The Physics of Global Warming is Complicated: A Note from Barry Moore
Posted by Barry Moore, September 20th, 2008 - under Opinion.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
Physicist and historian, Spencer R. Weart, recently penned an article for the popular blog RealClimate in which he explained:
“Physics is rich in phenomena that are simple in appearance but cannot be calculated in simple terms. Global warming is like that. People may yearn for a short, clear way to predict how much warming we are likely to face. Alas, no such simple calculation exists. The actual temperature rise is an emergent property resulting from interactions among hundreds of factors. People who refuse to acknowledge that complexity should not be surprised when their demands for an easy calculation go unanswered.”
This is an admission that we are nowhere near a scientifically proven result with regard to the effect of CO2 on our climate.
In another article at RealClimate Gavin Schmidt suggests that all can in fact be explained in six easy steps.
Schmidt’s explanation is in conflict with Weart’s article and skips over some key points.
Following are the steps proposed by Schmidt, with my objections:
Step 1: There is a natural greenhouse effect.
Here Schmidt notes the average incoming IR (area of the disc divided by the surface area of the world = ¼) X 1366 = 341.5 W/m2 this is reduced to ~240 W/m2 by assuming an average albedo of 0.3 . Unfortunately this completely ignores reflection by clouds which covers approximately 65% of the globe.
The actual incoming radiation which is absorbed by the earth’s surface is, therefore, much less. Schmidt’s next assumption is the surface radiation by Stefan’s law (15 deg C avg.) is ~390 W/m2 and the TOA radiation is ~240 W/m2 thus he concludes ~150 W/m2 heats up our atmosphere. But, firstly we know that a fourth power law cannot be averaged and Stefan’s law is for black body radiators thus an emissivity factor must be assumed which reduces the 390 W/m2. Even more curiously it appears the entire heat balance consists of radiation.
Where are conduction, convection and evaporation factored in, these are just a few of the complexities that Weart was referring to.
Step 2: Trace gases contribute to the natural greenhouse effect.
Schmidt explains that with the latest technology (as of 1995) the spectrum from space can be analyzed line by line to detect the energy absorbed by CO2. However there is a qualifier, “For some parts of the spectrum, IR can be either absorbed by CO2 or by water vapour and so simply removing the CO2 gives only a minimum effect.”
Put another way, remove the CO2 and the water absorbs more energy, or take away the water and the CO2 absorbs more.
Step 3: The trace greenhouse gases have increased markedly due to human emissions.
This claim is based on extrapolating from ice core data which some claim underestimates past carbon dioxide levels by 30% to 50%. There is also the leaf stomata proxy work, Beck’s paper – 180 Years of Atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods – and mass balance calculations based on the IPCC carbon cycle data none of which provide the necessary proof that the recent increase in carbon dioxide is unquestionably anthropogenic.
Step 4: Radiative forcing is a useful diagnostic and can easily be calculated.
I disagree and Spencer R. Weart would disagree. Here Schmidt trots out the only formula they have, RF = 5.35 ln(CO2/CO2_orig). So, if we use 385/280 for the CO2 increase we get RF= 1.7 W/m2 now at 0.75 deg C per 1 W/m2 we get an increase of 1.28 deg C.
However, if we look at the global temperature change since 1850 it is only 0.7 deg C. So something is wrong with the calculation as a measure of temperature increase based on radiative forcing from more carbon dioxide.
Step 5: Climate sensitivity is around 3ºC for a doubling of CO2. ( IPCC 4AR Pg.666)
Following on from my comments in step 4, this claim is an average based on data provided in the IPCC 4AR which provides a range of sensitivities generated from the IPCC formula and computer programs which attempt to evaluate the interaction of other factors such as water vapour.
Step 6: Radiative forcing multiplied by climate sensitivity is a significant number.
Schmidt explains “that current forcings (1.6 W/m2) x 0.75 ºC/(W/m2) imply 1.2 ºC that would occur at equilibrium. Because the oceans take time to warm up, we are not yet there (so far we have experienced 0.7ºC), and so the remaining 0.5 ºC is ‘in the pipeline’.”
This statement by Schmidt appears to be saying that the oceans absorb heat but do not experience a temperature change or the oceans absorb the heat but it takes time for the temperature change to affect the atmosphere.
The first concept is illogical, with regard to the second a convincing demonstration of the rapid reaction of global temperatures to ocean temperature changes was the effect of the super El Nino of 1998.
To illustrate the response of the globe and atmosphere to the sea surface temperatures the following graph shows anomalies for the global average (top) , the global sea surface (middle) and the global lower troposphere (bottom) temperatures from 1996 to 2008 showing the rapid response to the super El Nino of 1998.
