‘Controlled Opposition’ Keeps Greenhouse Gas Theory on Life Support
As ever-more peer-reviewed studies prove carbon dioxide is not our climate’s control knob a stubborn clique of ‘lukewarmers’ persist in defending the discredited greenhouse gas theory. Why?
Let us consider the real possibility, that on a matter so critical to government policy that we are dealing with a controlled opposition. But what is controlled opposition? As the Urban Dictionary advises:
“A controlled opposition is a protest movement that is actually being led by government agents. Nearly all governments in history have employed this technique to trick and subdue their adversaries. Notably Vladimir Lenin who said ”The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.”
To sustain the Big Climate Lie for 30 years needed a lot of hard work and scheming.
Any such controlled opposition would work to ensure that the CO2-driven radiative greenhouse gas theory was maintained and unquestioned as the ‘settled science’; without that lynchpin no one could persuasively argue that human emissions were dangerously altering earth’s climate.
From Lenin to former US President Obama evidence shows governments seek to manage and control opposition. In America the strategy is said to have begun in the 1950’s with Operation Mockingbird and a secret campaign by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media.
‘Mockingbird’ marked the official start of the US government’s infiltration of the news and entertainment media as editors, writers, reporters, and film makers were recruited as intelligence assets, made to sign secrecy oaths, and thereafter were under the control of their new masters.
During Obama’s presidency such subterfuge and propaganda was rife. Bernie Suarez (December 06, 2015) reveals:
“Obama’s Informational Czar Cass Sunstein specifically called for government to cognitively infiltrate the truth movement or as he called it “extremist groups”. “
It is thus no stretch of the imagination to infer that since the worldwide political launch of the CO2 climate fraud in 1988 (with Dr James Hansen’s testimony before the US Congress, and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s speech to the Royal Society) perceived “extremist groups” of dissenting scientists have been targeted. No doubt, this article’s author and his colleagues are prime candidates.
For three decades we have been lectured at ad naseum that our atmosphere works ‘like a greenhouse’ and within it the trace gas carbon dioxide (a tiny 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the air) is the tail that wags the climate dog.
Time and again we expose fake data and a clique of corrupt scientists (e.g. Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ graph and that fake ‘lab experiment’ claimed to prove CO2 ‘trapped heat’). Of course, we have been harangued, even prosecuted in court for our troubles (Dr Tim Ball defends Michael’s Mann’s libel suit; defeats Weaver, UN IPCC’s junk science climate modeler).
Sadly, it has needed the courts to show the world ‘Bad Measuring Made CO2 Our Climate’s Control Knob.’
For over a generation the mainstream media and prominent academics tried to hide how the infant science of ‘climate study’ had suddenly switched from advancing a theory of global cooling to selling catastrophic global warming.
No one, even on the skeptic side, seemed to be talking about the fact that the world-famous ‘Charney Report’ (1979) 13,500 words long and the most exhaustive US government climate report of that era, not once cited the ‘greenhouse gas theory’ as explaining the mechanism of climate change.
That glaring omission is just one example, but shows how the ‘back story’ of the greenhouse gas theory was sanitized and controlled; at least until exposed by Dr Tim Ball and Principia Scientific International (PSI) with their groundbreaking book ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory.’
Censorship and ‘refining’ of critical information has been the norm in the climate debate. Trillions of dollars, fame and stellar academic careers were all up for grabs. A concocted and protected core narrative turned out to be a boon for government coffers. Also on the alarmist gravy train rode those academics, the ‘lukewarmers’ who helped muddy the waters.
A 123-page paper by Christopher Booker helps explain the “groupthink” belief system formulated and perpetuated by just a few key personalities.
Such a controlled opposition would never question the cornerstone of climate alarm – the greenhouse gas theory. Critical to their modus operandi is to make it a matter of faith that CO2 and the radiative greenhouse effect operate to keep earth’s climate ‘warmer than it would otherwise be.’
