William Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus, in the Department of Physics at Princeton University. A long-time member of JASON, a group of scientists which provides independent advice to the U.S. government on matters relating to science, technology, and national security, Happer served as Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science from 1991–1993.
Best known to the general public as a vocal critic of the U.N. IPCC “consensus” on global warming, he has been called frequently to give expert testimony before various U.S. congressional committees on the subject of global warming (climate change). In 2015, he found himself at the center of a new controversy involving a so-called “sting” operation organized by Greenpeace.
On September 4, 2018, Happer announced that he would begin serving the National Security Council as the senior director for emerging technologies.
A list of some of Professor Happer’s major research publications may be accessed here.
TheBestSchools.org
Professor Happer: Thank you very much for agreeing to this interview, and to participate in the upcoming Focused Civil Dialogue on global warming with the Australian physicist, David Karoly. The global warming controversy is both exceedingly complicated and highly charged emotionally. Our goal in these interviews is to lay the groundwork for a productive Focused Civil Dialogue between you and Professor Karoly. In this interview, we will explore the issues from a number of different angles, both scientific and political (see the flowchart below).
However, before turning to the substance of the interview, we would like for you to tell us a little bit about your personal story. When and where were you born? What were your parents’ occupations? What was your religious upbringing, if any? Where did you obtain your education? What made you interested in a career in physics in the first place?
Anything you’d like to share with our readers, to give them a sense of you as a person, would be greatly appreciated.
William Happer
I was born on 27 July 1939, in Vellore, India. My father, also Dr. William Happer, was a Scottish medical officer in the Indian Army, and my mother, Dr. Gladys Morgan Happer, was a medical missionary for the Lutheran Church of North Carolina. On one September, a month after my birth, World War II began with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and its ally, the Soviet Union.
Britain and France immediately declared war on Germany in support of the poor Poles, the first victims of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact. The United States remained aloof and there were even suggestions by prominent Americans that we cut a deal with the Nazis and divide up the British Empire with the Germans and Japanese. Before my first birthday in India, the French, who had taken the brunt of the Nazi onslaught, made peace. This left only Britain to face the Nazis and their Japanese allies. At the time, there were fears that the rapidly advancing Japanese would soon seize India, so early in the year 1941, my father put me and my mother, pregnant with my brother Ian, on a ship bound for America.
Our ship sailed around the southern tip of Africa and up the coast of South America to avoid the “wolf packs” of Nazi submarines that were devastating British shipping. We were fortunate to reach the USA safely, and my mother’s parents welcomed us into their home in Salisbury, North Carolina. My father and his Indian Army unit were sent first to Iraq, where the government had declared its support for Hitler, and then to Egypt to help oppose Rommel’s advance across North Africa.
My mother’s brother, Karl Ziegler Morgan, was one of the first physicists to join the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Karl was responsible for protecting the workers at Oak Ridge from radiation hazards, and he is often called the “father of health physics.” He knew a lot about nuclear physics, but little about medicine, so he persuaded my mother to join him in Oak Ridge as the first doctor at “X-10,” now the site of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. More about my mother, Gladys Morgan Happer, can be found in the book, Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project, by Ruth H. Howes and Caroline L. Herzenberg (Temple University Press, 2003).
A preschooler, I went with my mother to Oak Ridge, then a closed city of hastily erected barracks, board walks, muddy streets, and tight security. But I was able to observe scientists of all stripes — most importantly, my physicist-uncle, Karl Morgan. He served as a father figure during the war when I did not know if my real father was alive or dead. It was this experience that convinced me that a career in physics would be wonderful if I could measure up to what was required.
Oak Ridge
Fortunately, my father survived the war and brought us back to India, where we remained until 1948. I went to the International School at Kodaikanal, at an altitude of about 7,000 ft. in the mountains between Tamil Nadu and Kerala in South India. On the first Indian Independence Day, 15 August 1947, I watched the Union Jack flag come down over my father’s government hospital in Madurai, and the Indian tricolor go up to replace it. There were bands and speeches by my father and by his Indian friend and colleague, Dr. Vadamaliyan, the new head of the hospital. I will never forget 30 January 1948, the somber day when Mohandas K. Ghandi was assassinated. There were tense hours of waiting to see if the assassin had been a Hindu or a Muslim. The atrocities of the partition of India and Pakistan had already been bad enough. Had the assassin been a Muslim, there would have been unthinkable carnage.
Later in 1948, we returned to my father’s home in Scotland, where we stayed with his mother in her little flat in Edinburgh. My brother Ian and I went to the James Gillespies School. We did our best to disguise our North Carolinian mother tongue, so the other boys could understand us, and vice versa. My father had been born in Falkirk, the same town where in the year 1298, William Wallace and his little band of Scottish patriots were nearly annihilated in battle by the English King Edward I and his mercenary thugs. I like to think that some of my Scottish ancestors “wi’ Wallace bled.”
In 1949, Scotland was overrun with returning colonials like us and still recovering from the damage of World War II. It was hard for my father to find a suitable job, and my mother missed America. So, in 1950 we once again set sail for America with my newborn sister, Elizabeth, named for my Scottish Aunt Elizabeth, a British army nurse who died in Aden. Broken by the war, our family had no savings, and we had to accept help from my mother’s relatives to make ends meet. My father, then almost 50 years old, and a member of the prestigious Royal Society of Physicians and Surgeons, was not qualified to work as a medical doctor in the United States. He was obliged to take off many months to study for medical examinations. He took them with fresh medical school graduates half his age. Not surprisingly, he had the highest exam score.
Once my father had his license to practice medicine, he accepted a job to head the public health department in Caldwell County, NC, at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The area reminded him of his Scottish homeland. It was a wonderful place to go to middle school and high school. To earn money for college, I worked as an assistant to a commercial beekeeper, a physically demanding job, since you had to wrestle 90-lb supers of honey from hives to a pickup truck, all the time being stung by irate bees. A hard day’s work ended with a swim in a turbulent stream rushing through a picturesque mountain cove. My youth in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina deepened my respect for Nature’s beauty, power, and indifference to mankind.
I was fortunate to win a Morehead Scholarship to the University of North Carolina in 1956, where I majored in physics. On the advice of my Uncle Karl, I entered graduate school at Princeton University in 1964, where I measured the magnetic moments of radioactive nuclear isotopes in which the f7/2 shell was partially filled. This provided incisive tests for the nuclear shell model, for which Maria Goeppert Meyer received the Nobel Prize about that time.
Several of my Princeton professors had ties to Columbia University, and they helped me get a postdoctoral position there under Bob Novick in 1964. Bob and his colleague, Allen Lurio, introduced me to optical pumping, a way to transfer order from light to atoms or molecules, without the need to make an atomic beam, as I had done in my thesis work. Optical pumping involved subtle details of the interaction of radiation with matter — one of the key issues in greenhouse warming. What I learned during my post-doctoral years turned out to be very useful for subsequent work on climate. I was also fortunate to meet Barbara Baker, then a nurse at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, who became my wife and has been a wonderful companion and friend ever since. Our two children, Jim and Gladys, were born in New York City.
I was fortunate to be promoted to Assistant Professor, and I took great pleasure measuring previously inaccessible properties of excited atoms with my graduate students and post docs. Although I tried to ignore the Vietnam war, it was becoming an increasingly divisive factor in American life. Keeping up an old family tradition, my brother Ian served as a US army doctor in South Vietnam.
After the 1970 US invasion of Cambodia, our physics building was seized by protesters. With other physics faculty and students, I was held captive for several days. The pretext was that several senior physics professors, notably Mal Ruderman and Henry Foley, were members of JASON, a group that did classified and unclassified studies for the US government. Having had several sleepless nights becoming acquainted with the protesters, while defending our cherished equipment with other young faculty members, I decided that JASON must be a pretty good organization if it had enemies like these. So, when Henry Foley asked me to join JASON a few years later, I was honored to do so. JASON continues to do valuable work for the USA, and I am still a member.
During a JASON summer study in 1982, some senior technical people from the US Air Force and DARPA asked the JASONs if they could think of any way to help ameliorate the distortion of laser beams by atmospheric turbulence. This is the same phenomenon that limits “seeing” of large, ground-based telescopes. After passing through parcels of warm and cool air, an initially flat optical wave from a laser or a distant star is “wrinkled.” If you are trying to use a high-power laser to shoot down an attacking missile, the wavefront distortion prevents you from focusing all of the laser power on target. And the image of a star at the focal plane of a big telescope is splattered into hundreds of speckles, instead of a sharp point. This seriously limits the angular resolution, which is one of the main rationales for a big telescope. At that time, it was known that for sufficiently bright stars, you could use the starlight itself to measure the wavefront distortion. This information could be used to control a deformable (“rubber”) mirror in such a way that when the distorted wavefront reflected on it, most of the wrinkles were removed.
But you can’t see many bright stars in the sky at night, and none at all during the day. So, Air Force defenders were going to have a hard time unless their targets were obliging enough to be backlit by bright stars like Sirius or Vega. By luck, I thought I knew the answer to the problem. It turns out there is a layer of sodium atoms at an altitude of about 100 km above the earth’s surface. The atoms are released when micrometeorites burn up in the atmosphere. I knew from my work at Columbia that sodium atoms had huge scattering cross sections for yellow resonant light — the same as the light you see if you happen to spill salty water into the flame of a gas cooking stove. So, I proposed that the Air Force invest in a big sodium laser and use it to create an artificial “sodium guide star” just in front of their desired target.
After some initial skepticism, the Air Force gambled that the idea would work. A brilliant team of scientists and engineers led by Bob Fugate soon built and successfully tested a sodium guide star at the secret Starfire Optical Range in the desert near Albuquerque. Some ten years later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the independent proposal by astronomers to build a sodium guide star, the Air Force work was declassified, largely due to the persistence of my JASON colleague and friend, Claire Max, then at the Livermore National Laboratory. Finally getting a little public recognition for my work, I was elected to various scientific societies, including the National Academy of Sciences. More details can be found in The Adaptive Optics Revolution: A History, by Robert W. Duffner (University of New Mexico Press, 2009).
I learned a lot about the atmosphere at JASON. I was involved in the analysis of “thermal blooming” of high-power lasers when they are weakly absorbed by H₂O and CO₂ molecules in the atmosphere. The physics is closely related to that of greenhouse warming. I learned about the physics of the tropopause, where much of the wavefront distortion of starlight or defensive laser beams takes place. I was one of 14 JASON coauthors of one the first books on global warming, with the nerdy title, The Long-Term Impacts of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels, edited by Gordon J. MacDonald (Ballinger Publishing Co., 1982). We over-predicted the warming from more CO₂ as badly as later establishment models, a topic to which I will return below.
My invention of the sodium guide star gave me some credibility in parts of the US government, but since the work was highly classified in the first few years, only a few scientists knew about it. I scrupulously avoided working on related areas with my university students. But based on this classified notoriety, I was elected to be Chair of the JASON steering committee in 1987, and in 1990 I was appointed Director of the Office of Energy Research at the US Department of Energy (DOE) by President George H. W. Bush, where I served under Secretary of Energy, James Watkins, until the election of President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore in the 1992 election. I served for three more months under Secretary Hazel O’Leary in the spring of 1993. I was fortunate that both Secretaries of Energy were supportive of basic science, the responsibility of my office.
The DOE Office of Science had an annual budget of over $3 billion at that time, more than the National Science Foundation. It funded almost all of DOE’s non-weapons basic research, including a great deal of environmental science and climate science. This was my first encounter with the climate establishment, and I was surprised to find environmental science so different from high-energy physics, nuclear physics, materials science, the human genome, and the many other areas we had responsibility for. I insisted that my assistant directors arrange for regular seminars, given by principal investigators of grants we supported. In most fields, principal investigators were delighted that government bureaucrats were actually interested in their research. They enjoyed being questioned during their talks, since this allowed them to show off their erudition. But, with honorable exceptions, principal investigators working on environmental issues were reluctant to come to our Washington offices, and evasive about answering the questions that were so welcome to briefers from other fields.
About three months after the beginning of the Clinton administration, Hazel O’Leary called me into her office to ask, “What have you done to Al Gore? I am told I have to fire you.” I assume that the main thing that upset Al Gore (left) was my questioning of blatant propaganda about stratospheric ozone that was his focus at the time: “ozone holes over Kennebunkport” and similar nonsense. Although Secretary O’Leary offered to find a way to keep me at DOE as a civil servant, I was glad to have an excuse to get back to doing real science at Princeton University, which was kind enough to offer me a professorship again.
For the next few years after my return to Princeton in 1993, I was very busy working on an exciting new project on magnetic resonance imaging with laser polarized nuclei that my young colleague, Professor Gordon Cates, and his students had pioneered while I was at DOE. But watching the evening news, I would often be outraged by the distortions about CO₂ and climate that were being intoned by hapless, scientifically-illiterate newscasters. My wife Barbara, who patiently sat through my outbursts, finally said, “Why don’t you speak up?” At Barbara’s urging, I began to speak up and I have never stopped.
I often hear that since I am not a card-carrying climate scientist — that I, and many other scientists with views similar to mine, have no right to criticize the climate establishment. But as I have outlined above, few have a deeper understanding of the basic science of climate than I. Almost all big modern telescopes use my sodium guidestar to correct for atmospheric turbulence. It works. As we will see below, most climate models do not work. The history of science shows many examples of fields that needed outside criticism. A famous example is Andrei Sakharov’s leadership of opposition to Trofim Lysenko’s politicized biology in the Soviet Union. We will have more to say about Lysenko (right) later in the interview, but one of Lysenko’s main defenses was that Sakharov, a physicist who invented the Soviet hydrogen bomb, was not a “Michurinian” biologist.
The need for outside criticism was well articulated by James Madison, arguably the first graduate student at Princeton University, and the principal architect of the US Constitution. In the “Federalist X,” Madison wrote:
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time.
(Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. The Federalist papers: a collection of essays written in favour of the new constitution as agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787. Dublin, Ohio: Coventry House Publishing, 2015. View citation …)
TheBestSchools.org
We understand that you were recently the object of a purported “sting” operation organized by Greenpeace. Defamatory claims about you growing out of this incident are rife on the Internet, even including in your Wikipedia article. Would you care to share with us briefly your side of the story?
William Happer
Greenpeace is one of the many organizations that have made a very good living from alarmism over the supposed threat of global warming. They are unable to defend the extremely weak science. So, they demonize not only the supposed “pollutant,” atmospheric CO₂, but also any scientists who seem to be effectively refuting their propaganda.
I suppose I should be flattered to be one of their targets: je mehr Feinde, je mehr Ehre (“the more enemies, the more honor”), as the old German saying goes. But my trials pale compared to those of scientists like Willie Soon, Patrick Michaels, and others, who were not only vilified, but driven from their jobs.
The smear campaign began in 2015 when I received an email from a Greenpeace operative posing as an agent for a Middle Eastern “client,” who wanted me to write something about the benefits of CO₂. As we will discuss below, I have long been persuaded that more CO₂ will benefit the world, mainly because it makes plants grow more efficiently and increases their resistance to drought, and because the warming from more CO₂, predicted by establishment models, has been exaggerated by a factor of three or more.
For years, I have used every avenue possible to spread the good news about the benefits of CO₂, so I was quite willing to write an op-ed or essay on this topic for the client. As far as I was concerned, I was using the client, not vice versa. I would urge any reader interested in this episode to read the complete email exchange between me and the Greenpeace operative. It can readily be found on the internet.
In one of the first emails, dated 03/11/15, I stated:
I would be glad to try to help if my views, outlined in the attachments, are in line with those of your client.
The sentence makes it clear that I was only interested in helping the “client” to publicize my long-held views, not to peddle whatever message the “client” had in mind.
Note also remarks in my email response of 05/11/15:
To be sure your client is not misled on my views, it is clear there are real pollutants associated with the combustion of fossil fuels, oxides of sulfur and nitrogen for most of them, fly ash and heavy metals for coal, volatile organics for gasoline, etc. I fully support regulations for cost-effective control of these real pollutants. But the Paris climate talks are based on the premise that CO₂ itself is a pollutant. This is completely false. More CO₂ will benefit the world. The only way to limit CO₂ would be to stop using fossil fuels, which I think would be a profoundly immoral and irrational policy.
I ended the note of 05/11/15 with the paragraph:
My activities to push back against climate extremism are a labor of love, to defend the cherished ideals of science, which have been so corrupted by the climate-change cult. If your client was considering reimbursing me for writing something, I would ask that whatever fee would have come to me would go directly to the CO₂ Coalition. This was the arrangement I had with the attorneys representing the Peabody Coal Company in the regulatory hearings in Minnesota. The fee I would have received was sent instead to the CO₂ Coalition, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational organization. The CO₂ Coalition covers occasional travel expenses for me, but pays me no other fees or salary.
Here you see that I was willing to write something gratis, as a “labor of love,” as long as I could get my message (not the “client’s” message) to more people. The CO₂ Coalition that I mentioned is a new tax-exempt educational organization that some friends and I have formed to help get out the good news about the benefits of CO₂. I suppose you might call it a “CO₂ Anti-Defamation League.” The Coalition leads a hand-to-mouth existence, with an annual operating budget of under $200,000 per year. Even a few thousand dollars from the “client” would help keep the lights on. The last I checked, Greenpeace has an annual operating budget of about $350,000,000, more than 1,000 times larger than the CO₂ Coalition’s.
I have never taken a dime for any of my activities to educate the public that more CO₂ will benefit the world. I even make contributions of several thousands of dollars a year from my modest university pension income. If any readers of this interview would like to help the CO₂ Coalition, they can find more information about how to donate at the CO2Coalition’s website.
The result of the Greenpeace smear included many hostile, obscene phone calls and emails with threats to me, my family, even my grandchildren. George Orwell wrote about these tactics in his novel, 1984, when he described the daily, obligatory “Two Minutes of Hate” for Emmanuel Goldstein (Leon Trotsky) and his agents, who were the enemies of Big Brother (Stalin) and his thugs.
Greenpeace and other even more fanatical elements of the global-warming movement fully embrace the ancient lie that their ideological end — elimination of fossil fuel — justifies any means, including falsification of scientific data and character assassination of their opponents.
But Kipling got it right: You will prevail,
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools.
TheBestSchools.org
Now, let us turn to the main matter at hand. The first topic is the physical theory upon which the official position of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is based. (The IPCC’s official position may be summarized as making four claims: global warming is a well-established fact; it is anthropogenic; it is a major problem for humanity; and concerted global governmental action is required to combat it.)
First of all, critics claim that the computer models upon which the IPCC’s official position is based are unreliable because of the inherent difficulty of modeling the climate due to the fact that the atmosphere is a fluid-dynamic system, which, like all such systems, is subject to turbulence — which makes its long-term behavior very hard to predict (turbulence being a form of “sensitivity to initial conditions” or “chaos”).
Supporters of the official or “consensus” position (we will discuss the notion of “consensus” further below) would argue that such considerations are basically irrelevant, given the simplicity of the physics of the “greenhouse effect”:
- CO₂ has been increasing (which no one disputes)
- CO₂ is a greenhouse gas (ditto)
- Therefore, the earth’s atmosphere must become warmer
Which side do you come down on with regard to first principles (so to speak) affecting the consensus position on global warming?
William Happer
Let me first respond to the bulleted statements with which you ended your previous section. Yes, CO₂ levels have been increasing, at about two parts per million (ppm) per year in recent years. Yes, CO₂ is a “greenhouse gas.” That is, it is partially opaque to the thermal, infrared radiation of the earth’s surface, but transparent to most sunlight. Most of the atmosphere consists of nitrogen (N₂) and oxygen (O₂), which are nearly transparent to both sunlight and thermal radiation, and which are therefore not greenhouse gases.
The last bullet “Therefore, the earth’s atmosphere must become warmer” is not very well posed. As you know the atmosphere, does not have a single temperature. The approximate vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere is shown below.
Fig. 1. The vertical temperature profile of the earth’s atmosphere. More CO₂ is expected to cool the stratosphere and warm the troposphere. The amount of surface warming is likely to be about 1° C for doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO₂.
[Source: Astrobites.]
Although there are important exceptions, the air is usually warmest near the surface and cools with increasing altitude. A representative cooling rate for the first 10 km or so is about 6.5° C/km. This is why people like to go to the mountains in the summer to get away from the heat. I went to high school in the little Appalachian town of Lenoir, NC, at an elevation of about 400 m, where the temperature was routinely about 8° F hotter than in the resort town of Blowing Rock, NC, at an elevation of about 1,100 m, some 20 miles away on the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The air temperature continues to decrease with altitude until you reach the “tropopause,” about 11 km of altitude over much of the continental USA. This is the top of the churning currents of air in the troposphere below. The churning is driven by solar heating of the surface, not unlike the heating of water in a sauce pan on a stove. Above the tropopause is the stratosphere, where the atmospheric churning stops. On a plane ride across the USA, airliners normally fly just above the tropopause in the lower stratosphere, where there is usually little turbulence, and where the air temperature is on the order of 220° K or -70° F.
Above the tropopause, in the stratosphere, the air no longer cools with increasing altitude. Starting at about 20 km, it begins to warm substantially, and the temperature peaks at about 0° C around 50 km altitude, where the absorption of ultraviolet solar radiation by ozone (O3) causes the maximum temperature rise. The heat from the absorbed ultraviolet light is dumped to space and to the earth below as infrared radiation emitted by greenhouse molecules, mainly CO₂, but with some contribution from O3. More CO₂ will cool the stratosphere, since more infrared-active molecules are available to radiate away energy.
The troposphere — the first 11 km of air — is quite different from the stratosphere. Close to the earth’s surface, much of the heat transfer is by convection of moist air and not by radiation, where more CO₂ could make a direct difference. More CO₂ will probably warm the troposphere and the earth’s surface. But the magnitude of the warming is very poorly known. My educated guess is that doubling CO₂ concentrations will warm the surface by about 1° C and will warm the middle troposphere by about 1.2° C. These are numbers that you calculate from the direct effects of more CO₂. The much higher “equilibrium climate sensitivities” quoted by the IPCC, say 3° C for doubling CO₂, come from assuming that the relatively small direct temperature increase from more CO₂ is greatly amplified by the changes in the properties of water vapor and clouds. There is less observational support with each passing year for this “positive feedback” on the direct warming from CO₂.
