Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
A new research study from The University of Alabama in Huntsville, a part of the University of Alabama System, addresses a central question of climate change research: how much warming can be expected from adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning and other activities as standards of living increase around the world?
UAH Earth System Science Center Research Scientist Dr. Roy Spencer and UAH Earth System Science Center Director and Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John R. Christy have spent 10 years developing a one-dimensional climate model to answer this elusive question.
Their latest research study was published in the September 2023 issue of Theoretical and Applied Climatology journal titled “Effective climate sensitivity distributions from a 1D model of global ocean and land temperature trends, 1970–2021.”
Spencer and Christy’s climate model, based upon objective measured data, found carbon dioxide does not have as big of an effect of warming of the atmosphere when compared with other climate models.
“For over 30 years, dozens of highly sophisticated computerized climate models based upon theory have been unable to agree on an answer. That’s why we developed our own one-dimensional climate model to provide an answer,” says. Dr. Spencer.
Current climate models range over a factor of three, from 1.8 to 5.6° Celsius, in the amount of warming produced in response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This warming response to double carbon dioxide is called “effective climate sensitivity.” Determining its magnitude has remained elusive for decades.
When compared to other current climate models, the research results from Spencer and Christy’s one-dimensional climate model approached the bottom end of the range, 1.9° Celsius. The lower UAH value indicates that the climate impact of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations is much less that that based on other climate models.
“An important assumption of our model, as well as the more complex models used by others, is that all climate change is human caused,” Spencer states. “If recent warming is partly natural, it would further reduce climate sensitivity.”
What distinguishes this model developed at UAH from others is that it is driven by actual observations of warming, rather than theoretical assumptions about how the climate system responds to increasing greenhouse gases.
The one-dimensional climate model uses a variety of observational datasets of warming between 1970 and 2021 of the deep ocean and land, along with associated uncertainty ranges. These datasets produced a range of estimates of climate sensitivity based upon basic concepts of energy conservation.
“The 52-year period since 1970 is key. It represents the period of most rapid warming, with the highest confidence in the observational data of deep-ocean warming,” Spencer states.
The results of Spencer and Christy’s research also showed a period of the most rapid growth in atmospheric carbon dioxide. This is due to their climate model accounting for heat storage in deeper layers of land, which other climate models ignore.
A critical advantage of their simple model is that it conserves energy.
“It should be a requirement that any physics-based model of global warming should meet,” Spencer says. “Current computerized climate models continue to have difficulty achieving this aspect.”
The model is simple enough that other scientists can easily adapt it to updated or improved global temperature measurements as they become available.
More information: Roy W. Spencer et al, Effective climate sensitivity distributions from a 1D model of global ocean and land temperature trends, 1970–2021, Theoretical and Applied Climatology (2023). DOI: 10.1007/s00704-023-04634-7
Ah, the 1960s. Even in 1966, before global warming was a thing, The Lovin’ Spoonful was singing about (among other things) the unusual heat of the inner city.
In fact, the heat caused by urban environments was discussed way back in 1833 (190 years ago!) by Luke Howard (The Climate of London) who was the first to document the urban heat island (UHI) effect.
Today, virtually anyone who routinely travels between cities and rural areas has observed the localized warmth that cities produce.
It is important to emphasize that the UHI effect, along with “record warm” temperatures, would exist even if there was no “global warming”. This is because cities have grown substantially in the last 100+ years, replacing the native landscape with high heat capacity surfaces like buildings, pavement, and sources of waste heat. This leads to UHI warmth of up to 10 deg. F or more, mostly at night.
Yet, we are routinely told through media reports that the latest record warmth recorded in some of our cities shows how serious the global warming problem has become. For example, as shown in this graphic from the Miami Herald, the summer of 2023 experienced some record warmth in cities across the South.
Of course, conflating the urban heat island with global warming is a necessary component of such reporting, as the news report dutifully adds,
“Prominent scientific institutions around the globe including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agree that the warming is caused mainly by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, NASA said.”
See how that works? A city has record warmth, so it must be due to global warming caused by burning fossil fuels. To be fair, not all the blame is always placed at the feet of Climate Change. For example, this 2014 article specifically discussed the role of the urban heat island in Phoenix weather.
