link.
The website keeps eating my comments.
coturnix
I have the same problem, and lots of commentators too.
1. Avoid ‘d’ immediately followed by ‘c’.
For example, Mr Spencer has no problem in writing head posts containing the link to the data he publishes for us all, but we can’t do that because the link contains ‘ncd c’ (without the space).
2. Avoid to write absorp tion in one word.
3. Avoid sending comments containing non-ASCII chars. Some go thru, others don’t.
4. If you need them, put your text into
https://mothereff.in/html-entities
and paste the result into your comment.
4. Recently, I was surprise to observe that a refused comment was accepted by separating ” from the dot sign after it.
coturnix (ctnd)
I forgot this:
Any link looking suspect, even if it doesn’t contain the stuff mentioned above, should be transformed using
https://tinyurl.com/
Bute here too, you have to look if the tinyURL link does not again contain bad boys…
t.y, bindidon, whatever the magic keywords are i can’t seem to be able to get past them. Dr. spencer is a real douche it seems.
Not so Greta
A new voice in climate debate
Naomi Seibt – The “anti-Greta” Thunberg debuts on Fox News with a message of hope for young people.
Unlike high-school dropout Greta Thunberg, Naomi Seibt is an accelerated student and has a background in science and psychology. She received a degree in BA (Business Administration).
She went to St. Mauritz School and won first place in the youth competition research in physics. She graduated from high school at the age of 16 in 2017.
https://youtu.be/8LnZbAsws20
Eben
If you think you can manipulate us…
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/anti-greta-thunberg-naomi-seibt-girl-climate-change-denial-heartland-institute-afd-a9355236.html
Not only is she a sockpuppet pushed up by the Heartland Institute; she is a little far-right lady with contact to worst alt-right politicians in Germany and Austria.
Oh I forgot this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Seibt
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identitarian_movement
A televised debate between Greta Thunberg and Naomi Seibt would be interesting, wouldn’t it?
FYI
The mental level of ‘Eben’
“Only climate shysterz like bdgwx…”
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shyster
Shyster is derived from the German term Scheisser, meaning literally “one who defecates,” from the verb scheissen, “to defecate,” with the English suffix -ster, “one who does,” substituted for the German suffix -er, meaning the same thing.
Generally used to describe someone who is untrustworthy, money grabbing and full of crap, particularly in the field of legal work for some reason.
The ‘z’ suffix at the end reminds me the language of many German neonazis. I had sometimes to do with these so-called ’88’ people.
*
What does such a language have to do at Roy Spencer’s blog?
J.-P. D.
Bindidong Triggered – Now playing in theaters near you
Freeman Dyson – Legendary physicist – one of the original climate scientist
https://youtu.be/5hswLwqRIW8
He did a lot of great things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Climate_change
“Dyson agreed that anthropogenic global warming exists and that one of its main causes is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.”
“[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have.”
May he rest in peace.
Svante
Yes! RIP Freeman Dyson.
Another one of these ‘original climate scientist(s)’ was
Joseph W. Chamberlain
His great work, made together with Donald M. Hunten:
Theory of Planetary Atmospheres (first ed. 1978)
https://tinyurl.com/tl2tsdk
One of his nicest essays he lacked the time to finish:
Elementary analytic models of climate
https://tinyurl.com/su82urh
May he too rest in peace!
Co2 radiates heat to space!!
…and towards the surface. Don’t forget about that direction as well.
Remember, the Earth’s surface does not need CO2 to radiate heat toward space. That happens with or without CO2 all the same. But when CO2 is there some of that heat is denied escape to space and is trapped either being thermalized or redirected back toward the surface.
bill hunter says:
“Co2 radiates heat to space!!”
That’s right, from a cold altitude so there is not much power in it.
If it had come from the surface it would have carried much more power away.
Yeah…that’s a great way of thinking about it as well. I hadn’t thought about angle.
You should stop patting yourself on each others back and start giving yourself Nobel prizes
Thats a good rationalization that greenhouse gases are a necessary condition for the greenhouse effect, but it doesn’t provide any argument at all for the necessary proposition that greenhouse gases are a sufficient condition for changes to the greenhouse effect arising out of changes in greenhouse gases alone.