Now let me comment on the IPCC’s four official positions which you mentioned at the beginning of the previous section.
Global warming is a well-established fact.
This statement is only half true. A more correct statement would be “global warming and global cooling are both well-established facts.” The earth is almost always warming or cooling. Since the year 1800, the earth has warmed by about 1° C, with much of the warming taking place before much increase of atmospheric CO₂. There was a quite substantial cooling from about 1940 to 1975. There has been almost no warming for the past 20 years when the CO₂ levels have increased most rapidly. The same alternation of warming and cooling has characterized the earth’s climate for all of geological history.
It is anthropogenic.
No, most of the warming has probably been due to natural causes. But much of the increase in CO₂, from around 280 ppm in the year 1800 to about 400 ppm in 2015, is probably anthropogenic, although the warming oceans and land have also released some CO₂. The warming of urban areas has correlated well with increasing CO₂. This is the well-known urban heat-island effect of expanding cities. But it is not increasing CO₂ that causes urban warming; rather, it is the replacement of green fields and forests, with their transpirational cooling, by roads and buildings which do not transpire water vapor. Of course, CO₂ levels also increased, along with the urban warming, but the additional CO₂ did not cause the warming associated with urbanization. Correlation is not causation! The sun does not rise at dawn because the rooster crows. Over the non-urban areas of the earth, the correlation between CO₂ levels and temperature has been poor.
Potent natural influences on climate include relatively short-period phenomena changes in ocean conditions like El Niño and longer-period changes like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or the North Atlantic Oscillation. Large volcanic eruptions are known to cool the climate for a few years. There is growing evidence that changes in solar activity somehow affect the climate, and there are probably many other influences that we have not yet recognized.
Some small fraction of the 1° C warming during the past two centuries must have been due to increasing CO₂, which is indeed a greenhouse gas. In equilibrium, the temperature increase should have been ΔT=S log₂ (400 ppm/280 ppm), where S is the equilibrium climate sensitivity. Without feedback, the theoretical sensitivity can be calculated to be very nearly S = 1° C, and the base-two logarithm is log₂ (400/280) = 0.51. So, the feedback-free warming should have been ΔT = 0.51° C, or about half of the observed warming. The other half of the warming would have been due to natural causes, perhaps related to the recovery of the earth from the “Little Ice Age,” which we will discuss a bit more below.
The favored IPCC equilibrium sensitivity is S = 3° C, about three times larger than the feedback-free value of S = 1° C. So, the CO₂-induced warming from IPCC models should have been three times larger, or ΔT = 1.54° C, substantially more than the observed warming. To cope with this embarrassing overestimate, establishment models assume that much of the warming has been canceled by aerosol cooling — for example, by small sulfate particulates from the combustion of high-sulfur coal and oil. Indeed, sulfate particulates from large volcanic eruptions, like that of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815, are known to cause world-wide cooling for several years. But the devil is in the details, and many scientists who have looked carefully at the physics regard the aerosol corrections as largely a fudge factor, invoked by the global warming establishment to avoid admitting the equilibrium temperature rise from doubling CO₂ is much less than S = 3° C.
It is a major problem for humanity.
Quite the contrary, more CO₂ will be a benefit to humanity. The predicted warming from more CO₂ is grossly exaggerated. The equilibrium warming from doubling CO₂ is not going to be 3° C, which might marginally be considered a problem, but closer to 1° C, which will be beneficial. One should not forget that the “global warming” is an average value. There will be little warming in the tropics and little warming at midday. What warming occurs will be mostly in temperate and polar regions, and at night. This will extend the agricultural growing season in many countries like Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia. More CO₂ greatly increases the efficiency of photosynthesis in plants and makes land plants more drought-resistant. So, the net result of more CO₂ will be strongly beneficial for humanity.
Concerted global governmental action is required to combat it.
In view of the comments above, this is nonsense. Government actions to combat the non-existent problem have blighted the landscape with windmills and solar farms. They have driven up the price of electricity, which has disproportionately harmed the poorest segments of society. Government actions have corrupted science, which has been flooded by money to produce politically correct results. It is time for governments to finally admit the truth about global warming. Warming is not the problem. Government action is the problem.
TheBestSchools.org
We all know that computer models are only as good as the data we feed into them (GIGO). Yet, it has been claimed that the empirical data relevant to the IPCC’s official position are very difficult to gather, for a number of reasons: the “signal” (the amount of warming claimed, measured in tenths of a degree Celsius) is some three orders of magnitude smaller that the range of the geographic temperature variation, not to mention the normal diurnal and annual temperature variability, over the surface of the planet — which makes the signal very hard to detect. On top of that, critics often say that the non-random distribution of measuring stations around the world creates still more difficulties in obtaining reliable empirical data.
Consensus supporters would say that the signal is well within the range of detection, the global coverage is adequate, and any biases can be detected and compensated for.
Could you please comment on the adequacy of the empirical basis for the computer models informing the consensus position?
William Happer
We need to remember the difference between weather models and climate models. Weather models are supposed to tell me whether I can plan a backyard picnic next weekend or whether I need to worry about a damaging frost tomorrow morning. I expect these predictions to be as accurate as possible. Weather models use detailed empirical data about the state of the atmosphere and oceans today to extrapolate its state in the near future, perhaps up to a week ahead.
Climate models are supposed to predict the statistical properties of weather: that is, the probability, not the certainty, that it will rain next Labor Day weekend. Climate models work with a much smaller set of empirical input data than weather models. Like weather models, climate models usually take the rotation rate of the earth, the brightness of the sun, the concentrations of CO₂, and a few other key variables as empirical input. But climate models do not require the detailed information about today’s winds, pressures, and temperatures that are needed for weather models.
For example, details about a “Bermuda high” today are essential empirical input data to let a weather model forecast what my Princeton weekend weather will be. But today’s Bermuda high is irrelevant to the predictions of climate models, which will give the same probability of rain every year at the same date, assuming constant solar radiation, constant concentrations of CO₂, etc. A climate model is supposed to predict the probability for the formation of Bermuda highs, not use the Bermuda high as an empirical input.
Both weather models and climate models are based on approximate solutions of the celebrated Navier-Stokes equation for fluid motion on a rotating planet. This equation, and related thermodynamic and radiative transport equations, describe the complicated interplay of gravitation, buoyancy, Coriolis forces, heat release from condensing water vapor, thermal radiation, and other phenomena. Clouds, other aerosols, and the very complicated way the atmospheric opacity depends on the frequency of solar and thermal radiation must all be taken into account, as well.
Some of the empirical input data for climate models are very well known — for example, the chemical composition of the air, the heats of condensation of water, the line spectra of greenhouse gases, the geography of the earth, etc. But many possibly important details are not well understood — for example, the far-wing spectral line shape of greenhouse gases, the extent to which continuum absorption and line structure contribute to the opacity, the role of solar activity, how cosmic rays influence cloud nucleation, how much contribution to radiation forcing comes from sulfate, black carbon and other aerosols, etc.
The empirical basis of both weather and climate models could be improved and many excellent scientists are working to bring this about with better laboratory and observational measurements. But I think the main problem with climate models is not the empirical input data. The main problem is that the fundamental equations for the earth’s atmosphere and oceans are too hard to solve with the necessary detail, even for the most advanced computers. Approximate solutions must be devised. These approximate solutions involve many parameterizations that involve human judgment — AKA educated guesses. Spatial and temporal grid sizes for numerical solutions of the Navier-Stokes equation are an example of such parameters. The compounding effect of many educated guesses, even if each individual guess is physically reasonable, has probably led to the striking exaggeration of warming by climate models.
TheBestSchools.org
There is a much-reproduced graph (or family of similar graphs) which purports to show substantial global mean surface temperature increase over the past century or so:
Fig. 2. Global Mean Surface Temperature (“T”)
[Source: Earth Observatory]
We have heard that this graph is so famous it is simply referred to as “T” (for temperature). T is a very persuasive — and, yes, scary — graph, at least to laymen like ourselves. Why doesn’t it just settle the issue of global warming all by itself, once and for all?
William Happer
I’m not sure where your Figure two comes from originally, but so let us use a similar figure from a known source: namely, the recent paper, “Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface temperature warming hiatus,” by Thomas R. Karl et al. (Science, June 2015, 348: 1469–1472), co-authored by employees of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and therefore with the imprimatur of the US federal government.
Fig. 3. Recent version of T
[Source: Science]
In March of 2013, a little less than three years ago, in preparation for a colloquium at the Argonne National Laboratory, I downloaded the graph below from the official NOAA website:
Fig. 4. NOAA data from the year 2013.
[Source: William Happer, 2013 Argonne National Laboratory Talk[PDF]
NOAA’s data showed a clear pause or hiatus in warming from about the year 2000 to 2013. Responding to this interview in early 2016, I tried to find the temperature record I had used at the Argonne colloquium on the Web, and I discovered that it seems to have been expunged from official NOAA websites, which now have various versions of Figure 3. The hiatus in warming that was clear in the data of 2013 has disappeared! This brings to mind George Orwell’s famous 1949 novel, 1984, where the hero, Winston Smith, is employed by the Ministry of Truth to rewrite history to conform to the current party line. And then there is Molière’s hero Sganarelle from Le médecin malgré lui [The Doctor in Spite of Himself] (1666), who responded to the question of why he had placed the heart on the right side of the human body and the liver on the left, by saying: “Nous avons changé tout cela!” [“We have changed all of that!”].
I recommend that you and your readers have a look at the Climate4you website. Here, you can see not only the data of Figure 2, but also temperature records from other ground-based recording networks, as well as atmospheric temperatures measured by satellites.
For example, the graph below shows the temperature of the lower troposphere:
Fig. 5. The temperature of the lower troposphere measured with satellite-mounted microwave sounding units (MSU).
[Source: Climate4you]
The data came from NOAA’s TIROS-N satellite, and were processed by Dr. Carl Mears of Remote Sensing Systems (RSS). The cooling from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 and the warming from the El Niño events in 1998, 2010, and 2015 are clearly visible. The analysis of satellite data from the competing research group at the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) are very similar. None of the satellite data sets shows as much warming as Figure 2. In fact, they show almost no systematic warming at all since the year 2000.
In contrast to ground stations, which originally used mercury or alcohol thermometers to measure surface temperatures or sea water temperatures at sparse sample locations, satellites measure temperature remotely from orbit over most of the globe by recording the intensity of thermal upwelling radiation at frequencies close to 60 GHz, and with wavelengths of about five mm. These frequencies are strongly absorbed and emitted by molecular oxygen (O₂), with more or less intensity if the atmosphere is hotter or colder and if the attenuation rate of the radiation is larger or smaller. The “brightness” at frequencies close to 60 GHz can be measured very precisely with the aid of calibrated blackbodies aboard the satellite. This is a sophisticated version of how a blacksmith judges the temperature of a piece of iron by its color, about 600° C if the iron is dim red, about 900° C if orange, and about 1,100° C if bright yellow. The temporal scanning thermometers used so often nowadays in hospitals work in a similar way with the aid of thermal radiation from the patient’s skin.
Satellites do not purport to give surface-temperatures changes, like Fig. 2 that we discussed earlier, but rather give a characteristic temperature change of the lower troposphere. This is to avoid dealing with the complicated variations of microwave emissivity of the surface itself. Using the brightness of different frequencies near the 60 GHz peak of the O₂ emission band, the satellites can estimate the temperature of different atmospheric layers, from the lower troposphere to the stratosphere.
Almost all climate models predict that the warming of the lower troposphere should be faster than that of the surface, since a warming surface, especially over the 70 percent of the earth that is oceans, will vaporize more water. The condensation of this excess water vapor into clouds releases latent heat (“steam heat”) that causes more warming of the air in the lower troposphere than at the surface. So, from very basic physics, the troposphere should have warmed more (by a factor of about 1.2) than the surface, not less.
Many people have pointed out that models of global warming from more CO₂ have predicted much more warming than has been observed over the past decade or two. For example, see the following figure from John C. Fyfe, et al. (“Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years,” Nature Climate Change, 2013, 3: 767–769):
Fig. 6. A comparison of the warming predicted by climate models with observed warming.
[Source: Nature Climate Change]
Rather than find out what is wrong with the models and correct them, whoever constructed Fig. 2 simply changed the data of Fig. 3, presumably guided by Nobel Prize–winning economist Ronald H. Coase’s comment, “If you torture the data enough, nature will always confess.”
TheBestSchools.org
You have frequently claimed that the computer models predicting global warming have been falsified as a matter of empirical fact. We take it that you are referring to the so-called “pause” or “hiatus” in global warming over the past 18 years or so, which was not predicted by the models. Is that correct?
If so, what would you say in light of the recent study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) purporting to show that the pause never existed to begin with?
William Happer
We have already discussed how the “hiatus” disappeared last year, like one of the leaders of the Soviet secret-police, Nikolai Yezhov, from group photos with Joseph Stalin. Yezhov supervised the arrest and execution of approximately 1,000,000 Soviet citizens in the “Great Terror” of 1937. Many others were sent to concentration camps. This was a bit much for even the committed leftists of that time. So, to polish his image as benevolent Uncle Joe, Stalin laid all the blame on Yezhov, who was executed in his turn. Here is an example of the “before” and “after” pictures:
Fig. 7. In the original picture on the left, Yezhov is standing between Joseph Stalin and the White Sea canal, built at great cost in human lives with prison labor. On the right is a later version, after Yezhov was executed to make sure he did not expose Stalin’s orchestration of the Great Terror in 1937.
[Source: Wikipedia]
For the global warming establishment, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the temperature hiatus of the last decade or two were like Yezhov — a serious embarrassment to the party line, that climate is controlled solely by CO₂. The solution was the same as Stalin’s or the Argentine military junta’s: make the embarrassments disappear.
I am glad that you brought up the important idea of falsifiability. This concept is often associated with the philosopher Karl Popper, whose views are succinctly summarized in his essay, “Science as Falsification” (in his collection, Conjectures and Refutations [Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963). Here Popper says:
It was the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more dissatisfied with these three theories — the Marxist theory of history, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology; and I began to feel dubious about their claims to scientific status. My problem perhaps first took the simple form, “What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton’s theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?”
He goes on to say:
I found that those of my friends, who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appear to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, open your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refuse to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still “un-analyzed” and crying aloud for treatment.
After some discussion, Popper concludes:
One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.
Figure five above, from the paper of Fyfe et al. in Nature, says it all. Most establishment climate models are scientifically falsified because they predicted much more warming than was actually observed. And there were dozens of papers in major scientific journals that made the same point.
Watching the news of the blizzard of 2016 on the evening news, I heard New York City Mayor de Blasio state that the blizzard was an example of weather that has become more extreme “because of global warming.” Just as Popper said: “Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory.”
Yet, there is not the slightest evidence that the weather has become more extreme. A good quantitative discussion of extreme weather can be found in John Christy’s congressional testimony [PDF].
Have a look at the evidence, much of it collected by NOAA and other government agencies in their honorable past:
Fig. 8. Weather extremes have not increased, even though CO₂ levels are steadily increasing.
[Sources: NOAA: Tornadoes; Hurricanes; Drought; Rutgers University: Snow Cover]
The astonishing recent claim by NOAA, that there never was a hiatus, reminds me of the Baron’s soliloquy about the power of his treasure chests in Pushkin’s “little tragedy,” The Miserly Knight, of 1830 (AKA The Covetous Knight). I have tried to reproduce the solemn, iambic pentameter of Pushkin’s verse in my translation:
И вольный гений мне поработится,
И добродетель и бессонный труд
Смиренно будут ждать моей награды.
Я свистну, и ко мне послушно, робко
Вползет окровавленное злодейство,
И руку будет мне лизать, и в очи
Смотреть, в них знак моей читая воли.
Free genius will enslave itself to me,
And virtue, yes, and, sleepless labor too
With humble mien will wait for my reward.
I’ve but to whistle, and obedient, timid,
Blood-spattered villainy will crawl to me
And lick my hand, and gaze into my eyes,
To read in them the sign of my desire.
The world has lots of political and financial Barons who profit in one way or another from hysteria over climate change. And, alas, there are muses in the mass media willing to bring tribute, as well as genius-scientists willing to enslave themselves.
In addition, with decades of propaganda about the supposed threat of more CO₂, and the menace of evil climate-change heretics like me, there are plenty of sincere but misguided true believers — like the illiterate old woman who tossed a few more sticks of wood at the feet of Jan Hus, as he was burnt at the stake for “heresy.”
Like Hus, the best one can say for them is sancta simplicitas, or “holy simplicity.”
TheBestSchools.org
Many would argue that, whatever the theoretical and empirical uncertainties surrounding the consensus view on global warming may be, we simply cannot afford the luxury of further study. As with Pascal’s Wager, the stakes are so high that it is far better to act and discover it was not necessary, than not to act and discover it was.
We will be discussing the specifics of the implications of global warming for human welfare below. Here, we would like you to speak to this general type of argument: “urgency overrides normal scientific caution in the face of uncertainty.”
William Happer
Pascal explained that it was better to wager that God exists than that He does not. Part of Moses’s second commandment was, “I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.”
If Moses’s God exists, says Pascal, you will be very sorry if you don’t believe in Him. No matter how small the probability, it is better to bet on His existence and act accordingly. A version of Pascal’s Wager I often heard from my Scottish father was Robert Burns’s quip, “An atheist’s laugh’s a poor exchange for Deity offended.” I am not qualified to say more about theology, but if God exists, I hope He will be merciful to believers and unbelievers.
But let me turn to what is meant by “doing something” about global warming, since it is supposedly “good insurance.” Pascal made major contributions to physics and mathematics of importance to climate science, before turning to philosophy and theology. As far as I know, he was the first to introduce probabilistic or statistical ideas to theology. And the theological context is appropriate, since global warming has long since acquired many of the trappings of religion, disguised as science.
Promoters of the “good insurance” argument would have you believe that there is a small but finite risk of catastrophic consequence from more CO₂, irreversible “tipping points,” and other doomsday scenarios. This is not true. CO₂ levels were thousands of ppm over most of the Phanerozoic eon — the last 550 million years (when there is a good fossil record of multicellular life), as shown below in the figure from R. A. Berner and Z. Kothvala, “Geocarb III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO₂ over Phanerozoic Time” (American Journal of Science [PDF], 2001, 301: 182–204).
Fig. 9. The ratio, RCO₂, of past atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to those (about 300 ppm) of past few million years, This particular proxy record comes from the fraction of the rare stable isotope 13C to the dominant isotope 12C in carbonate sediments and paleosols. Other proxies give similar results.
[Source: American Journal of Science [PDF]
Only once in the Phanerozoic, about 300,000,000 years ago, has the CO₂ level been as low as in the recent geological past. Today’s 400 ppm is still a CO₂ famine as far as most plants are concerned. During the coldest parts of continental glaciations of the past 5,000,000 years, CO₂ levels dropped to 200 ppm or less [J.K. Ward, et al., “Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2005, 102: 690–694], not much above the 150 ppm or so when many plants die of CO₂ starvation [J.K. Dippery, et al., “Effects of low and elevated CO₂ on C3 and C4 annuals: Growth and biomass allocation,” Oecologia, 1995, 101: 13–20).
Life begins to fade at half of today’s CO₂ levels, and dies almost completely at one quarter of today’s values. Geological history has demonstrated that life flourishes abundantly at double or quadruple the CO₂ levels of today. It is stupid to insure against damage that will not occur if CO₂ levels are doubled or tripled. A bet that the toss of two dies will give 13 is still a bad bet, no matter how astronomical the odds.
I think that the fact that more CO₂ is good, not bad, for the world is the strongest argument against “insurance policies.” But another powerful argument is that “the cure is worse than the disease,” especially since there is no disease at all. Today, there is no way for humanity to prosper without using fossil fuels. Quite aside from their high cost, wind and solar farms are of limited use for producing electrical power, because of their unreliability. Solar farms stop working every night and windmills stop working when the wind stops blowing. And neither makes transportation fuel for automobiles or aircraft.
China, India, and other less-developed countries are not about to cut their CO₂ emissions to pander to the USA and Europe. Over-privileged, ignorant, or cynical western elites are trying force green “insurance” onto their own populations, depriving most of them of meaningful jobs or hope for the future. In the process, they blight once-wide-open spaces with ugly, barely-functional solar farms, and cover once-green hills with noisy, bird-chopping windmills. And even the flawed models, like those of Fig. 6, show temperatures one 100 years from now that are only a few tenths of a degree cooler than they would have been with no insurance at all.
The economic damage to the least-advantaged parts of society from the “insurance” will be real and painful. But the insurance salesmen, like the Laputan professors of Gulliver’s Travels, “instead of being discouraged, . . . are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair.” This is a protection racket, not insurance.
TheBestSchools.org
Let’s move on now to the next set of issues. Assuming for the sake of argument that global warming is indeed a well-established fact, the next question is: What is causing it?
In connection with this question, another graph is often referred to — the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) “Hockey Stick,” popularized by Al Gore in his 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth:
Fig. 10. The “Hockey Stick.”
[Source: IPCC]
Critics say, among other things, that the Hockey Stick cannot possibly be right because it wipes out such well-known phenomena as the “Medieval Warm Period” (c. 1000–1300 AD) and the “Little Ice Age” (c. 1550–1850), as you have already alluded to above.
Where do you stand on the Hockey Stick? Could you please explain to our readers what is right or wrong with it, and how (in your opinion) it came to have the significant role it has assumed in the discussion of global warming?
William Happer
The hockey-stick temperature record was conspicuously absent from the latest IPCC report, which speaks volumes. My guess is that the hockey stick started out as an honest but mistaken paper, but one welcomed by the global-warming establishment. They had been embarrassed for years by the Medieval Warm Period, when Vikings farmed Greenland, and when emissions from fossil fuels were negligible. A.W. Montford’s book, The Hockey Stick Illusion (Anglosphere Books, 2015), is a pretty good summary of what happened (see this review).