Now, it is true that the southern U.S. had an unusually hot summer. Even our (UAH) satellite-based temperature product for the lower atmosphere showed this warmth in August:
In my last blog post, I showed our urbanization-adjusted average summer temperatures (based upon NOAA homogenized GHCN surface air temperatures) across all available stations in the Lower 48 states, and the result was that summer of 2023 was the 13th warmest (see Fig. 3 here) since records began (but with very few stations) in 1895.
But what role does climate change have in these records at selected cities? Most of what we hear through the media comes from urban reporting stations, or at least airports serving major urban areas.
The Summer of 2023: Phoenix versus Surrounding Stations
If the record hot summer in Phoenix is due to global warming, then it should show up at weather stations surrounding Phoenix, right? As part of our research project where we are quantifying the average urban heat island effect and its growth over time as a function of population density, I looked at the official NOAA GHCN monthly surface temperature data at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport (red curve in the following graph) versus at all rural stations (0 to 100 persons per sq. km) within 10 to 100 km of Phoenix (blue curve). I also applied a small urbanization adjustment correction at the rural (or nearly-rural) stations based upon their individual histories of population growth.
The result? The summer of 2023 was only the 11th warmest summer on record.
So, we see that the urban heat island effect was the dominant cause of the summer of 2023 being a record warm year in Phoenix. The “vote” from surrounding rural and nearly-rural stations was that it was only the 11th warmest year. As a side note, the difference between the red and blue curves indicate a jump in Phoenix Sky Harbor temperatures of about 0.7 deg. F around 1988. This could be due to a weather station move, but I have not investigated it.
“But”, you might protest, “even the rural stations still show a strong warming trend”. Well, that is partly because I have used only “homogenized” temperature data, which NOAA has already adjusted to some extent leading to all nearby station temperature trends being more or less equal to one another. I’m still trying to determine if I can use the “raw” data to make such comparisons, since there are other data adjustments made in NOAA’s homogenization of the data that I’m not privy to.
Another thing to notice is that media reports will repeat NOAA’s claim that these new high temperature records are based upon data extending back to 1895. In general, this is not true. Most of these station records don’t go back nearly that far. For the Phoenix Sky Harbor location, the data started in 1933. A few of the other “record hot cities” start dates I’ve looked at so far are Miami, FL (started in 1948), Houston, TX (1931), and Mobile, AL (1948).
The bottom line is that there are unsupportable conclusions being drawn about the supposed role of climate change in record high temperatures being reported at some cities. Cities are hotter than their rural surroundings, and increasingly so, with or without climate change.
Dr. Willie Soon, an astrophysicist and geoscientist, is a leading authority on the relationship between solar phenomena and global climate. In this 32+ years of singular pursuit, he seeks to understand the Sun-Earth relations in terms of not only meteorology and climate, but also in terms of orbital dynamics of Sun-Earth-other planets interactions, magmatic (volcanoes) and tectonic (earthquakes) activities. His discoveries challenge computer modelers and advocates who consistently underestimate solar influences on cloud formation, ocean currents, and wind that cause climate to change. He has faced and risen above unethical and often libelous attacks on his research and his character, becoming one of the world’s most respected and influential voices for climate realism. In 2018, he founded the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES-science.com) in order to tackle a wider range of issues and topics without fears nor prejudices.
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Dr. Michael Connolly is an independent scientist, based in Ireland.
Lecturer and tutor at third level in the fields of physics, chemistry, electronic engineering, computer science, mathematics, and statistics.
I qualified as a plasterer in 1969, as an electrician in 1970 and have experience in all building trades. In 1975, I built our first house entirely on my own. The last time this house was sold it went for approx. $1 million. Since then, I have designed and built hundreds of buildings and houses.
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About Ronan Connolly:
I am an independent scientist, environmentalist and writer. My primary university degree was in Chemistry, and my PhD in computational chemistry/polymer physics. However, in 2004, I shifted to environmentalism, and began working with my father, Dr. Michael Connolly, on developing sustainable methods of fish-farming, aquaponics and waste-water treatment. We also carried out research into developing low-cost heat exchanger systems and new energy efficient building materials and techniques.