One can speculate but in the words of Lord Kelvin: ”When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.”
bill hunter says:
You remind me of Sir Humphrey:
https://tinyurl.com/w3tc4dh
GHGs reduce IR optical depth.
More GHGs reduce it further.
Like so:
https://tinyurl.com/rwoywm4
Svante says: ”You remind me of Sir Humphrey”
I have no idea why unless its your point of view that our lives should be run by a committee.
Svante says: ”GHGs reduce IR optical depth.
More GHGs reduce it further.”
That experiment doesn’t accurately represent the issues in our atmosphere. And it grossly mistreats what it purports to represent.
If in the ink experiment in 200 liters of water at 260ppm most of the light is fully absorbed in the first 6 inches (diameter of the beaker of water) if we say 80% of light passing through the beaker has been absorbed when we kick it to 390 then 92% would be absorbed all in 6 inches. If we increased the beakers to say 3 feet diameter, the numbers for 260 and 390 would be (assuming 80% in the first example) the numbers for light getting through would me .6% for 260 and .3% for 390. . . .completely inconsequential. In a 33 degree greenhouse effect .3% amounts to about 1/100th of a degree. Further our atmosphere is many thousands of feet thick and actually one can find studies that claim that virtually all light of the co2 absorbing frequencies have been absorbed in the first few meters from the surface. Once no light of those frequencies are getting through adding more does virtually nothing to optical depth as you cannot reduce the amount of light getting through below zero.
There really is no controversy created by the ink experiment Svante because its there and there isn’t any more that comes from it.
So the debate changes at this point and the argument becomes an insulation argument where light is absorbed many times in the atmosphere like a blanket.
The primary problem is they ignore negative feedback of convection. Convection negative feedback can be easily seen in greenhouse experiments that block the convection. Thus the theory has evolved to be solely applicable to planets with atmospheres, a supposition that is completely incapable of experiment. The theory is about the equivalent of the Invisible Gardener argument for the existence of God, one with a lot of emotional appeal and very short on facts.
So you probably ought to limit yourself to only showing that video to the truly and deeply ignorant Svante. Bottom line is we couldn’t exist without our marvelous greenhouse effect and we would probably flourish even more with a bit more of it. The same goes for CO2 where enhanced CO2 is greening the world.
Sva,
That demonstration is profoundly misleading as an explanation for what happens in the atmosphere. Beers law states ,,the absor p tive capacity of a dissolved substance is directly proportional to its concentration in a solution,, It only applies when there is no significant emission at the absorbed wavelength. Within the liquid, there is no emission. In the atmosphere, e.g. smoke particles. The particles which absorb the light emit radiation dependent on the temperature of the particles.
The atmosphere is gaseous consisting of individual molecules. L W Radiation goes from ghg molecule to ghg molecule. Ghg molecules absorb/emit at the same wavelength. The outgoing radiation flux is maintained by radiation (at the specific characteristic wavelengths) emitted from ghg molecules below.
In understanding GW it is important to be aware that water vapor molecules (WV is a ghg) have been increasing faster than possible from just GW and more than 7 times faster than CO2 molecules.
You could babble all day.
Or you could calculate it:
Upward IR Heat Flux, tropical atmosphere, 90 km looking down:
260 ppm => 300.5 W/m2
390 ppm => 298.5 W/m2
Difference: -1.95 W/m2
Sva,
Take instead a period where we actually have data:
1988-2018
CO2 348-407, change 59 ppmv
WV 1.47%/decade, change 441 ppmv
Standard atm, UChi version of Modtran
T change due to CO2 change = 0.66 K
T change due to WV change = 0.659 K
Total calculated change CO2 & WV = 1.319 K
T change measured Had_crut4 = 0.51 K
It is foolish to put blind trust in a single calculation.
Svante says:
”You could babble all day.