As you can learn from the book, much of the Hockey Stick was based on growth rings from a judiciously chosen collection of trees. If you use other temperature proxies, for example 18O to 16O isotope ratios in carbonates, like the stalagmites of caves, borehole temperatures, lake-bottom pollen, alkenones, etc., you see a clear Medieval Warm Period, in agreement with historical data. A temperature record from more reliable proxies that do not include tree rings is shown in the figure below, taken from C. Loehle and J.H. McCulloch, “Correction to: A 2000-year temperature construction based on non-treering proxies,” Energy & Environment, 2008, 19: 93–100):
Fig. 11. A 2000-year record of temperature using non-tree-ring proxies.
[Source: Energy & Environment]
NOAA’s recent attempt to eliminate the hiatus is an example of the same kind of thinking that went into the hockey stick. If a politically correct theory does not agree with observations, revise the observations. This is the complete opposite of Nobel Laureate–physicist Dick Feynman’s definition of science, which he spelled out in an entertaining lecture at Cornell University in 1964:
In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it (audience laughter), no, don’t laugh, that’s really true. Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature, or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works.
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is . . . If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.
Fortunately, a videotape of Feynman making these remarks at Cornell University was recorded, complete with Feynman’s Bronx accent:
TheBestSchools.org
Now, even assuming that the situation depicted by the Hockey Stick is basically accurate — that a global warming spike coincides with the Industrial Revolution — critics still maintain that there are further uncertainties surrounding the claim that the burning of fossil fuels is the main “driver” (dominant causal factor) of global warming. Namely:
- We are, after all, still recovering from the last ice age (in the true sense of the term), which lasted for about 100,000 years and only ended about 12,000 years ago; therefore, why isn’t modest warming simply what we should expect (the null hypothesis) during an interglacial epoch such as ours? Isn’t the unspoken assumption by consensus scientists that climate change is abnormal blatantly false?
- Over the geological record taken as a whole, it appears that warming trends regularly precede rising CO₂ levels, not the other way around.
- Some studies show a strong correlation between solar activity cycles and earth surface temperatures; in fact, it was recently predicted that we may be entering a new Little Ice Age in 20 years or so, given that we are due to experience a “Maunder Minimum” (a period of minimal solar activity) at that time; the last Maunder Minimum is thought by some to have contributed to the Little Ice Age.
Consensus supporters, of course, would dismiss these concerns as basically irrelevant in comparison with the overriding fact of the rapid increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations during the past century.
How would you balance these two competing sets of concerns?
William Happer
Here, I am reminded of a wonderful scene from the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz.
Dorothy’s little dog Toto has just pulled back the green curtain to show that the “Wizard” is really a white-haired old man, manipulating various levers to control optical illusions. Seeing Dorothy and her friends, the Wizard shouts “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtains; the great Oz has spoken!” Defenders of the consensus are saying, “pay no attention to the well-documented facts summarized in your three bullets, 97 percent of scientists have spoken.”
Yes, there has been a rapid increase of CO₂ in the past century, and it has already made a contribution to increased agricultural production. And yes, there has been warming, about 1° C, but with half the warming occurring before there was much increase in CO₂. The erratic nature of the warming over the past century suggests that half or more of the warming is not due to more CO₂, but has been caused by other natural phenomena, which have caused warming or cooling over all of geological history.
The long-term ice ages seem to be at least partially explained by the Milankovic hypothesis. Milutin Milankovic, a Serbian astrophysicist, pointed out that changes in the earth’s orbit lead to changes in the summer insolation of the northern hemisphere. For certain combinations of tilt and orientation of the earth’s rotation axis, and of the ellipticity of the orbit, there is not enough summer sunshine near the north pole (often taken to be north of 65 degrees latitude) to melt the previous winter’s snow. Then, continental ice sheets can grow. This may be part of the explanation of the quasi-periodic occurrence of interglacial periods, like the one we are living in today. After 10,000 year or so of warmth, the ice returns. About 100,000 years pass between one balmy interglacial and the next, although the interval can be longer or shorter. A comparison of global temperature, as inferred from ice-core proxies, and summer insolation at 65 degrees north is shown below:
Fig. 12. A comparison calculated summer insolation at 65 degrees north latitude with temperatures inferred from Antarctic ice cores.
[Source: Climate Data]
Interglacials do occur at peaks of northern summer insolation, but some peak insolations had little effect on temperature. Our current interglacial is not as warm as the last one, 130,000 years ago, the Eemian, but it has lasted longer. And you can see why some people are worried that our current interglacial may be approaching an end, since northern summer insolation has dropped dramatically.
Figure 13, below, shows temperatures inferred from 18O isotope ratios and CO₂ concentrations in ice cores. As you mentioned above, close examination of the temperature and CO₂ data shows that temperature changes precede changes in CO₂ by several centuries. A possible implication is that warming oceans release dissolved CO₂ and cooling oceans absorb it. In the extreme cold just before the start of an interglacial, the ice has large amounts of dust, presumably because of desertification of ice-free areas of continents which permit global dust storms. CO₂ concentrations drop to as little as 200 ppm or lower at these dusty times, perhaps leading to partial dieback of land vegetation from CO₂ starvation, which would amplify the desertification.
Fig. 13. A comparison of temperature inferred from Antarctic ice cores with trapped CO₂ and dust.
[Source: New World Encyclopedia]
I am glad you mentioned solar activity above. The medieval warm period, the little ice age, and the current warm period are too short to ascribe to orbital changes, but they do suggest some sort of solar influence.
A sketch of the Maunder minimum of sun spots that you mention is shown below.
Fig. 14. Sunspot frequencies, observed since the year 1600. Almost no sunspots were observed from about 1650 to 1700, a fact first pointed out by the British astronomer Edward Walter Maunder.
[Source: Wikimedia]
There are few observations of sun spots before 1600, but it turns out that sunspot frequency is strongly correlated with the cosmic ray intensity at the earth, which in turn, is strongly correlated with the production of the radioactive isotope 14C, the relative abundance of which can be measured with great precision in tree rings.
Fig. 15. Relative production rate of 14C for the past 1100 years. Note the inverted scale. The production rate was higher during the Maunder Minimum than at present or during the medieval climate optimum around the year 1000, when the Vikings farmed Greenland..
[Source: U.S. Geological Survey [PDF]
From inspection of the temperature record (Fig. 11), sunspot activity (Fig. 14), and the 14C production rate (Fig. 15), one can see that the earth’s temperature is very strongly correlated with solar activity, as indicated by sunspot numbers. At times of high solar activity, temperatures are high and 14C production rates are low. The Danish physicist, Henrik Svensmark (“Influence of Cosmic Rays on Earth’s Climate,” Phys. Rev. Letters, 1998, 81: 5027), and the Israeli astrophysicist, Nir J. Shaviv (with J. Veizer, “Celestial Driver of Phanerozoic Climate [PDF],” GSA Today, July 2003, 13[7]: 4–10), have suggested that the physics involves cloud nucleation. Times of high 14C production and few sunspots may well have been more cloudy, since the high background of cosmic rays led to more low cloud cover, reflecting more sunlight back to space and thus cooling the earth.
TheBestSchools.org
Let us move on now to our third set of issues, namely: even assuming that global warming is a well-established fact and that it is caused by human activity (notably, the burning of fossil fuels), still critics contend that one may legitimately question whether there is much if any reason for alarm due to these facts. Reasons often given why global warming may not be such a bad thing include:
- The Medieval Warm Period demonstrates that global warming by a few degrees is no catastrophe.
- The probable existence of various negative feedbacks indicates that the warming may well be self-limiting; these include:
- Increased cloud cover, which would reflect more solar energy
- Increased vegetation, which would absorb more CO₂
Consensus supporters would say that the magnitude of the present anthropogenic forcing must lead to temperature increases that dwarf those of previous historical periods, and moreover will swamp the ability of negative feedbacks to offset the inexorable warming trend.
Please comment.
William Happer
As I have discussed in detail above, I don’t question that the earth has warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age, but I am persuaded that most of the warming was due to natural causes, about which the governments can do nothing. We are already seeing more vegetation on the earth and it is absorbing more CO₂. But as I will discuss in response to your next question, I believe that more CO₂ is good for the world, that the world has been in a CO₂ famine for many tens of millions of years and that one or two thousand ppm would be ideal for the biosphere. I am baffled at hysterical attempts to drive CO₂ levels below 350 ppm, or some other value, apparently chosen by Kabbalah numerology, not science.
TheBestSchools.org
Now, you go farther than many other critics of the consensus view in stressing, not only that increased atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and global warming will be no catastrophe, but that they will even be positively beneficial for humankind.
Please elaborate.
William Happer
We owe our existence to green plants that convert carbon dioxide molecules (CO₂) and water molecules (H₂O) to carbohydrates, with the aid of sunlight. One oxygen molecule (O₂) is released for every molecule of CO₂ incorporated into a carbohydrate. Plenty of oxygen is a boon for most animals. But because of the current low levels of CO₂, oxygen seriously limits the photosynthetic efficiency of C3 plants, which include all trees and many important agricultural plants.
Land plants get the carbon they need from the CO₂ in the air. Most plants draw other essential nutrients — water, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc. — from the soil. Just as plants grow better in fertilized, well-watered soils, they also grow better in air with CO₂ concentrations several time higher than present values.
The current low CO₂ levels have exposed a design flaw, made several billion years ago by Nature when she first evolved the enzyme, Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, or “RuBisCO” for short. RuBisCO is the most abundant protein in the world, and the foundation of all life. Using the energetic molecules, mainly adenosine triphosphate (ATP), produced with the aid of sunlight, RuBisCO, converts CO₂ to the simple carbohydrate molecule, 3-phosphoglyceraldehyde (3-PGA). The biochemical machinery of the plant subsequently reworks the 3-PGA molecules into sugar, starch, amino acids, and all the other chemicals of life. The letter “C” in the nickname RuBisCO stands for “carboxylase” in the full name, which reminds us of RuBisCO’s design target: CO₂.
Geological evidence suggests that RuBisCO began to play its key role in photosynthesis some three billion years ago, when there was lots of CO₂ and very little O₂ in the atmosphere. At current low levels of atmospheric CO₂, plants can use up much of the available CO₂ in full sunlight. This CO₂ depletion spells trouble for the plant. The letter “O” in the nickname RuBisCO stands for “oxygenase” in the full name, which reminds us that an alternate target of RuBisCO is the oxygen molecule: O₂. If RuBisCO, charged with chemical energy from ATP, does not quickly find a CO₂ molecule, it will settle for an O₂ molecule and produce toxic byproducts — for example, hydrogen peroxide — instead of useful carbohydrates. This “photo-oxydation” is a serious problem. At current low CO₂ levels and high O₂ levels, it leads to a reduction of photosynthetic efficiency by about 25 percent in C3 plants, which include major crops: wheat, rice, soybeans, cotton, and many others. Since 3-PGA, the first molecule synthesized from CO₂, has three carbons, such plants are said to have the “C3” photosynthetic pathway.
Fig. 16. Evolution designed RuBisCO to catalyze the incorporation of CO₂ and H₂O into organic carbohydrate molecules. But if CO₂ levels are low by the standards of geological history, as they are today, RuBisCO will occasionally use an O₂ molecule instead to make various toxic byproducts in the “photo-respiration” process.
[Source: rubiscofixeslife.blogspot.com]
The low CO₂ levels of the past tens of millions of years have driven the development of C4 plants (corn and sugar cane, for example) that cope with oxygen by protecting RuBisCO inside of “bundle sheaths.” CO₂ molecules are ferried into the bundle sheath by 4-carbon molecules, which give the C4 pathway its name. But O₂ cannot get into the bundle sheath, so the RuBisCO need not waste efficiency by mistakenly working on abundant O₂ molecules instead of scarce CO₂ molecules. The more elaborate C4 pathway comes at a cost in biochemical energy, but one that is worth paying in times of unusually low CO₂ concentrations, like those today. Thousands of experiments leave no doubt that all plants — both the great majority with the old-fashioned C3 path, but also those with the new-fangled C4 path — grow better with more CO₂ in the atmosphere. (See: M.B. Kirkham, Elevated Carbon Dioxide: Impacts on Soil and Plant Water Relations [CRC Press, 2011].)
The basic features of the C3 and C4 photosynthic pathways are summarized in the figure below, from D. Taub, “Effects of Rising Atmospheric Concentrations of Carbon Dioxide on Plants” (Nature Education Knowledge Project, 2010, 3[10]:21).
Fig. 17. The photosynthetic pathways of C3 and C4 plants. In both pathways, CO₂ and H₂O molecules are fused into carbohydrate molecules with the aid of RuBisCO, the molecule sketched in Fig. 16. The harmful photo-oxidation that limits the efficiency of C3 plants is avoided in C4 plants by isolating RuBisCO in bundle sheaths where it sees artificially high concentrations of CO₂ and low concentrations of O₂.
[Source: Nature Education Knowledge Project]
But the nutritional value of additional CO₂ is only part of its benefit to plants. Of equal or greater importance, more CO₂ in the atmosphere makes plants more drought-resistant. As indicated in Fig. 17, plant leaves are perforated by stomata, little holes in the gas-tight surface skin that allow CO₂ molecules to diffuse from the outside atmosphere into the moist interior of the leaf where they are photosynthesized into carbohydrates. A leaf in full sunlight can easily reach a temperature of 30° C, where the concentration of water molecules (H₂O) in the moist interior air of the leaf is about 42,000 ppm, more than 100 times greater than the 400 ppm concentration of CO₂ in fresh air outside the leaf. And CO₂ molecules, being much heavier than H₂O molecules, diffuse more slowly in air. So, depending on the relative humidity of the outside air, as many as 100 H₂O molecules can diffuse out of the leaf for every CO₂ molecule that diffuses in, to be captured by photosynthesis. This is the reason that most land plants need at least 100 grams of water to produce one gram of carbohydrate.
In the course of evolution, land plants have developed finely-tuned feedback mechanisms that allow them to grow leaves with more stomata in air that is poor in CO₂, like today, or with fewer stomata for air that is richer in CO₂, as has been the case over most of the geological history of land plants. If the amount of CO₂ doubles in the atmosphere, plants reduce the number of stomata in newly grown leaves by about a factor of two. With half as many stomata to leak water vapor, plants need about half as much water and will grow better in arid regions of the earth.
The following figure by R.J. Donohue, et al., of the Australian Climate Laboratory (“Impact of CO₂ fertilization on maximum foliage cover across the globe’s warm, arid environments,” Geophysical Research Letters, 2013, 40: 3031–3035), shows the change in surface vegetation of the Earth from 1982 to 2010 as plants have responded to the modest increase of CO₂ from about 340 ppm to 400 ppm during the satellite era.
Fig. 18. Greening of the earth between 1982 and 2010 from the increase in CO₂.
[Source: Geophysical Research Letters]
Most of the areas showed a net greening, giving an overall increase of 11 percent. In addition to the work shown here, Ranga Myeni of Boston University and his group find that over the past 30 years, 20.5 percent of the earth’s land area became greener, while only 3percent became browner. The precipitation effects can be separated out by correlating local rainfall with change in vegetation, pixel by pixel. Substantially more greening and greater agricultural yields can be expected as CO₂ concentrations increase further.
TheBestSchools.org
The last issue we wish to take up in this first phase of the interview is the so-called “consensus” that is said to exist among the world’s scientists on the global warming issue.
We have been using the term for the sake of convenience and, certainly, it does seem that the majority of scientists, who speak out on this issue, at least in public, tend to support the official IPCC position. On the other hand, the claim that this consensus is “overwhelming” (the figure “97 percent” is frequently bandied about) is often used by proponents to shut down discussion and quash dissent. For this reason, the claim has been subjected to withering criticism by some consensus critics.
For example, in their book Taken by Storm (Key Porter Books, rev. ed. 2007), Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick claim that such a “consensus” exists — to the extent that it does at all — only as a result of what they call a “perfect storm,” in which exaggerated claims by NGO partisans (like Greenpeace) are taken up and further exaggerated by the media, leading politicians (who are generally speaking scientifically illiterate) to feel that they must be seen to be doing something, anything, to respond. All of this, they claim, has a chilling effect on scientists who do not necessarily support the consensus view, but who do not say so openly out of self-protection. In this way, the “consensus” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What do you think? Is there a consensus on global warming? Is it overwhelming? If so, is it for the reasons that Essex and McKitrick cite, or for some other reasons?
William Happer
Essex and McKitrick are on target in their book, Taken by Storm. It is striking that many skeptics, like me, are retired. Aside from character assassination, there is not much the attack dogs of the climate consensus can do to us, at least so far. But young academics know very well that they will risk their careers by expressing any doubt about the party line on global warming.
Consensus supporters don’t like to admit it, but the situation is getting perilously close to Lysenkoism. Lysenko was a poorly educated agricultural extension agent from Ukraine who gained complete control over biology in the USSR, with the full backing of the Politburo and the personal support of both Stalin and Khrushchev.
Lysenko maintained that the genetic theory of inheritance was a lie, supported by evil western industrialists. He insisted that acquired characteristics of living creatures could be passed on to their progeny — and we’re not talking about the interesting phenomenon of epigenetics, but something much cruder. He apparently believed in the spontaneous generation of life. He blocked the introduction of hybrid crops to the Soviet Union. Scientists who expressed any doubt about Lysenko’s dogmas were lucky if they were only fired from their jobs. Many were sent to concentration camps in Siberia, and some were sentenced to death. Photos of Lysenko and one of his most prominent opponents, Nicolai Vavilov, are shown below. (See Valery N. Soyfer, Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science [Rutgers University Press, 1994].)
Fig. 19. On the left is Trofim Lysenko, who enforced consensus biology in the Soviet Union from the 1920’s to 1964. On the right is the secret-police mug shot of one of Lysenko’s most prominent opponents, Nikolai Vavilov, a brilliant plant geneticist. Vavilov was arrested and condemned to death in 1940.
[Sources: Lysenko: The Hayride; Vavilov: CTsT]
As for consensus in science, no one could be more eloquent than Michael Crichton in his lecture, “Aliens Cause Global Warming“ [PDF], at the California Institute of Technology in 2003:
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called “consensus science.” I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.
In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
TheBestSchools.org
Our last question already began to touch on difficult moral, societal, and political issues, in addition to the strictly scientific ones. Now, let us move into the part of the interview where we address head-on some of the societal issues relevant to the public discussion on global warming.
Specifically, we invite you to reflect upon four questions:
- Is concerted governmental action at the global level desirable?
- If so, what principle of equity should determine that action?
- When the stakes are very high and a broad scientific consensus is in place, should critics of the mainstream view nevertheless be entitled to express their views freely?
- Is political advocacy by scientists a good thing in the first place?
So, to tackle the first of these, let us begin by pointing out that it is logically possible to acknowledge that global warming is a reality, is manmade, is on the whole a bad thing, and is believed in by the overwhelming majority of scientists — and nevertheless to feel that the sort of concerted global governmental intervention that is being proposed by the IPCC and the UN Conferences on Climate Change would be a cure worse the disease.
One of the main factors which might go into such a negative cost/benefit analysis of action to curtail CO₂ emissions versus inaction would of course be straightforward economic costs, and we invite you to address those. How much might it cost is terms of lower global economic productivity to make a dent in the global warming problem (assuming the consensus is correct)? And how would such costs compare to the economic costs of inaction?
However, the economic costs of concerted global action to reduce CO₂ emissions are not the only ones which must be taken into account. There are political costs, as well — or at least many would so argue.
Now, one’s readiness to assent to the concept of “political costs” will obviously depends upon one’s economic and political allegiances. The threshold of certainty and the level of foreseen harm would need to be much higher for a committed libertarian, for example, than they would for a socialist.
We do not wish to ask you directly about your political and economic allegiances (though feel free to share them with us, if you so desire). However, we would like you to address for us the general issue of how one’s political allegiances might affect one’s evaluation of scientific evidence, at least with respect to the official IPCC position and the call for vigorous worldwide governmental intervention.
William Happer
Let me start by answering your bulleted questions above:
Is concerted governmental action at the global level desirable? No. More CO₂ will be good for the world, not bad. Concerted government action may take place anyway, as has so often happened in the sad history of human folly. One example is the Crusades, when the cynical leaders of “Western Christendom” united to punish the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. The prohibition era in the United States is a more localized example of a silly crusade that turned out badly. A few opportunists will profit handsomely if concerted government action is taken on climate, but most people, and the environment, will suffer.
Are our all-powerful governments going to fight increases or decreases of solar activity? Where is Owen Glendower (left) when we need him to “call the spirits from the vasty deep,” or King Canute to stop the tides? I am not keen to submit to lunatic, government-sponsored geoengineering schemes of contemporary Dr. Strangeloves. Nor does driving the earth’s human population down from its current seven billion people to no more than one billion have much appeal to me, even though it is promoted by influential climate advisers of politicians and popes. Are we supposed to draw straws to decide which six out of seven people must disappear from the face of the earth?
If so, what principle of equity should determine that action? No action should be taken on CO₂. But I enthusiastically support action on real pollution of air, land, or water, by fly ash, oxides of sulfur, and nitrogen from careless coal combustion, or water pollution by careless use of fertilizers and pesticides, or plastic debris in the oceans from human slovenliness. I regard the war on the responsible use of coal and other fossil fuels as deeply immoral. It will impoverish most people by raising the cost of energy. It will enrich crony capitalists who have government backing to force people to buy their inefficient, costly, unreliable windmills and solar farms. It is like the French noblewoman, who was told that the peasants had no bread and responded: “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” (“let them eat cake!”). When used responsibly, fossil fuels release negligible real pollutants like fly ash, oxides of sulfur, nitrogen, etc. The much demonized CO₂ that must be released, along with H₂O, is actually a benefit to the earth, not a pollutant.