Climate alarmists have been waiting nearly 8 years, since the last significant El Niño, for another chance to claim natural climate variation as an expression of their chosen non-natural theories. Tremble – or not – as the study authors predict ‘a cascade of climate crises’. – – – A strong El Niño event is going to wreak havoc on global surface temperature and trigger several climate crises in 2023–2024, according to researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. [Talkshop comment – the hype has already started].
The El Niño event, known for releasing massive heat into the atmosphere, is poised to change atmospheric circulation patterns, influence tropical-extratropical interactions, and impact subtropical jets, monsoons, and even polar vortices, and finally results in a rapid surge in Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST), says Phys.org.
The study was published in The Innovation Geoscience on Sept. 15.
GMST, which integrates global land surface temperature and sea surface temperature, is one of the vital indicators of climate variability and global warming.
Its interannual variability is primarily dominated by ENSO events, with El Niño events being particularly influential due to their capacity to release immense heat into the atmosphere, leading to anomalies in atmospheric circulation and changes in the surface energy balance.
Earlier in 2023, the ensemble prediction system developed by IAP has predicted that there will be an El Niño event in boreal autumn and may be maintained throughout winter.
Based on historical climate data and prior studies, the IAP team revealed the potential extent and consequences of the extreme warming expected in 2023–2024.
Their findings indicate a 17% probability that the 2023 GMST will become the highest recorded since 1950, and a staggering 61% probability that it will rank among the top three. In 2024, these probabilities suddenly rise to 56% and 79%, respectively. [Talkshop comment – ‘staggering’? None of this proves anything.]
During the development of a strong El Niño in 2023, warm anomalies are expected to predominantly affect the tropical central-eastern Pacific, the Eurasian continent, and Alaska. However, in the following year, 2024, warm anomalies are likely to encompass the entire continents, significantly increasing the chance of land-based heat waves, droughts, and wildfires.
According to Prof. Zheng Fei, corresponding author of the study, “In addition to the surge in surface temperatures, the strong El Niño in 2023-2024 is predicted to trigger a cascade of climate crises.”
Climate crises associated with the predicted strong El Niño in 2023-2024 (A) 12-month forecasts of ensemble-mean Niño3.4 index that started from Oct. 2022 to Aug. 2023 made by IAP ENSO EPS (solid color lines), the shading shows the ensemble spread of forecasted Niño3.4 index starting from Aug. 2023, and the black solid line represents the observed Niño3.4 index from Aug. 2022 to Jul. 2023. (B) Annual time series of GMST anomalies during 1950-2022 (Datasets: BEST, GISTEMP v4). The first and second years of nine strong El Niño events are indicated by orange and red bars, respectively. (C) The statistically forecasted probability for GMSTs to be 1st to 3rd in 2023 and in 2024. (D)-(E) Distribution of STAs in the first and second years of strong El Niño composited by the nine events in B. (F) Annual time series of the OHC0-2000m during 2005-2022 (blue dots), the corresponding linear trend (gray dashed line), and the estimated OHC0-2000m in 2023-2024 (red and orange bars) based on linear regression methods with a 90% confidence interval. Credit: The Innovation Geoscience (2023). DOI: 10.59717/j.xinn-geo.2023.100030
EpochTV host Roman Balmakov’s documentary, “No Farmers No Food,” shows that climate policies are being used to push farmers out of business, cause a decline in animal husbandry, and promote the human consumption of insect protein. Balmakov accurately describes how climate activists are collaborating with governments around the world to shut down farms by imposing burdensome regulations and top-down decrees on farmers, allegedly to prevent a purported climate crisis.
Balmakov explains in the film that the United Nations leads these efforts.
“People in charge of some of the most powerful organizations on the planet have determined that agriculture, specifically animal agriculture, is to blame for global warming, and global warming is to blame for the high prices of food and food shortages,” says Balmakov.