Or you could calculate it:
Upward IR Heat Flux, tropical atmosphere, 90 km looking down:
260 ppm => 300.5 W/m2
390 ppm => 298.5 W/m2
Difference: -1.95 W/m2”
Lets see it was 260ppm in 6000BC. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07055900.2013.773880?needAccess=true&
Has mankind flourished and the standard of living increased since then in your view?
Svante says: crickets!
bill said: Has mankind flourished and the standard of living increased since then in your view?
I’ll answer. Yes, absolutely!
Does seem obvious. Do you think that we are already beyond the peak? If so what do you see as evidence of that?
No. I don’t think we’ve peaked. But I do think the rate at which the standard of living increases will be slightly suppressed by a warming climate. In other words, the standard of living would probably increase faster if we dealt with the issue sooner rather than later. At least that is what most of the research says.
bdgwx says:”No. I dont think weve peaked. But I do think the rate at which the standard of living increases will be slightly suppressed by a warming climate.”
Well everybody is entitled to their opinions. Just that if you want the government to implement your opinion you need some evidence.
– Why did you not save the cricket ecosystems?
– It wasn’t profitable.
bill, a summary of the evidence you request is in IPCC AR5 WGII on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. There are 12,000 lines of evidence cited so you can review them individually if you want.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/
bdgwx says:”bill, a summary of the evidence you request is in IPCC AR5 WGII on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. There are 12,000 lines of evidence cited so you can review them individually if you want.”
Well one should keep in mind that really the only way to increase science funding is doomsdaymanship as funding essentially only arrives politically. . . .eg OP money. Thats been the case essentially forever. It has always existed right down the individual donor level, including those many wealthy individuals that personally became concerned about specific issues.
I was suggesting you tell me what line of evidence you find to be the most convincing for political action.
bill,
Sorry…I don’t find political conversations satisfying so I tend to disengage from them.
A comprehensive review of the topic would not be possible for only one line of evidence. So I’d prefer to let each of the IPCC AR5 reports (WGI, WGII, and WGIII) speak for themselves.
bdgwx says:”Sorry…I don’t find political conversations satisfying so I tend to disengage from them.”
That response is as political as it gets. Refusal debate means one does not want to air both side of an issue. Its as political as not voting. . . .it says I don’t care what the pluses and minuses are of a political proposition.
30 years of experience in policy and science I can say there really isn’t a non-political person who wants to do the best thing who doesn’t welcome a fair discussion of a political question no matter what direction that person may be leaning.
The IPCC is a political institution and its reports are 100% political as it cherry picks issues to discuss to make a political case.
The saddest thing to witness in politics is a single individual or a small group essentially being democratically destroyed by a mob. Thats why Lady Justice wears a blindfold and wields a scale.
Some people here think that 4 molecules of CO2 per 10,000 air molecules is a very serious concern, and all of humanity must do something about it, or a climate catastrophe will result.
Or do I have that all wrong. Did I misread anybody here?
Nice refute , I’m sure bill hunter never heard that one before , but you forgot about the “Blanket”
Because you know a blanket that is 999999 % empty holes space and .000001 thread sure holds a lot of heat
That reminds me that joke my grandfather told me when I was a kid , about two retards who decide to go on a three day bicycle trip , and one retard said should we pack some blankets it will get cold at night and second retard says no we will just cover our self with the bicycles.
Message jumped from bill hunters thread
I think 4.1 molecules per 10,000 results in +2.0 W/m^2 of radiative forcing relative to 2.8 molecules per 10,000. I have no idea if you consider that to be catastrophic or not. I do not.
No. I do not consider 400 ppmv CO2 catastrophic. The earth has done the CO2 experiment a long time ago with a much greater concentration, and there was no runaway positive feedback that resulted in earth becoming Venus like the late Dr. Hawking entertained.
Did not Dr. Spencer state in his presentation that the energy imbalance is only 0.8 W/m^2? Maybe Eben’s bicycle blanket allowed 1.2 W/m^2 escape out to space.
Yes it did escape, it was allowed by a missing spoke in one wheel
Yes, I believe he did say the energy imbalance was +0.8 W/m^2. That’s actually higher than the figure I typically use of +0.6 W/m^2.
rob…”there was no runaway positive feedback that resulted in earth becoming Venus like the late Dr. Hawking entertained.”