When the stakes are very high and a broad scientific consensus is in place, should critics of the mainstream view nevertheless be entitled to express their views freely? Yes! This is the no-brainer answer for a free society, which I and many others will fight for, as our forefathers did.
Is political advocacy by scientists a good thing in the first place? Yes! Scientists should be free to advocate on any side of a controversial issue. For example, Andrei Sakharov, one of my heroes, was a passionate advocate of stopping atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. He was convinced that the radioactive fallout was very harmful to the population of the whole world. My uncle, Karl Morgan, the founding father of the field of health physics, was a passionate, very public, and political opponent of careless exposure of the population to radiation.
I turn now to your question about political and economic allegiances. From the end of Reconstruction era after the American Civil War until my college years at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, my ancestral state was dominated by the Democrat party. You could vote for a liberal Democrat, a moderate Democrat, or a conservative Democrat in primary elections, and your candidate might win and then go on to certain victory over the sacrificial Republican candidate. So, when I was old enough to vote, I registered as a Democrat.
All that is completely different today, and North Carolina is one of the few states where both Democrats and Republicans are regularly elected. I have never changed my party registration, but I vote for the candidate of either party who seems most likely to do a good job. It saddens me to see that the party of my youth, the Democrats, have embraced global warming as fervently as Massachusetts Puritans embraced the belief in witches.
Both formal surveys and casual observation leave little doubt that the few scientists registered as Republicans are more likely to be openly skeptical about the alleged problem of global warming than the much larger number registered as Democrats. But there are notable exceptions. Ivar Giaever, who won the 1973 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of the band gap in superconductors, and who was an enthusiast supporter of Obama in the elections of 2008, is profoundly skeptical about global-warming alarmism. My Republican friend and colleague, the late D. Alan Bromley, who was the Presidential Science Advisor during the administration of George H.W. Bush from 1988 to 1992, was a global-warming believer who helped persuade the US President to attend the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro.
TheBestSchools.org
Assuming for the moment that concerted global governmental intervention is, on balance, required by the situation we are facing, the next problem that arises is the question of fairness or equity.
Some principle must be followed for sharing the economic sacrifices that will be required to halt or even roll back atmospheric CO₂ concentration increases. Should the developed countries (North America and Europe), which have produced the lion’s share of emissions in the past, bear the brunt of that sacrifice? Or should the countries of the world bear the burden proportionally to their present-day emissions (in which case, China might be penalized as severely as the U.S.)? Or perhaps in proportion to their ability to absorb the economic hit? Or according to some other formula?
What, in your opinion, would be a fair way for the nations of the world to share the economic burden that would be imposed by any serious effort to reduce CO₂ emissions on a global basis (assuming that such action were rationally mandated)?
William Happer
As I hope I have made clear, I can’t see any reason to reduce CO₂ emissions. Doubling or quadrupling current CO₂ levels will be good for the world. The economic burdens you talk about are all pain with no gain for most of the world.
This brings to mind the Salem Witch trials of 1692, presided over by Harvard-educated judges, the best and the brightest Massachusetts had to offer. When the monstrous hangings of innocent people finally stopped, it was not because the elite admitted there was no such thing as witches. Who would need Harvard-educated ministers if witches did not exist? The trials were stopped for a technicality: the use of “spectral evidence.” If an accuser with good political connections dreamed that the alleged witch consorted with the Devil, that was enough to hang her.
I suspect that the more perceptive of the Massachusetts elite realized that the continued use of made-up evidence could soon get out of hand and they themselves could be victims. French revolutionaries guillotined each other a century later. Some of Stalin’s main targets in the great terror of 1937 were his old Bolshevik comrades in arms, who received death sentences based on the equivalent of spectral evidence: wild, fabricated charges of collaboration with the Nazis, etc.
The evidence that CO₂ is a pollutant so fearsome that we must give up democracy, punish “deniers,” and impoverish much of the world by eliminating the use of fossil fuels is looking more and more like spectral evidence. If you can’t find real scientific evidence for alarm, dream up hockey sticks, dream away hiatuses, and get rid of your opponents as soon as possible.
TheBestSchools.org
Next is the issue of freedom of speech. You of all people do not need us to tell you that the public conversation on global warming has taken on a decidedly nasty tone. Overt bullying and intimidation are now the order of the day. Most recently, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called for the RICO Act against racketeering to be used to prosecute critics of the IPCC consensus!
One of the frequent charges (one you are not unfamiliar with personally) is that consensus critics are in the pay of the oil and gas industry. Such critics — nearly all of whom work for government in one form or another — do not often stop to consider that they, too, serve someone’s economic interests (as do we all in a society founded upon the free exchange of goods and services).
Given this “parity” of interests between consensus critics and supporters, what do you make of the situation? Isn’t the freedom to think what we like and say what we think at the very heart of the scientific endeavor? If so, then how did we get ourselves into this fix?
The situation seems to many of us to be truly scandalous — one that historians of science are going to be making hay out of for decades and centuries to come. Would you agree? Or is it, perhaps, rather all in a day’s work — merely what we ought to expect whenever science intersects with public policy the way it does in the global warming debate?
William Happer
It is not possible to make progress in science without controversy. For example, there was heated scientific debate over Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift for decades. Stanley Prusiner faced bitter resistance in the early days of his prion theory of mad cow disease and related illnesses, since the theory violated the dogma that the agent for an infectious disease had to be DNA or RNA, and could not be a protein.
What is different about the global warming controversy is the direct involvement of governments on one side. As you mention, congressional demands that racketeering charges be brought against climate skeptics are unprecedented in the USA, although this does have an ominous precedent in the Lysenkoism that we mentioned above.
Bernie Sanders says he will “bring climate deniers to justice” when he becomes President of the USA. What should people like me expect from President Sanders — a concentration camp? The firing squad?
And what ever happened to the First Amendment to the US Constitution?
There are many honest scientists working on climate for the government, some using the ARM facilities I myself helped to emplace when I was at the Department of Energy in the early 1990’s. I admire these scientists and I don’t hold them accountable for the thuggish few who vilify me and others as supposed prostitutes for the fossil fuel industry.
During Stalin’s Great Terror, the equivalents of evil fossil fuel interests were Leon Trotsky and his followers. They were a direct threat to Stalin’s control of the world-wide Communist movement, just as climate skeptics are regarded as an existential threat to the global warming establishment.
I would be surprised if the net total funding of climate skeptics exceeded $2 or $3 million dollars a year, and even that may be high. In the last few years, US government spending for climate research [PDF] has been about $20 billion dollars a year — more than a thousand times greater than skeptic funding. But even this huge financial advantage is not sufficient to support the pathetically weak scientific case that the world is in danger from more CO₂.
TheBestSchools.org
Third, there is the question of whether scientists ought to involve themselves in politics to the degree we have seen in the global warming episode. The argument here is twofold:
- Politicians may become lazy and abdicate their responsibility to educate themselves so they can understand the issues themselves.
- Scientists may compromise the integrity of scientific research itself, to the detriment of its proper functioning when controversial matters arise again in the future.
Of course, consensus supporters will note that scientists are citizens, too, and as such have the right (if not the duty) to bring their special expertise to bear on issues of public significance where it is relevant. Also, it must be admitted that there is noble precedent for such scientist-citizen activism — for instance, the letter addressed by Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard to President Roosevelt in 1939 about the possibilities of building an atomic bomb.
How do you feel about this issue? Do scientists who intervene in politics short-circuit the democratic process by absolving politicians and citizens of the obligation to inform themselves on scientific matters of public import? And what risk, if any, does such activism pose for the future of science itself?
William Happer
We have already touched on most of the issues you mention above. I think that great damage has been done to the reputation of all of science by the global-warming frenzy of the past few decades. Twenty years ago, supposedly expert scientists solemnly declared that our children and grandchildren would not know what snow is. A few weeks ago, Washington, DC, struggled to dig out of three feet of snow, a record in many locales.
In accepting his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (also won by Yassir Arafat), Al Gore said the summer Arctic could be ice-free by 2013 due to CO₂ emissions. I invite readers to have a look at the data site I mentioned earlier. A few minutes of inspection of the “sea ice” link will show that there has been no significant change in sea ice since 2007. With all due respect to Nobel Laureate Gore, there was plenty of summer ice in 2013.
I hope that when the global-warming scandal is finally behind us, science will be forgiven for letting it fester so long. It took decades for Soviet biology to recover from the damage done by Lysenkoism.
TheBestSchools.org
Finally, we would like you to tell us — in bulleted list format, if you like — what you consider to be the five strongest arguments against the consensus view, as well as the five weakest arguments that supporters commonly advance in favor of the consensus view.
William Happer
Strongest arguments against consensus view:
- Climate models have predicted far more warming than has been observed, as shown in Fig. 6. This is strong evidence that the equilibrium temperature increases from doubling CO₂ levels is not 3° C to 3.5° C, as assumed in most climate models, but much less, probably close to 1° C.
- The consensus has largely ignored the huge positive effects of more CO₂, as illustrated in Fig. 18.
- The large temperature changes of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age occurred before the widespread use of fossil fuels after the industrial revolution, as shown in Fig. 11.
- There is a strong correlation of temperature with solar activity as shown in Fig. 12, 14, and 15.
- Frenzied, ad hominem attacks on credible opponents show that consensus supporters have a very weak scientific case. You don’t need potentially counterproductive ad hominem attacks if you have strong scientific arguments.
Weakest arguments for consensus view:
- Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree with the consensus.
- Temperature has increased for the past century and CO₂ levels have increased. Therefore the temperature increase was caused by CO₂.
- Increasing CO₂
- Government funded, consensus-supporting researchers have no conflict of interest.
- Scientific opponents of the consensus are prostitutes of the evil fossil fuel industry.
TheBestSchools.org
Thank you very much for sharing your views on global warming with our readers. We look forward to the upcoming Focused Civil Dialogue between you and Professor Karoly, to be published soon here at TheBestSchools.org.
Join the Dialogue!
Share your thoughts in the comments section below… while the comments are still open!
Great review of the global warming controversy
If anyone needs further proof of the religious nature of the global warming group, look no further than the failure to support nuclear power plants which generate massive amounts of reliable, low-cost electricity. Most in this country will be closed in a few years. And they generate zero CO2.
Happer is a hack who spent more time cobbling this mishmash of standard global warming denier points (sometimes called a ‘Gish gallop’ after a creationist who commonly used a similar tactic to argue against evolution) together in retirement than he ever spent on any Earth science or climate-related research as a working physicist: i.e., zero.
Happer even manages to badly botch the section that is closest to pure physics in his misunderstanding of how temperature is estimated via measurements of the 50 to 60 GHz molecular oxygen emission lines, which exhibit temperature and pressure-dependent line width broadening and relative intensity shifts. No, Dr. Happer, it is NOT comparable to blackbody infrared thermometry.
There’s a reason contrarians look to emeritus contrarians from other fields and a tiny number of third-raters from climate science for their talking points… there is no-one credible to present their shoddy arguments.
Spot on.
Magma, as the co-developer of the satellite method who has been working in this field for 30 years, I’d like to say that Happer’s simplified explanation for a general audience is just fine. The microwave emissions in the 50-60 GHz range are nearly linearly proportional to air temperature, with almost no temperature dependence of the oxygen absorption coefficient. So, Happer didn’t get anything wrong in my book.
Magma, you are the gentleman on the left (as it were) in this scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R1ZlSAbpRU
Dr. Spencer, I hope you don’t mind being called the Marshall McLuhan of satellite temperature measurement, but the parallel was too good not to use (and I’m a fan of Woody Allen’s movies anyway).
That should be “You are” the gentleman. Sorry.
Magma….care to share you awards, background and achievements. What is your degree in…political science from UCONN? Pretty clear you are no scientist…like most Climate alarmists
Great, another anonymous pillage of a reasonable scientific argument, i hope you collected your 5 cents for the post and when good old Al Gore is ready for another conference you get a good seat…. Me, I’ll pay my $5 bucks a gallon for gas and not hire your spawn to shovel my driveway.
Magma thinks he knows more than two giants in their fields. Typical of warmists.
SMEGMA WROTE: “…Happer is a hack who spent more time cobbling this mishmash of standard global warming denier points…”
Just this one sentence speaks volumes about your (nonexistent) scientific literacy; and (equally-nonexistent) level of intellectual honesty.
No honest person with even a basic understanding of science, or judgement of people could put in writing such vomit-filled insults of this extraordinarily knowlegeable man.
If Smegma had a scintilla of the integrity, courage and ethical nous of William Happer, he would be fortunate indeed.
One is tempted to fee sad for him; and for the many others out there who are like him.
His world view will come crashing around his head as the GlobalWarming Lie is exposed by Nature itself, via the very snow and freezing weather which his hero AlGore has condemned to history – possibly though ignorance, but more likely through greed.
History shows us though, that even when confronted by Nature’s stark Testimony, People like Smegma reveal them selves to be the “deniers” which they accuse others of being.
What do you expect from someone who chooses the moniker “smegma”?
point taken…
layman hysteric believer 🙂
Greetings CO2=LIFE
Thank you for sharing this interview.
My comments are those of a pragmatic farmer and rancher. An African, with a deep love of nature, of my fellow man and a student of history.
I have made the best attempts I can to assess this issue in accordance with my practical approach to life and my thirst for knowledge.
My enduring consolation amid the ‘noise’ of this entire “Global Warming” now “Climate Change” preoccupation comes from an acceptance of the enduring capability of mankind to advance and improve his status.
As I see it there is little chance that the erudite of the 1st world will be successful in their desire to stop, much less reduce, the emissions of arguably one of the most essential compounds in life, CO2.
The 3rd world is now awakening from centuries of apathy and coloniial suppression.
Much has already been said of China who correctly refuse to label CO2 as a pollutant.
Simultaneously they are happy to profit from the demand for solar panels and turbines whilst refusing to slow their own growth by seriously relying on them to exclusively power their own development.
The major advance in the emergence of India is likewise coming with the increased use of cheap and reliable fossil fuels.
Then comes my continent Africa with an area into which the USA, Eastern and Western Europe, Mexico, India, China and Japan could fit.
Medupi, the world’s largest ever coal-fired plant is imminently due to come on line here in South Africa.
As the old power generators are replaced with newer, the capacity to limit the emission of pollutants is enhanced while the emission of life-giving CO2 simultaneously increases.
We in the 3rd world will not be denied our right to prosperity and whatever else may be said of us, we are a tough and resilient portion of the world population and some of us have nukes (just saying).
Whatever the actual climate will be in the future, I am firmly on board with the premise that it is cheaper, more sensible and morally imperative to allow this progress to occur unfettered by any constraints of imposed energy alternatives and to adapt to the resulting climate rather than trying to control either.
Mankind will be far more capable of adapting to any significant climate changes than we will be at deciding how to alter or influence those changes.
In the interim, further open and non-partisan research and debate should be encouraged. If and when those arguing either side can match their science with the real world via accurate predictive modeling, or better yet reliable and cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels then I shall be an enthusiastic adopter.
Until then the world around me, the plants and animals in it and I, shall remain grateful for the improvement in our ability to survive as a result of the increased CO2 availability.
If some warming continues as a result and brings with it more clouds and rain, as it has in the past, that will be an added bonus.
I was much more alarmed by the 70s ‘consensus’ that our earth was about to dip into another ice-age.
Well said, a sound and sensible position.
I am indebted to William Happer for his expertise and valuable assistance while critiquing Tim Flannery’s alarmist book, The Weather Makers, some years ago; and I found this interview fascinating and enlightening.
The nameless but aptly titled ‘Magma’, whose comments generate more heat than light, could not have better exemplified the ad hominem venom and character assassination referred to by Dr Happer in relation to Lysenkoism. He and the equally faceless icarius62 do their zealous cause no good.
Storm and Wes are bang on. I have been watching the religion of CC for a long time and have lost “friends” who would rather vilify than discuss.
Great interview with someone who actually knows physics! Might I add that Happer is correct about the 1 degree warming on doubling CO2 (before feedbacks), calculated using a radiative forcing of 3.7 W/m^2. But this forcing comes from computer calculations (e.g. using MODTRAN) of absorption which necessarily applies for a cloud-free troposphere. But 62% of the Earth’s surface is covered by clouds which are made of mini Planck black body liquid droplets or ice crystals. As near-perfect black bodies (emissivity at infrared frequencies is 0.98), the Earth’s surface and clouds exchange energy via IR photons at all frequencies, not just resonant molecular frequencies, so doubling CO2 is irrelevant for the space between the Earth’s surface and cloud-tops. And the increased absorption on doubling CO2 above clouds involves a colder black body emission source, and a shorter path length (which means fewer absorbing molecules at frequencies that are not saturated), and colder temperatures which decrease the fraction of absorbing molecules (since the extra absorption is due to 618 and 721 cm^-1 sidebands which require molecules in the v=1 first excited state for bond-bending vibration). Combined with the increased emission at central saturated frequencies in the stratosphere from 20 to 50 km altitude on doubling CO2, this means that climate sensitivity is closer to 0.6 degrees (before feedbacks) rather than 1 degree. Therefore water vapor feedback will be due to only a 4% increase in water vapor (assuming 50% relative humidity remains constant), rather than 7% (saturated water vapor pressure is roughly an exponential function of temperature). This means at most a 50% positive water vapor feedback (or 100% feedback if we use an infinite geometric series for feedback), rather than the 200% required to triple climate sensitivity from 1 degree to 3 degrees. And any reasonable estimate for negative cloud feedbacks will reduce the net feedback to around 10% (so invoking an infinite geometric series to boost feedback will increase net feedback to only 11%). Therefore the 200% feedback estimate is way too high, and climate sensitivity (including water vapor and cloud feedbacks) is around 0.7 degrees, not 3 degrees. The rapid rise and fall of 3 El Nino temperature events from 1997 to 2017, and the recent overall 18-year hiatus mean that there is no decades- or centuries-long time constant or lag in temperature increase (temperatures would otherwise have kept increasing even if CO2 had become constant, rather than continually increasing). More details can be sent on request to my email address at [email protected] .
A nice interview. If I may suggest some improvements for the format (it would be fantastic if Happer would like to answer some more questions). Suggested questions:
1. What evidence would do most to change your mind?
2. What are the most important open questions? What experiments would you most want to see done?
Your final question (what are your opponent’s weakest arguments?) really baffled me. To win an argument it is important to take on your opponents argument at its strongest, not its weakest point. (Will you ask the other side what are the weakest arguments – that would be completely uninformative – CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, the sun is a pulsar, CO2 is not anthropogenic, etc.) Instead of your five strong points and your opponents five weak arguments I would ask:
3. What are your opponent’s five strongest arguments?
4. What five questions would you like to see your opponents answer?
An interesting and comprehensive interview, that explores many of the more heretical areas of climate science.
I was interested in the comment that CO2 reductions during each glacial maximum resulted in CO2 deserts, dust production, and therefore ice-sheet albedo reductions and warming. This was the central thesis of my paper (Ellis and Palmer 2016.)
Modulation of Ice Ages via Precession and Dust Albedo Feedbacks”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987116300305
It is odd that in the 21st century, we still do not know what causes interglacial warming, and I think this lacuna in our understanding is due in part to an over-reliance upon CO2 feedbacks. But if we expand our horizon, it is apparent that the melting of annual winter snows is due to an increase in local insolation, rather than CO2. And so ice ages may well follow that same formula.
If the ice sheets can be darkened with dust they will indeed absorb more insolation, during what is termed here the Great Summer, the maximum insolation in Milankovitch cycles. And that is what happens, because each interglacial warming event is preceded by dust. But what causes these dust eras? The answer, it transpired, is CO2 reductions causing flora asphixiation at high altitude, especially when combined with aridity. This causes dust, ice sheet contamination, albedo reductions, melting, and therefore an interglacial.
But this process also has a bearing on modern climate calculations. It has been assumed that tropical treelines are regulated by temperature, but if they are regulated more by CO2 then the assumed glacial temperatures in the tropics are incorrect. And some of the calculations used in climate sensitivity are also in error. This theory places dust-albedo modulation as the primary climate feedback during ice ages, and it therefore relegates CO2 to the back seat. It is entirely possible that the same is happening in the modern climate – dust-soot emissions may be more important as a feedback than CO2. This is a topic for further research.
Ralph Ellis
Thank you for a very informative presentation and discussion.
I agree with Professor Happer, including that CO2 is needed.
For me, one issue was missing.
Of all the claims about climate change being the cause of XYZs (hurricanes, drought, precipitations, etc. etc. you name it), only one possible issue has been on my mind. This is about sea level.
We may not get more or much more “global warming” but we certainly see higher temperatures in the Arctic.
The possibility of melting glaciers and sea level rising is worth presentation and analysis, outside “climate change”.
It may not be something that Professor Happer had expertise to include in his interview but an issue worth pursuing.
A NASA chart of Arctic ice extent suggests a reduction of ice coverage from 2000-2016 of about 6-7%. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/sea_ice.php
Meanwhile, NASA showed in 2014 that Antarctic ice reached a new maximum. https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum
A NOAA article expressing concern at sea level rise shows a rise of 0.12 inches (3mm) a year from 1993-2014, or about a foot/30 cms a century. http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
This is not hugely different from what has been happening for several centuries, and surely gives no cause for alarm. The world must have many higher and more immediate priorities.
I agree with Yves Alarie that rising sea level is a concern, but it is much more complex than higher temperatures in the Arctic and melting glaciers. Melting of the floating Arctic icecap, of course, has no effect per se on sea level, and all glaciers combined make up less than 0.6% of land ice, enough to raise sea level about 45cm if they all melted. Most glaciers advanced during the Little Ice Age, bulldozing some Alpine villages, and many retreated more in first half than in the last half of last century. Many are still retreating, but some are advancing.
Glacial melt contributes about 15% of the present 3mm/yr sea level rise, perhaps double that if we include the major ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica; about half being due to thermal expansion of the oceans, and the remainder (as much as 0.8mm/yr) due to the extraction of ground water.