The film cites a variety of specific policies imposed by governments around the world that are driving farmers out of business, such as water regulations in California, nitrogen policies in the Netherlands, and organic farming mandates in Sri Lanka. These policies are also leading to food shortages and higher food prices. Climate Realism has likewise previously reported on the dangerous results of these perverse policies, in “Yes, Breitbart, The Netherlands Anti-Agriculture Scheme Is a Disturbing Development,” covering the voluntary-or-else government buyouts of small to midsized farms in the Netherlands, as well as a scheme in Britain to “rewild” farmland. Climate Realism also discussed how the Sri Lankan government’s push to take its agriculture industry all organic resulted a rapid and steep reduction in output, and an equally rapid and steep increase in food prices.
Data show that amid modest warming, world crop production and yields are increasing, regularly setting new records, as has been discussed in dozens of articles on Climate Realism. For most places food security has improved, and hunger and malnutrition have fallen significantly during the recent period of climate change.
Take for example world production of staple food crops like rice, corn, and wheat. All of these crops, according to data from the United Nations’ own Food and Agriculture Organization, have seen steady production increases over the same time period that alarmists have been warning of a dangerous warming. (See Figure below)
Research shows that carbon dioxide is contributing to this increase in crop production because of the fertilization effect of higher CO2 levels. Additionally, the modest warming of the past decades has likely contributed to a slight increase in precipitation in the northern hemisphere and the “bread basket” regions, which means that less groundwater is needed for irrigation.
Eating bugs is certainly not going to help anything. As Climate Realism pointed out, here, for example, insects are not bulletproof earth-friendly health foods, in fact they can cause serious allergic reactions and other health complications. Also, replacing cattle with insects is unlikely to improve emissions, because factory-scale insect farming for human consumption is energy intensive, especially in the quantities needed if proponents intend to totally replace other animal proteins.
As The Epoch Times explains, Balmakov’s “documentary shines the spotlight on how some innocuous-sounding policies are harmful to the food supply.” The facts indicate that climate change does not threaten the global food supply. Rather, as Balmakov’s documentary shows, it is governments and international agencies retrograde farm policies which threaten the continued growth in food production, by eschewing modern agricultural technological innovations which have brought about the largest, fastest decline in hunger around the world in history, during the past century. Banning fertilizers and pesticides, limiting the amount of water that can be used for farming and ranching, restricting fossil fuel development and use, and threatening livestock ranchers over the amount of methane produced by their animals, can only result in reduced food production and increased hunger.
Congratulations are in order for EpochTV and Balmakov for producing and promoting this important documentary. The impact of green policies on the food supply is one of the most dangerous emerging global issues. Shockingly, as Balmakov exposes, these policies are largely driven by climate alarmists in governments and supported by the climate alarmists in the mainstream media.
Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy. While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”
University of Melbourne explaining the velvet glove approach to EV charge time coercion.
A zero-carbon transport sector needs more than electric vehicles
Decarbonising Australia’s transport systems will take more than a transition to electric vehicles. Understanding how and when owners like to charge their cars is important. Our researchers are examining how we might persuade the increasing electricity demand to meet the time-dependent renewable energy supply.
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Electricity use already peaks at around 6 pm. The added load from masses of commuters plugging in their vehicles at once would strain the grid – and complicate Australia’s transition to renewable energy.
However, intelligent management of electric vehicle charging can bridge gaps in the renewable energy supply. EVs could charge from solar cells during the day and feed electricity back to the home or the grid in the evening.
“Electric vehicles can be hugely beneficial while we make our grid smarter and more sustainable,” says Professor Mancarella.
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Researchers must understand when EVs will be drawing power from the grid – especially as Australia transitions to weather-dependent renewable energy.
“Being able to shape behaviour is fundamental, because you’re going to need to convince your demand to behave in a way that meets your supply,” says Dr Lavieri.
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“People are living on budgets, and they are trying to minimise their costs,” says Dr Lavieri.
Monetary incentives could guide charging behaviours. These include free public charging and time-of-use tariffs – discounts for charging at off-peak times.
What a shame nuclear power, which could avoid the need for energy rationing by delivering full power output any time of day, is too expensive and difficult.
Except in France where they are obviously a lot smarter than everyone else in the world, or have a special kind of engineering ability which makes nuclear affordable – they managed to affordably decarbonise most of their electricity supply using nuclear in the 1970s.
I mean, our politicians wouldn’t be lying to us about the cost of nuclear power would they? Surely they wouldn’t be considering imposing energy rationing and price coercion, when there was an affordable zero carbon alternative to coercion which they just couldn’t be bothered to support? Surely not.