I don’t recall Hawking claiming that, it was an idea introduced by astronomer Carl Sagan, who was more a circus clown than an astronomer. Unfortunately, the idea was perpetuated by James Hansen of NASA GISS who got it from Sagan.
In any case, positive feedback requires amplification and there is no means of amplifying heat on the planet. The best description I have heard of positive feedback in the atmosphere was mentioned years ago by Roy when he described atmospheric positive feedback as a not-so-negative, negative feedback.
The only feedback that can exist in the atmosphere is negative feedback. Anything else would be a contradiction of the 2nd law and an example of perpetual motion.
So things like the snow/ice albedo feedback are a violation of the 2LOT?
bdg…”I think 4.1 molecules per 10,000 results in +2.0 W/m^2 of radiative forcing relative to 2.8 molecules per 10,000″.
There’s no proof of that. Radiative forcing is a term derived from climate model theory which stole the term forcing from differential equation theory. If the 0.04% of Co2 in the atmosphere is forcing anything it can be measured in 100ths of a degree C, based on the Ideal Gas Law.
bdgwx says: —-…and towards the surface. Don’t forget about that direction as well.—-
Sure thing! Every night when the atmosphere is warmer than the atmosphere loses heat both to the surface and to outerspace.
During the day when the surface is warmer than the atmosphere the surface loses heat to both space (through the window) and to the atmosphere and the atmosphere continues to lose heat to space as space is never warmer than the atmosphere. So 24/7 the atmosphere and the surface (through the window) loses heat to space and the surface and atmosphere take turns losing heat to each other as they seek a thermal equilibrium in a world with variable solar input due to planet rotation and clouds and water.
bdgwx says: —-
Remember, the Earth’s surface does not need CO2 to radiate heat toward space. That happens with or without CO2 all the same. But when CO2 is there some of that heat is denied (direct) escape to space—-
I agree.
bdgwx says: —-
and is trapped either being thermalized or redirected back toward the surface.—-
Heat can’t go in two directions simultaneously. “In physics, thermalization is the process of physical bodies reaching thermal equilibrium through mutual interaction.” That would a be a “single” direction of heat flow until equilibrium is reached, then to send heat back there must either be another source of heat for the recently warmed object or the object that warmed the recently warmed object must find some way to cool further. You guys are always getting mixed up thinking radiation theory is the the same as heat transfer because you all are always talking about warming in terms of radiation. Radiation is merely the “mutual interaction” in the process of thermalization.
I’m definitely guilty of using heat and energy interchangeably when I probably shouldn’t. And yes, I agree that heat in the most proper sense is best described as the net flow of energy which can only be in one direction. It sounds like we have a mutual agreement on the basic workings of the GHE so that’s good.
bdgwx says: ”It sounds like we have a mutual agreement on the basic workings of the GHE so that’s good.”
It would be more correct to say we have a mutual agreement on some of the basic workings of the GHE. We have a difference on what its potential might be for increasing its effect and we have a difference on its underlying cause. The process of radiant thermalization itself does not lead to a greenhouse effect all by itself. Often real dynamic causes and effects are very difficult to isolate from apparent static conditions. We have a strong tendency to assume stuff from correlation and skip over the actual physics.
This problem is really out of control I believe simply because we have widely adopted a greenhouse model that one cannot build an experiment to disprove. That combined with a big stick punishment of any scientist out of line with the wishes of large institutions prevents the topic from being taken on in the manner of important scientific related topics like creating preventive medicines, building war machines, growing food, etc. where the massive effort actually finds a path to solving the issue or the problem if its actually a problem. Instead we are on a political path not unlike many “socialist/politically correct” single minded paths. Academic freedom no longer exists in certain realms because the only allowed practitioners are the politically correct and an aging class of the tenured.
Humans are ingenious creatures. Here we are faced with a science question with a politically selected answer that cannot be answered by the scientific method because of our inability to create worlds with atmospheres. So if we actually consider this to be an important scientific question what is the right response?
