Closure on denning hayden climate debate (Howard Cork Hayden) USofA

I had a recent debate about climate with Scott Denning at CSU-Pueblo.

Here’s a copy of Scott Denning’s slides from the debate: https://www.aaeprototype.com/188environment/man-made-global-warming-alarmists-viewpoint/north-america/1102-climatechange-simple-serious-solvable My slides are here: https://www.aaeprototype.com/212-environment/man-made-globalwarming-organizations-discussing-all-positions/north-america/1122-denning-hayden-climatedebate-hayden-presentation Following the talk, there was some back-and-forth between Scott and some technical folks. I spent entirely too much time writing the following blurb to them.

---------------------Let’s begin with a review of Scott’s model. I’ll do things in a little different order than in his presentation.

I agree. Scott is saying that the data do not point to a future warming. (In truth, the direction of the point depends entirely upon the time scale you use. On a 10,000-year scale, the trend is definitely downward. On a century scale, the trend is upward.) For recent times, local climate is 30-year averages of many weather components (temperature being one). Global climate it local climate averaged over the entire earth. (Anybody who goes to the Arctic to “see climate change for himself” is a total idiot.) For more remote times, climate is averaged over far more years.

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Scott eschews climate models, (Not computer models) saying that you don’t need all that fancy stuff. The ideas are SIMPLE. Nevertheless, he repeatedly relies on the models without saying so.

He writes to Terry, “The plot you sent is so intentionally misleading as to be dishonest. Yes. It is literally a lie. The plot was presented to the US Congress, and you and I both know how much integrity that institution has! This plot is pure politics, and has nothing to do with science.” In other words, Congress has no integrity; therefore, whatever anybody says to Congress has no integrity. John Christy and Roy Spencer, therefore, are liars.

I would add that it takes only one letter of the alphabet to prove that the science is not settled: the letter s, which turns model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would agree with the data. There are over 100 models. They disagree with each other and with the data. QED

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In any case, Scott, while disdaining models, has his own simple-minded model. It states the obvious --- almost. The net heat is the difference between heat in and heat out. (Probably he said that in the debate, but the chart doesn’t say it.) However, his presentation entirely ignores the heat-out portion. In other words, he deceptively implies that the net heat increase due to increased CO2 is the input heat itself. He says absolutely zero about any mechanism by which net heat in results in increased heat out. The model is therefore totally worthless for predicting anything whatsoever about future temperature.

Scott’s model—additional heat-in minus nothing—would result in inexorable temperature rise to infinity, even if the heat in were 1 microwatt per every square meter on the planet. In his drive for simplicity, he has thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

There are several misunderstandings here, one of which is that molecules absorb and re-emit IR, quite as if local atmospheric temperature had nothing to do with the case. (BTW, you can go over the IPCC reports and search in vain for any mention of Boltzmann factors.) Mostly, the absorbed energy is shared with the local atmosphere via collisions which de-activate the excited states if they are out of equilibrium with ambient temperature. Collisional de-activation is far more likely than radiation.

A more important misunderstanding is the notion that “The effect of this is to warm the Earth’s surface and the lower atmosphere.” For the great majority of the band of IR absorbed by CO2, the mean free path is so small that all of the IR is absorbed by the lower atmosphere. (For example, the 15-micron peak, for which the absorption cross-section is 5  10-18 cm2, is effectively absorbed within one meter of travel.) However, on the far wings of the spectrum --the only part that matters at the present --- the absorption cross-sections are so small that the mean free path is measured in kilometers. (You’d be surprised at what changes 6 or 7 factors of ten in absorption cross-section can do!) Adding more CO2 to the atmosphere causes some 3

increased absorption in far wings of the spectrum; however, the mean free path is still so large that the lion’s share of the increased absorption occurs kilometers up from the surface.

This brings up another point seemingly missed by everybody except Will Happer, who is a very highly respected Atomic/Molecular/Optical physicist recently retired from Princeton. The absorption/emission lines are broadened by collisions (“pressure broadening”). When people have measured energy absorption in meter-long chambers by adding 5% or so CO2 to air at standard pressure, they have therefore distorted (artificially increased) the absorption factors for the far wings of the spectrum which are important at higher altitudes where pressure broadening is greatly reduced.

The logarithmic relationship between added heat Q and the CO2 concentration ratio is , where A was 6.3 W/m2 until 1988 (G. Myhre, E.J. Highwood, K.P. Shine and F. Stordal, “New estimates of radiative forcing due to well-mixed greenhouse gases,” Geophys.

