Why CO2 does not govern the earth's surface temperature

I see Jack as our unifier in the Climate Realist team, where I have been learning to keep my cool in the face of absurd replies from clueless people who grace the Environment board.

He goes on and on in civil clear replies to the nonsense out there that is a model for the rest of us.

 

That chart above is approximately right and looks convincing to people who don't understand climate science. The changes in
downward flux are not trivially small if you subtract the pre-industrial flux from the current flux. That would yield 2.0 watts/square meter.
I prefer the 2013 values from the IPCC shown at Wikipedia which yield 2.2 to 2.3 watts/meter. Using 0.77 degrees C/w/sq. meter for
the equilibrium climate sensitivity calculated from the Last Glacial Minimum would amount to 2.25 X 0.77 = 1.7 degree C. of warming after
equilibrium is established. That would be about 50 years after 2013 if no additional climate forcing is added. For doubled CO2, we would have
probably a little more that (509 - 505.5) = 3.5 watts/square meter of forcing. I would say 3.7 watts/square meter but that depends on what happens
with all greenhouse gases of which there are many + aerosols. 3.7 X 0.77 = 2.85 degrees C of warming 50 years after this doubling occurs.
That is a dangerous level of warming. Enough to destabilize Greenland and probably some of west Antarctica among other things.

There is some positive feedback from increased GHG forcing but we don't know exactly how much. It seems very apparent to me. There is
also global cooling from all of the pollution that we emit and that isn't well known Notice the aerosol negative forcing including indirect forcing
that increases cloud cover from the IPCC chart below.

Radiative forcing - Wikipedia


Radiative forcings, IPCC 2013.

 

I am thankful that you are keeping your cool. I am trying to stay cool as well but it isn't easy. I am prone to insomnia.

I have a hard time understanding how it is that some individuals can be so confident that they know more than climate scientists

and how others think that there is some global conspiracy to frighten people. I actually have no animosity towards anyone that disagrees

with me.

 

I use Wikipedia all the time for all kinds of science information. Much of it is backed up with references.

What happens when water vapor within 10 m from the surface of the earth absorbs a downward photon emitted by CO2? The water vapor molecule becomes more
energetic and emits a photon of the same wavelength to the Earth's surface or upward. So, it doesn't matter that water vapor is absorbing downward flux from CO2 because much of that energy makes it to the Earth's surface. If the water vapor molecule emits a photon upward then there is a good chance it will be absorbed by another water vapor molecule with a 50/50 chance of being emitted downward. Notice the last portion of the Wiki article, "but they (CO2 photons)
are replaced by emission of an equal number of 667.5 cm-1 photons (water vapor). "


from Wikipedia article mentioned previously:

"wavelengths that are strongly absorbed by GHGs can be significantly attenuated within 10 m in the lower atmosphere. Those same wavelengths, however, are the ones where emission is also strongest. In an extreme case, "roughly 90% of 667.5 cm−1 photons are absorbed within 1 meter by 400 ppm of CO2 at surface density,[18] but they are replaced by emission of an equal number of 667.5 cm−1 photons "

 

163.3 watts/square meter of solar energy (short wave) absorbed by the earth. The short wave downward radiation absorbed stays nearly
constant over time. The back radiation (long wave) was 340.3 watts/meter in 2009. The total is 503.6 watts/square meter but these numbers
aren't averages so they disagree a little with those form the previous table. They were probably made on 1 day. The back radiation goes up with time.

 

Wikipedia is useful source for a lot of different kinds of information -- I have edited hundreds of Wikipedia articles, and was the original contributor of dozens -- but it is not a useful or credible source for climate-related information because William Connolley has final edit on all climate-related information on Wikipedia, and he removes any factual information that casts doubt on the anti-fossil-fuel hate agenda.

No, photons are re-emitted in random directions. I already explained this. Think of it as a sphere surrounding the molecule, with every point on the sphere having an equal probability of being hit by the emitted photon.

Wrong. Because there is already so much CO2 in the air, and so much more water vapor than CO2 near the earth's surface, adding more CO2 makes almost no difference to the amount of downward IR reaching the surface, as Angstrom demonstrated experimentally more than 100 years ago.

