The UN IPCC’s core climate hypothesis is dead
Below are the first two sections of the Introduction to my definitive paper on why IPCC’s core hypothesis is invalid. All the math and physics are done, but I am expanding the Introduction because too many people with PhD degrees still get confused.
They don’t understand the basics of science because they have little or no background in the philosophy of science and logic. But this is really simple stuff that we can teach to high school kids. – Ed
by Ed Berry, PhD, Atmospheric Physics, CCM
1. Introduction
1.1 IPCC’s claims are based on invalid hypothesis
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [1] bases all its climate claims on its core hypothesis. This hypothesis has three parts:
- Natural carbon emissions remained constant after 1750.
- Natural carbon emissions support a CO2 level of 280 ppm.
- Human carbon emissions caused all the CO2 increase above 280 ppm.
IPCC claims its core hypothesis is true and concludes without scientific validation:
“With a very high level of confidence, the increase in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning and those arising from land use change are the dominant cause of the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.”
“The removal of human-emitted CO2 from the atmosphere by natural processes will take a few hundred thousand years (high confidence).”
The truth is IPCC’s “high level of confidence” vanishes because it assumes incorrectly that IPCC’s core hypothesis is true.
1.2 What this paper does
Simple observation of IPCC’s report [1] shows IPCC’s human carbon cycle does not agree with its natural carbon cycle. IPCC’s own Figure 6.1 shows something is wrong with IPCC’s human carbon cycle.
To test the above observation, this paper derives a “Physics” carbon cycle model that uses only one simple hypothesis:
Outflow equals level divided by response time, herein called e-time.
This hypothesis is used in many scientific and engineering models. Even IPCC uses this hypothesis in several places. It is the simplest possible hypothesis for carbon cycle models.
This simple hypothesis is compatible with all applicable physical and chemical laws. This simple hypothesis shows it is possible and preferable to calculate the natural and human carbon cycles separately. The results of the separate calculations can be added together to produce the total carbon cycle.
IPCC’s carbon cycle model has four key reservoirs: land, atmosphere, surface ocean, and deep ocean. IPCC’s data show carbon levels for each reservoir and the flows between the reservoirs for both natural and human carbon cycles. IPCC’s data for its natural carbon cycle is not perfect but it may be the best data we have. IPCC says its natural carbon cycle data is good to about 20 percent accuracy.
This paper calculates the six e-times for IPCC’s natural carbon cycle data by simply dividing levels by their outflows. Why six? Because the atmosphere and surface ocean have two outflows while the land and deep ocean have only one. With these six e-times, the Physics carbon cycle model is complete, and it exactly replicates IPCC’s data for its natural carbon cycle.
Then this paper calculates the human carbon cycle model. This model begins with all reservoirs empty and inserts IPCC’s data for annual human carbon emissions into the atmosphere. In each model year, the Physics model lets human carbon flow between the reservoirs according the e-times defined by IPCC’s natural carbon cycle.
This simple calculation shows the “true” human carbon cycle because it requires human carbon to obey the same physical rules as IPCC’s natural carbon cycle. However, this “true” human carbon cycle differs significantly from IPCC’s claimed human carbon cycle.
The fact that IPCC’s human carbon cycle is significantly different from the true human carbon cycle – that corresponds to IPCC’s natural carbon cycle – proves IPCC’s human carbon cycle is invalid. IPCC treats human and natural carbon differently, which is unphysical.
Inspection of IPCC’s data shows IPCC did NOT derive its human carbon cycle from its data for the natural carbon cycle or from any data at all. IPCC forced its human carbon cycle to match its core hypothesis without any consideration of IPCC’s natural carbon cycle data.
Therefore, IPCC’s human carbon cycle has no basis in science. Put politely, IPCC’s human carbon cycle is a fraud.
This conclusion is independent of whether IPCC’s natural carbon cycle or the Physics natural carbon cycle properly represent the unknown true natural carbon cycle. All models are approximations to reality.
All that matters here is that the Physics model properly represents IPCC’s natural carbon cycle. Therefore, the Physics model properly calculates IPCC’s true human carbon cycle. This is sufficient to prove IPCC’s human carbon cycle is a fraud and that IPCC’s core hypothesis is false.
All three parts of IPCC’s core hypothesis listed in Section 1.1 are false. There is no other testable hypothesis to replace IPCC’s failed core hypothesis.
The political implications of IPCC’s scientific fraud are significant. IPCC told the world that its human carbon cycle was valid. IPCC’s fraud negates all its claims about human-caused climate change. IPCC’s fraud negates all IPCC’s so-called scientific papers that incorrectly assume IPCC’s core hypothesis is true. All such “scientific” papers are wrong.