No pipeline effect here.
Furthermore, where exactly is all the extra heat? The oceans cannot store heat “in the pipeline” without increasing in temperature which would create an immediate increase in atmospheric temperatures. Maybe it just does not exist in which case if we recalculate their formula the constant changes from 5.35 to 2.935. This is quite a change.
In conclusion, I agree with Weart, there are no easy answers and the IPCC case is far from proven. Attempting to explain climate changes by taking global averages and deriving empirical formulae is an extreme oversimplification of a very complex subject and is not valid proof.
Barry Moore P. Eng.
Calgary Canada.
What do you know about the AGO and Aspendale?
“It isn’t a monopolar motor, and you admit in reply to Graeme Bird’s request that you personally know nothing about the science. You can’t even supply a concise reference to a paper which might support your position.”
No, unlike a lot of people here, I am aware of my level of competence.
SJT; Since the beginning of time we have all followed the same path, you try things, some are successful some fail. You learn from your successes and failures. But you must evaluate logically with an open mind or you will never learn anything. Things will never be the way you want them to be so be realistic. The reason I follow the blogs is to read and learn and I hope I will keep learning until the day I die, I have benifited greatly from this blog because of its diversity and to be perfectly honest if anyone from your side could come up with irrefutable evidence I would definitely reconsider my position.
“I have benifited greatly from this blog because of its diversity and to be perfectly honest if anyone from your side could come up with irrefutable evidence I would definitely reconsider my position.”
Science is rarely about irrefutable evidence, especially at the bleeding edge. That’s what research is all about, discovering the unknown.
SJT said…”What Gavin is saying is that the oceans are so large, they have a huge capacity to absorb heat without warming a lot”.
What you fail to understand is that Gavin Schmidt is a mathematician who programs computer models. What could he possibly know about oceans or thermodynamics?
Read this article by Glassman in which he exposes Schmidt’s lack of understanding of feedback and physics in general:
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/11/gavin_schmidt_on_the_acquittal.html
Here’s the original article by Glassman for which the above link is a response to Schmidt’s critique of the link below:
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html#ABSTRACT_
“What you fail to understand is that Gavin Schmidt is a mathematician who programs computer models. What could he possibly know about oceans or thermodynamics?”
On the basis that a mathematician is being criticised by a rocket scientist, I find your logic flawed.
SJT
Another one of your famous Non-Sequiturs.
Mathematicians are not scientists because they don’t practice the scientific method. They are masters in logic and symbolism.
So here we have a physicist telling a mathemtician that the maths master has it wrong.
“What does Gavin say about solubility and CO2 on his website, http://www.realclimate.org? First, Google says: Your search – “solubility pump” site:realclimate.org – did not match any documents. So apparently he completely neglects the CO2 physics of the solubility pump!”
Have to love that logic. Gavin is wrong because a google search of a website for the genearl public did not throw up the phrase he was looking for. This could be the same method that Chilingar used to decide that convection is not used in climate models, and is the same method used by Barry Moore. Realclimate is an attempt to ‘dumb down’ the science so that the general public can understand what is the science behind AGW, it is not “the science”. If you want “the science”, read the papers.
“I’m quite happy to ramble on at my own level of incompetence, but the scientists who investigate the climate and the papers that result from their research carry a lot more weight than I do.”
Neither you nor they carry any weight at all. You are an idiot. You admit you know nothing. They are idiots who also have no evidence but they won’t admit it. The differences are irrelevant. They are not scientists so stop lying and calling them scientists.
You can call them science-workers, research-grant whores. These are acceptable names for such people. You can call them people who are masters at passing tests via the use of nemonics.
Nemonics. The Australian approach to higher learning.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Now one of you dim bulbs had some sort of derision on the fly for a paradigm that I gather Louis put up one time or another.
I’m supposing that you are aware that derision is not a reliable methodology when it comes to human reason.
Can you tell me why you think it isn’t a worthy paradigm?
Is it because it relates to gravity and you think there is nothing further to be said about the subject?
You would have to be a complete moron to imagine that this the case. We know that gravity isn’t pinned down because they keep on coming up with these feeble excuses like dark matter and for the love of stupid buxom blondes “dark energy.”
So given that the state of the theory of gravity is no reason to be dismissive of this paradigm what is your reason?
I’ve never heard of it before. So you tell me its weak points?
If it has no weak points you know of why isn’t it under consideration?
You see you alarmists will never be scientists. You’d have to die and be born again.
“Neither you nor they carry any weight at all. You are an idiot. You admit you know nothing. They are idiots who also have no evidence but they won’t admit it. The differences are irrelevant. They are not scientists so stop lying and calling them scientists.”