Divide and Conquer, Ridicule the Opposition
In the climate debate this clandestine opposition denounces, ridicules and ostracizes fellow scientists who present evidence that might threaten the ‘settled science’ storyline. Perpetrators would merge unnoticed into that broad group defined as ‘Lukewarmers’ – those who are moderate in their assertions that carbon dioxide ‘must’ cause ‘some’ warming.
The lukewarmer’s camouflage is equivocation; those middle-of-the-road pronouncements that stop short of the most extreme doomsayer predictions. Hidden in plain sight, while seemingly challenging the mainstream climate consensus, they remain supportive of the all-important assertion that carbon dioxide is proven to be our climate’s control knob.
It’s ‘settled science’ don’t you know!
A mass of evidence of the vicious attacks by lukewarmers against the ‘Slayers’ (authors and supporters of the book, ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’) can be found online.
One ‘lukewarmer’ who has been at the forefront of these attacks is Dr Judith Curry. On the corbettreport.com she raised suspicions as noted 12/14/2015 at 4:53 pm, when Fernando Negro accused Dr Curry thus:
“bla, bla, bla “…disagreement about the value of different classes of evidence…” bla, bla, bla…
She only casts a certain (small) doubt on the amount of human influence in the supposed warming – and, doesn’t even denounce the fact that there is no warming, at all (but, that has actually been a cooling in the last years – as denounced in the e-mails that she admits to have read).
And, her “critiques” have even been promoted by one of the publications involved in all the lying, with the latter writing articles calling attention to her declarations. (While people who really denounce this falsehood, are not only not mentioned/promoted by this same lying media, but even have to go into hiding…To me, this is clearly a case of “controlled opposition”.
Fernando Negro may have a point. Or do we go too far? Perhaps Dr Curry is less the willing operative and more the unwitting groupthinker. Curry revealed she is intellectually constrained because she has never studied higher-level thermodynamics and admitted, “I am personally not taking this on in any detail.”
She added, I’ve read Slaying the Sky Dragon and originally intended a rubuttal [sic], but it would be too overwhelming to attempt this and probably pointless.”
Probably pointless? Well, Judy we are seven years further on and despite ever-higher CO2 levels (now over 411ppm) global temperatures are flat, possibly even cooling. Are you still so sure?
Along with Judy’s admitted deficiencies isn’t it odd that other key lukewarmers (including Lord Monckton and Anthony Watts) are not even science graduates?
Nonetheless, despite their questionable expertise Curry and other lukewarmers persist in arguing CO2’s impact on warming the atmosphere is a logarithmic effect; they simply assume a direct monotonic relationship of temperature to CO2.
But the ‘Slayers’ (now Principia Scientific International) dispute that. We say Svante Arrhenius (1896) got it wrong when he calculated:
“if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression”
PSI’s position is that it is ludicrous to term CO2 as a ‘heat-trapping gas’ when – beyond that fake lab experiment cited above – it is proven in industry and by applied scientists with PhD’s to only COOL.
Apart from government climate ‘science’, nowhere in physics or chemistry does there exist actual evidence that carbon dioxide warms anything.
Group Thinkers Don’t Recognize CO2 Only Cools, Never Warms
PSI is comprised of hundreds of applied scientists, many with stellar careers. They can testify just how powerful CO2 is as the supreme COOLANT gas. It has been used for over a century in refrigeration and air conditioning because it EMITS energy within milliseconds of absorption.
Nonetheless, back in January 2011 on her blog Dr Curry put herself in the vanguard of outspoken and unequivocal attacks on any and all such scientists who present evidence debunking her beloved greenhouse gas theory. At that time, Curry and fellow academic ‘experts’ had insisted CO2 was up at “ten percent” of the so-called greenhouse effect. [1]
But nowadays, Dr Curry is walking back her former staunch position. Lukewarm ally, Anthony Watts on WUWT (April 24, 2018) explains:
“New paper by Nic Lewis and Judith Curry suggests future warming would be a third to nearly half of what the IPCC claims.”
