In the Paris Agreement China promised to reduce its CO2 emissions, from 2030 onward, relative to 2030. From there on the emissions should shrink to net zero by the year 2060. The interesting feature about this agreement is that up to 2030 China can emit as much as it wants to. Not just that, it even puts itself in a better position by maximizing its emissions, because it will have a larger CO2 budget to work off later. There are further commitments, like planting trees, decreasing carbon intensity of the GDP, or certain shares of “renewables” in energy consumption. But none of these are much…
Outrageous claims may lead to extreme insights. It is as old as epistemology itself and a highly useful tool when analyzing things, I used it many times before. If you think there is a relation, a physical law or something, think it to the ends. What would it mean in the extremes? Is it still plausible then? You always need to put your own thoughts to the test and to anyone mentally fit, this is common procedure.
As anyone I am not endlessly creative when it comes to generating own thoughts. That is where outside input, education in the best sense, comes in handy. Let me be straight,…
We are learning over time. Driving a bicycle will feel like the most natural, simplistic thing to most of us, but that was not always so. There will have been a time when it appeared an insurmountable challenge. Eventually you would manage driving it, but of course you still felt insecure and awkward. But over time everything settles and you might even learn some stunts.
Dealing with climate physics I had some similar experiences. Insights, even if not fundamentally new, become way more understood and obvious over time. You learn tricks, short cuts, you play around with it, and soon enough…
First of all you will need some really useless random data, and lots of them. I mean not that they were actual data, but just noise. They can easily be produced in Excel using the rand() function. I used the expression in D2 “=RAND()+C2-0.5-C2*0.01” and pulled that expression horizontally over 150 columns. What it does effectively is adding some random (-0.5 to +0.5) to every data point and containing the growth via the last term, subtracting one percent of the deviation from zero.
The whole procedure is meant to give some nice, noise data garbage, like in the chart below. Btw. I truncated…
Methane, as you all will know, is a greenhouse gas, next to being a by-product of digestion by cows, as well as our own. Remarkably that is about where the knowledge ends, as there is an awful lot of nonsense circulating on the subject, originating both from the consensus as the critical side. So let me have short and simple review on the subject that even the ordinary reader should be able to comprehend. You know, the simple things..
The common narrative
Over 20 years, the methane would trap about 80 times as much heat as the CO2. Over 100 years, that original ton of methane would trap…
Consensus climate science is driven by a lack of criticism. Critical climate science is driven by a lack of competence. Both sides add to the impression of a settled science, with only idiots rejecting it. It is certainly a tragic story and to illustrate it, let me present a couple of examples to show what state the “critical side” is in. The named examples are not meant to ridicule the concerning individuals, but rather to discuss the prevailing incompetence, or disinterest in physics in general.
In one of the last articles I investigated the “radiative flux” (sic!) concept. With it, although I am afraid it is based on really bad logic, it is at least possible to reproduce the canonical CO2 forcing estimate of some 3.7W/m2. However even this theoretical approach is no remedy for a (primary-) water vapor (WV) feedback of some 1.8W/m2. There is simply no way to get even close to this figure. Even if you push all the limits, you will get no higher than 1.2W/m2. I mean it will be a lot lower anyway, as WV is vastly overrated as a GHG.
Ok, this is a little issue I ran into and I really wanted to source it out, rather than having it bloating up another article, while not properly addressing it. If you look up the literature, like the famous Kiehl, Trenberth papers, or Wikipedia, you will get a straight forward answer. The atmospheric window is about 40W/m2 in size, and of course it is all settled science.
In reality the settled rather means consensus, and consensus means the abolishment of all scientific principles like pluralism and criticism to promote an all too important message. Just digging a little deeper reveals,…
Sorry for being silent here for way too long. I guess I just took on a bad habit of starting articles and not finishing them. Partly this is because I like to go into depth before making a statement, partly it is because “climate science” is just a target rich environment. There are so many absurd stories worth to be told, which strangely enough were never covered. I can only emphasize again what a miserable job the “critical side” is doing. Anyway..
Michael Mann’s famous (or rather infamous) hockey stick has been talked about a lot. He was brave enough to “hide the decline” in tree ring…
I have written a couple of articles investigating climate sensitivity and asserted it was almost negligible. Well, since “negligible” is a circumstantial term, let me be more precise. Based on line-by-line calculations and some necessary corrections to what are identifiable mistakes in the orthodox approach, I did end up with a figure of around 0.5K only. That would allow for CO2 forcing and WV feedback, though not for other feedbacks like cloud- and albedo-. These however, even when considered in orthodox magnitudes, would barely affect the outcome.