I didn’t say I know nothing. All I said was, unlike you, I am aware of the limits of my knowledge.
AGW propogandists have ‘manipulated’ large numbers of people into believing that we, mankind are causing the world to warm. That the world has warmed (as it’s done many times before) is not in doubt, however there is no clear, observable, testable evidence that any or all of the recent warming (which has now stopped) has been caused by mankind (and CO2). To be able to prove beyond doubt that we have caused the warming you would have to have significantly more knowledge about all the factors that influence climate change than mankind currently has – any scientist has to admit that we don’t have this level of knowlewdge at the moment. Computers are very useful for modeling but as we know their ability to predict future events with accuracy a few days out is limited – look at how the most powerful ones fail to accurately predict the weather or financial markets.
Therefore, AGW is just a claim, a weak theory, a supposition; it’s way off being a theory that has passed all traditional scientific evidential criteria.
Let’s remember that over the last twenty years ‘experts’, politicians, the media & pressure groups (a consensus?) told us that we were going to have an new Ice Age, AIDS, bird flu and SARS epidemics, that a Y2K computer failure would ’stop’ the world, that Saddam had WMD etc, etc. What happened – very little – storm in a tea cup – scaremongering and brinkmanship on a grand scale. Mankind may have had an impact on climate change (he certainly does on the environment at a local level) or may do so in the future, however there is no substantive, observable, or verifiable evidence that we have as yet had any global impact or that we understand why we might in the future.
“Stop pretending your side has ANY evidence you jerk. You don’t have anything. You have nothing.”
LOL
SJT said…”On the basis that a mathematician is being criticised by a rocket scientist, I find your logic flawed”.
A Ph.D in math studies undergraduate courses that lead him to a bachelor’s degree in math, then he specializes in math through his graduate studies. He might encounter problem of applied mathematics that lead him into physics at a superficial level but his expertise in physics is literally nil.
A Ph.D in physics studies general physics for 5 years to get a bachelor’s degree, then he specializes in physics. He is an expert in the same by the time he gets his doctorate. Schmidt does not list physics among his qualifications and I think it’s because his expertise is in computer modeling, not physics.
Degrees in climate science were not available much before 1980. Dr. Joanne Simpson was the first scientists to get a doctorate in meteorology, back in the 1950’s. Meteorologists and atmospheric physicists specialize in climate related sciences both during their undergraduate courses and their graduate courses. Scientists like Spencer, Christy, Michaels, Trenberth, et al specialized in atmospheric physics during their 8 years of getting a degree.
Glassman is another kind of cat altogether. He’s an engineer who specializing in electronics, applied mathematics, applied physics, communication and information theory.
Engineers go through a thorough undergraduate program in math, physics and chemistry as well as specializing in their field of engineering, which is in the field of physics. When I studied engineering for a couple of years, the courses were all honours-level and the academic burden was twice that of other disciplines. For example, a straight physics undergraduate degree required 15 hours of class time per week plus labs and tutorials. Engineering required 21 hours of class time plus labs and tutorials, for a total of over 40 hours per week.
While physics student took one math course and one physics course, we took two of each. Engineering is about problem solving and many engineers who get their Ph. D’s can go into other disciplines fairly easily because they have studied a broad spectrum of sciences and have learned problem solving to an expert level.
Glassman was not arguing with Schmidt on climate science, he was arguing on subjects he knew well, like feedback theory and computer modeling. Schmidt could not possibly have the in-depth training in physics that Glassman has.
One of the scientists Schmidt and the AGWers love to discredit is Fred Singer, yet he’s one of the most brilliant scientists of the bunch. He has a degree in electrical engineering, one of the most difficult degrees to attain due to the work content and the difficulty encountered academically. Furthermore, he is an expert on the atmosphere. I find it pitiful to hear Schmidt putting him down because Schmidt is not even in the same league as Singer academically or on the atmosphere.
Cohenite
are you going to acknowledge that Chilingar was wrong about scientists not being aware of the role of convection in climate, when they first became aware of it 40 years ago when their first simple models weren’t working?
You are laying on this dishonest conflation between pre and post energy-deprivation-crusade scientists AGAIN!!!!!!
There are alarmist scientists and there are real scientists and the two are not to be confused.
Here is an answer to an email from a thermista in the Canadian Civil Service.
By Lord Monckton
Dear Sir Humphrey – The “Abundance of scientific statements” that you mention is no sound or logical basis for deciding or believing anything. The question is whether the scientific statements have any rational justification, and whether those making them are in effect making statements that are political rather than scientific, rent-seeking rather than objective. After all, this is the age of reason (or it was).
