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Lord Christopher Monckton is a talented mathematician, and there are many things on which we agree. But it is unhelpful to the skeptical response to claims of a supposed climate emergency to be chasing rabbits down holes when others have already gone on that chase. So, what follows is my latest attempt to explain why Monckton’s feedback arguments supporting a very low climate sensitivity cannot be supported. This doesn’t mean his conclusion is wrong, only the line of reasoning that led him to that conclusion.
Couched in the obscure language of feedback analysis, and the mathematical gymnastics deriving from initial assumptions regarding those feedbacks, Lord Monckton’s latest explanation of his climate feedback theory (Why It Matters That Climatologists Forgot the Sun Was Shining) tends to skirt around actual physical processes. For if he were to actually investigate what meteorologists and climate scientists already know of atmospheric processes, he would not still be pushing his current theory.
Here I will try to explain, based upon actual atmospheric processes, why his argument does not make physical sense.
Christopher’s latest installment explaining his logic begins (emphasis added),
It is now almost two years since we submitted our paper on the central error perpetrated by climatologists in their attempts to derive climate sensitivity to anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcings — namely, their failure to appreciate that such feedback processes as subsist in the climate system at any given moment must, at that moment, necessarily respond equally to each Kelvin of the entire reference temperature. Feedbacks do not, repeat not, respond solely to perturbation signals, the reference sensitivities. They also respond to the base signal, the emission temperature that would prevail even if there were no greenhouse gases in the air, because the Sun is shining.
I cannot emphasize enough just how bold (and wrong) the underlined assertion is. The idea that the climate system’s response to a small perturbation from its current state might be discerned from its response to the presence of solar heating assuming a theoretical initial cold Earth is not new, but was rejected many years ago based upon the known behavior of clouds and the atmospheric circulations associated with them.
The issue is not unlike the Ramanathan and Collins (1991) “cloud thermostat” hypothesis, which imagines that just because the Pacific Warm Pool is limited in its warmth by local cloud formation, that global warming will be limited by even more cloud formation. Hartmann and Michelsen (1993) and Lau et al. (1994) quickly responded to that claim by pointing out that vertical circulations created in the cloudy air must also produce descending, clear air elsewhere. Thus, more clouds on one region can actually cause fewer clouds elsewhere. This shows than even an expert in atmospheric radiative transfer (Ramanathan) could be misled without an adequate understanding of atmospheric circulation systems.
I’m not claiming that further warming of the climate system won’t be mitigated by an increase in clouds, as Monckton’s analysis implies. Just that we cannot get to that conclusion from the evidence presented.
Yes, Clouds Cool the Climate System
It has long been known that clouds, on average, cool the climate system. Sunlight heats the surface of the Earth, which combined with the atmospheric destabilization from the greenhouse effect, leads to convective heat transport away from the surface. Due to the presence of water, clouds form, reflecting sunlight back to outer space. While those clouds also enhance the water vapor-dominated greenhouse effect, the solar reflection (albedo) effect dominates, leading to the observation that clouds, on average, cool the climate system.
So, it might seem logical to assume (at least as a starting point) that any additional source of heating (positive energy imbalance) would lead to even more clouds, and thus a negative cloud feedback. As far as I can tell, this is the physical underpinning of Monckton’s argument. Of course, clouds might not be the only element of his argument, but clouds are arguably the most prominent example.
The trouble is that when clouds form, most of them are embedded in ascending air currents. All of that ascending air must be exactly matched by an equal amount of descending air, which is almost always cloud-free.
Thus, one cannot create more clouds without creating more clear air. When you experience a cloud-free day, it’s because ascending cloudy air with precipitation, hundreds of miles away, is forcing the air over you to sink. This is why cloud feedbacks are so uncertain, and why we cannot use the average base-state response of the climate system to the presence of sunlight to estimate climate sensitivity.
Another way to express this is that the climate system’s response to solar heating is non-linear. Initial warming from a base state of a cold, dark Earth to a solar heated one is to create clouds (a cooling effect), but the resulting vertical air circulations means you cannot created an ever more cloud-covered Earth with ever more heating. Descending air currents in response to rising air currents will not allow it.
Even Climate Models Tell Us This is the Case
Like weather forecast models, modern 3D climate models deal with the equations of motion, conservation of mass, energy, moist processes, and the atmospheric equation of state. In other words, they depend upon physics. (This does not mean all of those physical processes — especially cloud microphysical processes — are sufficiently well known to allow useful predictions of future average climate states. I don’t believe they are. My point is that the models depend upon our knowledge of the physics of a wide variety of complex processes.)
If you start-up a computerized climate model from an initial cold state (pick any cold temperature you want, say 50 Kelvin), with no clouds, the modeled system will warm, clouds will form, and the system will eventually reach a state of quasi-equilibrium, with the global area-average rate of absorbed solar energy equaling the average rate of infrared cooling to outer space. These results are consistent with the statement that “clouds cool the climate system”.
But if a small energy perturbation is then added (e.g. from more CO2 in the atmosphere reducing the rate of IR cooling, or from increasing the intensity of sunlight), clouds in the model will often respond by being reduced, not increased, in response to the small CO2-induced warming. Years ago we did this experiment with a limited-domain version of the ARPS cloud-resolving model. Global climate models would do the same thing.
The cloud response to the perturbation is not prescribed by the modelers as a cloud feedback. It is the result of the physics (and cloud microphysics) in the model. Climate model feedbacks are not prescribed; they are diagnosed after the model is run from model output.
I’m not claiming cloud feedbacks are negative or positive. Only that you cannot use the observation that “clouds cool the climate system” as a basis for determining cloud feedbacks in response to adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. And, as far as I can tell, this is the physical assumption Monckton makes in his feedback-based arguments.
Climate Sensitivity Does Not Depend Upon Feedback Analysis
For better or worse, Jule Charney and his co-authors in 1979 decided to use the forcing-feedback paradigm to explain the response of the climate system to increasing CO2. As a result, some climate skeptics have seized upon the lack of a direct one-to-one correspondence between feedbacks in electrical circuit design and climate feedback analysis. But the use of the forcing-feedback paradigm was simply a way for climate researchers to explain, in conceptual terms, how the climate system responds to an imposed energy imbalance.
While this paradigm has been useful (even quantitatively), the sensitivity of modern 3D climate models does not depend upon feedback analysis, per se. One could talk about sensitivity kernels or other plain-language terms for the partial derivatives without using the f-word. The feedback concepts which Lord Monckton imagines the climate system depends upon are only used by climate modelers as a simple way to conceptually describe the behavior (output) of climate models: that for an imposed energy imbalance in the climate system, a certain amount of warming takes place after all temperature-dependent adjustments (e.g. cloud and water vapor changes in response to warming) in the system occur. These temperature-dependent responses (feedbacks) either amplify (positive feedback) or reduce (negative feedback) the direct warming effect from the imposed energy imbalance. (Remember, almost without exception, the temperature change in anything is the result of energy imbalance).
Now, it is true that feedbacks in the models are indeed quantitatively diagnosed based upon perturbations from the models average pre-industrial climate state. But that is the only way it makes sense, because the warming in response to a perturbation (say, a doubling of atmospheric CO2) involves changes in (say) clouds from their average pre-industrial state. The fact that sunlight shining on a theoretical cold, dark earth creates warming which creates clouds (“climatologists forgot the sun is shining“) is not relevant to climate sensitivity — and even the climate models themselves (run from a cold, dark Earth state) will produce the process which Monckton imagines controls climate sensitivity.
I consider Christopher Monckton a friend, and I implore him to stop chasing this rabbit. I am asked about his ideas from time to time, and as a result I must, once again, attempt to explain why I believe he is wrong.
> Lord Christopher Monckton is a talented mathematician
Citation needed.
*** OK, here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_puzzle
-Roy
Game designers create games, Roy.