The Eemian was warmer and sea levels probably several metres higher than now. Man has coped with an average rise of more than a meter a century over the last 12,000 years, often far more rapid than now.
Sea level rise is far from uniform across the globe. It is falling in some parts (e.g. Scandinavia) because the land is still rising after the melting of the ice sheets; and rising fast in some areas (e.g. southwest England) because they are sinking for the same reason. The Dutch have coped with that problem by building dykes, and modern man will also cope with rising seas so long as he is not too impoverished by quixotic climate action.
Yves,
Please refer to PSMSL.org for data on sea level rise at hundreds of sites worldwide. Nearly all show a slow steady rise with no inflection points. Look particularly at The Battery in NYC. This gauge goes back about 150 years and is mounted on crystalline rock so it reflects relative sea level as best as can be. It also has a GPS elevation capability to which allows for correction due to elevation changes. Combining the gauge and GPS results suggests a steady rise in sea level of roughly 2 mm/yr. There is no inflection. In their paper “A Search for Scale in Sea-Level Studies” (Journal of Coastal Research, V 22, No. 4, July, 2006) Larson and Clark find that sea level has been rising at about the same rate as far back as 6000 years.
There is in fact no radiative greenhouse effect at all. Climate science is so far off the mark that it is founded upon a concept which doesn’t even exist.
It isn’t just that climate alarm isn’t as bad as the alarmists say it is, it is that the very foundation of the science – the radiative greenhouse effect – is in error, does not exist, and hence the alarmism and the policy surrounding it is completely, 100% in error.
Not merely slightly wrong, not mostly wrong, but completely 100% wrong.
If you start with false premises, everything you subsequently extrapolate from those premises will likewise carry along the original error and thus exhibit error within themselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5bwaf9QXro&feature=youtu.be&t=1100
Happers exposition is brilliant. It’s fearless, encyclopedic in its scope and balanced. It’s what you would expect from a retired elder. And a very engaging read. Congratulations on the initiative shown in organizing this exchange of views.
Had we more men of this calibre humanity would be so much better off.
In terms of the carrying capacity of the planet the potential is much greater than is commonly suggested.
Being a long time educator in biology and environmental science I think I’ll continue to teach the youth of America the facts of climate change. But the extensive article looked very scientific and I’m sure the fossil fuels industry loved it. But facts are facts and that’s what needs to be taught.
written like a true democrat. Were you not able to absorb the facts? Are your facts from the huffington post, Paul Krugman and Daily KOS. Please point us to a well reason defense with more facts than written here? Also can you cite a giant of physic or two…using a climatologists whose whole pay depends on towing the line isn’t really too honest. Where is your degree from a low end state school? Question do you consider yourself smarter than Happer? Where do you teach…a low end high school? I am being completely honest….do you consider your critical thinking to exceed Happer? Do you believe in scientific debate or just bullying and “consensus” via threat?
a simpler question is CO2 good or bad? And how much is just right? I think everyone wants less impact at a sensible cost? Do you know that Wind Turbines are wiping out species of bats and raptors and many thousands of acres of previous open space are now solar and wind turbine industrial area that are wiping out wildlife? One wind turbine in NJ was documented to kill 80 birds and bat per year including an endangered falcon….only 30 in the state! That is one wind turbine….they are building many thousands across America. Care to comment on the impact of the renewable industrial impact?
James Cooper says:
“Being a long time educator in biology and environmental science I think I’ll continue to teach the youth of America the facts of climate change. But the extensive article looked very scientific and I’m sure the fossil fuels industry loved it. But facts are facts and that’s what needs to be taught.”
Your statement about “fossil fuels industry” exposes that what you are in fact teaching is politics and economic intrigue…hardly “the facts”. No one disputes climate change but they do dispute, and debunk, the political narrative that climate change is alarming and caused by humans in an alarming way, that CO2 is bad, etc. So you see…you are not teaching “the facts”, but economic & political intrigue which, as it were, benefits OPEC by shutting down its competition in Western producers of the energy which the world and poor people need. In other words you’re being used like a sucker.
From the webcast debunking the basis of climate alarm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5bwaf9QXro):
The Facts:
– Climate alarm and even basic climate science is based in pseudoscience: in physical paradoxes, and violations of the laws of thermodynamics.
– The real danger is CO2 depletion due to geologic forces: photosynthesis ceases below 200ppm CO2 and for the last few millions years that’s where planet Earth was almost hovering around and heading towards. That would be global extinction.
– By using hydrocarbons as fuel man is replenishing the CO2 that used to be in the atmosphere but was leached out of it due to the ravages of geologic history. This will only get CO2 to 2-times pre-industrial level. Earth-life evolved with up to 20-times the CO2 concentration that we have now, that’s what it prefers. That’s why we go to 5-times concentration in greenhouses – to optimize plant growth.
– Science has adopted an anti-human, anti-meaning attitude towards human existence. Given that like goes with like, (true = true, false = false, false ≠ true) then that this attitude uses pseudoscience to support itself, the position itself must be illogical and pseudoscientific. Thus: Life has not evolved over billions of years of struggle and terrible sacrifice & loss to continue existing, just to find itself discovering that it is “bad” and shouldn’t exist when it gains the ability to think about itself
– “Carrying capacity” of Earth was exceeded thousands of years ago, in pre-history, with the very first crop, very first stable, etc. Man engineers his survival with his mind; animals subsist with what they accidentally find.
– Man is the most important & precious & valuable development in evolution – EVER! That’s an objective scientific FACT.
– The biosphere requires more CO2 in the atmosphere, not less, not the same as now or that at 100 years ago
– CO2 is not pollution, but is one of the 3 basic elements required for life (sunlight, water, CO2)
– It is good that man’s activity is replenishing atmospheric CO2
– Climate alarm/climate science is pseudoscience, based in flat-Earth woowoo physics & based in paradox at the foundational level, and has “low information processing scientists” at the highest official levels on both “alarmist” and “skeptical” sides defending it
– There is no radiative greenhouse effect
– Man always has, always will live beyond the “natural carrying capacity” of the Earth; what’s the natural carrying capacity of low-Earth-orbit?, of the moon?, of outer space?
– The actual fundamental threat to human existence as we have known it since pre-history is not having more of the source of life (CO2), but is having the source of man’s subsistence destroyed – that source is his mind, which means his ability to discriminate truth: absolutism over relativism, fact over fiction, value over waste, utility over fraud…merit over bullshit, the real thing over the simulated thing
– Climate alarm is an attack on the basis of human existence – we survive BY changing the environment!
But you would never actually teach these *actual* facts…would you?…
This interview was indeed perhaps the most convincing refutation of climate alarmism I have read. Despite the technical detail, it’s fascinating reading. Retired or not, Happer is intellectually courageous and honest to a rare degree. Bravo.
“Joseph E Postma says
January 10, 2017 at 10:12 pm
There is in fact no radiative greenhouse effect at all. Climate science is so far off the mark that it is founded upon a concept which doesn’t even exist.”
This argumentation does much harm to the skeptics issue. The simple fact is that nearly all matter above 0 Kelvin is radiating energy in form of infrared radiation, including CO2, water vapor and methane, which are members of the atmospheric gasses.
If theses gasses are radiating in all directions, whichever temperature above 0 K they have, a certain amount will go back to the earth’s surface. Thereby they will slow the net transfer of heat from the surface to the space.
One common misconception is that ” due to the laws of thermodynamic colder materials cannot heat up warmer materials, therefore colder CO2 cannot heat up the surface” – which in turn would insist that no colder item is alllowed to send infrared radiation towards a warmer item.
The reality is: If a certain colder surface radidates 40 w/m² towards a warmer surface which radiates 100 w/m², the net flow is 60 w/m² towards the warmer surface. This is exactly how thermodynamics work.
Just think about these gold or aluminium plated emergency blankets. If you wrap one around yourself in a cold surrounding you are getting warmer. The blanket is colder than you, but it radiates back some amount of heat towards your warmer body.
For a more elaborate explanation how radiation is working, just read at my blog:
http://klimawandler.blogspot.de/2017/01/why-co2-and-downwelling-radiation-is.html
“Johannes S. Herbst says
The reality is: If a certain colder surface radidates 40 w/m² towards a warmer surface which radiates 100 w/m², the net flow is 60 w/m² towards the warmer surface. This is exactly how thermodynamics work.”
I think you meant to say 60 W/m2 to the cooler surface. This is simply the definition of heat flow, however, heat is not a conserved quantity and the warmer surface is still emitting its full 100 W/m2. The heat flow is not the conserved quantity, and the warmer object is still emitting its full energy, thus the warmer object doesn’t heat up.
As Schroeder says in his thermodynamics textbook “Thermal Physics”:
“Much of thermodynamics deals with three closely related concepts: temperature, energy, and heat. Much of students’ difficulty with thermodynamics comes from confusing these three concepts with each other.”
Thus, just because a cooler object emits thermal radiant energy, does not mean that that energy can act as heat for another object; it can only act as heat when going from hot to cool. Energy is not always heat. Nor does it mean that a warmer object would have to become warmer still since heat is not a conserved quantity and the warmer object still emits all of its original portion as energy.
“Johannes S. Herbst says
Just think about these gold or aluminium plated emergency blankets. If you wrap one around yourself in a cold surrounding you are getting warmer. The blanket is colder than you, but it radiates back some amount of heat towards your warmer body.”
This is incorrect. The body inside warms the air inside thus creating for themselves a warmer local environment, and the blanket exterior also has low emissivity. These processes are not the radiative greenhouse effect. There is no such thing as heat flow from the cooler blanket to the warmer body, as such a statement is in direct violation of the definition of heat.
All of this is covered in the webcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5bwaf9QXro
I thought the space blanket worked in part by reflecting the infrared that is coming from your body back to you. Any blanket can slow convection (flow of warm fluid), but the space blanket is very reflective.
Joseph E Postma says
“I think you [Johannes S. Herbst says] meant to say 60 W/m2 to the cooler surface. This is simply the definition of heat flow, however, heat is not a conserved quantity and the warmer surface is still emitting its full 100 W/m2. The heat flow is not the conserved quantity, and the warmer object is still emitting its full energy, thus the warmer object doesn’t heat up.”
Joseph, I totally agree with you that EMR (including IR radiation) is NOT HEAT. For instance, if we take an LTE elemental layer in the atmosphere, the T is constant and yet the GHG’s are furiously radiating in all directions but with zero net result in the purely lateral directions. Furthermore, most of the GHG radiation tends to be lateral rather than up and down. (Consider the dimples on a golf ball as “transmitters”, and most of them are towards the lateral).
Interesting analogies can be made with electrical Potential Differences (PD’s) between two interconnected electrical batteries, with and without resistance load and/or PD. Insert a resister and HEAT is generated. Voltage is not HEAT………. +12 volt connected to -12 volt = zero.
But, when you say: “…the warmer surface is still emitting its full 100 W/m2…” might I suggest that there is controversy in you asserting that the warmer surface T remains unaltered as a consequence of the opposing 40 W/m^2?
In engineering (at least) the S & B radiative heat transfer calculations involving T1^4 -T2^4 seem to work very well, even for say just two opposing non-flat- and/or non-parallel BODIES. After many years of complex geometric applications, I’m unaware of any significant failures in the theory.
As I understand it, your discussion applies to closely orientated BODIES that are effectively in vacuum (e.g. the thermally REFLECTIVE and thus LOW EMISSION survival blanket to keep the human body warm). I fail to see how an absorptive/radiative atmosphere kilometres deep can be compared with radiation between two closely associated solid bodies.
It would be interesting to learn more from you.
Please also see my essay here which attracted 669 comments:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/26/does-the-trenberth-et-al-%e2%80%9cearth%e2%80%99s-energy-budget-diagram%e2%80%9d-contain-a-paradox/
I agree with Johannes S. Herbst that denying any greenhouse effect due to CO2 hurts the skeptics’ arguments. The mechanism of the greenhouse effect can be understood by correctly interpreting the infrared spectra obtained by satellites looking down on the Earth. The MODTRAN computed spectrum available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing accurately replicates a typical spectrum. The infrared (IR) emitted by a 288.2 K (15.0 Celsius) solid and liquid Earth forms a Planck black body spectrum, and at emissivity 0.98 amounts to a Stefan-Boltzmann flux of 383.34 W/m^2. Yet at the TOA (Top Of the Atmosphere) only 260.12 W/m^2 escapes to outer space when CO2 concentration is 300 ppmv. What has happened to the 383.34 – 260.12 = 123.22 W/m^2 difference? It has been absorbed by the troposphere, resulting in temperatures higher than if there were no greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are important because the main molecules of the atmosphere (N2. O2, At) which form 99.9% of dry air are non-polar molecules and therefore cannot and do not absorb any significant amount of the outgoing IR (by the changing electric dipole moment mechanism). The MODTRAN spectrum shows that the main greenhouse gases are (1) water vapor, (2) CO2, and (3) ozone whose band absorptions form downward bites from the Planck curve. The total area of those downward bites amounts to 123.22 W/m^2, where the total area under the 288.2 K Planck curve amounts to 383.34 W/m^2. So denying any greenhouse effect is denying the evidence of the IR spectra. However, the IPCC and climate change literature is wrong by at least a factor of 2, and more likely by a factor of 4, in estimating the extra warming when CO2 is doubled from 300 to 600 ppmv, including feedbacks. This extra warming (before feedbacks) corresponds to the slight difference in area between the green and blue absorption curves in the MODTRAN spectra. Note that the differences in area are centered at 618 and 721 cm^-1, which correspond to absorptions by the v=1 first excited vibrational state of CO2, not the ground v=0 state (see the energy level diagram, diagram 3 in the section “Spectral transitions” at http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com ). Unlike the main frequencies from 620-720 cm^-1 for the v=0 ground state, these sidebands are not saturated, because the population of molecules in the v=1 excited state is only about 3% of the total number of molecules. Therefore increasing CO2 will increase the amount of absorption slightly.
However, the literature explanation for the greenhouse effect invoking back-radiation is wrong, and I agree with Joseph Postma on this point. Here is the correct explanation: Temperatures decrease with increasing altitude in the troposphere because the most probable way of distributing energy among molecules is to give each degree of freedom of each molecule an equal amount (the classical Equipartition of Energy at equilibrium). In particular, if gravitational potential energy U = mgh is increased, and if there is no injection of heat/energy from outside (i.e. the change is adiabatic), then the enthalpy (heat content) H = Cp.T must decrease, where heat capacity at constant pressure Cp = 7k/2 per molecule for linear molecules like N2, O2 and CO2 , and k = Boltzmann’s constant (Cp = 5k/2 for monatomic Ar, since there is no rotational motion possible). [See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity ] I.e. dU/dh = – dH/dh = – (dH/dT).(dT/dh) , on applying the Chain Rule for derivatives. On substitution for U and H, and rearranging factors, we derive the dry adiabatic lapse rate dT/dh = -9.8 K/km. So every km increase in altitude means a drop of 9.8 K if there is no injection of heat.
But IR photons are absorbed by greenhouse gas molecules like CO2 and water vapor, forming excited state molecules. These excited molecules can then re-emit IR photons, but since the energy levels are quantized, there would then be no net change in energy, and hence no greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect arises because the excited molecules can lose their extra energy in non-radiative collisions with the main molecules of the troposphere, which outnumber CO2 by a ratio of 1,000,000:400 = 2500:1. The result is increased translational and rotational energies for the departing molecules, i.e. a net increase in enthalpy (heat content), and since delta H = Cp.(delta T), a net increase in temperature. Because the surface of the Earth is warmer than the layers of the troposphere above it, there is a net transfer of energy from hot to cold, so the Second Law of Thermodynamics is not violated. Rotating and vibrating N2 and O2 molecules cannot re-radiate IR photons because they do not have a non-zero electric dipole moment. Because the quantized vibrational energy levels for N2 and O2 are so high, almost all the molecules are in the v=0 ground state, so Cp does not include a vibrational component.
The heat absorbed by the non-radiating N2, O2 and Ar molecules means that the slope of the temperature profile of the troposphere will change. Suppose that 100% of the IR at all frequencies is absorbed by the first layer of the troposphere. Then by Kirchhoff’s Law that a good absorber is a good emitter, 100% of the energy will be re-emitted by the first layer. If one considers that at that temperature another 100% will be emitted as back-radiation, then we have a total of 200% emitted by the first layer, when it receives only 100% from the solid and liquid surface. This is impossible! The solution is that the back-radiation can be considered the reflection of photons emitted from the hard deck surface, with no net absorption or emission by either the first layer or the hard deck surface. With no net absorption or emission due to back-radiation, there is no temperature change; the exchange of photons at equal rates simply means that the two layers are at thermodynamic equilibrium. So only the outward flowing 100% energy need be considered. If this process is continued, layer by layer, then 100% of the energy will be emitted to outer space from the last layer, which must be at the same temperature as the hard deck surface. In essence, the troposphere would be a 100% opaque layer, so the emission from the hard deck surface becomes emission from the last layer before outer space. It is important, therefore, that we consider all energy balance diagrams and hypotheses that invoke back-radiation as an explanation for the greenhouse effect as simply wrong.
However, we can now understand more: from the MODTRAN data, 123.22/383.34 = 0.321, or 32.1% of the IR energy emitted by the hard deck surface is absorbed in the troposphere via greenhouse gases. Since delta H is proportional to delta T, this means that the temperature change for each km increase in altitude should be moderated by 32.1%. I.e. instead of a drop of 9.8 K per km, the drop should be (1-0.321)(9.8) = 6.65 K per km. I.e. the observed lapse rate should be -6.65 K/km, a calculation which is within 2% of the accepted value of -6.8 K/km. We can even rationalize the even greater moderation in the lower troposphere as due to latent heats transferred on condensation of cloud droplets from separate water vapor (gas) molecules, and by the greater absorption at all IR frequencies by cloud particles, which are essentially miniature Planck black bodies.
The throttling of outgoing IR by absorption by greenhouse gases, the energy transferred to non-radiating N2, O2 and Ar molecules, means that there would be an energy imbalance compared to an Earth with no greenhouse gases. The same incoming Solar radiation would therefore increase the hard deck surface temperature, whose IR emission would increase by T^4 (the Stefan-Boltzmann law), until energy balance is achieved. Thus the solid and liquid surface of the Earth warms up, as well as the troposphere, until at equilibrium the two temperatures match at the surface. This is the greenhouse effect, which is about 18 degrees in magnitude, if one considers that the main greenhouse gas is water vapor, which produces clouds, which affect the albedo (so Hansen’s original estimate of 288 – 255 = 33 K is wrong, since it assumes the albedo of a clouded Earth remains constant).
The main point here is that back-radiation as an explanation for the greenhouse effect is wrong, and ought to be retracted from the literature. An understanding of the difference between absorption spectra and emission spectra has also been missing from the climate change literature. This requires understanding that there are two terms on the right side of the Schwarzschild Equation, a Beer-Lambert absorption term and an emission term. For those non-saturated CO2 lines in the sidebands, modified Beer-Lambert absorption explains the extra greenhouse effect, not emission from opaque Planck black body surfaces that do not exist for all IR frequencies. I can send more details if you contact me at [email protected] .
“The main point here is that back-radiation as an explanation for the greenhouse effect is wrong, and ought to be retracted from the literature. … It is important, therefore, that we consider all energy balance diagrams and hypotheses that invoke back-radiation as an explanation for the greenhouse effect as simply wrong.”
Indeed, it is wrong, and it also violates all manner of thermodynamic law.
Further though, absorption of radiant IR energy by molecules in the atmosphere should not be labelled a “greenhouse effect” either, as this is simple heat flow. That there is such a thing as an absorption spectrum is not a greenhouse effect. We do not call absorption spectra “greenhouse effects”. Everybody wants to use and create new concepts for the label “greenhouse effect”, but they should calm down and just finally drop it.
A real greenhouse does the real greenhouse effect, and it is about stopping convection and trapping warmed air. It is a physical effect, and not an effect due to radiation. Or it is an effect involving radiation in as much as the glass ceiling of a greenhouse has lower emissivity than the ground surface beneath it, but this is not about “backradiation” or the alarmist “greenhouse effect” either. The term “greenhouse effect” applies, logically, to what happens in an actual greenhouse, and the term should stop being used for things that it isn’t, like “backradiation”, absorption spectra, heat flow from hot to cold, etc. Of course the sophistry of using terms for things which they are not only serves confusion and benefits only those who wish to subvert & confuse…the alarmists and the political agenda they intend.
The warmer ground surface can heat the cooler atmosphere by physical contact transfer (conduction, convection), and also by radiation transfer. None of these processes are and thus none of them should be called a “greenhouse effect”. Molecules in a cool gas absorbing energy from a warmer background emitter is not a “greenhouse effect”.
From dT/dh = -g/Cp, we know that the atmosphere must have a sequential temperature distribution independent of any radiative effect, as the derivation for that result is independent of radiative influence. Given that we know that the atmosphere must have a sequential temperature distribution, then we also already know that any expected average state of the atmosphere can not be found at either extremity of said distribution since by mathematical law an average must be found within the interior of a sequential distribution and not at either extremity. Thus, the bottom of the atmosphere *has to* be warmer than any expected average temperature, and so it was never correct to think that -18C should be found at the Earth’s surface from the beginning.
If one factors in latent heat release to the dry lapse rate of -9.8K/km, given the known average water vapor concentration at the surface and that this concentration goes to zero at ~10km, then one arrives at the wet lapse rate of -6.5K/km. This is within a few percent of measurement, and so if any extra radiative influence is there from CO2 molecules absorbing radiant thermal energy, the effect is 2nd order, at the single-percentage level of influence. And what would you expect of a molecule that is only 1 part in 2500.
This whole narrative about thermal radiation, about WARMTH, being a great threat to existence is ridiculous and fraudulent. Of course, it is all a manufactured sophistical reinterpretation and misrepresentation of reality for a fraudulent political end – the end of having a small number of meritless psychopathic people in total control of the state of livelihood of everyone else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5bwaf9QXro
I agree with Joe that the back-radiation explanation is inadequate, that the Greenhouse Effect is a misnomer, that the lapse rate determined by gravity and specific heat accounts for a warmer surface and that we should be more worried about cooling than warming. There is, however, a bit more to the story.