But, as Kenneth Richard shows over on notrickzone, there are now no fewer than 75 peer reviewed papers discrediting the entire premise of a CO2-driven radiative greenhouse gas effect (GHE). Principia Scientific International scientists have two such papers published in mainstream journals, here and here.
Even ice core data shows that CO2 follows temperature, atmospheric CO2 change does not lead temperature change. Please stop mixing ’cause’ with ‘effect.’
It might be fear of ridicule from their peers; the desire not be seen as disloyal to fellow lukewarmers, that compels their circling of the wagons rather than embrace the paradigm shift away from that flawed and unduly-hyped hypothesis.
A perfect case in point occurred recently as S. Fred Singer appeared to break ranks conceding that carbon dioxide (CO2) DOES act to cool the atmosphere.
With ‘Does the Greenhouse Gas CO2 cool the climate?‘ (April 2, 2018) Professor Singer, emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, admitted “Much further work awaits!”
Singer’s statement came as more peer-reviewed papers show scientists are abandoning the greenhouse gas theory with 17 such papers have been published in recent months. [2]
PSI is unabashed about declaring the failure of the greenhouse gas theory on both a contemporary and geological timescale to have CO2 levels in lockstep with temperatures. In fact, only in the period 1975 ~ 1997 can believers in the theory make a case for CO2 driving temperatures. Before and since there is no such correlation at all, as shown below in the graph:
Nonetheless, it is clear prominent ‘lukewarmers’ aren’t abandoning what all climate alarmists claim: that CO2 is our climate’s ‘control knob.’
Anthony Watts, owner of WUWT, the world’s most popular climate skeptic blog, is so certain carbon dioxide is guilty and PSI is wrong. Watts insists we “ignore real world measurements in favor of self-deduced science.”
Really?
Watts regularly promotes the work of fellow lukewarmer, Dr Roy Spencer.
Spencer boldly declared:
“All they have to do is provide an energy budget equation that produces the observed average surface temperature of the Earth, and support the values for the energy fluxes with observational evidence. They have not done this.”
Spencer lied. As PSI senior scientist, Joseph E Postma pointed out. PSI/Slayers published an alternative energy budget equation in 2011 but Spencer, Watts, et al ignored it (see here) [3]
Watts writes: “So far, he’s [Spencer] attracted lots of blowback rhetoric, but no serious takers. I doubt there will be.”
But Watts fails to admit he has banned any and all pro-PSI/Slayers comments on his site. No debate allowed!
Is WUWT therefore controlled opposition?
Only a fool would deny that a controlled opposition still exists (be it comprised mostly of the ill-informed and self-censoring), but the longer such characters defend the indefensible and nonsensical CO2 narrative the less likely are they to be afforded the benefit of the doubt. And so much in science exists among doubt.
If the Spencers, Currys, Watts and Singers of this world admitted they were now less sure about the CO2-driven radiative greenhouse hypothesis they would gain, not lose esteem.
The final word on the issue may best be left to the famous Nobel prize winning physicist, Richard P. Feynman who said:
“The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darned sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize the ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty—some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.” Nobel Prize Scientist Richard P. Feynman.
UPDATE (June 13, 2018): Further evidence Dr Curry serves as part of the ‘controlled opposition’ promoting the GHE is shown in yesterday’s ‘Judith Curry & Patrick Moore-v- Michael Mann climate debate‘. Here’s Curry’s transcript. https://goo.gl/SiZXqe
John O’Sullivan is CEO of PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. Telephone: Calls from within the UK: 020 7419 5027. International dialling: (44) 20 7419 5027.