Mathematicians solve them:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/992393.stm
I would not say that our Lord is a talented businessman.
Speaking of the Iron Lady, a commenter reminds us:
For more on the latest market manipulations by the Tories:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhkHKy4GNZw
well, this is becoming mostly off-topic. Christopher and I have discussed math concepts before, and his knowledge was well above mine. So, maybe he isn’t as talented as I am untalented.
Fair.
For a guy who quotes Non notatio, sed notio our Lord does not do much equations, and his diagram is obviously wrong, as your post clearly explains.
Missing out on non-linearity does not sound like great math prowess.
Of course, Little Willy is in no position to judge anyone’s math prowess, having confused himself for over a year on the trivial math involved in understanding the following:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/09/uah-global-temperature-update-for-august-2022-0-28-deg-c/#comment-1368998
Graham!
You are back!
Where were you?
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Little Willy, please stop trolling.
Dr. Spencer,
Your donate button isn’t working.
Willard is off topic here. However, the Eternity puzzle made my fortune, for we sold 500,000 copies at $50 each, and went on to sell 500,000 copies of Eternity II at $65 each. Nobody solved the latter. But the publicity when we paid out on the first puzzle helped to sell the second. Not quite such a bad businessman as the furtively pseudonymous “Willard” would wish you to believe.
The collapse of British manufacturing in the early 1980s was a direct result of the spending spree and consequent rapid inflation caused by the immediately preceding “Labour” government. To rein in the inflation, it was necessary to have a tightish monetary as well as fiscal policy. Unfortunately, manufacturing did not resume once inflation was beaten, not least because the crippling cost of energy directly caused by the global-warming nonsense has driven manufacturing overseas, chiefly to Communist-led China.
And to you Christopher Monckton (and anyone in the world) I offer a mere AU $10,000 (which is at least something I could pay without selling my house) if you are the first to prove the non-radiative process I called “heat creep” (as explained here*) does not exist, and to provide a study contrary to mine which shows water vapour cooling – see the Appendix of that paper. To qualify for consideration of your attempted refutation, post it on Researchgate and draw my attention to it. You also would do well to study the writings of Prof. Claes Johnson (cited in my peer-reviewed 2012 paper**) and to realise why the brilliant 19th century physicist Josef Loschmidt was right.*** And do, please, explain the required heat needed to maintain the base of the 350Km high nominal troposphere at temperatures warmer than the mean surface temperature of Earth.****
* https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318008633_Planetary_Core_and_Surface_Temperatures
** https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317997916_Radiated_Energy_and_the_Second_Law_of_Thermodynamics
*** https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337915638_Understanding_Josef_Loschmidt's_Gravito-_Thermal_Effect_and_thus_Why_the_Radiative_Forcing_Greenhouse_Hypothesis_is_False
****
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344506263_WHAT_WE_CAN_LEARN_ABOUT_CLIMATE_CHANGE_FROM_URANUS
> we sold
You mean the Ertl Company did, my Lord. And in 1999 Racing Champions acquired The Ertl Company. Did you own the Ertl Company by any chance? If not, you are speaking of revenues that were not yours as if they were.
Would that count as a white lie or a romantic fabrication? Let’s be generous and speak of a PR stunt:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100604012232/http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Aristocrat-admits-tale-of-lost.3340554.jp
Such portentous foresight is so rare. The culture of mankind would gain from a James Bond villain to your effigy. When will you write your autobiography, with a foreword by an external auditor authenticating your bragging rights?
And you Sir Christopher could do well to read even just the three comments starting below here …
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/10/no-climatologists-did-not-forget-the-sun-was-shining/#comment-1374909
as could Roy also. But I expect that neither you nor Roy will deign to read anything I write. That’s your loss.
And you Dug:
https://joannenova.com.au/2016/01/another-way-life-on-earth-adapts-to-climate-change/#comment-1776423
Little Willy, please stop trolling.
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It is always worrying when two people you admire are arguing over something like this – a bit like hearing the grown-ups arguing when we were children. I do not understand the argument at all well but I do not think that Lord M is referring to cloud feedback in particular. As you say, Dr Spencer, he does not specify the physical processes involved. I have always assumed he was referring to a process where CO2 warms the air so that it can absorb more water which also acts as a GHG, thus warming the atmosphere even more. So the feedback is simply in increasing the greenhouse effect of CO2 by now being CO2-plus-water vapour. The historical stuff he talks about seems to be that all the water vapour feedback was thought to come from the CO2 warming rather than the overall heat of the earth’s atmosphere. Apologies if this is all nonsense!
–I have always assumed he was referring to a process where CO2 warms the air so that it can absorb more water which also acts as a GHG, thus warming the atmosphere even more. So the feedback is simply in increasing the greenhouse effect of CO2 by now being CO2-plus-water vapour.–
I would tend to agree, but I know nothing about.
–The historical stuff he talks about seems to be that all the water vapour feedback was thought to come from the CO2 warming rather than the overall heat of the earths atmosphere. Apologies if this is all nonsense!–
I can’t believe it’s widely thought that all warming comes from CO2-
I always thought that was minority/fringe idea. But perhaps the camp that believes CO2 causes 33 K is bigger and more crazy than I thought.
It is interesting that the radiation of the troposphere is equated with warming, while the truth is that the surface temperature of the ocean reaches a maximum of 31 degrees C, and that in small areas. The ocean covers 70% of the Earth’s surface. Take, for example, the La Nina period. The surface temperature of the eastern Pacific is low over a huge area. In turn, the high insolation of the land greatly increases the radiation of the troposphere. Of great importance here is the length of the day in summer at mid-latitudes. But as early as October, cold fronts from the north can reduce the temperature in North America by several degrees in a single day.
It is worth asking the basic question, why is La Nina currently lasting so long?
I have not heard an answer to such a question.
Since La Nina refuses to end, what kind of warming at the surface level are we talking about?
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/contour/global_small.fc.gif
The best explanation for El Nino and La Nina I have seen is that they represent alternative average states that climate system can’t decide between. It’s sort of a bifurcation in the seasonal cycle, which maximizes in NH winter. I like that explanation.
It seems to me that the current weak La Nina presents an average condition for the coming years.
http://www.bom.gov.au/archive/oceanography/ocean_anals/IDYOC006/IDYOC006.202210.gif
See below Roy …
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/10/no-climatologists-did-not-forget-the-sun-was-shining/#comment-1374851
I made to day a comparison of Mr Spencer’s UAH6.0 LT time series (in blue) with the Multivariate ENSO Index (in red), and added a series for HadISST1 SST for MEI’s SST area (30N-30S — 70W-110E):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DQhVp9KN5ZHxKRL3RmnhawJmPfSNn1Eg/view
UAH, MEI and the SSTs have very different value ranges; I therefore converted them to percentages of their respective maximum.
You see that, though showing many similarities, the series nonetheless can differ considerably.
Not only do they differ in the whole period (MEI decreases over time, UAH and SST increase).
When you look at our most recent La Nina episode which started June 2020, you see that MEI decreases way faster than UAH.
*
You write
” The surface temperature of the eastern Pacific is low over a huge area. ”
A huge area? Low?? Sure?
Nino3+4 used by ONI is less than a Mkm^2, and even MEI’s observed area for SST is far lower than the Tropic ocean surface as a whole.
Look in the chart above at the green stuff: that is the sea surface area observed by MEI.
You see that the HadISST1 SST time series obtained for this area looks much more similar to UAH Globe than to that of the MEI.
*
Neither ONI let alone MEI are useful as temperature time series.
They are ENSO indices, not less, not more.
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Pat Smith is correct. We do not know, and do not need to know, the individual feedback strengths; we make no analysis of the behavior of clouds, for instance; and the published uncertainties in feedback strengths are very large, indicating not only that individual feedback strengths are unconstrainable but also that, since the interval of system-gain factors covering IPCC’s 3 [2, 5] K ECS interval is only 1.1 [1.09, 1,13], falling well within the uncertainty envelope corresponding to the giant uncertainties in feedback strengths, no prediction of ECS is any better than guesswork.