Atmospheric radiation, both outwards to space and inwards to Earth, is a well-established fact. That reaching Earth’s surface complies with Kirchhoff’s Law (i.e. fully absorbed) and with the first law of thermodynamics (i.e. converted to thermal energy). Being at a lower energy level than that radiating from the warmer surface, however, it cannot increase surface temperature. But it does replace some of the thermal energy lost to outgoing radiation, and thus reduce the rate of cooling of the surface. That it can enhance the warming effect of solar radiation in the morning was nicely demonstrated by Carl Brehmer, whose study was written up by Joe Postma in A Discussion on the Absence of a Measurable Greenhouse Effect and published on October 22, 2012 here:
http://principia-scientific.org/publications/Absence_Measureable_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf (see Figure 11)
The problem with this explanation for a warmer surface is that the IR-absorbing/emitting (greenhouse) gases (especially water vapour) also absorb solar IR and thus reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth’s surface, by up to 39% if we include clouds condensed from water vapour; so increasing the concentration of these gases also increases their cooling effect by day. It is therefore primarily at night that these gases slow the rate of surface cooling. Daytime greenhouse studies show no difference between IR-absorbent and IR-transparent glass. These gases don’t work like a greenhouse but more like a thermos flask, which slows cooling by reflecting outgoing radiation. I would therefore prefer to call it the Thermos Effect.
As Joe points out, the temperature gradient in the troposphere is determined by gravity and specific heat. Since the IR-absorbing gases, especially water vapour, actually reduce the lapse rate, one might imagine that they should make the surface cooler rather than warmer. Water vapour, however, greatly elevates the radiation altitude and tropopause, especially over the tropics, so that the lapse rate operates over a greater distance, more than compensating for the reduction in lapse rate.
Radiant thermal energy from the atmosphere can not act as heat for the surface, nor does it stop the surface from emitting since radiant thermal emission is spontaneous as per the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, and so emission from the surface is not “slowed”. Heat is not a or the conserved quantity.
It is impossible for emission from the atmosphere to “enhance” the warming from sunlight, as this statement implies that emission from the atmosphere must likewise be being transferred as heat along with solar radiation being transferred as such. And so this is not what was demonstrated in the paper by Postma & Brehmer, because it is impossible for such a thing to be demonstrated. What was in fact demonstrated in the paper was that atmospheric emission does not add with solar input as the temperature one would expect given that combination was not achieved.
The bottom-of-atmosphere or “surface” temperature is a function of, to first order, two variables. Those variables are 1) the solar flux input, 2) the depth of the atmosphere. On a planet like Venus which has a tremendous atmospheric depth, and high atmospheric reflectivity which rejects a high percentage of the incoming solar flux, the main dependence is thus on the depth of atmosphere. On a planet like Earth there is more equitable dependence between the two variables, where solar input does significantly warm the surface in the morning and also the depth of atmosphere is significant enough to affect the average near-surface-temperature. The likely explanation for the local bottom-of-atmosphere temperature to be warmer than the rising local solar flux until maximum is achieved is atmospheric expansion (due to heating) above said location, which increases the weighting for the -g/Cp dependence of the two variables
A later paper was published on ArXiv (https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.02503) in which the radiative factor was isolated so that it could be seen whether or not “backradiation” could enhance the warming caused by solar input. Of course on theoretical principles alone it is known that this is impossible and that such a concept doesn’t occur or exist, but nevertheless it is helpful to witness empirical demonstrations. A case study was made of Joseph Fourier’s own empirical work on the matter, relevant given that this research lead to his development of modern heat transfer theory via the Fourier Transform.
In regards to the concept of “slowed surface cooling” caused by the atmosphere overnight, in the paper referenced by Wes Allen (good to see you again Wes) it was demonstrated that, given the thermal capacity of the atmosphere and its rate of cooling, it should drop in temperature overnight by only about 1-2 degrees Kelvin. What is empirically found however is that the near-surface air/surface temperature drops by about 10 Kelvin or more, thus indicating that surface cooling is in fact enhanced, and not inhibited, overnight.
Indeed, the “backradiation” gambit is entirely erroneous and incompatible with thermodynamics, and the radiative “greenhouse effect” based on it, and which is the sole basis of climate alarm, is likewise nonexistent, which thus goes to say that climate alarm has no foundation whatsoever.
Anyone who is interested in this subject should look at Figure 11 in the article to which I provided a link and ask themselves why the ground temperature remained above the insolation temperature, adjusted for albedo, at all times on day 1 and for all but a short time around noon on day 2. Conduction of subsurface heat will delay surface cooling in the afternoon and evening, but it certainly won’t make the surface temperature rise ahead of solar insolation in the morning. Another question to ask yourself is how could any heat be stored in the subsurface when the surface temperature remained above that which could be obtained from insolation alone, especially on day 1? This study provides powerful empirical evidence for the impact of atmospheric radiation on surface temperature, and I am indebted to Joe for it.
Well I really wish not to indebt someone to me for becoming misinformed. Please re-read the above comment (https://thebestschools.org/special/karoly-happer-dialogue-global-warming/william-happer-interview/#comment-733) to understand that radiation from the atmosphere can not act as heat for the warmer surface, nor does it prevent the surface from emitting energy, nor is the night-time cooling of the surface slowed in any case, but is enhanced. Someone should look into why surface cooling is enhanced, rather than impeded or slowed by radiation from the atmosphere as expected under the false radiative greenhouse physics paradigm. Nevertheless I am greatly pleased to see Wes agree that “backradiation” is inadequate, and that the “greenhouse effect” term is a misnomer.
For more detail, please see the presentation “There is no Radiative Greenhouse Effect”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5bwaf9QXro
rogertaguchi says
“…Suppose that 100% of the IR at all frequencies is absorbed by the first layer of the troposphere. Then by Kirchhoff’s Law that a good absorber is a good emitter, 100% of the energy will be re-emitted by the first layer. If one considers that at that temperature another 100% will be emitted as back-radiation, then we have a total of 200% emitted by the first layer, when it receives only 100% from the solid and liquid surface. This is impossible!…”
Kirchhoff’s (and S & B) refer to solid bodies which in the simple case (a) of a flat body will radiate equally in all directions but constrained within a hemisphere. In a comparative simple case (b) of a solid sphere having the same surface area as (a), the same laws apply but radiation will be unrestrained to go equally in all directions (spherically). If S & B is applied, then it suggests that body (b) requires double the heat input of that for (a) in order to maintain a particular equilibrium temperature. In the process, it radiates equally “up” and “down”.
Putting aside that an air layer in the troposphere is not a solid body, and ignoring collisional energy transfer to non GHG’s, would it not be fair to say that for any given equilibrium temperature, the GHG’s will radiate 50% of their absorbed energy “up” and 50% “down”, not 2 x 100%?
Bob Fernley-Jones.
Hi Bob!
The Stefan-Boltzmann law applies for a Planck black body, i.e. one that is opaque at all frequencies. This applies to almost all solids and liquids in the far infrared (IR) range, e.g. for the hard deck surface of the Earth which is assumed to have emissivity 0.98 (a perfect black body has emissivity 1). The main components of the dry atmosphere (78% N2, 21% O2, 1% Ar) are essentially transparent at visible frequencies, but also at IR frequencies (because the molecules are non-polar, with zero electric dipole moment). This means that they have absorptivity and emissivity essentially zero. They cannot and do not emit any Planck black body radiation. Therefore all energy budget diagrams in the literature are wrong, if they show that most of the TOA (Top Of the Atmosphere) IR flux comes from “atmospheric emission”. Yes, there is 220 K Planck black body radiation emitted below 200 cm^-1, due to rotating water vapor molecules dropping down from an excited state to a lower one with a change in rotational quantum number “delta J” = -1, where rotational angular momentum is expressed in units of h/2pi , where h = Planck’s constant. This occurs because the average translational kinetic energy of air molecules at 220 K is enough to produce rotationally excited water vapor molecules on collision. But from 200 to 600 cm^-1, collisions become less and less likely to produce the highly excited state water vapor molecules that can emit those higher energy IR photons. From 620 to 710 cm^-1, 220 K emission from excited state CO2 molecules is powered by collisions in the stratosphere with excited state ozone molecules formed on absorption of incoming UV photons from the Sun. But the total of such stratospheric emission from CO2 and ozone molecules is about 19 W/m^2, nowhere near the 240 W/m^2 necessary for energy balance. The water vapor emission below 200 cm^-1 is small, because the Planck black body curves approach zero emission at zero wavenumbers. The 240 W/m^2 flux to outer space is therefore due to that portion of the 383 W/m^2 emitted by the solid and liquid 288 K surface of the Earth which is NOT absorbed by greenhouse gas molecules CO2 and water vapor and transferred to non-radiating N2, O2 and Ar molecules. The flux that is absorbed is 383-240 = 143 W/m^2 , which maintains a tropospheric and hard deck surface temperature higher than if there were no greenhouse gases. This is the mechanism of the atmospheric greenhouse effect, and not heating of the hard deck surface by back-radiation. Your suggestion of 50% forward scattering and 50% back-radiation raises the question of “Is this for the entire 10 km of the troposphere? Or for each of many layers?” If for the entire 10 km of the troposphere, that would predict 383/2 = 191.5 W/m^2 outward flux to space, too small for energy balance which requires 240 W/m^2. If there are many layers, each layer transmitting 50% of the previous layer’s output, the flux to outer space would be even less. No, a 100% opaque troposphere at all IR frequencies emits 100% Stefan-Boltzmann flux in the outward direction, but at ordinary Earth pressures only water vapor frequencies below 200 cm^-1, CO2 frequencies between 620-710 cm^-1, and molecular oxygen spin flip frequencies at around 60 GHz are essentially saturated and emit 100% outward at temperatures corresponding to altitudes of 10-30 km (around 220 K). Back-radiation, although it exists, does not normally heat or cool the hard deck surface, since it is balanced by an extra equal amount in the outward direction. The two equal and opposite fluxes just maintain local temperature equilibrium. The one exception occurs in the long polar nighttimes (winters), when rapid cooling of the hard deck surface by loss of photons directly to outer space creates a temperature inversion, with the troposphere actually warmer at several hundred metres compared to the surface. In this case, the back-radiation helps moderate the temperature drop of the surface, as heat content (enthalpy) stored in the daytime in the main non-radiating gases of the troposphere is gradually radiated via excited state greenhouse gas molecules formed on collision with N2, O2 and Ar. Hope this helps.
rogertaguchi says
Thanks Roger…. your key points that I find important relative to mine are:
“…The 240 W/m^2 flux to outer space is therefore due to that portion of the 383 W/m^2 emitted by the solid and liquid 288 K surface of the Earth which is NOT absorbed by greenhouse gas molecules…” “…The flux that is absorbed is 383-240 = 143 W/m^2, which maintains a tropospheric and hard deck surface temperature higher than if there were no greenhouse gases. This is the mechanism of the atmospheric greenhouse effect, and not heating of the hard deck surface by back-radiation…” “…Back-radiation, although it exists, does not normally heat or cool the hard deck surface, since it is balanced by an extra equal amount in the outward direction. The two equal and opposite fluxes just maintain local temperature equilibrium…”
In consideration of RADIATIVE EFFECTS ALONE: It seems to me that there is a problem in semantics in what you (and Wes and Joseph) argue over. Of course, when climate scientists say; greenhouse effect; it could be better framed as “greenhouse effect” or ‘so-called greenhouse effect’, but that aside, I’m unaware of any scientific claims that back-radiation HEATS the surface so wonder where you are coming from.
It is well accepted that back radiation effectively SLOWS the rate at which heat escapes from the generally warmer surface (and progressively less in successive air layers through the colder thinning air above). This is demonstrated by your 383 – 240 W/m^2 numbers. If we accept your comparison (made elsewhere) that the GHG’s behave like the surface molecules in a black body then the fundamental conclusion for the RADIATIVE HEAT transfer process between any air layer and the surface, IF SIMPLIFIED* in concept as BB’s, is provenly formulated thus:
Q = ?(T1^4 – T2^4)
Thus the greater T2* is, the slower is the rate of escape of heat from the surface and thus the higher the surface T driven from solar absorbed.
*Of course, the actual heat sink in air is not another BB SURFACE but a concept of elemental layers of widely separated GHG molecules of differing energy levels treated as having an average T collectively within LTE layers…….which is all rather complicated. Nevertheless, the concept can be described I think (as a mechanical engineer) as: Q = ?(eT1^4 – xT2^4) where x = dunno.
A crude analogy is in heat conduction through say a metal rod (sides insulated) if its thermal resistivity is compared with EMR absorptivity in an air column (of modest height). For any given heat input to the rod, the higher the resistivity, the higher the temperature at the input end because rate of escape of heat is slowed (but to T1 – T2, not to the fourth, etcetera). In the air column comparator, the higher the absorptivity, the higher the surface temperature (and lapse rate).
It is not necessary to explore why individual gas species are or are not absorptive of specific EMR wavelengths, or band widening, or MODTRAN modelled spectra differences to Planckies and whatnot that you detail, other than to take it that individual GHG molecules behave in a similar way (in the IR) to that described by Stefan & Boltzmann (effectively) for “black” molecules in the surface of a flat body.
Re your final line in the three extracts above: “…The two equal and opposite fluxes just maintain local temperature equilibrium…”. True! but the so-called greenhouse effect has resulted in a raised surface T (a raised LTE) as a result of that back-radiation. For instance, please see related link to my unanswered comment on an exchange between J Herbst and J. Postma above.
https://thebestschools.org/special/karoly-happer-dialogue-global-warming/william-happer-interview/#comment-760
The accepted maths in that example (units = W/m^2): Q = 100 – 40 = 60 but apparently you prefer to express it as Q = 40 – 40 + 60?
Bob Fernley-Jones
Hi Bob!
Thanks for clearly stating your arguments logically without malice. You deserve respectful rebuttals. I agree with you, Wes and Joe, that “greenhouse effect” or “so-called greenhouse effect” is more accurate than greenhouse effect (since glass greenhouses involve preventing heat loss by convection, a different mechanism from the gases in the troposphere).
Re your puzzlement about where I get my objection to “back-radiation heats the surface”, you immediately show where this comes from when you state “It is well accepted that back radiation effectively slows the rate at which heat escapes from the generally warmer surface”. Except for when net back radiation is greater than outgoing flux from the hard deck surface when there is a temperature inversion (which occurs near the poles during the long winter/nighttime), I contend that back radiation does not slow the rate at which heat escapes to outer space. It is net absorption of outgoing flux by greenhouse gases which transfer energy on collision to non-radiating N2, O2 and At molecules that slows the rate at which heat escapes to outer space (which must be by radiation, since conduction and convection to outer space is negligible). Then the incoming Solar radiation, assumed unchanged, is greater than the TOA (Top Of the Atmosphere) flux, so the hard deck surface increases in temperature until the new Stefan-Boltzmann T^4 emission, minus the new absorption by greenhouse gases, balances the incoming Solar radiation at steady state. Because the heat transferred to non-radiating molecules warms each layer of the troposphere, the lapse rate is moderated (to -6.8 K/km from the dry adiabatic lapse rate of -9.8 K.km). So both the slope and the intercept of the temperature profile at the hard deck surface are changed by net absorption by greenhouse gases such as water vapor and CO2. Back-radiation at greenhouse gas frequencies can be observed by spectrometers looking upward from the surface, but this simply shows there is local thermodynamic equilibrium for thin layers of the troposphere (at central CO2 band frequencies, absorption is 100% complete within tens of metres, followed by 100% emission by Kirchhoff’s Law, so the back-radiation is effectively from opaque layers at or very near the surface temperature).
Next, you invoke the radiative heat transfer mechanism, where heat absorbed Q is the difference between two T^4 terms, one for the hard deck surface (at 288.2 K) and the other at the TOA. This assumes that the TOA flux is that from an opaque black body surface (e.g. at 255 K, which corresponds to 240 W/m^2). It is true that below 200 cm^-1, water vapor pure rotation transitions result in 220 K Planck black body emission, powered by collisions with non-radiating N2, O2 and At molecules which jolt water molecules to higher rotational energy states.
It is also true that from 620 to 710 cm^-1, infrared (IR) spectra taken by satellites or balloons looking down show 220 K Planck black body emission from vibrationally excited CO2 molecules. But this CO2 emission is powered not from the ground below, but by excited CO2 molecules formed on collision with excited ozone molecules formed in the stratosphere on absorption of incoming Solar UV radiation. Thus if CO2 is doubled, the opaque layer from which central CO2 frequency photons finally escape to outer space will be higher up, where the density is lower. But because ozone absorbs incoming Solar UV, there is a temperature inversion in the stratosphere from 10 to 40 or 50 km altitude. Thus on doubling CO2, the central emission from CO2 comes from higher layers which are actually higher in temperature, so the emission to outer space actually increases (see the section “The hard bit” at http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com ). This means for energy balance at steady state, the Earth’s hard deck surface needs to decrease slightly in temperature, not increase. I.e. the result is global cooling! But of course, this is not the complete picture.
The literature model of radiative heat transfer apes a successful model for the interior of stars. Heat released during exothermic nuclear fusion reactions at the center of stars spreads outward in the form of fast-moving particles and in high energy photons (gamma rays). The gamma rays can be scattered during inelastic collisions with charged particles (electrons and mainly protons) in the star’s interior, transferring energy to those particles [this is Compton scattering]. The energy transferred diminishes the energy of the photons, so gamma rays eventually become X-rays, then UV rays, and then mainly visible radiation which finally escapes to outer space at the photosphere. This model and its equations can be applied to those frequencies that correspond to complete 100% absorption followed by emission (i.e. for those frequencies where the troposphere is opaque). But the emission from central CO2 IR frequencies amounts to only about 16 W/m^2, increasing by a measly 0.6 W/m^2 on doubling CO2 (as shown by the emission spectrum looking down on a 210 K Thunderstorm Anvil, where the background 210 K Planck black body emission is lower than the 220 K stratospheric CO2 emission peak).
Instead of cooling the Earth on doubling CO2, there is of course a net warming, but the mechanism is not the same as above. This is because the molecules in the troposphere are electrically neutral, not charged, so photons cannot be degraded in energy via inelastic Compton scattering. The vibrational and rotational energy levels of CO2 molecules are quantized, which means that absorption followed by emission does not change the energy of the photons or the non-radiating air molecules surrounding them. It is the quenching of vibrationally excited molecules during inelastic non-radiating collisions that transfers energy to the non-radiating molecules, resulting in atmospheric warming. So the equation involving the difference of two T^4 terms is inapplicable. Also, the visible and UV radiation escaping from the Sun do so at the photosphere because that’s where the atoms (electrons and ions) run out. There is no comparable sudden change in density for the Earth’s atmosphere (the mean density of the Sun is about that of liquid water at the Earth’s surface). So IR photons do not suddenly escape to outer space for frequencies which are not saturated (which means they cannot be thought of as emitted by opaque Planck black body surfaces). Instead those unsaturated frequencies, which are responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect (the extra warming on doubling CO2), are located on the sloping sides of the absorption ditch, and follow a modified Beer-Lambert law, where an initial intensity Io at the 288.2 K hard deck surface is reduced to I = Io.exp(-KCL) where L=10-30 km is the effective path length, C is the concentration of absorbing molecules, and K is a constant. The absorbing CO2 molecules are in the v=1 vibrationally first excited state, as shown by the absorptions centered at 618 and 721 cm^-1 in the MODTRAN computer simulated spectrum available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing (the net extra absorption corresponds to the small area between the green and blue curves). For the vibrational energy level diagram showing the transitions, see the third diagram in the section “Spectral transitions” at http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com . I have used the adjective “modified” because there is a very small emission term that must be added to the Beer-Lambert transmission term in the Schwarzschild Equation [see the section “Schwarzschild’s Equation” at http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com which shows that the intensity recorded by a spectrometer is the sum of a Beer-Lambert transmission term and an emission term]. The emission term has a coefficient B which is the Planck black body emission at altitude relative to that at the hard deck surface (lower by the ratio of the 4th power of T). Since the density at 10 km is about 1/4 that at the Earth’s surface, the emission/absorption factor will be severely reduced for highly non-saturated frequencies, since if C is replaced by C/4, this means that exp(-KCL) is replaced by the 4th-root of exp(-KCL). At 20 km, where C is replaced by approx. C/16, the emission term becomes increasingly marginalized, so for highly non-saturated frequencies the intensity observed will approach the simple Beer-Lambert law. Thus the enhanced greenhouse effect is mainly due to net Beer-Lambert absorption at highly non-saturated frequencies and not to emission of radiation from a cooler opaque layer at altitude. Everyone who has learned the radiative heat transfer paradigm will find it hard to unlearn it, and accept what I have just written.
Rather than writing more, I can send more details and discussion on request at my email address of [email protected] . The goal is to have us all converge on the right theory which leads to correct calculations of the climate sensitivity (which I say is 0.66 +/- 0.16 K , including water vapor and cloud feedbacks, and not 3 K).
Thanks Roger for your continued interest and lengthy response.
Let’s review two of your points:
1) “…I [Roger] contend that back radiation does not slow the rate at which heat escapes to outer space. It is net absorption of outgoing flux by greenhouse gases which transfer energy on collision to non-radiating N2, O2 and Ar molecules that slows the rate at which heat escapes to outer space…”
But you confirm there IS back-radiation. Per S&B & law 2, this radiation is subtracted from the upwelling to obtain the net radiative heat transfer in the simplified radiation-only process. In the simplified concept that I outlined, the greater the back-radiation (it being altitude and/or GHG density related) the lesser is the net escape rate of heat. Back-radiation is greatest near the surface, does not come from a definable air-layer surface (a la S&B), and diminishes with altitude. Amongst various other things, my simplified consideration does not include a small reduction of surface absorption of solar input with increasing GHG density (incoming UV and near-IR absorption)……. Etcetera.