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[1] Where did “Carbon dioxide contributes 10{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the effect” come from? Kiehl and Trenberth (1997) calculate CO2 as about 26{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the “greenhouse” effect (see CO2- An Insignificant Trace Gas? – Part Five. Going back to Ramanathan and Coakley 1978, they had a wide range for CO2’s contribution to the ‘greenhouse effect’ – between 9 and 26 percent
[2] Richard, K., ‘New Scientific Papers Dispute CO2 Greenhouse Effect As Primary Explanation For Climate Change’ (June 8, 2017)
[3] Postma J. E. ‘The Model Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect’ (July 22, 2011), https://principia-scientific.com/publications/The_Model_Atmosphere.pdf
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Joseph A Olson
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I have been lectured on line thousands of times by fake skeptic Lukewarmists, and in person by Lindzen, Singer, Clueless Curry, BlogBully Watts, Stuntman Monckton, MisInfo Morano and Disinfo Delingpole. A few of my rebuttals:
“Non Science Nonsense” at CanadaFreePress, April 2010
“Mommie, Can We Play Obombie Truth Origami” at FauxScienceSlayer
“Spencer Sorcery on Magic Gas” at FauxScienceSlayer(.)com
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geran
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John, this is a great writeup. Thanks for doing it. The truth about these people needs to get out. Many are being, and have been, misled by phony “Lukers”.
I tried to help Spencer for years. He just couldn’t seem to understand the physics. I couldn’t tell if he was incompetent or disingenuous.
I recently found out he is both, unfortunately.
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John O'Sullivan
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Thanks Geran. Our senior scientists, particularly Dr Pierre Latour, engaged in very lengthy and detailed correspondence with Roy for over a year and sadly came to the same conclusion.
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Thomas D. Gillespie
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I have studied “Slaying” and find much in it with which I can agree. However, as a geologist, I found some of the geologic conclusions/statements were either incorrect or displayed an absence of any grasp on the science and the correlations/implications which were being made (attempted). That makes me doubt the complete validity of some of the physics, which I understand but which is not my discipline, so I am uncertain. It
s a case of not being able to accept the conclusions of that which I know makes me mistrust the conclusions of that which I don’t know as well. Would welcome opportunity to discuss the geologic short-comings to get some assurances about the physics.
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John O'Sullivan
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Thomas, Great to have your input. Many thanks. for the offer I would be delighted to put you in touch with senior PSI scientists. It would be very helpful to have your analysis on where you have identified elements of our work addressing geologic aspects that are in error or warrant further refinement/improvement. Email me at [email protected]
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Thomas Gillespie
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I can prepare a really brief summary and send via email. It might take a day or two to go back through the book to locate my highlights and then write it up, and I can let you know when itis ready.
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John O'Sullivan
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Thomas, Looking forward to reading it. Thanks
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geran
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Thomas, if you are weak in physics, you will have a hard time understanding the physics of Earth’s energy budget. But, you appear to be able to think for yourself. So, you can either spend years improving your grasp of things like heat transfer, radiative physics, thermodynamics, and the gas laws, or just use your critical thinking.
1) “Climategate” revealed that “institutionalized science” knew AGW was a FAIL. They got caught. But, they “investigated” themselves and found they were “innocent”
2) Several different government agencies have been caught “adjusting” historical temperature data. Such “adjustments” has been called “manmade” global warming.
3) In the 2015 SOTU speech, Obama stated that 2014 was the warmest year, as reported to him by both NASA and NOAA. It was later revealed that their probabilities were less than 50%! So the whole effort was to deceive the public.
Those 3 interesting facts are easily verifiable. Warmists can easily dismiss all three. It clearly indicates they cannot think for themselves.
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Gary Ashe
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Yeah Geran and 4 why does Co2 become a super heater when free roaming the Atmosphere,
And it’s only commercial and laboratory use is for super-cooling.
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Squidly
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Exactly Gary!!!
CO2 is in fact the most widely used industrial coolant in the world!
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Robert Beatty
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What I find strange in this whole argument is the level of hubris required to assume humans can influence the level of CO2 in the atmosphere either up or down.
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geran
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If the oceans were to “sneeze”, atmospheric CO2 ppm could easily double.