If, however, one were to correct the method originally used by Hansen and many others to derive the midrange system-gain factor based on data for 1850, that factor would not be the ratio 4 of the 32 K natural greenhouse effect to the 8 K reference sensitivity to greenhouse gases: it would instead be (255 + 32) / (255 + 8), to allow for the fact that the Sun is shining, that there is an emission temperature, that emission temperature is 30 times the greenhouse-gas reference sensitivity, and that most feedback response is feedback response to emission temperature and not to greenhouse gases.
And you should not be concerned that Roy and I have differing views on all this. On the skeptical side of the debate we do not all believe the same things: we discuss and debate cheerfully.
You are BOTH WRONG Roy and Christopher because …
(a) As the brilliant physicist Josef Loschmidt explained in 1876 it is gravity which forms the tropospheric temperature gradient seen in every planetary troposphere as well as in centrifugal force experiments such as that at http://climate-change-theory.com and those done with vortex cooling tubes – it is NOT back radiation that does so. In all these cases we see evidence of what I called “heat creep” which only happens in force fields.
(b) Prof Claes Johnson was right about the fact that energy in radiation is not always wholly converted to thermal (kinetic) energy in a target.
(c) Wien’s Displacement Law is well established and clearly the combined Planck function based on adding the Planck functions for atmospheric radiation to that for solar radiation does not have the same peak wavelength as would that of a Planck function for a single source delivering flux equal to the sum of the solar and atmospheric radiation. In other words, this is why the Stefan Boltzmann Law only ever applies for a single source of radiation that is effectively hotter (after allowing for attenuation due to distance) than the target.
(d) You cannot use “radiative forcing” false science to explain the warming of a location on the Venus surface over the course of four months on the sunlit side. Radiation does not cause that warming – only “heat creep” can do so.
Monckton,
The point of defining sensitivity the standard way is that The whole system is nonlinear, just like transistor-based amplifiers.
For transistor amplifiers the configuration of biasing conditions will change the gain of the amplifier. The present ‘state’ of nonlinear transistors will determine the gain, and thus the feedbacks.
At 255 K, the Earth is an iceball. And in that state, the ice-albedo feedback effect, for a small increase in T, will be nil. Similarly in that state the water vapor feedback, for a small change in T, will be nil.
The ice-albedo and water-vapor feedbacks, for small changes in T, from the current climate state (or even 1850 one) are much larger than the feedbacks for the ice-ball state, thus it makes perfect sense to define sensitivity relative to the present state.
What ice ball state Nate? You can’t even explain the current climate and how it came to be and you expect us to believe you know what the temperature would be without CO2?
Fact is a sun capable of boiling water shines down on the earth and the only reason a lot of it doesn’t reach the ground is due to clouds.
And you expect the surface mean temperature to be as if their greenhouse effect selectively doesn’t exist while still reflecting sunlight away from the planet? LMAO! How dumb can you be to have bought into that narrative!
Carrying the same albedo back to some mythical ice ball earth is pure fraud. Its fraud because you just claimed an ice-albedo feedback from a teensy change due to CO2.
You are like some ignorant parrot parroting political jargon that no respectable scientist would ever utter.
Cold fronts pass over Australia.
https://i.ibb.co/1zNrY2j/Zrzut-ekranu-2022-10-04-201819.png
IIRC global warming increases both low cloud cover and high cloud cover.
The low cloud reflects more shortwave radiation upwards than longwave radiation downwards, so the extra low cloud has a net cooling effect and acts as a negative feedback.
The high cloud reflects less shortwave radiation upwards than longwave radiation downwards, so the extra high cloud has a net warming effect and acts as a positive feedback.
Overall, high cloud is increasing faster than low cloud so the net effect of increasing cloud on temperature is a slight positive feedback.
However, the uncertainty in cloud feedback is enormous. Our main point is that if the feedback analysis is done correctly it is impossible to constrain ECS at all; that, therefore, there is no rational or legitimate scientific basis for the notion of “climate emergency”; and that, therefore, the crippling of the Western economies to Save The Planet from what is increasingly obviously a non-problem is a waste of time, effort and other people’s money.
Christopher, Roy and others:
It is now well established that cosmic rays assist cloud formation. As the level of sunspot activity increases the heliosphere expands. This sphere (reaching beyond Earth’s orbit) tends to block some cosmic rays reaching Earth. Also, planets can change the path of such rays and thus potentially regulate the observed natural climate cycles. Quite possibly planets regulate sun spot cycles as their fields reach to the Sun. As Roy’s graphs show, there has been net global cooling since 1998 as I predicted would occur until 2027 (at least) in an archived statement I made in 2011 …
“From 2003 the effect of El Nino had passed and a slightly declining trend has been observed. This is the net effect of the 60-year cycle starting to decline whilst the 934 year cycle is still rising. By 2014 the decline should be steeper and continue until at least 2027. (This statement was archived 22 August 2011 here)”
The 934 figure is derived from calculations of the scalar sum of the angular momentum of the Sun and all planets. See this graph of this sum inverted …
http://climate-change-theory.com/planetcycles.jpg
Monckton of Brenchley
“Our main point is that if the feedback analysis is done correctly it is impossible to constrain ECS at all; ”
That turns out not to be the case. While ECS and SEE cannot be constrained accurately because of their timescale, their short term cousin FOR can be constrained on the back of an envelope.
Preliminary information:-
It takes about 3.7W/m^2 of forcing to raise global average temperature by 1C.
CO2 has increased from 280ppm to 419ppm since 1880.
Temperature has increased by 1.2C. Anything less than 0.2C is not statistically significant.
Natural forcing add up to 0.001C/decade of slow cooling, leaving CO2 as the only major warming forcing.
Solar insolation varies over a 1W range in an 11 year cycle, varying surface radiation by 0.25W.
Lower limit of TCR for CO2:-
Direct CO2 forcing since 1880 is 5.35ln(419/280) = 2.15W.
That causes a temperature rise of 2.15/3.7 = 0.58C.
The actual temperature rise is 1.2 giving a TCR of 1.2/0.58 =2.06 and a minimum ECS of 2.06.
Maximum TCR.
Solar radiation at surface varies by 0.25W/m^2.
That is the equivalent of 0.25/3.7 = 0.07C.
This is not signicant. The minimum significant change would by 0.2C. That would require a TCR of 0.2/0.07 = 2.9
In summary the minimum TCR and hence minimum ECS is 2.06.
The maximum TCR is 2.9, giving a maximum ECS of about 5.8.
We know all that is nonsense Ent because you have a history of producing garbage.
There’s no need to spend time debunking it. You produce garbage.
Am I the only having trouble understanding how “increasingly obviously a non-problem” follows from “impossible to constrain ECS at all”?
I would question the chain of reasoning there. For high cloud to create positive feedback according to your statement, it would have to create more high cloud. Given that most of the water is on the surface, would it not create more low cloud first?
The direct effect of cloud cover is one aspect, but what about the effect of rainfall? There are claims of more intense rain events due to a warming earth. Is that due to a warmer surface or a cooler upper atmosphere? What is the overall effect of rainwater being cooled? Is rain formation a truly adiabatic process with latent heat being converted to sensible heat?
“There are claims of more intense rain events due to a warming earth. Is that due to a warmer surface or a cooler upper atmosphere? ”
Neither. They are due to the ability of a warmer atmosphere to carry a greater mass of water vapour which then becomes a greater mass of rainfall.
“What is the overall effect of rainwater being cooled? ”
Warmer atmosphere at the condensation level.
“Is rain formation a truly adiabatic process with latent heat being converted to sensible heat? ”
Yes.
Ent, the rain cycle is one of Earth’s cooling systems. Energy from the surface is transported to the upper atmosphere, where it is released by condensation. The energy is then emitted to space.