It’s a bit out of my field but my elementary understanding of molecular energy levels (motions/speeds) in any gas species is that they vary considerably and I guess a mixture of gasses will have net “bell-curve” distributions. All rather different in a solid body surface though! Nevertheless, my simplified model suggested that an LTE elementary layer of gas can be conceived as behaving rather like the surface of a solid body in the context of this here. An odd aspect in it (if I understand correctly) is that after collisions and whatnot, the mean energy levels/motions/”temperatures” of each molecule species within the non-GHG’s will probably be different to those in each of the GHG’s. However, the “temperature” of the non-GHG’s is unimportant because they are inactive.
You made an excursion to the Sun in your extensive comments so I will make analogy too. It is said that the temperature of its surface is ~5,800K. Oh really? But where is the surface? The brightness image of the sun that we generally see appears to be a uniform disc, but in detail there is “limb darkening” in a tangential range at the outside of the sphere which I seem to recollect is quite big when say compared with the diameter of the Earth! What surface?
Such thoughts led me to produce the joke formula (unable to show Greek symbols here):
Q = ?(eT1^4 – xT2^4), where x = dunno
Nevertheless, regardless of what x represents, and various other stuff (below), I fail to see how you can argue that back-radiation does NOT slow the rate of escape of solar absorbed at the surface………
2) “…Next, you [Bob] invoke the radiative heat transfer mechanism, where heat absorbed Q is the difference between two T^4 terms, one for the hard deck surface (at 288.2 K) and the other at the TOA…”
Well no, I was not talking TOA; sorry for any misunderstanding but the first T2 (at the first considered heat sink) was intended as the first conceived absorptive air layer. Last time I looked at the issue in how LTE air layers should be conceived, (maybe 3 years ago) I thought the best guess was that MOST of the initial hemispherical surface emissions would be absorbed very close to the surface, maybe as low as around 1m. Photon path lengths range at their minimum at the surface and most of them tend towards the lateral, not up. Subsequent aerial emissions go omnidirectionally spherical and their intensity will reduce and path lengths increase with increasing altitude in any layer subsequently examined.
There are complications in defining air-layers for consideration of back radiation in that their LTE is not the consequence of EMR alone. For instance, the latest Kevin Trenberth energy balance cartoon suggests that ~50% of the heat loss from the surface is dumped from latent heat at cloud level via evapotranspiration, and another ~10% more progressively from convection.
I’m impressed that your detailed analyses may be very useful in establishing LTE layers in the atmosphere but that the fundamentals of net radiative heat transfer continue to be true.
I’m closing quickly because I’m running out of time today, and tomorrow I will be tripping to the hills where for much of the next two days, mobile communications are likely to fail.
Thanks and regards,
Bob Fernley-Jones
Hi Bob!
Yes, I said that back-radiation does exist (as recorded by infrared spectrometers looking upward from the Earth’s surface), but it is not a full Planck black body spectrum (the back-radiation is at central CO2 and water vapor frequencies).
To understand why back-radiation does not warm the surface (unless there is a temperature inversion in the first several hundred metres), consider each 100 W/m^2 emitted from a 288.2 K hard deck surface. The first layer of the troposphere will be in Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (at 288.2 K). If greenhouse gas frequencies are saturated (i.e. the tropospheric layer is 100% opaque at those frequencies), then equal fluxes will be emitted in the forward and backward directions. If 50 W/m^2 escapes in the forward direction, and 50 W/m^2 of the original 100 W/m^2 is in back-radiation, then the NET flux from the surface is 100-50 = 50 W/m^2. So the NET effect is that 50 W/m^2 emitted by the hard deck surface escapes in the forward direction with a flux of 50 W/m^2. I.e. we can consider that ALL of the Stefan-Boltzmann flux emitted by the hard deck surface escapes the first layer, which is at the same temperature of 288.2 K. This is consistent with the first layer being isothermal and 100% opaque: the surface of emission has simply been translated from the hard deck surface to the top of the first layer. The back-radiation does not change the temperature of the hard deck surface (there is no net warming) because it merely indicates thermal equilibrium, with equal fluxes in both directions. Quantitatively, the back-radiation can be considered a reflection of part of the emission from the hard deck surface, although in reality there is a delay between absorption followed by emission (reflection, however, in our minds means equal fluxes in both directions, whereas emission following absorption is fuzzier quantitatively).
However, there is a temperature drop with increasing altitude. I showed that the adiabatic lapse rate of -9.8 K/km is independent of the presence or absence of greenhouse gases, since it is simply a consequence of dU/dh = – dH/dh . Net energy absorption of outgoing infrared (IR) flux by greenhouse gases is mainly transferred to non-radiating N2, O2 and Ar molecules and moderates the lapse rate to -6.8 K/km, and for energy balance with incoming Solar radiation, this means that the temperature of the hard deck surface must rise, the greenhouse effect. The lapse rate means that the next layer will be at LTE at a slightly lower temperature (by dT), so the back-radiation will be slightly less, and so will the forward radiation from the top of the second layer. As before, the back-radiation exists, but it cannot warm the first layer (since this would correspond to spontaneous net heat flow from lower to higher temperature, violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics). We can continue on, layer by layer, until at 20-30 km the central CO2 IR frequencies can escape to outer space, effectively from an opaque last surface at 220 K. The outgoing flux at 220 K is (220/288.2)^4 = 0.34 times that at the hard deck surface at frequencies that are saturated (100% opaque). The net energy absorbed has been mainly transferred to the non-radiating molecules, which at each layer will be at the same increased temperature as the CO2 molecules (i.e. at LTE). Non-radiating molecules on average cannot be at a lower temperature at equilibrium in the same layer (at the same altitude h). BTW molecular velocities follow at equilibrium a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution: N(v) = v^2.exp(-0.5mv^2/kT) , where k = Boltzmann’s constant, not exactly a Gaussian bell-shaped curve (but your idea of an energy distribution function was correct). At equilibrium, each degree of freedom carries on average the same energy per molecule, so the heat capacity at constant pressure is 7k/2 per molecule for linear molecules N2, O2 and CO2 (for the monatomic Ar molecule, Cp = 5k/2 per molecule since it lacks the rotational degree of freedom). [See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity ]
During the daytime, incoming Solar radiation raises the temperature of the hard deck surface, which by Stefan-Boltzmann emits more flux, and the heat stored increases in the troposphere (mainly in non-radiating molecules), which is given by (delta H) = Cp.(delta T). During the nighttime, there is no incoming Solar radiation, so the hard deck surface drops in temperature as there is a net flux of IR photons to outer space. However, as the temperature of the hard deck surface drops by (delta T), the next layer above which is only dT cooler will tend to be warmer, so the back-radiation from greenhouse gases will tend to moderate the rate of temperature drop. As the population of excited state CO2 molecules becomes depleted in the next layer, collisions of ground state CO2 molecules with N2, O2 and Ar molecules will replenish most of the excited state CO2 molecules, and in this way heat content (enthalpy) stored in the troposphere during the daytime can flow back to the cooling hard deck surface, moderating the temperature drop. So the hard deck surface temperature does fluctuate daily, but the mean value is not raised by back-radiation, since the energy stored in the daytime balances the energy used to moderate nighttime losses. Back-radiation is only a mechanism by which LTE is maintained, in keeping with LeChatelier’s Principle that “if a system at equilibrium is stressed, the equilibrium shifts in such a direction as to PARTIALLY relieve that stress”. At nighttime, the stress is a drop in hard deck surface temperature, and a flow of energy via greenhouse gas back-radiation from the troposphere moderates the temperature drop. But the temperature does drop, since the relief is only partial. And if the nighttime is prolonged (e.g. for months in the polar regions), radiation from the troposphere via CO2 frequencies may not be sufficient to maintain LTE, and a temperature inversion can occur, with the hard deck surface temperature becoming tens of degrees cooler than the troposphere at several hundred metres altitude.
Re the 5800 K emission from the Sun: since the Sun is composed of charged particles (electrons and ions), the mean free path of photons is quite short. Photons are constantly being absorbed and re-emitted via inelastic Compton scattering, and in this way energy is transferred from hotter interior layers to cooler outer layers. This scattering means that the interior is 100% opaque. However, photons of visible and UV radiation can finally escape to outer space at the photosphere, and travel in straight lines outward, some reaching the Earth. This escape occurs from a layer where the density of scattering electrons and ions suddenly plummets (since the mass runs out), and the intensity function is that of an opaque 5800 K Planck black body, with the total flux given by the Stefan-Boltzmann law for T=5800 K. Yes, the Sun is made up of gases, but the mean density is approximately that of liquid water at the Earth’s surface, so there really is a sudden drop in density. The Sun does have a tenuous (thin) corona, made up of gases at millions of degrees. Emission from this thin corona can be seen during total Solar eclipses, but the Stefan-Boltzmann and Planck black body laws do not apply, since the corona is not 100% opaque. For example, it is totally wrong to compute a Stefan-Boltzmann flux varying as (1,000,000)^4 . Similarly it is wrong to apply radiative exchange equations to the non-saturated frequencies in the Earth’s troposphere, since by definition the entire 10 km of the troposphere is not opaque at those frequencies. This means that the Trenberth energy budget diagrams are all wrong when they show “emission from the atmosphere” dominating the right side. The TOA flux is mainly flux emitted by the hard deck surface which is NOT absorbed by the greenhouse gases in the entire 10 km path length of the troposphere.
Why is the hard deck surface of the Earth a near-perfect (emissivity 0.98) Planck black body emitter of IR radiation? In condensed phases (solids and liquids), the atoms/ions/molecules are held together by attractive forces (bonds), which may be approximated by springs. Energy can be stored in these springs, but there are zillions of weaker springs representing forces between particles that are not nearest-neighbours. Those weaker springs correspond to lower frequencies. So condensed phases emit IR photons over essentially a continuous spectrum given by the Planck black body formula (which Planck derived assuming that the energy stored in vibration of these springs must be quantized). By Kirchhoff’s Law that a good absorber is a good emitter, very poor IR emitters must be very poor absorbers, so we need only consider those materials used as IR windows, lenses or prisms. Unlike most terrestrial materials which contain small H atoms (e.g. water, hydrocarbons) or O atoms (e.g. silicates) which vibrate at high frequencies over 400 cm^-1, NaCl and KBr are used as windows for IR specimen cells. Vibrational frequencies for a harmonic oscillator vary as the square root of k/m where k=force constant and m=mass. The more massive Na+, Cl-, and especially K+ and Br- nuclei have lower fundamental frequencies for vibration and are transparent at wavelengths corresponding to IR spectra. CsI would be even better. So except for certain salt flats, the emissivity at 288 K for most condensed phases will be nearly equal to 1. Hope this helps.
Thanks Roger for a very interesting discussion, but I still have difficulties with some things that I think you may have overlooked and this here is brief, having returned tired and still busy from a trip in the hills, mostly out of laptop radio access.
One fundamental is that that energy transfer from GHG to non-GHG molecules via collisions is the consequence of absorption of IR by those GHG’s. In other words, thermalization of N2/O2/Ar is an EFFECT that is CAUSED by that GHG absorption. (And an effect cannot precede its cause).
A parallel prime EFFECT that has the warmists excited is T1^4 – Tx^4 where Tx does not fit with the classic hard surface having a given (cooler) T, but is a profusion of gaseous molecular “T’s” whizzing around all over a substantial depth of air. Nevertheless, the concept of an elemental air-layer having an equilibrium T over its micro-depth enables the classical calculation to be made for any one of the countless conceivable layers.
The conventional cooler T2 body (In field of view) slows the escape of heat from the warmer body creating a higher T1.
I’ll look more closely tomorrow
Best regards,
Bob
Hi Bob! Please forgive the delay in response, but sometimes I go for days without checking my email.
You are correct when you say that an effect cannot precede a cause. However, a dynamic equilibrium does not mean there is no motion of molecules, but a balance of flows of energy and molecules. The Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of molecular velocities v is proportional to f(v) = v^2.exp(-0.5mv^2/kT) , which means that there are zero molecules standing still, with frequency of molecules increasing quadratically for low values of v. For high values of v, the translational kinetic energy 0.5mv^2 is in the argument of a decreasing exponential function, so there is a non-zero, but small, probability of really fast-moving molecules. The product of the quadratic and decreasing exponential functions means that there is a peak in the distribution, at the most probable velocity, which is the square root of (2kT/m). The average (mean) velocity is the square root of (8kT/pi.m), and the root-mean-square (rms) velocity is the square root of (3kT/m). Note that these three values are different, unlike the case for a symmetrical Gaussian (bell-shaped) distribution. This is a reflection of the skewing of the f(v) distribution to high values of v. This means that at any temperature around 220-300 K there will be enough high-energy molecules to boost ground state greenhouse gas molecules like CO2 to the first vibrationally excited state (with vibrational quantum number v=1) on collision. The fraction in this excited state, which is capable of emitting an infrared (IR) photon, is small (around 3%). Excited state CO2 molecules can also be produced when ground state (v=0) molecules absorb IR photons emitted from the 288.2 K hard deck surface of the Earth. This would tend to increase the fraction of excited state molecules, upsetting the equilibrium. By LeChatelier’s Principle, the equilibrium shifts in such a direction as to partially relieve that stress. The stress is an increased fraction of v=1 molecules. The relief comes when most, but not all, of the extra v=1 molecules collide with non-radiating N2, O2, and Ar molecules, transferring their extra energy in non-radiative collisions to the main gas molecules of the atmosphere (that outnumber CO2 by 2500:1). So yes, energy transfer occurs both ways, but does not contradict cause-and-effect. At the new equilibrium (which would be at a slightly higher temperature), there will be a slightly higher fraction of excited state molecules, with a new balance between emission and absorption rates. This fundamental mechanism of the greenhouse effect has been missed by the climate change literature, which concentrates only on frequencies that correspond to Planck black body radiation (and the Stefan-Boltzmann law for opaque objects).
Your invoking the T1^4 – Tx^4 relation assumes an opaque layer with a temperature difference between the lower (hard deck) and upper (somewhere in the atmosphere) layer. This applies for lines/frequencies that are nearly 100% saturated (i.e. below 200 cm^-1 for the pure rotation spectrum of water vapour, and between 620-710 cm^-1 for the vibration-rotation spectrum of CO2). However, there is very little difference in the Planck black body emission curves below 200 cm^-1 for temperatures 220 K and 288 K (since the Planck function approaches zero at low frequencies, and converges to the same values for all temperatures), and the CO2 emission between 620-710 cm^-1 amounts to only about 16 W/m^2, a small fraction of the 240 W/m^2 needed for energy balance. And this CO2 emission (which occurs in the stratosphere) actually increases slightly on doubling CO2 (since there is a temperature inversion in the stratosphere due to the net absorption of incoming Solar UV and visible radiation by ozone). This means that for these frequencies, doubling CO2 actually tends to cool the Earth’s hard deck surface, since less hard deck emission need be emitted for energy balance. For MODTRAN computed spectra integrated to 70 km altitude that show this increased emission on doubling CO2, see the section “The hard bit” at http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com .
However, there really is a net warming effect on doubling CO2 because there is increased net absorption at those frequencies that are not yet saturated. This occurs primarily in bands centered at 618 and 721 cm^-1 , due to absorption by v=1 molecules (that constitute only 3% of all CO2 molecules). This explains the slight extra absorption corresponding to the difference in areas between the green and blue curves in the MODTRAN spectra available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing .
Hi Roger,
Expanding on mine of yesterday, and when you say:
1) “…consider each 100 W/m^2 emitted from a 288.2 K hard deck surface. The first layer of the troposphere will be in Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (at 288.2 K)…”
But, you have also suggested that the 100% opacity spectra absorption occurs within “tens of metres” above the surface and that the lapse rate is 6.8 K/Km. Typically, it equates that for every ~fifteen metres of altitude there should be a reduction of T of ~0.1 K, together with reducing barometric pressure. Thus, the first absorption layer is quite fat and does not have an LTE of 288.2 K. (By inference, less absorptive spectra will go to greater altitudes BTW).
2) “…If greenhouse gas frequencies are saturated … …If 50 W/m^2 escapes in the forward direction, and 50 W/m^2 of the original 100 W/m^2 is in back-radiation, then the NET flux from the surface is 100-50 = 50 W/m^2…”
In consideration of any initial surface emission, the geometry of hemispherical omnidirectional radiation (on a simplified flat earth) dictates that most of it tends equally towards the lateral through 360 planar degrees and that “up” flux is much less. It is to T1^4 per S&B.
If we conceive an elemental air layer above with an LTE, it will radiate spherically so for its particular T there is an equal “down” to the “up” however, there are countless such elemental layers of different LTE’s and………
I think I’ll pause there and check if you are interested in continuing this discussion.
Cheers, Bob
Hi Bob!
It is really hard to equilibrate temperatures in the lab to better than 0.01 K stability. So a temperature difference of 0.1 K, though not zero, is pretty close to Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE) for any layer. The layer thickness for 100% opacity (the mean free path of the IR photon for complete absorption followed by complete emission) varies for each frequency, but for central CO2 frequencies is in the order of metres. I used the phrase “tens of metres” so that I could include frequencies between the lines that are not saturated in metres.
Since the troposphere is 10,000 metres thick, there will be many, many layers even if the mean free path is hundreds of metres (in which case your point about LTE is well taken). Suppose for sake of argument each layer is 500 metres thick on average (taking into account the exponential decrease in density with altitude). Then there would be 20 average layers. If, as you propose, half of each radiative flux is back-radiated at the boundary between each layer, then the amount escaping at 10 km will approach 1/(2^20), essentially zero. This conclusion will not be saved by invoking the decreased Stefan-Boltzmann emission with decreasing temperature: a drop from 288 to 220 K means a Planck black body radiation decrease by (220?288)^4 = 0.34, nowhere near 2^-20. Thus using 50% back-radiation at each boundary to explain the greenhouse effect is simply wrong (something Joe Postma has been arguing for years). That back-radiation does exist, but is simply balanced by an equal amount in the forward direction which comes from the previous layer, and ultimately from the hard deck surface. So only the net forward flux need be considered, and that is given by the Stefan-Boltzmann law from the hard deck surface, diminished by any net absorption by greenhouse gases.
As for emission in hemispherical patterns, this might apply for a point particle emitting from the hard deck surface. But add up the hemispherical patterns from a zillion particles spread over the entire surface of the Earth, and you get a net outward flux of energy/power (an analogy might be the wavefront formed from the semicircular emission of waves from each point in a ripple tank wave generator, or the Huygen wavefronts formed in optics which can be used to explain refraction, and interference patterns).
Thanks for your patience Roger,
Extracting three of your points:
1) … So a temperature difference of 0.1 K, though not zero, is pretty close to Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE) for any layer. The layer thickness for 100% opacity (the mean free path of the IR photon for complete absorption followed by complete emission) varies for each frequency, but for central CO2 frequencies is in the order of metres…
Even when restricted to “central frequencies” that you say are of “the order of metres” deep, there is still a T gradient. Rather than LTE (elemental) layers, you thus conceive deeper band depths measured as the nominal local vertical photon MEAN free path length. However, they must comprise very many unique LTE layers. Each elemental layer has its unique T (and radiative response) arising from ALL of the various heat sources, of which the GHG portion is thought to be rather small in each layer.
According to Trenberth’s cartoon, only 14% of the heat lost from the surface is absorbed by GHG’s and clouds in the troposphere, but the 40% from evapotranspiration (and latent heat release) can only be distributed way up in the clouds (even more so at Cirrus ice levels). Furthermore, while GHG absorption reduces with altitude, convection/advection increases I do believe. This leads to later complexities in consideration of molecular collisions which you describe as being the true GH effect.
2) “…If, as you [Bob] propose, half of each radiative flux is back-radiated at the boundary between each layer, then…”
Well no, not from the boundaries of your deeper layers but from countless elemental layers within them, reducing from their most intense close to the surface. It is a matter of plain geometry and photon path lengths.
I’M RUUNNING OUT OF TIME AGAIN so skipping incomplete to 3)
3) “…As for emission in hemispherical patterns, this might apply for a point particle emitting from the hard deck surface. But add up the hemispherical patterns from a zillion particles spread over the entire surface of the Earth, and you get a net outward flux of energy/power…”
S & B showed that from a small flat body the radiation was hemispherical and it follows that by extension of that finding, an equidistant opposition of any large smooth surfaced bodies in common field of view would follow the same rules. A simplified flat surfaced Earth of T1 (288 K) can be compared such with any opposing elemental layer in the troposphere that is capable to back-radiate through to the surface (but its T ….. at gaseous molecular energy distribution levels ….. and “emissivity come penetrability” is tricky to define).
Sorry, gotta go
I would like to add more on molecular path lengths and the implications of them being mostly towards the lateral and the resultant spectrum of molecular collisions, so please let me know if you are interested
Best regards, Bob
Don’t know if Prof. Happer is a wonderful husband, father, or human being but I suspect it is highly likely he is (more than two sigma). However, this is a nonsequetir. What is clear is that he is a great thinker able to present a coherent and cogent argument, leaktight, with an acessible and logical arc. Thank you for the illumination in an otherwise very dark area of ‘science’.
I am no more a climate scientist than Professor Happner, but I would like to point out certain shortcomings of his position as expressed in this interview.
1. I see no great relevance of his prior scientific work to the issues of global warming.
2. His demeaning attacks on Al Gore, GreenPeace and the “climate-change cult” suggest that he is unable to win on the basis of science alone. Ad hominem diversions like this are the first “refuge of scoundrels”.
3. His “educated guess” that doubling CO2 concentrations will warm the surface by only about 1 degree Centigrade (not 3 degrees), is exactly that, a guess. He offers no evidence whatever for this, and apparently expects us to take it on faith.
4. His claim that more CO2 increases photosynthesis in plants and makes them more drought resistant is a huge generalization. One would imagine that such effects
will vary greatly with the plant species. The recent destruction by drought of crops in California and elsewhere suggests that humanity will suffer, not benefit.