Should it be a middle ages religious mentality of punishing heretics? Insulting them, firing them, smearing them? Or should it be like a “moon project” to closely investigate the actual physics in the atmosphere.
Instead the claim becomes there isn’t time for that, the very basis of intolerance. . . .ignorance and fear.
Bindidon says: ”It is this small, additional loss of energy balance that, according to some people, could create problems in say 50-100 years.”
Indeed! However, if we operated on all the “coulds” in the world we would have few resources remaining for the devastating “shalls”. That is particularly true considering the cost of dealing with this issue.
There is no question that the cost of energy impacts most those least able to absorb the impacts. And entering into world agreements where this nation pays to other nations is asking our most impacted people to multiply their impacts to compensate the poor of other nations. I have given credit to James Hansen for seeing through that charade. However, what it means is if the charade is not pulled off its unlikely all the folks like Leonardo DiCaprio are going to give up their yachts for it.
We can start with the lowest cost of energy production, nuclear, and see that solution is also untenable to the very same people. Bottom line is when energy costs make up a few percent of your networth one might actually be willing to double the investment as long as they don’t have to give up their toys or face other irrational fears.
bill hunter
It’s a bit late here at GMT+1, so I’ll restrict my reply to a few thoughts.
Maybe I have more time tomorrow to develop.
You wrote:
“Heat can’t go in two directions simultaneously. ”
But… it is not heat that is redirected back to surface.
It is… radiation.
And this tiny bit of radiation that can’t reach directly outer space is, if you want or not, the basics of GHE.
Rob Mitchell wrote above:
“Some people here think that 4 molecules of CO2 per 10,000 air molecules is a very serious concern…”
But… why didn’t he write:
“Some people here think that 40 molecules of H2O per 10,000 air molecules is a very serious concern…” ?
H2O is with about 4 % 100 times more abundant than CO2 in the Tropics, but on average it is no more than 0.4 % of the atmosphere.
Where is the difference between 0.04 % and 0.4 % ?
What we should consider – without any alarmism – is the fact that whilst H2O precipitates around the tropopause, CO2 is – from the altitude point of view – more or less uniformly present in the atmosphere up to 50 km.
When CO2 molecules absorb LW IR radiation at higher altitudes and reemit it, the reemission process takes place at a temperature much lower than that at the surface.
It is this small, additional loss of energy balance that, according to some people, could create problems in say 50-100 years.
This is best described in this document (published in 2011, I read it in 2016):
https://tinyurl.com/uqgxgpt
but unfortunately, it is in… French.
I will later ask the authors whether an English translation is available in between; otherwise, if I have time, I will translate extracts of their paper if they agree.
Rgds
J.-P. D.
bill hunter…”One can speculate but in the words of Lord Kelvin: When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.”
Physicist David Bohm put it equally well. He claimed that any equation lacking a physical basis is garbage.
bdg…”the Earths surface does not need CO2 to radiate heat toward space. That happens with or without CO2 all the same. But when CO2 is there some of that heat is denied escape to space and is trapped either being thermalized or redirected back toward the surface”.
You are confusing heat with EM and misrepresenting the factors causing a change in the rate of heat dissipation at the surface. Heat cannot flow through the atmosphere as you describe, ergo it cannot be trapped by CO2, and any EM radiating toward the surface is from cold to hot, therefore no heat is transferred.
Besides that, there are other means of dissipating heat in the atmosphere. Heat is the kinetic energy of atoms/molecules and as gases rise and spread out the heat is naturally dissipated.
There is also the problem of how nitrogen and oxygen, making up 99% of the atmosphere dissipate heat they gather at the surface and that is transferred high into the atmosphere via convection current or clouds.
CO2 at 0.04% is simply not a factor in affected heat dissipation at the surface. That rate is due to the difference in temperature between the surface and the atmosphere at the surface/atmosphere boundary. Without convection, to replace heated air as it rises with cooler air aloft, the surface would have trouble cooling.