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Squidly
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Indeed! … just the top 3m of ocean contain more CO2 than all of the atmosphere above it. With the average depth of our oceans being 4km and containing more than 326 million trillion gallons of water, you could dissolve all of the CO2 contained in the atmosphere into the oceans and you would be very hard pressed to be able to even measure the change in pH.
The CO2 content in our oceans completely dwarfs our atmosphere, by a ratio that leaves our atmospheric CO2 concentration completely insignificant.
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Thomas Gillespie
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Thanks. I wouldn’t say I am weak in physics, and I have been studying climate and have been following and lecturing against the whole nonsensical CO2 AGW charade since the very day J.Hansen pulled his Capitol building stunt (June 1988). What I mean is, although I follow the entire argument in ‘Slaying’ I notice some things which are not quite correct in the bits pertaining to MY science, so it would be really helpful for those aspects which are not the principal disciplines of readers to have some more resource references or references to foundational works so we can be assured that the same kinds of inaccuracies I note about geology (and not many others would) are not also deep inside the physics. I have studied everything presented in the book, but that was >35 yes ago, so I want to be certain there are no pitfalls before I include some of this in my college class lectures about the real climate
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Thomas Gillespie
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Thanks
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Kyle Poplar
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I would recommend Randal Carlson’s write up on the demonization on the carbon cycle. http://sacredgeometryinternational.com/redemption-beast-carbon-cycle-demonization-co2
also are any of you aware of Piers Corbyn’s work I have been listening to him lately.
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Squidly
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Sadly, Piers is also a “luker” .. also believes there are magical gases in our atmosphere.
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Sam Northcliffe
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Piers a “luker”, really?
Time you revised your opinion, methinks:
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews09No80.pdf
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Dave Burton
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Sam Northcliffe, you didn’t read Piers’ powerpoint (that you linked to), did you?
He did not dispute the (misnamed) “greenhouse effect.” In fact, on slide #23 & 24 he quantified it at a very conventional +3.8 W/m² per doubling of CO2.
Rather, he expected that the warming would be offset by a biological effect: accelerated cooling through increased transpiration, due to “greening” of the Earth, thanks to CO2 fertilization.
It was an interesting and plausible theory, especially when he wrote it (2009). It is less plausible, now, because, evidence has been found that the improvement in plants’ water efficiency which results from higher CO2 levels roughly offsets the greening effect, w/r/t transpiration. Recent research has found that the result that the greater number, size & photosynthesis rates of plants due to higher CO2 levels use hardly any more water. Here’s the very interesting paper which I’m talking about:
Cheng et al (2017),”Recent increases in terrestrial carbon uptake at little cost to the water cycle.” doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00114-5
Here’s an article about that paper:
https{colon,slash,slash}theconversation.com/rising-carbon-dioxide-is-making-the-worlds-plants-more-water-wise-79427
Excerpt:
That’s because extra CO2 makes plants more drought resistant and water-efficient, by improving stomatal conductance relative to transpiration, which is especially helpful in arid regions. Google finds many articles about it:
http{colon,slash,slash}tinyurl{dot}com/CO2droughtstress
When air passes through plant stomata (pores), two things happen: the plant absorbs CO2, and the plant loses water through transpiration. When CO2 levels are higher, the ratio of CO2 absorbed to water lost improves, which improves both plant growth and drought resistance. The plants also commonly respond to elevated CO2 by reducing the density of the stomata in their leaves, which reduces water loss.
That’s why the Sahel is greening, but it is also why Piers’ theory, that accelerated transpiration cooling would fully offset CO2’s warming effect, was almost certainly incorrect.
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Dave Burton
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{reposted with obfuscated URLs, to avoid “moderation” which never gets “approved.”}
Squidly, there’s nothing “magical” about they way in which so-called “greenhouse gases” work to warm the Earth. (I say “so-called” because it’s not how greenhouses actually work, but it’s still a real effect.)
CO2 in the atmosphere is a dye. It “colors” the atmosphere in non-visible parts of the light spectrum, and it greatly affects the passage and absorption of light at those wavelengths.