Last year, when Gavin Schmidt explained the CO2 problem in six easy steps on the realclimate blog, I could not help to hint towards the surface emissivity problem. You know, while the consensus largely assumes an emissivity of unity, it is rather about 0.91 in reality. This blunder alone produces a chain reaction of more severe consequences, like overstating the GHE, getting the attribution wrong, overstating climate sensitivity and messing up climate models in a way that no super computer will ever fix.
Gavin was so kind to respond: “Not really sure why you think this, but LW emissivity…
It is funny how the content of this largely ignored site sometimes diffuses into the world. Of course such education is its scope, but one might expect people to communicate a little more open on what their source is, or ask for clarification if the content is too complex for them. After all this would help to spread the word and gain me some well deserved reputation.
Bob Irvine’s misunderstanding
Just a few days ago I had a little déjà-vu while reading an article on WUWT. The title was “The Climate Feedback Debate”, sounding interesting to me. After a couple of paraphrases I could not…
Aerosols, although poorly understood, play a vital role in climate models. If you ask why global warming only really started in the 1970s, aerosols are the answer. If you wonder how the only moderate warming witnessed so far shall support high climate sensitivity, again aerosols are the answer. So it is about time we take a closer look at them.
Aerosols and Volcanos
It is true, aerosols can cool the planet. In fact declining (surface-) temperatures have been observed many times over after volcanic eruptions. In the course of an eruption, lots of hot gases, most importantly sulfur, get…
I do not know why, but „Climate Science“ seems to be cursed to get everything wrong, even if it is completely pointless. It puts me into an awkward position to sort out all these side shows, when there is a far more significant main line. Yet you can not really skip it, since sooner or later it would haunt you anyway. What can I say..
The Polar Amplification, what does it mean? It is pretty simple, the poles tend to heat, or cool respectively, much stronger than the rest of the planet. Something makes the climate there specifically sensitive. When we are talking about ice ages and…
I know focusing on contrails as the main cause for global warming may look a bit strange to most people. Are they not reflecting sun light? Should that not be cooling the planet? And even in the scientific literature, although by now it is consensus new they have some warming momentum, this was quite disputed for a long time. However, if you understand the basic physics of the GHE correctly, and there is a lot of confusion out there, then contrails are a logical subject of interest.
As with any component of the atmosphere, there are two sides to be considered. That is a) the SW- and b) the…
As we have discussed GHGs and clouds are overlapped all over the place. “Climate science” largely ignores this and the logical implications to it. Moreover however, GHGs overlap themselves so to say. It is for this reason, that a doubling of CO2 will not double its radiative forcing, but will only cause a gradual increase. Some people call this “saturation”, suggesting CO2 and other GHGs would hardly enhance the GHE with additional quantities. While this is essentially true, there is no innovation in it, as the orthodoxy claims nothing else.
Although the title may be a bit misleading, as some minor feedbacks actually do exist, they do not play the role “climate science” wants to make us believe. There is very straight forward logical evidence denying the basic claim and to my knowledge, it has not been discussed so far. Also this shall be a synopsis of my previous work with an argument Lord Monckton tries to rightfully bring forward.
When it comes to alternative explanations for “global warming”, most climate skeptics are inclined to point to the sun. It makes sense in a way, as the GHE is responsible for a certain deviation in surface temperature, while the sun is responsible for the bulk of it. Without the sun, if Earth was a rogue planet, the surface temperature would be close to zero Kelvin. So in a way the sun is the gorilla in the room, and it would be foolish to ignore it when it comes to natural climate change. Also we know the sun is prone to cycles, though because of the infancy of civilization and modern day…
After exploring the relevant pieces finally has come the time to put them all together. I have dealt with a number of mistakes, all having pivotal impacts on ECS estimates. Oddly enough, all these mistakes produce biases in the same direction, that is overheating the planet due to CO2 emissions. To provide an oversight let me recapitulate the main points.
The Lambda Mistake
Lambda, as a conversion factor of radiative forcing or feedback to temperature, is assumed to be 0.3. The figure is derived from the assumption a surface at 288K would emit 240W/m2 into space, as 1 / (((289/288)^4 -…
The “lapse rate feedback” is the other component of vapor feedback, and it is negative by nature. In order get a comprehensive understanding of vapor feedback as whole and ECS estimates, we need to explore it. The orthodoxy seems not just to lack an understanding of its magnitude, but also of its nature.
As discussed in the first part of this article the radiative effect of a 6.5% increment of vapor will only result in 0.5W/m2 forcing, rather than common estimates of 1.5-2W/m2. Forcing? Yes, if we would assume an endogenous increase in vapor that would be a forcing, if we assume an…