According to R.W.Wood, a one time expert on gases like CO2, the atmosphere as a whole absorbs heat from the surface via conduction and that accounts for the major dissipation of surface heat. Without convection, the atmosphere and surface would be in thermal equilibrium and no heat would be transferred. Under those conditions the rate of heat dissipation via radiation would be reduced as well, due to the lack of a temperature gradient.
Radiation is a form of heat transport. It can definitely flow through the atmosphere. We know it can because radiometers in space observe surface based radiation. They also observe a reduction in the radiation flux when a GHG moves between the surface and the radiometer.
@Bill Hunter,
[Further our atmosphere is many thousands of feet thick and actually one can find studies that claim that virtually all light of the co2 absorbing frequencies have been absorbed in the first few meters from the surface. Once no light of those frequencies are getting through adding more does virtually nothing to optical depth as you cannot reduce the amount of light getting through below zero.]
Nonsense!
A) Imagine if we could construct a 10 meter tall greenhouse on the moon, where the glass is transparent to the downwelling solar radiation, but opaque to the upwelling surface radiation.
The floor of the greenhouse would warm as a result of back radiation from the glass surface above. The floor would keep warming until the glass has reached a steady temperature.
B) place a 20 meter tall greenhouse on top of the smaller one.
The lower glass surface would become warmer due to backradiation from the higher glass surface.
This, in turn, would warm the greenhouse floor.
Imagine that you have a magical one way insulator made of unobtainium! Or accept reality – the choice is yours.
Actually Snape you need to study greenhouse and window technologies. It actually should work on the moon due to the lack of an atmosphere. It doesn’t work on earth because of having an atmosphere. They have already tried that. Thus the claim is you must build the greenhouses tall enough to have a lapse rate effect, e.g build a greenhouse that extends beyond the tropopause as shorter greenhouses are all maxxed out and can’t produce any additional warmth.
Convenient huh?
For the fans of temperature series
I replied at WUWT to a commentator having posted a link to his own TMAX evaluation of NOAA’s USHCN data for 1900-2019:
http://theearthintime.com/
Windlord-sun, so his pseudonym, claims about recent, drastic cooling in CONUS, with 2019’s TMAX average being second lowest since 1990, just above 1993.
I couldn’t agree to that, so much my evaluation based on GHCN daily differs by a lot.
This evaluation is the product of a grid averaging – prior to construction of the monthly time series (out of which a yearly variant finally is generated).
Why this grid averaging?
Simply because in CONUS, the GHCN daily stations (in the sum since beginning around 1860: over 18000) are distributed very unevenly.
If you divide CONUS into 2.5 degree grid cells, you see that while many cells encompass less than 20 stations, some contain over 300.
In the first 20 most populated cells worldwide, you see 19 CONUS cells with together about 5000 stations.
This means that if you construct, for CONUS, a time series without grid averaging, the least populated corners will be totally dominated by the most populated ones, and thus will be nearly ‘inaudible’.
1. This is then the ‘ungridded’ result:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lSCB4ScZ_MF_LPhXwTjb5o-iFA0-15SG/view
If you now include grid averaging in the time series processing, the least populated corners now have the same ‘voice’ as the the most populated ones. You move from the station competition within between 2000 in 1900 and 7000 in recent times, to a grid cell competition within 160-170 2.5 degree cells.
2. This is then the ‘gridded’ result:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PhQQpErrQtYRvxUW6znkRXofizfFb8VR/view
While 2019 is 2nd lowest in the ungridded variant, this year drops in the gridded variant down to position 69 of 140 in the ascending sort.
*
You see that the ungridded result gives a good match with Windlord’s evaluation. The differences are probably due to USHCN having about 1200 stations in the sum, to be compared with the 18000 of GHCN daily.
It is absolutely evident that the top ten differ by a lot as well.
Gridded variant
1953 22.061
2012 22.036
1954 21.941
1946 21.782
1921 21.722
1999 21.721
1934 21.710
2016 21.706
1990 21.693
2006 21.653
Ungridded variant
1934 19.638
1953 19.538
1921 19.439
1954 19.434
1931 19.388
1939 19.370
1946 19.162
1933 19.070
1938 19.050
1956 19.037
Ha! The Golden Thirties are back! And no year of the 2000’s.