Have you ever been walking barefoot on a light-colored sidewalk on a hot summer day, and stepped from the curb onto a black asphalt road? If so, you probably stepped back onto that sidewalk in a hurry!
http{colon,slash,slash}sealevel{dot}info/white_sidewalk_and_black_asphalt{dot}png
What do you think accounts for the fact that the the road is much hotter than the sidewalk? It’s the COLOR.
GHGs are colorants or dyes, because they change the absorption spectrum of the atmosphere. That is, they change its “color,” albeit in the far infrared part of the EM spectrum, rather than in the visible part.
CO2 warms the air by tinting it to a “color” which absorbs far infrared (around 13-17 µm).
The Earth emits (on average) as much radiant energy as it absorbs, but since nearly all of the energy emissions from the Earth are in the far infrared & longer bands, and over half of the incoming energy (from the Sun) is at shorter wavelengths (near infrared, visible & UV), tinting the atmosphere in the far infrared has a differential effect. Since there’s more outgoing than incoming far infrared, GHGs absorb mostly outgoing radiation, preventing it from escaping into space. That causes warming.
It’s not how actual greenhouses work, but it’s still a real effect.
Greenhouse warming of the air, in turn, warms the ground, by a couple of mechanisms, including increased “downwelling” infrared back-radiation from the air. Here’s a good article:
http{colon,slash,slash}barrettbellamyclimate{dot}com/page8{dot}htm
Additional CO2 has only a small greenhouse effect, because the atmosphere is already nearly opaque in the affected absorption bands, because there is already so much CO2 in the atmosphere. MODTRAN calculates that 50% of the warming effect of current (400 ppm) CO2 level would be accomplished by just 20 ppm CO2 (for a tropical atmosphere w/ constant relative humidity). The NCAR radiation code says that 40 ppm CO2 would be needed to get 50% of the current CO2-caused warming, rather than 20 ppm, but, either way, the lesson is clear: we’re well past the point of diminishing returns w/r/t the warming effect of CO2.
There’s no dispute in the real scientific community about the fact that CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming. You want measured proof? Look at this great big green notch in the Earth’s emission spectrum. This is measured spectrographic data, from a satellite looking down over the tropical western Pacific (except that I added the colored annotations):
http{colon,slash,slash}sealevel{dot}info/slide16_excerpt2_FTIR_data_from_a_satellite_tropical_western_pacific_annot5{dot}png
That big green notch is the proof that CO2 causes warming: it represents energy emitted from the surface of the Earth which did not escape the atmosphere, because it was absorbed by the CO2 “dye” (albeit, a dye which colors the atmosphere in the LWIR, rather than the visible).
Now, the “man-made” part is slightly trickier, because most of that 13-17 µm section of the spectrum is already pretty thoroughly saturated. Adding CO2 raises the effective emission height, but from about 14-16 µm the emission height is in or near the tropopause, already, so raising the emission height has little effect on radiative balance.
But at the fringes of the absorption band (especially on the shorter side, where water vapor has little effect, say from 13-13.5 µm), additional CO2 does have an effect, broadening the absorption band, and raising the emission height. That certainly should have a warming effect.
But how much? The usual estimate is a little over 1°C of warming per doubling of CO2, at equilibrium, from the direct effect of the CO2, absent any feedbacks.
However, in 2014 Prof. Will Happer did a Physics Colloquium at UNC, in which he took a deep dive into this question. He explained why the warming effect of additional CO2 is logarithmically diminishing, and he reported finding evidence that the far tails of the fine line spectra of CO2 are commonly inaccurately modeled, with the result that the calculated direct warming effect (before feedbacks) of additional CO2 is commonly overestimated by about 40%.