Not just a good chance. There is more than a 99.99% chance that a photon emitted by water vapor will be reabsorbed before it reaches outer space because there is so little water vapor above the lower troposphere compared to other GHGs that absorb the wavelengths water vapor emits.

And...?

And....??? How does that contradict anything I said?

 

Huh?? That's like saying the amount of light reaching the earth from other stars is not trivially small if you subtract the amount of light reaching us from the sun!

Except that all those numbers are simply made up. There is no credible experimental evidence for any of them.

Oh, well, I guess that proves it, then!

That chart is nothing but an absurd fabrication. Solar variability has a fraction of the effect of NO2?? Please.

 

I thought Connolley had been booted from Wikipedia. Is he back?

 

AFAIK he was only banned for six months.

 

Hmmm.

 

If you are so sure that you are right about climate science then why don't you submit your analysis to a credible climate journal
and see what happens? You would be a very famous person if you are right. Why waste your talents on this forum?

I know that photons are emitted in random directions. I was simplifying the discussion by saying that 50% of photons are emitted
away from the Earth's surface and 50% are emitted towards the Earth's surface.

Also, Angstrom wasn't entirely right. He did not know much about carbon dioxide and water vapor absorption bands
because the instruments needed to make the measurements didn't exist. He did not know that the bands consisted of large numbers
of narrow spikes separated by short discontinuities or how they depended on temperature and pressure. Climate science has advanced quite a bit since then.
The number of absorption bands goes up as the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases and many of those added bands
are near the periphery of the central, saturated portion. That is why we have an approximately logarithmic relationship between increased
CO2 concentration and radiative forcing.

 

Because peer-reviewed journals do not publish statements of the obvious and reiterations of 100-year-old results.

I am definitely going to continue to be proved right about CO2 and climate, as I have been to date, and it will not make me famous because no one ever became famous for saying, "Chill. It's not an issue." Take it to the bank.

It's fun.

He was right about actually adding CO2 to actual lower troposphere air having almost no effect on its radiative heat transfer properties.

But he knew that whatever the nature of the absorption bands, actually adding CO2 to actual typical lower troposphere air has almost no effect on its radiative heat transfer properties.

Or at least, it had until it was taken over by anti-fossil-fuel hysteria in the 1990s. Since then, it has regressed to a cargo-cult level little better than primitive superstition.

We can probably assume that is also why actually adding CO2 to samples of actual typical lower troposphere air has almost no effect on their radiative heat transfer properties.

 

Just to clarify, what's called a "Trenberth diagram" does not refer to any single point on earth or any single point in time. It's an average over the whole earth, over a ten year span.

 

Nope, you pooched it on a fundamential level.

Per your analogy, there _still_ an additional blanket being put on top. Yes, it's a thinner blanket, but it's a blanket nonetheless, so it will raise the surface temperature. You may _feel_ that can't be right, but it is.

Have you run the numbers? No, you haven't. Like I said, you only have a feeling, and your feeling is wrong.

What you also get wrong is that there's quite a bit of overlap in the CO2 and H2O spectrums, and CO2 alone does a signfiicant amount of blocking. What makes CO2 so important lower down is how it blocks some of the few spectral windows that H2O doesn't block.

 

Nope. I'm indisputably correct as a matter of objective physical fact.

No, I am assuming it's the same thickness as all the other blankets. It just has little effect because there are already so many blankets. That is the point of the analogy.

Right, but only microscopically. Doubling all the cotton blankets on a bed will have some effect on the sleeper's skin temperature even if there are already 40 times as many wool blankets on it.

I said it was right. You may feel that doubling atmospheric CO2 would have to have more effect on the earth's surface temperature than doubling the number of cotton blankets on a bed that already has 40 times as many wool blankets would have on a sleeper's skin temperature, but it doesn't.

What numbers? Made-up numbers, like the ones anti-CO2 scaremongers run?

I don't have to, because Angstrom already did the experiment more than 100 years ago.

False. I have described a close physical analogy to the effect of GHGs with similar properties that any informed, thoughtful, and honest adult can understand, and its implications agree with the results of the actual physical experiment conducted by Angstrom more than 100 years ago.