You always omit details like that because you believe Earth is in some kind of unnatural warming spiral. Just like you believe passenger jets fly backwards.
You have strange beliefs, and you make up strange nonsense to support your strange beliefs.
” Lord Christopher Monckton is a talented mathematician, and there are many things on which we agree. ”
I have watched several discussions along the Third Viscount’s guest posts at WUWT, and saw many times that the knowledge shown by his immediate replies to really knowledgeable WUWT commenters on his guest posts had few in common with the knowledge shown by the guest posts themselves.
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This La Nia is not typical, as the western equatorial Pacific remains cool.
https://i.ibb.co/sCB6MY2/ct5km-ssta-v3-1-tropics-current.png
https://i.ibb.co/gdvnFms/equatpac-REM-fc.gif
NO! NO! NO! ROY!
Your statement “Sunlight heats the surface of the Earth” is incorrect.
The average “sunlight” reaching the Earth’s surface is of the order of 170 w/m^2 for which the Stefan-Boltzmann Law gives about 233K – that is, minus 40C.
For Venus it is less than 20 w/m^2 and the radiation from the less-hot atmosphere of Venus can NEVER explain the warming of the Venus surface on the sunlit side, compensating for about 5 degrees of cooling (737K to 732K) on the dark side.
I TOLD YOU YEARS AGO ROY THAT THESE SURFACE TEMPERATURES ARE NOT DETERMINED PRIMARILY BY RADIATION.
What DOES supply the necessary thermal energy needed to raise surface temperatures on the sunlit side is NOT a radiative process at all.
It is explained from the Second Law of Thermodynamics at
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318008633_Planetary_Core_and_Surface_Temperatures
It’s time you heeded my correct physics which you cannot prove wrong even for the AU $10,000 reward.
And, Roy, water vapor COOLS the surface according to real-world data in my study* and CORRECT physics in my 2013 paper. In response to one of my FOI’s to the CSIRO in Australia they could produce absolutely NO EVIDENCE of water vapor warming the surface. It cools because it reduces the magnitude of the gravitationally-induced temperature gradient so that there is less warming from the radiating altitude down to the surface. I strongly recommend you read my paper linked above and this** one.
* http://climate-change-theory.com/study-15-locations.jpg
** https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344506263_WHAT_WE_CAN_LEARN_ABOUT_CLIMATE_CHANGE_FROM_URANUS
It’s likely that more than 50 of your silent readers will today.
AND ROY ….
Here* is the NASA diagram showing 168 w/m^2 of “sunlight” penetrating the Earth’s surface, and below it you will see how the climate models quantify the surface temperature with that 324 w/m^2 of back radiation which you, Roy, once admitted was not a measured figure – just a calculated one based on a lack of knowledge of the non-radiative heat that I have been first in the world to discover and explain from the laws of physics, supported by experiments with vortex cooling tubes and data throughout the Solar System. You CANNOT just add some extra radiative flux from the atmosphere into Stefan-Boltzmann calculations because that Law only works for a single source such as the Sun which is hotter than the surface. Prof Claes Johnson proved radiative forcing wrong more than a decade ago. Josef Loschmidt correctly explained the gravito-thermal effect in 1876 and I proved him correct, extending his work.**
* http://climate-change-theory.com/sb168-NASA.jpg
** https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337915638_Understanding_Josef_Loschmidt's_Gravito-_Thermal_Effect_and_thus_Why_the_Radiative_Forcing_Greenhouse_Hypothesis_is_False
YES! YES! YES! DUG!
You were banned by Roy:
https://tinyurl.com/banned-by-roy
Why are you still spamming here under another sock puppet?
Because truth will prevail and needs to be known for the sake of the world. This is the biggest scientific scam of all time and I predict it will be defeated by about 2025.
Alternatively, Dug, because you’re an anti-social character whose obsessions got him banned from just about every single Climateball website, including those from the contrarian side.
Yes, owners of valuable URLs such as WUWT, as well as arrogant journalists like John O’Sullivan of PSI and blog holders who either agree with the IPCC authors or present their own inventions of science don’t like to have their errors exposed, such as on the “WUWT Errors” and “PSI errors” pages of my website http://climate-change-theory.com. Hence their banning of my comments (with weak excuses) is their easy way out, rather than challenging me on their blogs, as neither you nor Roy or Christopher will do on this thread I predict. Your personal smears are water off a duck’s back.
Remember, Dug.
It’s not a smear if it’s true, even in Australia:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/2/25/the-ipccs-private-portals.html
AND ROY!
You talk about radiation from CO2 slowing the IR cooling of the surface, but ONLY the IR cooling, Roy, not the non-radiative component via convection and evaporation etc. Furthermore, since CO2 only radiates in a few wavelengths its effect is like that of a picket fence with most of its pickets missing standing up against the full-spectrum torrent of radiation from the surface, as I wrote in my peer-reviewed 2012 paper.*
In any event, if IR cooling is slowed then non-radiative cooling merely accelerates to compensate, as can be explained from the laws of physics since the temperature gap would increase. Furthermore, Roy, neither you nor any climatologist in the world has correctly explained the quantification of the surface temperature in the first place – only I have done so.
Currently the CEO of the CSIRO in Australia (Dr Larry Marshall) who is aware of my research has to answer my FOI about this quantification in the next two weeks, thus providing the final piece of evidence before I organize a major class action by large companies (those affected financially by the CO2 hoax) which will probably get worldwide attention.
* https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317997916_Radiated_Energy_and_the_Second_Law_of_Thermodynamics
Wrong Dug. You have fallen for the GHE nonsense. Earth’s surface receives about 960 W/m^2. That’s the flux you must use. Dividing by 4, and reducing even more. to less than 170 W/m^2 weakens the actual solar effect. Once Sun is removed, then nonsense like the GHE and “heat creep” emerge from the darkness.
You MUST use the Sun. That’s reality. Everything else is nonsense.
Do you know what a rotisserie grill is? A chicken is placed on a spit to rotate in front of an infrared heat source. An infrared flux of 2400 W/m^2 arriving the surface of the chicken could easily raise the temperature to well over 300 °F, as it rotates. But 4 separate IR sources, providing 600 W/m^2 each, could barely scald the chicken. It would never get above 120 °F. It would never cook properly.
You just don’t understand radiative physics and thermodynamics.
Nup. You are wrong Clint and at least NASA is right on this one. About half the Solar Constant (~1360 w/m^2) is either reflected or absorbed by the atmosphere and clouds, and we must also divide the remaining half by four because the area of the surface is four times the area of a circle of the same radius. So we divide 1360 by 8 and get 170. The NASA diagram (linked in a comment above) shows 168 w/m^2.
Furthermore, because of T^4 in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations, the average temperature achieved by variable flux is always less than that achieved by uniform flux equal to the average of the variable flux. So, in fact, the mean surface temperature achievable by solar radiation is even colder than minus 40C. Try your calculations for Venus and then for the base of the Uranus troposphere where no solar radiation reaches but it’s hotter than Earth down there.
A note to everyone: It’s not wise to write about my world-first discovery of heat creep without first reading my proof of its existence. If you do I will expose the fact that you haven’t bothered (or deigned) to read such. That’s your loss. Tens of thousands of others have read my material and/or watched my video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BEN3iJzlrI&feature=youtu.be
and not one of them has ever proved me wrong about heat creep and the fact that water vapor cools the surface of Earth.
But, yes, Clint you are right in saying “But 4 separate IR sources, providing 600 W/m^2 each, could barely scald the chicken.”
That’s EXACTLY what I’ve been trying to get Roy to understand for a decade now since I wrote my peer-reviewed paper “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics”* in 2012.
So you prove to silent readers that you haven’t a clue about what is in my papers.
CLIMATOLOGISTS ARE WRONG IN EXPLAINING THE SURFACE TEMPERATURE USING THE SUM OF SOLAR AND ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION IN STEFAN-BOLTZMANN CALCULATIONS.