Henceforth, no true scientist can claim or assume that natural carbon emissions stayed constant after 1750 and human carbon emissions caused all the increase in atmospheric CO2 above 280 ppm.
Reference
- IPCC. 2013. Carbon and other biogeochemical cycles. Fig. 6.1, p 471. CrossRef
Read more at edberry.com
About the author: Dr. Edwin X Berry is a physicist, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist (CCM) by the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and CEO of Climate Physics, LLC. His expertise is in atmospheric physics, climate physics, numerical models, and the philosophy of science.
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chris
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You don’t even have to go beyond the IPCC Hypothesis point 2 to realize that this is not based in reality. It says that nature supports a level of only 280 ppm CO2. If that were the case then plants would perform best at 280 ppm, but in reality they perform best at 1200 ppm. Therefore, the evolution of photosynthesis took place on a planet with a CO2 concentration of about 1200 ppm most of the time. 280 ppm is nearly the CO2 starvation point for many plants.
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tom0mason
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Earth’s atmosphere is made of 78% nitrogen (N2) and 21% oxygen (O2). The “consensus” view is N2 and O2 are not greenhouse gases (GHGs) and don’t absorb infrared radiation (IR). But scientists have been saying N2 absorbs and radiates IR since 1944 and more recent (2012, 2016) studies have found N2 and O2 are “radiatively important” greenhouse gases with IR temperature absorption capacities similar to CO2.
It’s been known for 75 years that nitrogen – the Earth’s most prevalent atmospheric gas – absorbs and “strongly” radiates infrared energy (Stebbins et al., 1944)
Currently scientists (Höpfner et al., 2012 — https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2012GL051409) publishing in Geophysical Research Letters dispute the “common perception” that nitrogen and oxygen – accounting for 78% and 21% of the Earth’s atmospheric gases – do not contribute signficantly to the Earth’s greenhouse effect.
They assert N2 and O2 are “radiatively important” “natural greenhouse gases” primarily because their concentration is “about 2000 (550) times higher than that of CO2 and about 4.4 × 105 (1.2 × 105) times more abundant than CH4.”
Nitrogen, oxygen combined are more potent GHGs than methane
The atmospheric abundance of N2 and O2 compensates for their relatively weaker IR function (when directly compared to CH4).
For example, “the natural greenhouse effect of N2 and O2 would be larger than that of CH4 by a factor of 1.3” when considering their combined isolated GHE influence.
Further to the last reference a real-world experiment (Allmendinger, 2016 — https://www.allphyscon.ch/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Allmendinger_Behaviour-of-Gases_IJPS-rev.pdf) assessing the efficacy of CO2’s IR-absorption temperature capacity relative to air (N2, O2) and Argon (Ar) further establishes CO2 is not the “special” GHG it is commonly thought to be.
The results were admittedly “surprising” given expectations CO2 would operate as a radiatively distinct GHG.
The tube absorbing IR with N2 and O2 (air) and Ar warmed to a temperature limit quite similar to (55°C to 58°C) the temperature limit in the 100% CO2 tube (58°C).
There was no remarkable or “special” heat absorption capacity for CO2 relative to air observed. And Argon – not considered a greenhouse gas – absorbed IR to the same temperature limit as CO2. With a concentration of 9300 ppm, Ar is the third-most abundant gas in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Because there is so little to distinguish CO2 from the most abundant gas molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, Dr. Allmendinger assesses “a significant effect of carbon-dioxide on the direct sunlight absorption can already be excluded.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
Another study finds CO2’s greenhouse effect contribution and climate sensitivity are much smaller than claimed by the IPCC and proponents of anthropogenic global warming.
Ollila (2019 — http://www.journalpsij.com/index.php/PSIJ/article/view/30127/56520) reconfigures the “consensus”-derived greenhouse effect radiation values and finds
(a) LW absorption only adds 45% to Earth’s present atmospheric greenhouse effect,
(b) water vapor dominates (76.4%) the total greenhouse effect whereas CO2’s contribution is minimal (7.3%),
and
(c) CO2 climate sensitivity is just 0.6°C upon doubling.
According to the IPCC and other sources, when CO2’s atmospheric concentration ranges between 0.03% and 0.04% (300-400 parts per million, or ppm), it literally warms the air by 7.2°C within the Earth’s 33°C greenhouse effect.
Problematically, at no time has it been empirically demonstrated in a real-world experiment that CO2 warms air by this temperature at this concentration. (Or any concentration.)