Res. Lett. 25 (1998) 2715–2718), after which it became 5.35 W/m2. Now, the CMIP5 models have it at 5.05 W/m2. (Scott said that the heating was known with precision since the late 1800s.

I’m glad they don’t make cars with that kind of precision.) When climate scientists finally learn something about molecular spectroscopy, they will have another reduction of something like 2040%.

Scott’s claim of “4 watts to every square meter” comes from rounding 3.7, (or with CMIP5) 3.5, (or with proper account of pressure broadening) 2.8 or lower, up to 4. (Again, his model would be just as bad if the figure were 1 microwatt per square meter.)

Just as importantly, he confuses the surface with the upper atmosphere. The heat due to increased CO2 is in the atmosphere (indeed, high up there), not on the surface. And if anybody comes along asking, the satellites measure the atmospheric temperature, not the surface temperature.

“It is serious”

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These charts are pure propaganda designed to influence the stupid but numerous. Nobody is predicting 10 ºF warming. The equation used by the IPCC in its Third Assessment Report, combined with the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law (assuming that all that heat kilometers up in the atmosphere actually heats the surface) says that the temperature should increase by 1.1 ºC (2 ºF) if the atmospheric CO2 fraction doubles. The ordinary mortal might notice that 2 ºF  10 ºF. (Notice Scott’s reliance on climate models that he claims are not the reason that people are worried about global warming.) Things look a lot different if you ignore the hysterical predictions, as shown below.)

Wildfire!!

Somehow the actual data do not support Scott’s hideously colored map that was included to scare the pants off Count Dracula.

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RENEWABLES … and to think that they do it all with just tax money!

It’s a curious thing about the penetration of solar and wind into the grid. Whenever the subsidies stop or slow down, the penetration stalls. Solar with battery storage is absolutely wonderful for remote applications, such as water pumping on ranches previously handled by windmills, or warning signs at highway construction sites. For the grid, it has no merit whatsoever, save that the electricity is paid for by taxpayers. The cell price (not to be confused with module price, not to be confused with installed price) is per peak watt; multiply by 6 to get the cost per average watt. The module price in 2016 was $0.72/peak-watt.

It is of interest that gasoline could be made free, if only the government would buy it for us.

Wind is the lowest-quality power on the planet. It varies drastically with wind speed (v3), produces a piddling 5 kW/acre (1.2 kW/ha) on year-round average, independent of the size of the turbines, and requires expensive back-up to keep the grid stable. (Germany and Denmark achieve high percentages of their power from renewables only on an average-accounting basis.

When such power is available, they put it on the grid where is it a small, non-disruptive fraction, and that power is distributed around many countries. The two nations have the highest electricity prices in Europe. If the grids stopped at the borders, the renewable power would have to shrink in order to have steady electricity.

Data handling UAH There seems to have been some banter back and forth between Terry and Scott about data handling. Terry shows that NASA has systematically reduced past temperatures with the obvious intent of increasing the rate of warming. Scott says that the UAH satellite data have been subject to many revisions; all good scientists correct bad data.

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To some extent, I have kept up with the UAH changes over the years. Satellites lose altitude (and speed up) because of very minor drag caused by the upper reaches of the atmosphere, and the field of view of the microwave sounding units changes a bit. The UAH folks first corrected for that phenomenon, but another problem came up. The periods of the satellites were no longer exactly 12 hours, but slightly shorter, so that on subsequent days, the temperature was read slightly earlier, and this had a distorting effect on the data. Now they have one satellite in an orbit that is stabilized by occasional use of thrusters to compensate for the drag. The result is that the rate of warming, as indicated by satellite, has increased since the beginning, but has been essentially constant for the last dozen years.

I wrote this in January 2007 issue of The Energy Advocate: --------------------------

Temperature Update How could you measure the average temperature of the earth? How about taking the average of 200 000 thermometers in New York City and one in Bora-Bora? The best way is actually to measure the temperature everywhere, giving equal weight to every square kilometer on earth.

We do not have thermometers everywhere, of course, so we have to either use the data we have and guess at the unknown temperatures, or use remote sensing by satellite. Use of this latter method is in progress by John Christy and Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama – Huntsville. But there are problems in calibration of instruments, as well as changes in orbits that make the project a bit tricky.