Therefore, one should not accord to “scientists” the status of infallible high priests merely because they mumble a hieratic language with which one is unfamiliar. There is clear, compelling evidence that many of the major conclusions of the IPCC, your new religion’s constantly-changing Holy Book, are based on evidence that has been fabricated. The “hockey stick” graph that purported to abolish the mediaeval warm period is just one example. So let me try to lure you away from feeble-minded, religious belief in the Church of “Global Warming” and back towards the use of the faculty of reason.
Let us begin with the “devastation of New Orleans” that you mention. Even the High Priests of your Church are entirely clear that individual extreme-weather events such as Hurricane Katrina cannot, repeat cannot, be attributed to “global warming”. Even the Holy Book makes this entirely plain. There was one priest – Emanuel (a good, religious name) – who had suggested there might be a link between “global warming” and hurricanes; but he has recently recanted, at least to some extent. Very nearly all others in the hierarchy of your Church are clear that ascribing individual extreme-weather events to “global warming” is impossible. Why? Well, let’s take the question of landfalling Atlantic hurricanes such as Katrina. The implication of your attribution of Hurricane Katrina to “global warming” is twofold: that “global warming” is happening, and that in consequence either the frequency or the intensity of tropical weather systems such as hurricanes is increasing. Neither of these propositions is true. Yes, there has been “global warming” for 300 years, since the end of the 60-year period of unusually low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum (after the celebrated Astronomer Royal who studied it). But there has been no net warming since 1995, and Keenlyside et al, in the theological journal Nature a few months ago, say they do not expect a new record year for global temperatures until 2015 at the earliest. If these theologians are correct, there will have been a 20-year period of no net “global warming” even though the presence of the devil Siotu in the ether grows inexorably stronger. And, secondly, the number of Atlantic hurricanes making landfall has actually fallen throughout the 20th century, even as temperatures have risen. Indeed, some theologians have argued that warmer weather actually reduces the temperature differential between sea and sky that generates hurricanes, reducing their frequency, and that the extra heat in the coupled ocean-atmosphere system increases wind-shear in tropical storms, tending to reduce their intensity. Certainly the frequency of intense tropical cyclones has fallen throughout the 30-year satellite record, even though temperatures have increased compared with 30 years ago. Also, the damage done by Hurricane Katrina was chiefly caused by the failure of the Democrat-led city administration to heed repeated warnings from the Corps of Engineers that the levees needed to be strengthened.
Next, you mention the recent earthquake damage at Galveston, and you imply that this is something new and terrible. Perhaps you would like to do some research of your own to verify whether the High Priests of your Church, some of whom have blamed the Galveston incident on the wrath of the devil Siotu, are likely to be telling the truth. And how, you may ask, may a non-theologian such as yourself argue theology with your High Priests? Well, the Galveston incident will give you just one indication of the many ways in which a lay member of the Church of “Global Warming” may verify for himself whether or not the Great Druids of his religion are speaking the truth from their pulpits in the media. Cast your eye back just over a century, to 1906, and look up what happened to Galveston then. Which was worse – Galveston 2008 or Galveston 1906? Next, check the global mean surface temperature in 1906: many theology faculties compile surface temperature data and make it publicly available to the faithful and to infidels alike. Was the global mean surface temperature significantly lower or significantly higher in 2008 than in 1906? What implications do your two answers have for your proposition that Galveston 2008 can be attributed to “global warming”?
Next, you mention fires in California. Once again, you can either sit slumped in your pew, gazing in adoration at the Archdruids as their pious faces flicker across your television screen, or you can do a little research for yourself. It may, for instance, occur to you to ask whether droughts were worse in the United States in the second half of the 20th century than they were in the first half. Once again, you may want to check with your local theological faculty to obtain the answer to this question. Or you may like to pick up a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. And you may want to verify whether temperatures in the second half of the 20th century were warmer than in the first half. Once again, what are the implications of your two answers for your proposition that “global warming” is causing forest fires? You could also talk to the Fire Department in California and obtain its data on the causes of forest fires. You might be mightily surprised by the answers you get.
Next, you talk of beetles in your forests destroying natural resources. Here, you could ask the Druids just a couple of simple questions. What evidence do they have, if any, that whichever species of beetle you have in mind has not wrought havoc in the forests before? And, even if your clergy think that they have evidence that the beetle-damage is new, what evidence do they have, if any, that the beetle-damage is greater because of “global warming” than it would otherwise have been? Of course, you could ask them the wider question what evidence there is that anthropogenic “global warming”, as opposed to solar warming, is the reason for the temperature increases that have occurred over the past 300 years. The more honest parish priests will admit that for 250 of the past 300 years none of the inferred warming can be attributed to human industry. They will also be compelled to concede, if you press them, that the warming of the most recent 50 years has not occurred at a rate any greater than that which was observed before, so that it is in fact very difficult to discern any anthropogenic signal at all in the temperature record.