CO2’s capacity to warm air by 7.2°C is an non-validated assumption derived from the arbitrary estimation that CO2’s warming influence contributes about 20-25% to the Earth’s 33°C greenhouse effect.
Lab experiments using CO2 as a causal variable fail to demonstrate its warming effect (Wagoner et al., 2010 — https://rtobin.phy.tufts.edu/Wagoner%20AJP%202010.pdf).
Classroom lab experiments that use pure (1,000,000 ppm) CO2 in one container and air (N2, O2) in another to demonstrate the CO2 container warms more than the air container are only illustrating that CO2 molecules are heavier than nitrogen and oxygen molecules.
Heavier CO2 molecules “reduce heat transfer by suppressing convective mixing with the ambient air”
In other words, the CO2 molecules aren’t warming the container via their radiative properties, but due to the density differential for CO2 relative to N2 and O2.
Mainstream climate science claims CO2 molecules “slow down the rate of heat-loss from the surface” like a blanket does. And yet the rate at which a CO2 molecule retains or slows down heat loss is, at most, a negligible 0.0001 of a second. A CO2 concentration of 300 ppm versus 400 ppm will therefore have no detectable impact.
SkepticalScience, a blog spearheaded by climate science “consensus” advocate John Cook, is widely considered the explanatory guidebook for the anthropogenic global warming movement.
The blog claims CO2 molecules, with a representation of 4 parts in 10,000 in the atmosphere (400 parts per million, or ppm), collectively function like a blanket does in slowing down the rate at which the human body cools.
It is all just bunkum!
Professor Nasif Nahle has mathematically assessed the rate at which heat is retained by CO2 molecules; his work was endorsed by the Faculty of Physics of the University of Nuevo Leon (Mexico).
Nahle found the “mean free path” for a quantum wave to pass through the atmosphere before colliding with a CO2 molecule is about 33 meters (Nahle, 2011a). Such a wide chasm between molecular collisions would appear to undermine a visualization of CO2 functioning like a blanket does.
Even more saliently, Nahle determined that the rate at which CO2 molecules can retain heat at the surface may only last about 0.0001 of a second (Nahle, 2011b).
If heat-loss is slowed down at a rate of 0.0001 of a second by CO2 molecules, the atmospheric CO2 concentration – whether it’s 300 ppm or 400 ppm – effectively doesn’t matter. The time lapse differential would be immaterial for either concentration.
Consequently, Nahle concludes “carbon dioxide has not an effect on climate changes or warming periods on the Earth”.
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jerry krause
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Hi Tom,
You wrote: “The “consensus” view is N2 and O2 are not greenhouse gases (GHGs)” And something clicked. The one gas of the atmosphere about which we know absorbs solar radiation is oxygen. And we know about the oxygen-ozone system which heats the stratosphere which in turn puts a lid on the troposphere and its its upward convection.
Now a historical fact is that we did not know about the stratosphere until 1899. And then until the Japanese floated hydrogen balloons across the Pacific Ocean to the USA most of us did not recognize the existence of the jet stream at the base of the stratosphere or at the top of the troposphere.
Have you, or anyone else, much pondered the influence of this oxygen-ozone system upon weather (and, of course, we know that the jet stream has an influence upon ordinary thunderstorms to sometimes ‘convert’ these localized thunderstorm into very localized tornado.
What if the earth’s atmosphere would continually cool with increasing altitude as considered before 1899?
Something to ponder about which I haven’t read much here at PSI.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Matt
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The article on Raman Spectroscopy in PSI endorses much of what Tom is referencing here.
The article, by John O’Sullivan was published around March a couple of years ago.
It would be great if PSI had a way to find such valuable articles that are more direct than the currently torturous method.
To be able to reference articles by topic or even being able to scan article content of month and year, similar to realclimatescince.com would be of great service to the reader. There are so many valuable articles in PSI that are very difficult to find.
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Matt
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Tortuous!
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CD Marshall
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My present short answer is I agree with you. Political Climate Science has been deliberately obfuscating the fact that even though N2 and O2 do not have a magnetic dipole (which in a relaxed state neither does CO2) that although they can’t absorb and re-radiate IR once heated they do emit IR all the same.
If I am correct atmospheric molecules are either Rayleigh active or IR active, either way they get heated and once heated, emit IR.
The only difference is IR active molecules like heated CO2 can re-radiate IR and none active IR molecules can only transfer IR energy to another molecule by collision/bumping or have to cool back off, which takes longer. So, in fact CO2 and any molecule that re-radiates IR helps to cool none active molecules off faster by shedding that IR to space or in another direction.
Naturally, if I am correct in all of my data.
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