This piece is not about climate but about the mindset of taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Commission, which has a legal charter for impartiality. This has not prevented the ABC from adopting woke/Green/Left positions on most controversies including Australia’s impending referendum to set up a new chamber of Aborigines to “make representations” to both Parliament and the executive.
This piece is not about climate but about the mindset of taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Commission, which has a legal charter for impartiality. This has not prevented the ABC from adopting woke/Green/Left positions on most controversies including Australia’s impending referendum to set up a new chamber of Aborigines to “make representations” to both Parliament and the executive. The ABC’s position on climate can be taken as read.
Guys, don’t cancel me, but in our household we’ve watched ABCTV 7pm News (Vic) for 40 years. It’s an addiction – like heroin, crystal meth, fentanyl. Close to 7pm we get twitchy for our fix – will the iView app work on our Smart TV (IQ just above 100)? Up to Tuesday (September 26), we accepted the assurances of the ABC Charter that ABC flagship TV would be impartial, professional and devoid of green-Left spin. But last night’s news (Tues) shattered my illusions.
I must now put in a complaint to the ABC Ombudsman (properly, Ombudswoman) Fiona Cameron. She will consider it carefully before, as I expect, rejecting it , her role being “to build on the credibility and trust Australian audiences have in the ABC.”
The same item was in the NSW 7pm news (21.30mins), and I assume around the nation. This item even wound up on the France 24 news channel, in English, albeit with some clips that didn’t make the ABC compilation. These dual versions enable me to do a compare and contrast exercise.
The item is about the Electoral Commission’s job of setting up polling stations in remote areas like Arnhem Land and the Tiwi Islands. The distances are formidable and the AEC ‘s efforts commendable. The ABC itself threw in substantial resources to get its reporters around.
So what’s my beef? Well, judging by the ABC footage, the Yes vote out there is 100 per cent. A Yes tally of 50 per cent, 60 per cent or 70 per cent might be remotely (pun) plausible. In some tiny communities (the ABC mentions one comprising ten people), even 90 per cent might be the go. But 100 per cent across the board?
This smacks of ABC desperation as polls show the Yes armies heading for their Waterloo.[1] A potent argument for No is that the Aboriginal community is thoroughly split, so why should we balandas deliver them a permanent pack of Aboriginal-Industry aristocrats?
I can imagine the conversation at Ultimo as the 7pm News piece is packaged into shape:
ABC Senior Editor: Remember we’re storytellers. Let’s go through all these grabs and vox pops and make them tell a story.
ABC Junior Editor: Good thinking! What story line do you have in mind?
ABC Senior Editor: [Guffaws] Well doh! Why are we here, you cretin?
So here’s the anatomy of the finished item. ABC Melbourne’s Tamara Oudyn, dressed all in white (is that a wrong note?), teleprompts how the AEC is encouraging vote-averse blacks to vote.
14.24 mins: Shot of shed for remote polling, with two and a half big VOTE YES! signs outside.
14.26: ABC reporter Roxanne Fitzgerald says, “Signs are up and teams are ready to go.” She must mean, “YES” signs are up and “YES” teams are ready to go.
14.29: An Aboriginal man in a white YES 23 shirt hands out a voting card.
14.32: An Aboriginal woman lodges her vote. She is holding a pamphlet which from the logo, colour and text I can identify as a YES pamphlet.
14.37: We’re now in the Tiwi Islands. ABC vox pops an Elder Bernard Tipoloura who says, “I strongly believe in people talking for us in Canberra.” Behind him are two VOTE YES! placards.
14.50: Another vox pop Aboriginal says, “Yeah, Vote YES! We need some changes!” He waves his VOTE YES! sign at the camera.
15.14: Remote Voter Service’s Aboriginal Ebony Williams Costa says, “And I’m also about getting out and informing people about Aboriginal rights.” This seems code for YES. I can’t imagine her pushing their “rights” not to have a permanent non-elected Voice assembly. Reporter Roxanne says a funeral and sorry-business is reducing voter turnout.