Unfortunately, no video recording was made of that colloquium, but I made an audio recording with my phone, while sitting in the front row, and he graciously sent me his powerpoint slides. I combined the two to make a usable video. The sound quality is mediocre, but understandable. I encourage you to watch it:
https{colon,slash,slash}tinyurl{dot}com/happer2014unc
BTW, Prof. Happer is a friend and colleague of Prof. Freeman Dyson, and very heavy hitter. Here’s a bio:
https{colon,slash,slash}dof{dot}princeton.edu/about/clerk-faculty/emeritus/william-happer
That bio mentions that, among Prof. Happer’s many other accomplishments, he is the inventor of the Sodium Laser Guide-Star. What the bio doesn’t mention is how revolutionary that invention is.
Here’s a blog that does:
http{colon,slash,slash}archive{dot}is/Zkl3G#selection-1199.5-1199.124
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John O'Sullivan
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Dave, You and others have been sold a pup on this supposed CO2 ‘logarithmic effect’ on climate. The scam stems from the admitted ‘FUDGE’ in the numbers committed by Manabe (1964/67) and then Hansen (1981). Their junk science thus provided the Planck response (zero feedback climate sensitivity) of 1.2~1.3K.
Manabe did not resolve the problem of the tropospheric lapse rate and made an estimate which was falsely entered as “fact,” contrary to modern government expert claims that such work was rigorous “settled science.”
Go check your facts.
Manabe (1964/67) ADMITTED he botched his logarithmic effect with 2xCO2 as follows:
“The observed tropospheric lapse rate of temperature is approximately 6.5K/km. The explanation for this fact is rather complicated. It is essentially the result of a balance between (a) the stabilizing effect of upward heat transport in moist and dry convection on both small and large scales and (b), the destabilizing effect of radiative transfer. Instead of exploring the problem of the tropospheric lapse rate in detail, we here accept this as an observed fact and regard it as a critical lapse rate for convection.” [Emphasis added]
Hansen admitted there was a FUDGE in his numbers too, when interviewed by Spencer Weart (October 23, 2000) at NASA. An excerpt from the interview below:
Weart: This was a radiative convective model, so where’s the convective part come in. Again, are you using somebody else’s…
Hansen: That’s trivial. You just put in…
Weart: … a lapse rate…
Hansen: Yes. So it’s a fudge. That’s why you have a 3D model to do it properly. In the 1D model, it’s just a fudge, and you can choose different lapse rates and you get somewhat different answers. So you try to pick something that has some physical justification. But the best justification is probably trying to put in the fundamental equations into a 3D model.
Source: Interview of James Hansen by Spencer Weart on 2000 October 23, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA, http://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oralhistories/243091
Professor Lindzen now admits, “leading figures in atmospheric physics from the mid-1950’s to at least the early 1980’s, clearly did not emphasize greenhouse warming.…climate is a remarkably complex system that cannot be reduced to a CO2 knob, something you turn up or down like your house thermostat, to control global temperature.”
Lindzen and other leading lukewarmers are realizing the back story of climate has been rigged. Indeed the AMS and Britian’s top climate expert in the 1950 C.E.P. Brookes, head of Britain’s prestigious Meteorological Office, said this about the GHE:
“it was never widely accepted and was abandoned when it was found that all the long-wave radiation [that would be] absorbed by CO2 is [already] absorbed by water vapor.” (C.E.P Brooks, “Geological and Historical Aspects of Climatic Change.” In Compendium of Meteorology, edited by Thomas F. Malone, pp. 1004-18 (at 1016). Boston: American Meteorological Association (1951)).
So, Dave, that AMS comment above by Brookes destroys your claim that the “big green notch is the proof that CO2 causes warming.”
Meanwhile Professor Singer tells us what the root of the problem has been: ““Such is the power of group-think that even experts, with some exception, find the idea that CO2 might cool the climate difficult to accept….climate sensitivity (CS) is indeed close to zero“
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Dave Burton
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John O’Sullivan wrote, “…it was found that all the long-wave radiation [that would be] absorbed by CO2 is [already] absorbed by water vapor.” (C.E.P Brooks… (1951)). So, Dave, that AMS comment above by Brookes destroys your claim that the “big green notch is the proof that CO2 causes warming.””