5. He complains that the landscape is being blighted by windmills and solar farms. Not as badly, I would guess, as the blight of oil fields and coal mines, bulldozing
entire mountaintops. (These areas, already so ugly, but serviced by roads and electric lines, might make fine wind and solar farms, and also restore local employment levels somewhat.)
6. His point (borrowed from Karl Popper) that once a theory is adapted, one tends to see confirmation everywhere, applies to his own climate theory, just as well as to the mainstream climate theorists.
7. Contrary to the interview (which is apparently out of date), China, India, and the other countries are now working together against climate change. The Times reported
today (January 19, 2017) that China is scrapping some 130 coal-burning plants,
and has been building one new windmill per hour.
8. Happner’s bottom line argument is not scientific, but economic—he speaks of “crony capitalists who have government backing” (like the oil and coal capitalists?) “to force people to buy their inefficent, costly, unreliable windmills and solar farms.”
This argument weakens by the day as wind and solar prices fall.
9. Happner ignores so much: the dying of coral reefs, the devastation of western forests by insects, the drying-up of rivers fed by the Himalayan glaciers, the enormous cost of cleaning up after climate disasters (50 billion dollars just to clean up New
York City after one hurricane), and on and on.
10. Speaking of economy, it can be demonstrated that the entire population of the United States, man, woman, and child, could be made carbon neutral for less than $5.00 per person per year—by reforesting degraded lands in the tropics.
Learn more at https://www.facebook.com/Carbon-Neutral-Woodstock-437596276325810/ Contact [email protected].
I applaud you, David Stein, for critiquing William Happer’s Interview, but you need to be more attentive to detail and more objective:
1. His name is Happer, not Happner, and his prior scientific work shows that he has a good grasp of the basic physics.
2. The reference to Al Gore (“What have you done to Al Gore? I am told I have to fire you.” I assume that the main thing that upset Al Gore (left) was my questioning of blatant propaganda about stratospheric ozone that was his focus at the time: “ozone holes over Kennebunkport” and similar nonsense.) is neither irrelevant to his life story nor ‘demeaning’. Since when was attacking a cult or an organisation like Greenpeace ‘ad hominem’! I think you should learn the meaning of that term.
3. The scientific literature contains estimations of climate sensitivity ranging from 0.6C to 6C, a whole order of magnitude. The IPCC narrows it to1.5-4C, but no one has yet produced anything more than an ‘educated guess’ of the precise figure. Your bias might pick the traditional IPCC favourite of 3C and present that not as an educated guess but as proven fact, and we would have to take that on faith too.
4. Professor Happer explained the difference between C3 and C4 crops and their dependence on CO2. The positive overall impact of rising atmospheric CO2 levels on global vegetation and food production has been extensively researched and published. Your confirmation bias leads you to focus on a Californian drought (that has recently been broken by double the average precipitation) rather than the global record wheat crop reported in The American Interest, 3 September 2016.
5. Yes, mining and power stations can blight the landscape, but they occupy a tiny fraction of the space required by wind and solar to produce the same power output, and they don’t dot numerous ridges and shorelines. Nor do they kill millions of bats and birds annually. Nor do they contaminate the lakes of northern China/Mongolia with more radioactive waste (mining the ton/turbine of neodymium) than the US nuclear industry produces annually.
6. Yes, we all need to guard against confirmation bias, but the anthropocentric bias has swamped natural climate variability, even more than it did in the days of Copernicus and Galileo.
7. You would have to be naïve and gullible to believe Chinese propaganda. China is building far more coal fired power stations than it is decommissioning. The Western world is continuing to export its emissions to India and Asia.
8.Wind and solar prices might be falling in some areas, but South Australia relies heavily on them, and has the highest (heavily subsidised) power prices, and the highest unemployment rate in Australia. When the wind stopped blowing on 7 July, the wholesale price of electricity soared 15,000 per cent. And when it blew too hard on 28 September, six wind farms producing 315MW shut down in rapid succession and there was a state-wide blackout!
9. Happer may have overlooked some anthropogenic consequences, but your cherry-picking and inferences reveal an alarmist bias. Apart from heat waves, the evidence linking CO2 to extreme weather events is very weak or non-existent. The loss of life from extreme weather has been falling, as has the economic loss/GDP from such events. Coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef has been greatly exaggerated. I recently spoke to a marine biologist who had just returned from documenting it around Lizard Island, where bleaching was reputedly the worst – over 90%. She said they gridded the area and counted all gridded areas containing any bleaching to get that figure. She estimated the actual area of bleaching at less than 10%. Science funding is so dependent on alarmist findings that the reporting bias is irresistible.
10. Alarmist economists invariably overestimate the cost of climate change and underestimate the cost of climate action. Most such ‘demonstrations’ have to be taken on faith. You will generally find evidence to confirm your bias.
I think you might have to do better to win that $5,000.
On David Stein’s point #9: it is part of the warming misinformation that reefs are dying because of global warming. Reefs are dying because of pollution and overfishing– that’s it in a nutshell. Fish graze on algae that would otherwise overwhelm reefs. On occasion reefs are bleached due to either prolonged heat or prolonged cold (or other stresses) but this is a natural mechanism that allows healthy reefs to change symbionts and survive for millions of years. Reefs that are remote from fishing pressures and pollution are healthy and that points to something happening in proximity to humans rather than to a global phenomenon. This is an important point: no local human influence, no reef harm and this is regardless of whatever the climate is supposedly doing to reefs. Please see the excellent book, “Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas.” See also http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/factsheet_reefs_main.pdf. In the WRI fact sheet global warming is acknowledged as an effect on reef health but my supposition is that this is merely following the “party line,” because, as is stated in the fact sheet, immediate threats are from local, not global, sources; i.e. overfishing and pollution.
See also http://www.icriforum.org/about-coral-reefs/status-and-threat-coral-reefs. Here too the real and immediate threats are explained as local, not global, even though global warming is added as a (secondary) influence. Again, the evidence is that it’s not warming that is the primary damage to reef health. That is the real evidence that we are ignoring. To say that warming is killing reefs is to miss the point entirely.
I agree, Don, and even the coral bleaching associated with El Nino events is exaggerated. There were scientific reports last year of devastating bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, especially around Lizard Island where 90% of the reef was allegedly bleached. A marine biologist who was working there told me that if any bleaching was found in a gridded area, that area was reported as bleached. She estimated that only about 10% of the coral around Lizard Island was actually bleached.
Thanks for all the comments and great dialogue, everybody! Just a reminder that there’s more to the discussion. Be sure to check out Happer’s Major Statement as well. Plus, stay tuned for a big announcement.
Regards,
Rich
That BIG announcement Rich mentions above…
TheBestSchools.org is now sponsoring a $5,000 prize if your refutation of Dr. William Happer’s First Statement in this FCD on Global Warming is selected as the best!
Details at the following link:
Is global warming good? Trump Dr. Happer and win $5K for best refutation
arationofreason: The short synopsis: Without the Water Vapor positive feedback fairytale there can be no multiplier of the CO2 GH warming, ~ 0.5….1C. Fact CO2 or its GH effect adds no energy to the earth/atmosphere system. Therefore it is not a “forcing ” agent and can evaporate no additional water(WV) to the atmosphere (and therefore can not even effect the cloud coverage). Also, even if it did as additional solar energy can, WV is the primary conveyor of energy to the altitudes of the troposphere where it is the Major(virtually only other than CO2 itself) earth cooling molecule responsible for IR radiation to space. Please explain how a minor addition of WV could suddenly because a “warming agent”.
The electronic amplifier feedback equation cannot be applied in this context: there is no feedback amplifier in the atmosphere. In fact there is no energy feedback at all since this equation requires that there be a source of energy which can be controlled by a forward gain amplifier which can respond to any demand from the input signal + the feedback signal. This does not exist in the earth atmosphere system, just the opposite. The constant source of energy is the constant solar energy put into the surface and available only through the thermal resistance of the surface/atmosphere interface and becomes less available(lower surface temperature) with any “additional demand” put upon it.
Paper available on request.
I can’t be sure, but I think Joe Postma is saying that surface cooling at night is enhanced by atmospheric radiation. This seems to contradict observations and atmospheric physics. In inland Australia, where the air is dry, night-time temperatures drop faster and further than they do at the same latitude on the east coast, where the air is humid. Cloudy nights here remain warmer than do cloudless ones. This is consistent with increased atmospheric radiation from more water vapour, which releases latent heat on condensation into cloud droplets, which also absorb and re-emit outgoing longwave radiation.
“surface cooling at night is enhanced by atmospheric radiation”
The surface cools by radiation as one mechanism of energy loss, yes, but emission from the atmosphere “towards the surface” wouldn’t be said to enhance surface cooling. Something enhances surface and near-surface cooling at night since the the bulk of the thermal energy lost by the air column is concentrated at and near the surface, given how much total energy we know must be emitted by the air column overnight. That is, the entire air column should drop by 1-2 Kelvin, however most of the air column remains relatively constant in temperature, and overnight cooling is concentrated at and near the surface, which thus goes to a larger drop in temperature for smaller portion of the thermal mass at and near the surface only. So, surface & near-surface cooling is enhanced.
When water vapour is present then it releases latent heat, which is a physical release shared physically with other molecules through conduction and diffusion. If one increases the thermal capacity of the air column by adding water vapour and clouds, then of course the air column will not cool as much as when the thermal capacity of the air column is much less, without water vapour and clouds.
I agree with Joe and Wes that in glass greenhouses the temperature is high due to prevention of heat loss to the outside by convection. The mechanism by which CO2 and water vapor warm the troposphere is different, so technically the term “greenhouse effect” is a false analogy. However, CO2 and water vapor (and ozone) do reduce the heat flow from the surface to outer space (as shown quantitatively by the infrared spectra obtained by satellites or balloons looking down on the Earth), which most call the greenhouse effect, so skeptics ought not to deny it, and go with common usage. When we say that the Sun rises in the East, we are not denying that the Earth actually orbits the Sun, but going with common usage about observations from the Earth’s surface.
As for Joe’s earlier comment that CO2 makes up only 1/2500 of the atmosphere, and so cannot be involved with much heat, this is true for the heat content (enthalpy) stored in CO2 molecules themselves. But during non-radiative collisions, excited state CO2 molecules transfer energy to non-radiating N2, O2 and Ar molecules. Since the heat capacity at constant pressure, Cp , is the same 7k/2 for linear molecules N2, O2 and CO2, this means that the enthalpy stored in N2 and O2 is approx. 2500 times that stored in CO2 molecules. Yes, water vapor is the main greenhouse gas, but net absorption by CO2 is about half that by H2O (as shown by the relative areas of the CO2 and water vapor absorption bites out of the 288 K Planck black body spectrum).
At nighttime, there is no incoming Solar radiation, so the hard deck surface of the Earth radiates infrared (IR) photons which escape to outer space. Since the Earth’s hard deck surface is at a higher temperature than if there were no greenhouse gases, then the Stefan-Boltzmann flux is higher, and so in this sense Joe is right that the rate of heat loss is greater from the surface when there are greenhouse gases. But this is not what Wes and others are talking about, when it is noted that the Earth’s surface is warmer at night when there are greenhouse gases. In deserts, where there is little water vapor, the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation from the hard deck surface to outer space is so high that temperatures plummet, so that the difference between day and night temperatures is high. In humid areas, there is much more water vapor which can absorb outgoing IR photons and transfer the energy via non-radiative collisions to N2, O2 and Ar, reducing the flux to outer space at the TOA (Top Of the Atmosphere).
However, the hard deck surface does drop in temperature at nighttime. This might tend to form a temperature inversion, which actually occurs in the polar regions during the months-long night (winter). Conduction downward of heat is important only for a couple of mm or cm (dry air is a good insulator), and convection transports heat upward, not downward. Therefore the only mechanism of transferring heat in dry air downward is by radiation from CO2 or water vapor molecules. This is not fast enough (since it involves repeated absorptions followed by emissions) to balance the direct outward flow of IR photons from hard deck surface to outer space, so the temperature inversion grows (the hard deck surface can be tens of degrees colder than the troposphere at several hundred metres).
For most of the Earth at nighttime, temperature inversions do not form, but the mechanism of energy transfer via radiation still applies, as heat content stored during the daytime is transferred downward from troposphere to the hard deck surface. You might say this is impossible, but consider that the derivation of the dry adiabatic lapse rate comes from dU/dh = -dH/dh = -(dH/dT)(dT/dh) on using the Chain Rule for derivatives. On substituting U = mgh and H = 7kT/2 , we get dT/dh = -(2mg)/(7k) = -9.8 K/km. This correct derivation means
d(U+H)/dh = 0. I.e. U+H is a conserved quantity if there is no injection of heat in each layer of the troposphere. This means that if a molecule moves upward against gravity, its gravitational potential energy increases at the expense of its heat content; i.e. temperatures drop with increasing altitude. So the total of U and H is the same for molecules at every altitude in the troposphere. This is in keeping with the classical principle of Equipartition of Energy: the most probable distribution of a finite amount of energy is to have each degree of freedom receive the same amount of energy, so for molecules with the same Cp= 7k/2, each gets the same amount of energy on average. This means that if the first layer of the troposphere (which is in contact with the hard deck surface) cools, its U+H decreases (since U is the same), and this means for equilibrium each layer above it in the troposphere will also decrease in U+H, and therefore in temperature. This local thermodynamic equilibrium for thin layers is mainly maintained by radiation between greenhouse gas molecules which constantly collide with and exchange energy with the main molecules of the dry atmosphere, N2, O2 and Ar . As explained in an earlier post, greenhouse gas molecules inject heat into each layer of the troposphere, moderating the lapse rate from -9.8 K/km to -6.8 K/km, and increasing the temperature of the hard deck surface and troposphere relative to a hypothetical Earth with no greenhouse gases. The observed temperature profiles of the troposphere show roughly parallel lines with different intercepts at the hard deck surface. This means that even in moist atmospheres containing CO2, each molecule has the same U+H on average (with H increased by equal amounts of injected heat, relative to the dry adiabatic case). So cooling of the layer in contact with a cooling hard deck surface means cooling of the entire column of the troposphere by the same amount, if thermodynamic equilibrium via radiation is maintained (i.e. if no temperature inversion forms) . In the nighttime, therefore, it can be said that back-radiation moderates the rate of heat loss by the hard deck surface, and this back-radiation cannot be via N2, O2 or Ar, but by greenhouse gases. In addition, latent heat released when water vapor condenses to form fog or dew, or sublimes to form frost during the nighttime helps moderate the temperature drop during the nighttime. The absence of this latent heat helps explain the dramatic temperature drop in deserts at night. Clouds also moderate heat loss to outer space, as they are formed of tiny liquid droplets or ice crystals that act as miniature Planck black bodies, absorbing and emitting at all IR frequencies, and not just at resonant molecular frequencies. The cloud tops are at lower temperatures (due to dT/dh), and therefore radiate less Stefan-Boltzmann flux, and after absorption by greenhouse gases in the remaining path length to outer space, the net TOA flux above clouds is less than for cloudless surfaces (e.g. 228 W/m^2 instead of 260 W/m^2 as shown in the MODTRAN spectrum for a cloudless 288.2 K hard deck surface at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing ). It remains true that back-radiation does not warm the hard deck surface, in the sense that temperatures increase in the absolute sense. Back-radiation only moderates the temperature drop at night (e.g. from -20 to -5 degrees). Hope this helps increase understanding on all sides.
It certainly does, for me anyway. Thank you very much Roger.
Wes, your acknowledgement shows a willingness to admit learning something new, in keeping with the ideals of real science. By contrast, true believers of the CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) cult can never admit that skeptics can ever be right, for “the science has been settled”, so there is nothing to be learned from skeptical arguments. This is not science! But for decades now a few authority figures with a wrong explanation for the atmospheric greenhouse effect have managed to bamboozle the innumerate elite in the media and universities. My use of the word “innumerate” is not an ad hominem attack, but a description of observable fact:
The Wikipedia article on Radiative forcing gives a formula for Forcing as (delta F) = 5.35 ln(C/C0). this means that if CO2 is doubled, C/C0=2, and (delta F) = 5.35 ln2 = 3.7 W/m^2. This supposedly results in global warming of 3 degrees (3K); see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity . From 1850 to 2016, CO2 increased from 280 to 400 ppmv [see http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html ]. Thus if C/C0 = 400/280, the forcing would be (delta F) = 5.35 ln(400/280) = 1.9 W/m^2 , and this would correspond to 3K(1.9/3.7) = 1.54 K warming. The actual warming from 1850 to 2016 was 0.8 +/- 0.1 K [see the first page at http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/ ]. This is only 0.8/1.54 = 0.52, or half of that predicted if the value of 3K were correct. When theory does not match experimental measurements, the theory is WRONG. It doesn’t matter how smart the theorist, or who the theorist is, or how many Nobel Prizes she has won, or how many computer models have been run. This simple scientific truth is stated in the first 60 seconds by Richard Feynman at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw (if this link doesn’t work, just Google “Feynman scientific method”). There has been a hiatus in warming for the last 18 years [see http://www.wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/01/uah-global-temperature-update-down-slightly-for-october ]. The rise and fall of 3 El Nino spikes during the interval shows the time constant must be small, and any decades- or centuries-long lag in warming would have meant a continual rise in temperature even if CO2 had reached a constant value (when in fact CO2 has continued to rise, more than linearly). Therefore doubling CO2 can at most result in only 1.5 K warming. And this still assumes that ALL of the 0.8 K historic warming from 1850 has been caused by CO2 and related feedbacks (e.g. increased water vapor). Therefore crippling the economy in attempts to limit warming to 2 K on doubling CO2 is unnecessary, wasteful, and foolish. Anyone with the ability to use the ln (natural logarithm) button on a $10 scientific calculator could have done the calculation in this paragraph. This is what I meant by “innumerate”.
Brilliant. What amazes me is the wide gulf that exists between responsible and skeptical science on the one hand and widespread political acceptance of model based theory on the other. Also I think it would help if debate on global warming began more often with a set of yardsticks that confirm that the maximum range of average global temperatures ( from extreme low to extreme high over the last century has been 1.5 degrees Celsius. That I suggest testifies to a reassuring degree of climate stability.
Glad to have followed a link here, affirms my readings of a decade or so, even if some of the math is beyond me.
But could I please draw your attention to these comments on “Physics of the Air”, the blog at
https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/influence-of-carbon-dioxide-on-temperatures/
and if you like his style, develop an affection for his irreverence, read more… this also relates:
https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/murry-salby-control-of-atmospheric-co2/
Personally, I find further interest and I think relevance in reading (in even earlier posts) of “the electric universe”.
https://malagabay.wordpress.com/category/electric-universe/
Just a hint to other readings to broaden one’s horizons &etc.;=}) Cheers!!
Physics of the Air – W. J. Humphreys – 1929 – does it ring true, have relevance?
Is it scientifically sound … ed out?
(not that I’m seeking reassurance – but it seems reasonable to me.)
Your comments?
No comments or critique on “Physics of the Air – W. J. Humphreys – 1929” at the first malagabay link above?
https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/influence-of-carbon-dioxide-on-temperatures/
Saturation, so that much more CO2 will move temperatures very little? Did anybody read this? Thanks! ;=})
Above there is a lot of complicated writing nearly nobody will read or understand. Here a very simple explanation of the process:
The earths surface is radiating IR rays towards space, but only 15-30% are leaving indisturbed (through a so-called atmospheric window). At certain wavelengths they are not absorbed by CO2 & Co.
If one radiative active molecule (water vapor, CO2, methane) is hit by an IR ray, it gets added some plus energy. Every molecule is vibrating and hitting other molecules and transporting energy to others – much quicker than they re-emit radiation. Through steady radiation that part of the atmosphere gets heated up a small bit.
At the same time all radiative molecules above 0 Kelvin are emitting IR radiation – at a certain wave length and in an average direction. Which means 50% up / 50% down. The Backward radiation from the lowest layer of the atmosphere goes down to the surface, the other IR rays are going up to the next layer of the atmosphere. There the above mentioned game starts again, and so on.
We must consider that nearly everything above 0 Kelvin (-273°C) is radiating – also the earths surface, the ocean surface and the clouds. The earths surface is always radiating more than the atmosphere or the clouds. So there is always a net transfer of heat towards space.
Only O2 and N2 – the 99% of the atmospheres molecules – are not radiating and not absorbing IR rays. But they can receive and distribute heat energy by contact with neighboring molecules. Additionally, moving masses of air can transport heat – mostly upwards.
Clouds (water droplets) are different from water vapor und are even more absorbing. In fact, they behave like a blackbody. Like a black matte painted sheet metal they absorbing all IR radiation throughout the whole wavelength spectrum. And they are emitting radiation the same way in all directions.
On the top of the troposphere (about 5 to 10 kilometers above ground) the atmosphere gets thinner and there is nearly no water vapor. So CO2 is radating mostly undisturbed towards space, as the distance between the molecules is large.
These are just the rules how radiation is working. I have not written anything about amounts and figures. There are also a lot of variables and additional regulating effects.
In short: IR radiation from the surface is not reflected by CO2. Its a bit more complicated.
Excellent article! I would have gone further in saying that the entire history of the environmental movement is littered with bogus scares and scams. Climate change is just the latest hoax.
Radiation theory should be informed by observation. Consider this: The entire southern hemisphere is no warmer today than it was in the 1950s. Secondly, at all latitudes surface temperature varies much more in the middle of winter than in summer. It is the winter months that have warmed, not the summer months. Warming in winter is highly beneficial.
These subtleties are entirely lost when the statistic referred to is the average for the globe as a whole.
Sadly the debate is conducted in terms of theory uninformed by reference to the details of what is actually occuring. Both sides of this argument should be grounded in observation. Both sides could, to advantage, employ a healthy dose of common sense.
Critically, humanity needs to take a stronger interest in the origins of natural climate change. It has its origins in the high latitudes of the winter hemisphere and is closely tied to the ozone content of the atmospheric column.