Is that not pretty good?
This crazy lazy grid averaging is ‘plain wrong’, isn’t it?
Best regards
J.-P. D.
Winlord-sun here.
“The differences are probably due to USHCN having about 1200 stations in the sum, to be compared with the 18000 of GHCN daily.”
This is a strange attempt to make a comparison.
USHCN indeed consists of 1200 stations, although over the last few decades NOAA has stopped reporting over 400 of them. The USHCN dataset contains 100 Million data points (individual readings) for TMAX and TMIN.
Before I challenge you any further, please clarify: What exactly do you mean by “18000 of GHCN daily?” 18000 of what?
I have responded to you at WUWT, by the way, in case you chose to continue our exchange there.
windlord-sun
Oops?!
I was until right now at WUWT and didn’t see any reply from your side.
I posted a long comment below your discussion with Bellman in the WUWT reblog of this page.
*
What is your problem with this 18000?
Download
https://tinyurl.com/ydbymtp6
extract all lines beginning with ‘US’ into a file.
Download
https://tinyurl.com/yae4aydn
extract all stations busy with TMIN or TAVG or TOBS or TMAX into a file.
Build the unique intersection of the two, and you have the US stations.
Remove all stations with ‘AK’ or ‘HI’ and you have the CONUS stations (20000 inbetween probably).
I’m no longer busy in this thread.
J.-P. D.
@Bill Hunter
If think maybe you understood my point, which was that in both examples (A and B). the surface radiation was completely absorbed at 10 meters altitude. That didnt prevent the additional layer layer of glass (example B) from further warming the greenhouse floor.
*****
I am not sure what you are trying to say ….. all the warming is negated by convection?
(Sorry, my comments always end up at the bottom of the thread.)
Darn! I wish I could edit the typos.
Snape says: – – I am not sure what you are trying to say ….. all the warming is negated by convection? – –
No I didn’t say that. I said that in order to have warming you need to restrict convection. Greenhouses restrict convection and thus they warm. In order to claim a method of warming in our atmosphere one must explain all the layers in it. The atmosphere does not act exactly like a greenhouse because it has a natural lapse rate where pressure decreases with altitude. If it did not have a lapse rate you cannot have a radiation-based GHE as the CO2 at the top of the atmosphere would emit the same as it captured at the bottom of the atmosphere. However, nobody has ever demonstrated this effect and it has nothing to do with greenhouses.
[I said that in order to have warming you need to restrict convection.]
Convection is restricted to zero on the moon, where is the warming?
Snape says: ”Convection is restricted to zero on the moon, where is the warming?”
Restriction of convection is but one requirement for a greenhouse effect.
Snape says: ”Near surface water vapor has been increasing, a boon to convection. This obviously hasnt prevented the planet from warming.”
Variations in water content in the sky is the main climate variable that we experience in the weather. Water not only carries twice the energy as other molecules but its presence is highly variable and in particular its shading abilities (clouds) are capable of wide variation even if its greenhouse effect is not.
It seems positively obvious to me that we have a greenhouse effect and that its quite obvious that convection doesn’t rule out all climate change. There are 4 potentially completely independent concepts on this planet that are very important to climate and our understanding of it 1) how the greenhouse effect we have was created; 2) how clouds and the water cycle varies; 3) how ocean currents affect climate; 4) how snow and ice cover affect climate.
I might add 5) how anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide affect the climate; but I tend to think maybe its not too important.
Near surface water vapor has been increasing, a boon to convection. This obviously hasnt prevented the planet from warming:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/03/uah-global-temperature-update-for-february-2020-0-76-deg-c/
The Next link is an abstract from 2016 of The french publication (PDF from 2011) that Bindidon gave us before,
and Google can translate It:
Thank you Bindidon! It’s very Claire 🙂
If you can get the complete publication in english I will be very Thank you because I can pass
to other friends Who didn’t speak french
(Seulment s’il est possible et si cela ne vous drange pas beaucoup! Bien sr!!