In 1951 there were no satellites measuring the Earth’s emission spectra. So the big green notch, which proves that CO2 causes warming, was unknown to Charles Ernest Pelham Brooks. So I think his erroneous belief is forgivable.
He began his paper with a subtitle: “THE FACTS AS KNOWN AT PRESENT.” By “at present” he meant 1951. It is no longer 1951. Were he alive today, his opinion would surely be different. Sadly, he died in 1957.
John O'Sullivan
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Dave, Glad you’ve acknowledged the undeniable status of Brookes and the AMS, which in itself is your tacit admission that the GHE was NOT consensus science before the 1980’s
Can we also take it that your omission to address my others points is that you cannot address them and thus they are correct?
geran
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Dave, all you are saying is that the surface warms the atmosphere.
What is confusing you is that the atmosphere does not then warm the surface.
Claudius Denk
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CO2 in the atmosphere is a dye. It “colors” the atmosphere in non-visible parts of the light spectrum, and it greatly affects the passage and absorption of light at those wavelengths.
I think you are lying Dave. You have no data that indicates an such effect.
You are a meteorologist. So telling lies and coming up with clever sounding analogies to distract attention from the fact that you can’t/don’t measure or test any of this is a tactic that comes easy to you.
One phony paradigm begets another:
Did you hear the one about the guy that goes to buy a suit?
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=16319
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
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geran
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Dave, just one more thing that you are confused about: “GHGs absorb mostly outgoing radiation, preventing it from escaping into space.”
NOPE!
They can NOT prevent infrared from escaping to space.
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Claudius Denk
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Dave:
“There’s no dispute in the real scientific community about the fact that CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming. You want measured proof? Look at this great big green notch in the Earth’s emission spectrum. This is measured spectrographic data, from a satellite looking down over the tropical western Pacific (except that I added the colored annotations):”
JMcG:
LOL. No dispute? Hell, you frauds don’t dispute anything. You just agree to agree. Meteorology asserts all kinds of magical notions like water that magically defines its boiling temperature to produce a cold steam that is magically is lighter than dry air but magically doesn’t “convect” where it is created but hundreds of miles away due to a dry layer that magically acts like a lid or cap and when it does escape upward magially produces latent heat that magically produces cold, gusty winds.
All of meteorology’s theory is a fairy tale. Every aspect of their theory is flawed. None of you idiots has an argument that doesn’t depend deeply on the bottomless pit of gullibility and blatant stupidity of a public that has failed to even recognize that they are being a sold a theory based on positive pressure (convection) and that failed to identify the obvious structure of an atmosphere that obviously works based on negative pressure acting through plainly evident structural characteristics.
All meteorologists are scientific frauds:
Simple Refutation of the Convection Model of Storm Theory
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=16661
James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
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John O'Sullivan
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Kyle, You are correct about Piers Corbyn. He has been associated with the ‘Slayers’ (now Principia Scientific Intl) and rejects the GHE theory. I remember in 2010 having the honor of presenting Piers with a ‘Climate Realists’ award in the UK House of Parliament. See here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/02/who-are-the-climate-fools-climate-fools-day/
“John O Sullivan: Climate Realists. Gave a short speech and presented a $10,000 cheque to Piers Corbyn, from a US publisher Stairway Press ( US publisher of A J Montford’s – The Hockey Stick Illusion) They had chosen the Climate Fools Day to present the inaugural Ernst-Georg Beck Award, this was not directly a part of Climate Fools Day, see Climate Realists for the detail.”
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Robert Bourke
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John, great article and I have read the Kindle version of Slayers twice and in fact ordered the hard copy book today. Keep up the great work.
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John O'Sullivan
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Robert, much appreciated, thank you!
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Thomas Gillespie
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I did the same. After reading the Kindle version I obtained a hard copy so I could make main notes
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Gary Ashe
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You are one repetitive boring phucked up nutter Doug.
Have a nice day.
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