For several months, the investigators have been trying to figure out why there are inconsistencies between data from satellites NOAA-15 and NOAA-16. NOAA-16 was becoming unreliable; about a month ago, the investigators erroneously eliminated data from NOAA-15 instead of from NOAA-16. The effect of all corrections made was to increase the decadal trend of the lower troposphere by 0.01 ºC. See ref. [11].

The table shows up-to-date temperature trends. The globe is heating up at 0.14 ºC per decade.

The northern hemisphere is heating faster (0.21 ºC / decade). The North Pole is heating at 0.46 ºC / decade, but the South Pole is actually cooling at –0.07 ºC / decade. Global warming models all predict that global warming should be fastest at the poles and that Antarctica should be heating fastest of all. (Reason: The colder the air is, the less water vapor it holds, and the more important (comparatively) CO2 becomes.)

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Globe Land Ocean Northern Hemisphere USA_48 Southern Hemisphere North Pole South Pole

Trend (ºC / decade) 0.14 0.16 0.13 0.21 0.29 0.07 0.46 –0.09

[11] http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt ------------------------The earliest UAH data set I have on my computer dates back to 2006. The most recent data are from 2017. One thing UAH does from time to time is to change the reference against which the anomaly is measured, so I adjusted one of the data sets so that each data set has exactly the same average anomaly, plotting only data through 2006. (The UAH data show, Dec 1978-present, show a trend of 1.3 ºC/century.) See the figure below. Your job, should you decide to accept it, is to tell which data set is which. Do you see any systematic change?

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NASA et al The NASA revisions were not due to errors found in thermometers in all of those Stevenson Screens that have been historically used by the US Weather Service. (If anybody believes that all those thermometers have been collected and re-calibrated, please note that I have a bridge for sale.) Furthermore, one would expect that any errors in thermometer readings would be random: some high readings, some low readings.

The average of some temperatures is not, in fact, a temperature; it has no thermodynamic meaning whatsoever. It is a statistic with the dimensions of temperature. There are many ways of doing averaging, none carved in stone, and perhaps somebody thought of a “better” way of averaging the data. N.B.: One verboten thing about data handling is to change or destroy the raw data. (Climate Research Unit at University of East Anglia, TAKE NOTE!) Why would NASA-GISS drop the Reykjavik temperature of 1930 by 1.3 ºC? Why would NOAA drop the Maine temperature of 1905 by 2.5 ºF? In other words, why did NASA and NOAA systematically reduce past temperature data?

CAUSALITY During the debate, I showed that during the Milankovitch warming/cooling cycles, the changes in temperature precede the changes in CO2 concentration. In response, Scott said that all that stuff was understood --- it was all about dust, iron fertilization, and plankton. I presume he was talking about Alfredo Martínez-García et al., “Iron Fertilization of the Subantarctic Ocean During the Last Ice Age,” Science 343, 1347 (2014). It’s nice to know that it’s well understood in the very way I wrote about it in the May issue of The Energy Advocate. But let’s not let the dust obscure our view. Milankovitch changes cause temperature changes which in turn (via ironbearing dust or its absence) cause eventual CO2 changes. To repeat the very clear sequence, temperature changes precede CO2 changes, not the other way around.

What, then, is the basis for saying CO2 causes warming? More CO2 causes more absorption of IR in the far wings of the spectrum, and pretty high in the atmosphere. That absorbed energy 10

rapidly adds heat to the local air, and is generally not radiated back to the surface. The actual atmospheric processes cannot be ignored, and they are not simple as Scott avers.

How much should the temperature rise if (say) the CO2 concentration is doubled? To infinity, in Scott’s part-of-the-equation model. By 10 ºF (5.6 ºC) according to Scott’s propaganda graphics.

By between 1.5 ºC and 4.5 ºC in the IPCC models, which vary all over the map, and which disagree with the facts. By 1.1 ºC if the main effect is simply to heat the surface, which sheds more heat according to the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law. By less than 1.1 ºC if the predominant mechanism for dealing with increased temperature in the atmosphere is that the atmosphere (which radiates 83% of the IR leaving the earth to outer space) radiates more than it does now. By who-knows-how-much if any effects of CO2 are overwhelmed by other phenomena.

Cheers, Cork

________________________ Howard "Cork" Hayden corkhayden@comcast.net NEW! Energy: A Textbook, $25 at www.energyadvocate.com and www.valeslake.com P.O. Box 7609 Pueblo West, CO 81007

Consensus is the enemy of science

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