Next, you talk of people migrating from one place to another because in some places water has become scarce. Once again, it is easy for a layman, whether a true believer such as yourself or not, to verify whether such migrations are as a result of “global warming”. For instance, you could ask whether there have been changing patterns of drought and flood before in human history. Once you have collected some historical data – most theological faculties have quite a lot of this available, though you may have to dig a little to get it – you could compare previous migrations with those of which you now speak. And you could also ask your local parish priest whether a theological phenomenon known as the Clausius-Clapeyron relation mandates that, as the atmosphere warms, the carrying-capacity of the space occupied by the atmosphere for water vapor decreases, remains static, or increases near-exponentially. Once you have found the answers to these not particularly difficult questions, you may like to spend some of your devotional time meditating on the question whether, or to what extent, the changes in patterns of flood and drought that have occurred in the past give you any confidence that such changes occurring today are either worse than those in the past or attributable to “global warming”, whether caused by the increasing presence of the devil Siotu in the atmosphere or by the natural evolution of the climate. During your meditation, you may like to refer to the passage from the 2001 edition of the Holy Book of the IPCC that describes the climate as “a complex, non-linear, chaotic object” whose long-term future evolution cannot reliably be predicted.
If you are willing to reflect a little on the questions I have raised – and, with the exception of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, I have done my best to avoid anything that might be too technical for a layman to find out for himself – you will perhaps come to realize that there is very little basis in scientific fact for the alarmist, hellfire preaching in which your clergy love to indulge. And you may even find your faith in your new religion beginning to weaken a little in the face of the truths that you will have unearthed by the not particularly difficult process of simply checking those statements of your clergy that you can easily and independently verify. There are, of course, many environmental problems posed by the astonishing recent success of humankind. If you were concerned, for instance, about deforestation, or the loss of species whose habitats have been displaced by humans, then your concerns would have a good grounding in fact. But, given the abject failure of global temperatures to rise as the Druids had forecast, it must surely be clear to you that the influence of the devil Siotu on global temperatures – your theologians call this “climate sensitivity” – must be a great deal smaller than your Holy Book asks you to believe.
Finally, you may wonder why I have so scathingly described your pious belief in your new religion as founded upon blind faith rather than upon the light of reason. I have drafted this email in this way so that you can perhaps come to see for yourself just how baffling it is to the likes of me, who were educated in the light of TH Huxley’s dictum that the first duty of the scientist is skepticism, to see how easily your hierarchy is able to prey upon your naive credulity. I do not target this comment at you alone: there are far too many others who, like you, are in positions of some authority and whose duty to think these things through logically is great, and yet who simply fail to ask even the most elementary and blindingly obvious questions before sappily, happily, clappily believing in, and parroting by rote, whatever the current Establishment proposes. I do not know whether you merely believe all that you are told by the Druids because otherwise you will find yourself in conflict with other true believers among your colleagues or, worse, among your superiors. If you are under pressures of this kind, I do sympathize. But if you are free to think for yourself without penalty, may I beg you – in the name of humanity – to give the use of reason a try?
Why “in the name of humanity”? Because, although the noisy preachers from the media pulpits have found it expedient not to say so, there have been food riots all round the world as the biofuel scam whipped up by the High Priests of your religion takes vast tracts of agricultural land out of food production. Millions are now starving because the price of food has doubled in little more than a year. A leaked report by the World Bank says that fully three-quarters of that doubling has occurred as a direct result of the biofuel scam. So your religion is causing mass starvation in faraway countries, and is even causing hardship to the poorest in your own country. Can you, in conscience, look away from the sufferings that your beliefs are inflicting upon the poorest and most helpless people in the world?
“There is clear, compelling evidence that many of the major conclusions of the IPCC, your new religion’s constantly-changing Holy Book, are based on evidence that has been fabricated. The “hockey stick” graph that purported to abolish the mediaeval warm period is just one example. So let me try to lure you away from feeble-minded, religious belief in the Church of “Global Warming” and back towards the use of the faculty of reason.”
Strange, I find the AGW argument to have been one of consistency. “Monkton” makes this assertion, then provides no evidence to support it. On the other hand, AGW deniers are quite content to believe mutually contradictory statements, and a constantly changing set of statements on why AGW is wrong.
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