You, Clint and I agree on that.
* https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317997916_Radiated_Energy_and_the_Second_Law_of_Thermodynamics
PS: Clint. It’s basic physics (in which I am suitably qualified) that the warming effect of radiation which strikes a level surface at an acute angle (less than a right angle) is determined by multiplying the flux by the sine of that acute angle (which thus reduces it) and using the reduced flux in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations. You have made a very obvious mistake in treating the whole Earth as if it were a flat disc orthogonal to the incident solar radiation. You even forget that half the Earth is in darkness. Dear me!
Some readers will never learn that it is unwise to assume I’m wrong.
And the reason, Clint, that we are both in agreement that four 600w/m^2 radiators will not achieve the temperature that would a 2400w/m^2 radiator is that the temperature is related to the peak wavelength in the Planck function according to Wien’s Displacement Law.* Adding four identical Planck functions that are for 600 w/m^2 will make a function with higher values but not a different peak wavelength. Thus the combined function is not the same as that for a 2400 w/m^2 source.
* http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/wien.html
This is what climatologists need to learn. That is why all their models are totally and utterly wrong. There is no GHE.
ROY and CHRISTOPHER are BOTH WRONG.
Dug has backed away from his own nonsense: The average “sunlight” reaching the Earth’s surface is of the order of 170 w/m^2 for which the Stefan-Boltzmann Law gives about 233K – that is, minus 40C.
He now understands his chicken won’t cook, if the flux is divided by 4.
Maybe he’s not as braindead as the cult idiots. He can learn from a simple analogy.
There’s no physics what-so-ever in your reply, Dear Clint. As I said, argue with NASA about their 168w/m^2 figure at:
http://climate-change-theory.com/sb168-NASA.jpg
Try holding the palm of your hand directly at the Sun. Then twist it so it’s only about 30 degrees towards the Sun and confirm it feels less hot.
You have no idea what is in my 2012 and 2013 papers. My whole point is that “the chicken won’t cook” and the Solar radiation will NOT by itself raise the MEAN surface temperature above minus 40C. That’s a fact Dear Clint. You’d be frozen to death without heat creep.
At the base of the Venus atmosphere there is only less than 20w/m^2 of solar radiation getting through – as was MEASURED by Russian probes dropped with little parachutes to the surface. Good luck with cooking a chicken with that much radiation and no heat creep raising the temperature of a location on the Venus surface from 732K to 737K on the sunlit side.
At the base of the Uranus troposphere there’s no solar radiation at all, but it’s hotter than Earth down there due to heat creep.
Keep it up! You’ll be a beggar for punishment whilever you try to guess what I’ve written and you fail to read at least my main three papers at
https://ssrn.com/author=2627605.
PS And now you could read my comment at
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/10/no-climatologists-did-not-forget-the-sun-was-shining/#comment-1375001
Dug:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/09/uah-global-temperature-update-for-august-2022-0-28-deg-c/#comment-1368998
You’re still not getting it, Dug. The reason your chicken won’t cook is you’re reducing the POWER level, by dividing by 4. Four 600 W/m^2 fluxes will NOT provide the same POWER level as one 2400 W/m^2 flux.
You are confused by the nonsense from the cult, headquartered in NASA — Neurotic Anti-Science Agency. The cult believes Earth only receives about 170 W/m^2. The cult then believes CO2 is warming the planet, instead of Sun. But you have conjured up the nonsense that “heat creep” is heating the planet. You’re in your own cult, just to sell your books.
And, like the cult, you violate the laws of thermodynamics. If the atmosphere is heating the surface, that means heat is moving against the temperature gradient. That is IMPOSSIBLE,
You know NOTHING about radiative physics, or thermodynamics. You’re only here for the “fame and fortune”, only it’s to working for you. Wearing out keyboards ain’t science.
Get a life.
Pup:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/10/03/why-it-matters-that-climatologists-forgot-the-sun-was-shining/#comment-3613507
Little Willy, please stop trolling.
“The average ‘sunlight’ reaching the Earths surface is of the order of 170 w/m^2”
“The standard solar panel has an input rate of around 1000 Watts per square meter, and the majority of solar panels available have around 15-20%. Therefore, if your solar panel was 1 square meter in size, then it would likely only produce around 150-200W in good sunlight.”
Me thinks that you are wrong.
Yes RLH, well consider what your solar panels receive at night or at the poles in mid winter. I am obviously talking about global mean solar flux penetrating the surface. Go argue with NASA about their 168w/m^2 figure in this* diagram. You really need to study my material and that promulgated by NASA and by IPCC authors, as well as some basic High School physics, geometry and trigonometry. You are trying to argue with someone with over 50 years’ experience in physics and over 10 years postgraduate research into climatology and atmospheric and sub-terrestrial physics, with peer-reviewed writings on such and author of the book “Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide After All” on Amazon.
As I’ve said in a comment above, it’s not a good idea to assume I’m wrong. There’s a reward of AU $10,000 for the first to prove such out of over 150,000 who have read or watched my material these last 10 years.
* http://climate-change-theory.com/sb168-NASA.jpg
And you also RLH could read my comment above:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/10/no-climatologists-did-not-forget-the-sun-was-shining/#comment-1375051
I am presently raising another $33,000 or many months from home by doing terribly honest and easy on-line sports activities from home. The month comes from this interest at home.~px170~ im currently interacting in short throughout this interest and creating plenty of cash online victimization the usable helpful resource of by using the balance at intervals
the given stats system. https://fixjob11.blogspot.com
East Asia is an example of how temperatures on the continent can change in a short period of time.
https://i.ibb.co/svDX2kd/gfs-T2m-ea-1.png
https://i.ibb.co/X4jWYZj/gfs-T2ma-ea-1.png
Oh ren…
Did you REALLY intend to compare
– absolute temperatures
and
– their anomalies wrt 1981-2010
for the same day?
I am presently raising another $33,000 or many months from home by doing terribly honest and easy on-line sports activities from home. The month comes from this interest at home.~px90~ im currently interacting in short throughout this interest and creating plenty of cash online victimization the usable helpful resource of by using the balance at intervals
the given stats system https://fixjob11.blogspot.com
https://imgur.com/gallery/QiqldXV
More clouds between 30N and 30S are likely to cool the planet overall. This because, as Roy and others observe, more clouds somewhere lead to less clouds elsewhere. If those less clouds occur outside the 30N to 30S band then that will cool the planer further.
Where clouds form in latitude is as important as the presence/absence of the clouds themselves.
ROY! ROY! ROY! THIS IS WHERE YOU (AND MONCKTON) ARE WRONG!
You write:
“If you start-up a computerized climate model from an initial cold state (pick any cold temperature you want, say 50 Kelvin), with no clouds, the modeled system will warm, clouds will form, and the system will eventually reach a state of quasi-equilibrium, with the global area-average rate of absorbed solar energy equaling the average rate of infrared cooling to outer space.”
Under no circumstances, regardless of emissivity, will any given radiative flux (from a single source) ever achieve a temperature above that determined with Stefan-Boltzmann calculations. For the solar flux reaching the Earth’s surface (averaging around 170w/m^2 as per NASA diagrams) that temperature would be about 233K (minus 40C) for uniform flux and even colder for the actual flux which is variable.
As you would agree, it requires net input of thermal (kinetic) energy to raise the surface temperature normally in the morning and early afternoon in calm conditions. But most of the extra thermal energy needed is NOT supplied by radiation from IR-active gases in the regions of the troposphere that are colder than the surface. Only on a small portion of Earth’s surface is it mostly supplied by direct solar radiation.
SO, ROY, WE DON’T HAVE TO HAVE RADIATIVE BALANCE because there is NON-RADIATIVE “HEAT CREEP” supplying most of that extra needed thermal energy, and it can be seen warming the surface in the morning even where there is thick cloud cover for several days in a row. On Venus (and at the base of the Uranus troposphere etc) “heat creep” supplies ALL the necessary thermal energy. It is NOT a radiative process. Hence there is no radiative balance.