Huh?? That's what you get wrong! The overlap, combined with the vastly greater abundance of H2O near the earth's surface, is why increased CO2 cannot have a significant effect on lower troposphere IR heat transfer or the earth's surface temperature.

Right. CO2 alone -- i.e., when there is little or no water vapor present.

There is only one significant narrow window like that, it accounts for only a minor fraction of IR energy, it was already thoroughly saturated by the pre-industrial level of CO2, and there are GHGs other than CO2 that also block it. More CO2 will be like putting more cotton blankets on a bed that already has 40 times as many wool blankets on it.

 

CO2 exonerated, again.
New Atmospheric Science Publication Finds Quadrupling CO2 Would Lead To Only 1.0°C Increase!
By P Gosselin on 29. August 2021

Share this...
“No climate emergency,” scientists say…”increasing levels of CO2 won’t lead to significant changes in earth temperature”
Increases in CH4 and N2O will have very little discernable impact.

A new publication in the International Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences concludes that CO2 climate sensitivity has been excessively exaggerated by IPCC scientists.


. . . .

 

The person who can disprove current accepted theories on climate change will get at least one Nobel prize yes?

it always amazes me that the ones so sure of the incorrectness of current science will not go the distance and publish themselves

 

It has already been done. Please see post #141, for example.

 

No, certainly not, because Angstrom already refuted the currently trendy but unscientific trash about CO2 controlling the earth's temperature more than 100 years ago. You don't get a Nobel Prize for showing that Newton was right about gravity, or that Aristotle was right about dolphins being mammals.

As I have told you repeatedly and you always ignore, you can't publish results that have been known for over 100 years in peer-reviewed journals.

 

Interesting journal - can’t even find it on the top one hundred climatology journals
https://www.resurchify.com/impact/category/Atmospheric-Science

The date is a little off as well
Volume 5 , Issue 2 , December 2021 , Pages: 29 - 40

Is it prepublication?

 

You mean this guy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_Ångström

I would think a paper vindicating his findings after all these years WOULD win a Nobel prize

 

It is hilarious since CO2 absorbs about 6% of the Outgoing IR which is very small indeed and that most of the OLWR is OUTSIDE of the main CO2 absorption range, which means very little outgoing energy is stopped by the overrated gas.

From the article that have NEVER been challenged (LINK) is this expose of simple mathematics of just how small the increase in warm forcing power of CO2 after 300 years time from 1750.....


"Next, here is the radical change in downwelling radiation at the surface from the increase in CO2 that is supposed to be driving the “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!!!” What I’ve shown is the change that in theory would have occurred from the changes in CO2 from 1750 to the present, and the change that in theory will occur in the future when CO2 increases from its present value to twice the 1750 value. This is using the generally accepted (although not rigorously derived) claim that the downwelling radiation change from a doubling of CO2 is 3.5 watts per square metre (W/m2). The purpose is to show how small these CO2-caused changes are compared to total downwelling radiation.



The changes in downwelling radiation from the increase in CO2 are trivially small, lost in the noise …"

=====

Really when will warmist/alarmists ever use their fingers to count?

 

Yes, except for the baldly false claim -- based on two cited sources, one of which is a blatant CAGW propaganda piece and the other of which actually says the opposite -- that Arrhenius was vindicated.

Sadly, all climate-related information on Wikipedia is controlled, edited and censored by William Connolley to conform to the oft-falsified CO2-controls-global-temperature hypothesis.

Anyone with access to ordinary lab apparatus can verify the correctness of Angstrom's measurements and the falsity of Arrhenius's claims. So, no peer-reviewed publication -- let alone Nobel Prizes -- for replicating 100-year-old experiments that any ordinary undergraduate can easily perform in a modest university physics lab.

 

Periodicals, including scholarly journals, sometimes carry forward dates.

 

Why is it people who start threads denying global warming, the role CO2 plays in it never stick around after they are repudiated?Just once I would like to see the scientific experts who commence such threads stick around.

Thank you SkepMike for your time and others who had the decency to respond to the thread starter and repudiate the original absurd comments.