Merci nouveau Bindidon! :))
https://www.centrale-energie.fr/spip/spip.php?article151
The Next link is an abstract from 2016 of The french publication (PDF from 2011) that Bindidon gave us before,
and Google can translate It:
Thank you Bindidon! It’s very Claire 🙂
If you can get the complete publication in english I will be very Thank you because I can pass
to other friends Who didn’t speak french
Only If It is possible as long as It is not a problem to you!
https://www.centrale-energie.fr/spip/spip.php?article151
Adelaida
Thanks a lot, I didn’t know of this resumee much easier to translate using Google than is the original pdf, due to the fact that such files are protected since years against even simple copy and paste.
But… wouldn’t it not be better to post such comments in Roy Spencer’s most recent thread?
That I came along was random, due to clicking on the wrong link…
Best greetings from Northern Germoney,
J.-P. alias Bindidon
Roy,
It is always invaluable to have people who challenge the consensus. It helps keep them on their toes and strive for better data and more objectivity. So good for you in providing that.
Where I come from is that we need to follow the basic scientific reasoning: 1.The atmospheric greenhouse effect is real and 2. H2O, CO2, CH4 are the main contributors. It then follows that (assuming none of these are at saturation) any increase in their atmospheric concentrations will lead to rising temperatures. (Even though H2O is variable, a warmer atmosphere means more water vapor on average). How much warmer is hard to predict. But much work has been done to try to get at least a range. Using that knowledge, we would be surprised if we didn’t observe increases in surface temperatures. But we do! Hence it’s totally reasonable to assume with a high degree of probability that we ARE (at least in part) responsible for associated climate change. Your tune has changed over the years to reach this same conclusion. Your Satellite data is reinforcing this. I see a linear trend in your data seems less and less likely….. I would wager a bet that you would suggest a new (higher gradient) trend line in a few years time.
Your apparent complacency about potential threats to humankind is what worries me. In most walks of life, we take a risked viewpoint. And as time goes on and the effects data comes in (e.g. sea level rise, melting glaciers, warming and acidifying oceans, more energy in the atmosphere….), the likelihood /risks of more severe consequences grows. It would be foolish of us not to take precautionary actions, in the same way we take out insurance.
But I know that if you followed the consensus, then your challenging stance would be less impactful in keeping the science on its toes…. so I guess, keep doing what you are doing.
Tony,
We are living in an ice age. If CO2 could warm things up we should all try to increase our “Carbon Footprint”.
Sadly the idea that CO2 drives global warming is false.
Even so we should strive to maximize our carbon emissions because plants appreciate our efforts. Rising levels of CO2 are greening the planet and we will all benefit from that.
Thank you very much Bindidon!
You are absolutely right and the next few times I will do it as you say!
My mother in law is from Hamburg! We have a nice little connection I think!
Roy, Andrew Dessler has a response video to this post. I didn’t have the courage to watch it as my experience with him is that he projects his own faulty reasoning onto those he disagrees with. FYI
David, I am sure if arm yourself with the facts, you can summon the courage to view Andrew Dressler’s demolition job.
If there are others who might want to take up the challenge, here is a link to the video.
https://youtu.be/DxQCMyuqBno?t=645
Hello,
I must admit that I could not follow your blogs GHG explanations.
You mention in passing that the Ivanpah solar facility is a failed plant. But in checking Wikipedia, which is quite detailed, I found statements that it has been a great success in most things, generating power according to most expectations as the years have progressed. Why did you call it a failure? Are you against renewable energy development? The investors you talked to are going in that direction more and more.
Manny
Hello,
I must admit that I could not follow your blogs GHG explanations.
You mention in passing that the Ivanpah solar facility is a failed plant. But in checking Wikipedia, which is quite detailed, I found statements that it has been a great success in most things, generating power according to most expectations as the years have progressed. Why did you call it a failure? Are you against renewable energy development? The investors you talked to are going in that direction more and more.
Manny
I didnt get an ack that my message was sent, so there may be duplicates.