ROY:
Just to clarify, I am talking about there being no radiative balance at the surface and that is because there are different inputs and outputs via non-radiative processes there also. (You are treating the surface as if it were a blackbody in Space with no loss or gain of thermal energy other than by radiation.)
Of course there will be roughly long-term overall ENERGY balance with minor variations due to natural climate cycles. But the only (approximate) radiative balance with solar radiation received is at the radiating altitude if we consider that as being a weighted average for various altitudes and including reflected radiation as well as that emitted by the surface (through the atmospheric window) and that emitted by IR-active (so-called “greenhouse”) molecules which thus cool the whole troposphere, collecting thermal energy from nitrogen, oxygen, argon etc via molecular collisions and thus acting like holes in a blanket.
But what you continually overlook there being a need for is the non-radiative input of thermal energy via the “heat creep” process, which is indeed increasing entropy and is thus a direct consequence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Do you understand that the spam posts from “Gloria” are more interesting and informative than anything you have posted? Just asking for a friend.
You have an opinion, Tim. It isn’t shared by everyone.
Tim,
Is radiation heating the Earth’s core?
Tim,
Can nitrogen and oxygen transfer heat?
Increased risk for all-cause dementia in people who abstain from alcohol
“The study findings suggest that abstaining from alcohol may increase the risk for all-cause dementia. Furthermore, there was no evidence to suggest that the amount of alcohol consumed impacts the dementia risk.”
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220930/Increased-risk-for-all-cause-dementia-in-people-who-abstain-from-alcohol.aspx
Hold my beer- or you will become Joe Biden.
These people don’t know what they’re talking about.
In France it has been known for decades that
– risk of dementia is proportional to consumption of red meat;
– not alcohol as such is a risk, but rather strong alcoholic beverages (with more than 40% alcohol content) but also wine with too few tannins.
Probably.
But they might have learned something.
It seems they wanted to find a connection between dementia and drinking alcohol, and their effort showed the opposite.
Or perhaps they are shills for Big Alcohol.
I think the study just showed that people who refuse to drink alcohol have have a better chance of having underlying mental problems which selects or gives them a larger risk of dementia. Or in simple terms, they are already demented, which worsens as they get older.
Being good with math doesn’t mean you understand the mechanics of the climate system, specially when you disregard the laws of fizzix and construct a model where the Sun shines on every part of earth evenly including the night side and top it off with colder air heating up the warmer ground .
You can concoct the math and make the numbers to add up but what you have is just another Ptolemaic system that has no basis on reality.
Does the scientific “consensus” always work in actual observations? If so, why is the ozone hole over Antarctica growing in September? Do predictions of solar activity agree with observations? Does anyone know why La Nina is not ending?
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/polar/gif_files/ozone_hole_plot.png
https://i.ibb.co/NY46m8q/wolfjmms.png
https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/soi/
La Nina is not ending because Bindidong cursed it, you cannot be so pesistently wrong on the forecast and not jinx the universe
ren
Don’t believe what the babbling Edog aka Eben is telling you.
I know from usually well-informed sources that Edog himself banned the ending of La Nina, what he of course never would admit.
Everyone knows from personal experience that air is an excellent insulator, so the increase in kinetic energy of air particles in the troposphere cannot be explained by radiation that occurs in a small frequency range. For example, the temperature in the stratosphere rises during the production of ozone as a result of photolysis of the O2 molecule by photons of a certain frequency.
A commonly held misconception –
“All of that ascending air must be exactly matched by an equal amount of descending air, which is almost always cloud-free.”
Nope. The ascending air is ascending purely because it is less dense. It has expanded. If it is at the surface, it cannot expand downwards. The denser air surrounding it prevents it expanding laterally, so the only way left is up.
And, of course, air that contains higher proportions of H2O is also less dense, so given enough cloud condensation nuclei, convective cloud such as cumulus may be observed. It all gets more complicated, because the air parcel cools as it rises, radiating energy, but additional heat is generated as water vapour condenses, and releases heat!
Cumulus clouds can pierce into the stratosphere under the right conditions.
On the other hand, stratus clouds can occur in the absence of ascending air. An example familiar to most is fog – low level cloud. Of course, stratus (fog) can occur at all altitudes – up to cirrostratus at 25 km or so in the tropics.
Tricky things, clouds. Most “climate scientists” seem to have no trouble believing what they want to, and rejecting reality as they go.
Dr Spencer wrote –
“If you start-up a computerized climate model from an initial cold state (pick any cold temperature you want, say 50 Kelvin), . . . “.
Unfortunately, that model is obviously not fit for purpose.
No part of the Earth has ever been 50 K, or even 150 K! A model which uses a physically impossible input? Hopefully, Dr Spencer is not serious.
On the other hand, run the model with a starting temperature of 373 K (when the first liquid water appeared) and see what happens. Ridiculous? Why? The surface has actually been this temperature, unlike the physically impossible 50 K.
Or why not 288 K – widely accepted as the current “average” temperature?
The Earth has cooled. The atmosphere is chaotic. People generate ephemeral heat.
End of story.
Show me new facts, and I change my view.
“Show me new facts, and I change my view.”
That turns out not to be the case.
Various people have been showing you new facts for years but your view has not changed.
EM,
You can’t actually point to one of these “new facts”, can you?
What a pity!
thanks for poking holes in that Roy, it makes sense the perturbative model would be inferred from the physical processes rather than assumed
this makes me slightly more confident the most plausible 50-year forecast is better than a random walk, despite the recent shortwave domination of the energy balance
Oh…
” … and construct a model where the Sun shines on every part of earth evenly including the night side … ”
Where is the source confirming these nonsensical claims?
The Sun’ SW radiation hits one hemisphere at at time.
From the Topics (100%) down to the Poles (0%) the average radiation over all latitudes of the hit hemisphere is obtained by integrating it with the weighting factor cos^2(ia) dia = 0.5, where ia is the radiation’s incidence angle, what halves the radiation.
Thus, the average radiation over the full sphere (4 pi r^2) is divided by four.
*
” … and top it off with colder air heating up the warmer ground . ”
No colder air heats up the warmer ground.
That’s an invention of Pseudoskeptics.
Bin, you are very confused. It’s scientifically irresponsible to divide a power level by 4. That changes everything. It ain’t science.
And your cult definitely believes “colder air” can heat up a “warmer ground”. They call that nonsense the “greenhouse effect”.
Clint R
Anyone like you who endlessly denies scientific results like the lunar spin about its polar axis and thinks lunar motion is like ‘orbiting without rotating’ and looks like a ‘ball-on-a-string’, is a denier of science anyway, hence a troll.
The ‘greenhouse effect’ has nothing in common with what pseudoskeptic deniers like you ‘think’ it might be.
You are one of this strange cult’s members, to which people like Robertson, Flynnson, the Pseudomod, Hunter and a few others belong.
Bin, “lunar spin” ain’t science. It comes from ancient astrology. Moon is clearly only orbiting, not rotating. That’s why we only see one side from Earth. You still can’t understand the simple analogy of a ball-on-a-string.
And the claim from the GHE nonsense is the sky can heat the surface. Check in with your cult headquarters if you don’t understand that. They’re still trying to launch a rocket….
You really are working hard to pull Graham back in, Pup.
I like it, we need him.
The place looks empty without him,
Willard,
Please stop trolling.
Bindidon you are one of the fairly large groups of cultists around here who believe everything their daddy tells them. That of course being your cult daddy and not necessarily your biological daddy.
Nearly all cultists have more than one daddy. One who gave you life and one that owns you.
Bottom line is the moon rotates. It rotates because an orbit is a rotation. If it has more than one rotation then it must show all sides to the center of the orbital rotation. Really simple stuff here and you are so indoctrinated you don’t apparently think that is possible.
There is little doubt you are also confused about what a woman is. . . . unless of course you haven’t risen to that level in the cult yet.
I greatly appreciate this post.
I thoroughly refuted Lord Monckton’s theory on feedback-theory grounds, but it occurred to me after I had done so that I should additionally have pointed out how far into never-never land accepting so many of his assumptions for the sake of argument pushed us.
You brought things back to the real world.
A little off topic, but your discussion about starting at a model at 50 K brought to mind something James Gleick said around 35 years ago in “Chaos” concerning Lorenz’s climate work. If I remember correctly, he said the models at the time exhibited an attractor in which the earth had a very high albedo and would never warm up.
Obviously, we can’t compare Lorenz’s models to today’s, but it would be interesting to know whether the same could be said of current-day models.
Good point, Joe.
Earth obeys the laws of physics. Its many cooling mechanisms mean it can NOT overheat.
Dr. Roy,
Thinking about your comments on cloud feedback / formation that suggest this is some type of ‘zero-sum’ phenomenon:
‘Thus, more clouds on one region can actually cause fewer clouds elsewhere.’
I could see this with respect to a non-compressible fluid, like liquid water. But air is very compressible, hence, one could envision larger areas of low pressure / high cloud cover co-existing with smaller areas of high pressure / low cloud cover that would be consistent with the need to conserve mass, presuming, of course, that the horizontal mass movement, i.e., winds were able to compensate.
I am presently raising another $33,000 or many months from home by doing terribly honest and easy on-line sports activities from home. The month comes from this interest at home.~px180~ im currently interacting in short throughout this interest and creating plenty of cash online victimization the usable helpful resource of by using the balance at intervals
the given stats system. https://fixjob11.blogspot.com
What a mess this thread is.
Perhaps some equations of theoretical feedback would be helpful, as a linear feedback wouldn’t care one bit what the baseline was.
It seems to me that the argument is one of language more than math.
If you want to see the math, go to https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/09/12/refutation-of-the-forgotten-sunshine-theory/ or https://naptownnumbers.substack.com/p/power-of-obscure-language
Actually, if you really want math, you can slog through https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/16/remystifying-feedback/.
The Substack piece was good, Joe.
Will cite it in my piece.
Thanks.
Little Willy, please stop trolling.
“little willy?”
That’s worse than me.
1. Clouds are not cooling Earth, rather they are warming. Both clouds and GHGs add to the GHE, but not exclusively so. Rather they are strongly overlapped in this. The fallacy is in attributing this overlapped component to GHGs only, rather than GHGs and clouds. In fact the GHE provided by clouds is about 30W/m2 “net”, “single factor removal”, or “exclusive” (whatever you want to call it). Including the overlapped part, the cloud radiative effect is about 2.5times larger, that is 75W/m2. This figure definitely exceeds the cloud albedo effect! Now this brings up some interesting questions which I already explored..
For instance
https://greenhousedefect.com/the-cloud-mess-part-2-something-spooky
2. Monckton’s idea is largely correct, and does not require proper understanding of clouds or any other feedback mechanism in detail. But there is certainly a more consistent approach to this issue, which again, I have already delivered..
https://greenhousedefect.com/about-the-physical-impossibility-of-feedbacks
I truly don’t understand the difference here. Assuming we had a stable climate system until evil humans came along, we introduce a gas with warming properties, I see no reason why control system feedback equations don’t model this correctly using some large scale perturbation from zero or one from a simple anomaly. The large temperature scale equations for all feedback are going to be dramatically increased in complexity due to non-linearity of feedback but an anomaly based feedback is definitely not incorrect.
Taking the whole feedback system’s “perturbation of GHG” into account, should make literally ZERO impact on result over the temperature scales we’re SUPPOSED to be concerned with.
Maybe I need to go read the paper but none of this makes sense.
This paper suggests by observation that Monckton is right:
High cloud coverage over melted areas dominates the impact of clouds on the albedo feedback in the Arctic
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44155-w
The negative cloud-feedback is dominant and it has to be to provide a climate without runaway greenhouse effect that would’ve killed all life on Earth numerous times like from external impacts. The atmospheric pressure must’ve been far higher because some dinosaurs couldn’t have existed without at least 2 bar, rather 3+ bar of pressure.
https://gdesilvestri.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/was-the-atmospheric-pressure-different-at-the-time-of-dinosaurs-o-levenspiel-a-small-tribute/
I doubt that there are more than 5 people on this thread that know what it is even about.
Our moon has been slowly drifting away from Earth over the past 2.5 billion years
By Margriet Lantink, Joshua Davies
published about 7 hours ago
–We found that the moon was around 37,280 miles (60,000 kilometres) closer to the Earth then (that distance is about 1.5 times the circumference of Earth). This would make the length of a day much shorter than it is now, at roughly 17 hours rather than the current 24 hours.–
https://www.space.com/moon-drifting-away-from-earth-2-5-billion-years
Will our Moon leave us, before NASA can explore it??
angech says:
Moncktons feedback arguments supporting a very low climate sensitivity cannot be supported.
This doesn’t mean his conclusion is wrong, only the line of reasoning that led him to that conclusion.
Some comments on parts of your argument, and Christophers.
Couched in the language of feedback analysis.
Lord Moncktons latest explanation of his climate feedback theory skirt around actual physical processes.
–
It is convoluted, but if he is describing actual feedback loops to actual physical processes, one has to the ones he is using.
I will try to explain, based upon actual atmospheric processes, why his argument does not make physical sense.
Christopher explaining his logic.
Climate sensitivity to anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcings feedback processes at any given moment must, necessarily respond equally to each Kelvin of the entire reference temperature.
Feedbacks respond to the base signal, the emission temperature that would prevail even if there were no greenhouse gases in the air, because the Sun is shining.
–
The problem here, for Christopher is that each Kelvin of the entire reference temperature cannot cause an equal feedback process as the amount of energy involved is minute per Kelvin at lower temperatures and extreme in comparison to a Kelvin change around 288 K.
Still that is his problem and mathematically treatable.
I cannot emphasize enough how wrong the underlined assertion is.
–
The idea that the climate systems response to a small perturbation from its current state might be discerned from its response to the presence of solar heating assuming a theoretical initial cold Earth is not new.
It is wrong as more clouds on one region can actually cause fewer clouds elsewhere.
Further warming of the climate system wont be mitigated by an increase in clouds, as Monckton’s analysis implies from the evidence presented.
So do clouds never change, or do they change in amount with the temperature?
The argument that it is at a steady state with respect to amount of cloud present ignores the effect of changing temperature.
Yes, Clouds Cool the Climate System
It has long been known that clouds, on average, cool the climate system.
–
Sounds like feedback.
“Sunlight heats the surface of the Earth, which combined with the atmospheric destabilization from the greenhouse effect, leads to convective heat transport away from the surface.
–
Convection is meaningless if more clouds on one region can actually cause fewer clouds elsewhere.
This means that with a stable global temperature Convection is utterly unimportant.
When someone sells a share someone buys a share.
–
Due to the presence of water, clouds form, reflecting sunlight back to outer space.While those clouds also enhance the water vapor-dominated greenhouse effect, the solar reflection (albedo) effect dominates, leading to the observation that clouds, on average, cool the climate system.
Clouds are due to the temperature, not a cause of the temperature
and remember more clouds on one region can actually cause fewer clouds elsewhere.
So, it might seem logical to assume that any additional source of heating (positive energy imbalance) would lead to even more clouds, and thus a negative cloud feedback.
Ignores the fact that it has to get hotter first and then the negative can kick in but as Lucia once pointed out response negative feed backs can never outweigh the initial first positive feedback.
As far as I can tell, this is the physical underpinning of Monckton’s argument.
Hard to tell.
I read it more as saying that the elephant in the room is the massive amount of energy already in the system not from the sun.
Because it is so massive and ongoing the small amount of solar radiative change cannot act as an important forcing?
while it seems important in the context of a zero Kelvin world in a 288K world it disappears.
Of course, clouds might not be the only element of his argument,
I do not think his argument is about clouds per se.
So “clouds are arguably the most prominent example. is a misinterpretation of what he is saying?
The trouble is that when clouds form, most of them are embedded in ascending air currents. All of that ascending air must be exactly matched by an equal amount of descending air, which is almost always cloud-free.Thus, one cannot create more clouds without creating more clear air. *
* You are right only when there is no temperature change. Feedback must occur with temperature changes hence making more or less clouds [or we would have none in the first place]
When you experience a cloud-free day, its because ascending cloudy air with precipitation, hundreds of miles away, is forcing the air over you to sink. This is why cloud feed backs are so uncertain, and why we cannot use the average base-state response of the climate system to the presence of sunlight to estimate climate sensitivity.
Only with constant temperature
Another way to express this is that the climate systems response to solar heating is non-linear.
Because of the SB law.
Initial warming from a base state of a cold, dark Earth to a solar heated one is to create clouds (a cooling effect), but the resulting vertical air circulations means you cannot created an ever more cloud-covered Earth with ever more heating. Descending air currents in response to rising air currents will not allow it.
–
The earth was never warmed from a cold and dark state.
Its formation and ongoing pressure, collapse and radioactivity is the generator for 99.99..% of the energy contained in it.
The sun heats a very important to us but barely visible atmosphere and surface.
The earth would trundle along producing say 100 Kelvin on the surface for the next billion years without a sun.
Even Climate Models Tell Us This is the Case”
“modern 3D climate models deal with the equations of motion, conservation of mass, energy, moist processes, and the atmospheric equation of state. those physical processes especially cloud micro physical processes are not sufficiently well known to allow useful predictions of future average climate states.
Otherwise known as good stuff in good stuff out.
Climate models cannot tell us anything we did not know when the program was made.
Right or wrong it will only ever iterate what was programmed into it.
If you start-up a computerized climate model from an initial cold state (pick any cold temperature you want, say 50 Kelvin), with no clouds,
–
Yes?
A wrong assumption. The planet, as Christopher says, was already full of energy even though not at 50 K.
So we are already and always wrong in the basic assumption of a cold earth that only warmed up because of trapped heat forever warming the planet. There is a large difference between the amount of heat needed to warm a planet up to 288 and to warm the surface only up to 288 K
the modeled system will warm, clouds will form, and the system will eventually reach a state of quasi-equilibrium, with the global area-average rate of absorbed solar energy equaling the average rate of infrared cooling to outer space. These results are consistent with the statement that clouds cool the climate system.
–
Earth is a generator of energy just like the sun and the equilibrium cannot exist [energy out always > than energy in].
In such a setting any extra increase from the sun is matched by its outflow which is occurring from a base of 288 K not 100 K or 0K.
“If a small energy perturbation is then added clouds in the model will often respond by being reduced, not increased, in response to the small CO2-induced warming.
–
Again this is not consistent with the comment that changes in clouds balance out.
Any increase in heating is a positive effect to which the negative feedback must be applied.
Global climate models would do the same thing.
Climate models with an increase in energy must always give an increase in temperature.
Any model that claims to do the opposite gives an unreal and impossible counter effect.
The cloud response to the perturbation is not prescribed by the modelers as a cloud feedback. It is the result of the physics (and cloud micro physics) in the model.
Again and again saying something that is wrong does not make it right
It is a feedback.
It is prescribed by how the algorithm uses the data
More energy must make higher temperatures .
They can never generate more cooling than the positive input heating in the first place.
Climate model feed backs are not prescribed; they are diagnosed after the model is run from model output.
Similar logic to the warmer the weather gets the more it snows
“I’m not claiming cloud feed backs are negative or positive”.
They are both.
you cannot use the observation that clouds cool the climate system as a basis for determining cloud feed backs in response to adding more CO2 to the atmosphere.
As far as I can tell, this is the physical assumption made in his feedback-based arguments
It would help your argument if true.
Climate Sensitivity Does Not Depend Upon Feedback Analysis?
Most scientists explain the added risk of CO2 rise through feed back.
Your view of the atmosphere is far greater than mine particularly and most others.
I appreciate the hard work you and your colleagues at UAH have put in.
“”I will try to explain, based upon actual atmospheric processes, why his argument does not make physical sense.”
– but
Im not claiming cloud feed backs are negative or positive.
-but
“Yes, Clouds Cool the Climate System
It has long been known that clouds, on average, cool the climate system.”
– but
“The cloud response to the perturbation is not prescribed by the modelers as a cloud feedback. It is the result of the physics (and cloud micro physics) in the model.”
-but
If a small energy perturbation is then added clouds in the model will often respond by being reduced, not increased, in response to the small CO2-induced warming”.
-and
Sunlight heats the surface of the Earth, which combined with the atmospheric destabilization from the greenhouse effect, leads to convective heat transport away from the surface.”
4 contradictions of each previous comment.
Followed by a statement that assumes heat gets to space by convection rather than radiation.
The atmosphere whether moving by convection or not is merely part of the earth surface at that spot in line with the sun on the outward bound trajectory of a fixed amount of energy.
Such a great tip! Thanks. https://www.appliancekitchener.com
Ah well.
https://www.beg.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/media/0000/0804/Greenhouse%20%E2%80%93%20Icehouse%20Earth.pdf
“For the majority of Earths history, the planet
has been hotter than today.”
Been warmer, not hotter.
“Hotter periods make up some 70 percent of
the past two and a half billion years, and are called
Greenhouse Earth. They can last hundreds of millions of years, with CO2 levels 1020 times higher than today, and no ice anywhere on the planet”
Wrong, of course there was ice, though perhaps, no ice at sea level
“Were living in a mild interglacial of a long-term Icehouse now.
Temperate climate for many millennia has allowed the human
population to expand to what it is today.”
We are living in a cold interglacial.
Holocene was never very warm, and we in coolest time of Holocene.
“Human activity may be accelerating warming, but historical climate
patterns suggest that within a few thousand years we could enter
another glacial period, when ice would slowly advance again from
the poles”
Human activity may be slowing the cooling.
Higher CO2 levels might have caused .2 C of increase to global temperature, it’s possible other human activity could have added as much. It’s never been proven, but it could be plausible.
“Why we shift from Icehouse to Greenhouse, and glacial to inter-
glacial, are important concepts, which well explore on another
EarthDate”
Important concepts but no one has theory explaining it.
Most ideas explaining are connected to geological changes- Antarctica
moving to south pole, etc.
One problem is that ocean floor is fairly young- and ocean controls
global climate.
To make a RARE criticism of Dr Spencer: A friendly disagreement or debunking (in your eyes) is fine, but, Dr Spencer, “The Scientific Community” supposedly thinks the *entire* tent of Non-Alarmists are “Chasing Rabbits down holes instead of following the Facts,” or some less kind derivation of that assessment. You can’t ask a friend to stop promoting that which he thinks is right, although I note & appreciate the respect given.
As an amateur (understatement), might I also say that you’re also on a different page from 99.9% of Everyone, “Scientists” even… Not everyone knows Clouds are a net cooling factor. A super majority think the Hockey Stick & An Inconvenient Truth are Standing Scientific Pillars… Cue another Feather in Monkton’s Hat ( his work debunking of Algores’s movie)… I’ve seen the IPCC’s Forcings attributions, it certainly looks like somebody forgot the Sun. Don’t forget there’s a million miles of people trailing far far behind current discovery, and scarily, they’re the ones making policy.
Your recent work on Urban Heat Island Effect looks really exquisite. Cheers and congratulations on that!
can’t decide whether people panicking in 1979 or 1988 would have found this graph more comforting
social cost of cargo cults still rising