15.43: Marion Scrymgour, federal Labor MHR for Lingiari, is interviewed with three VOTE YES signs in the background.
15.54: Two young Aboriginal women are shown casting their votes. The one on the left holds a single flyer for YES.
16.00: Two Aboriginals with VOTE YES! shirts stand in front of no fewer than five VOTE YES! signs. Roxanne says, “Despite traditional low voter turnout, remote communities will see more voter service than ever before, with voting extended by a week to try to ensure everyone gets a say.” Everyone, that is, who votes YES, judging by the ABC item.
16.36: Ends.
To sum up, in the piece’s two minutes we see 13 “VOTE YES! ” signs, three “VOTE YES!” T-shirts, two “VOTE YES!” flyers, and the ABC finds three vox-poppers to deliver YES messaging. The ABC’s score for the “NO” camp: zero, zero, zero, and zero respectively.
Maybe Ombudswoman Cameron will tell me that the ABC crews trudged hill and spinifex looking for NO case material out there to balance the item and, sadly, none was to be found.
A friend of mine who knows how things work in such remote places, suggests this might even be true. The reason: each little settlement is controlled by a “big man” who well recognises that a Canberra Voice could operate to reinforce his power and patronage. Hence before the ABC’s visit, Big Man has patrolled to ensure no trace of NO material is seen and filmed. He might not even need to, because no-one out there wants to tangle with him.
He’s apparently taken a feed from the ABC as some shots are the same or similar.[2] But he runs other clips which the ABC perhaps left on its cutting-room floor.
He includes a scene (0.13mins) at Mowanjum on the mainland, showing a community store – and with a VOTE YES sign outside.
At 0.24 Vasina has an elderly man saying, “Our voice has to be heard somewhere, especially Parliament House and all that. It’s hard to understand what it really means. A few people voted NO, I’m not sure why, I just decided to go with this.”
So there we have it, remote NO voters do exist, but the ABC couldn’t find any or found them and ignored them.
Vasina (0.47) then abandons the backblocks in favor of high political theatre, saying,
The Prime Minister blames these No votes on misinformation campaigns, given that the Referendum aims to provide Australian’s indigenous people with a representative body to advise Parliament.
The PM doesn’t seem respectful of us NO voters, and Vasina omits that the Voice would also have the right to hector the executive. By omission, Vasina implies to Francophiles that Aborigines don’t already have advisory systems, let alone a peak $4.5-billion-a-year body, the NIAA, with 1300 staff, plus heaven knows how many other bureaucratic beasts.
Vasina at 1.00 wheels out Mr Albanese himself, but not Opposition Leader Dutton or an inconvenient Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, to spruik the YES case. The PM tells France 24 he is confident that remote Aborigines will “overwhelmingly” vote YES.
At 1.14 we see the AEC sign “Polling Place” on a remote-station fence. About 1.5 metres distant and tied to the same fence are two VOTE YES! signs (is that legal?). The cameraman (again, I’m assuming it’s an ABC person) pans into loving close-up of the upper VOTE YES! sign, then scrolls down and pans lovingly on the second VOTE YES! sign. Two more VOTE YES! signs are inside the yard. A fifth VOTE YES! is across the track. Some message here perhaps?
Unlike the ABC, France 24 then plugs in (1.35) stock footage of perhaps 200 people at a city rally. At first sight it’s a YES rally, with a chap in foreground wearing a T-shirt with “Stop the Genocide” on the back. It’s actually a NO rally and the TV crew (ABC?) are sneakily emphasising a lone anti-NO campaigner.
At 1.40 someone there holds up a sign (at last!), “VOTE NO – Fairaustralia.com.au”. At 1.48 we even get to see two more VOTE NO signs, one reading, VOTE NO – Do Not Comply”. The item then fades out with Vasina mentioning that conservatives don’t want Australia divided on racial lines.
If you ask me, Vasina is out of his depth in this coverage, and maybe allows in a smidgeon of NO material by accident or because it’s tough trying to explain complex things to a beret-wearing audience 17,000km away.
My task now is to persuade my rusted-on ABC household to subscribe to Sky News, or at second-best, haul up France 24 on YouTube. Although head of the household, I still prefer consensus.
Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here
[1] The Duke of Wellington is running the NO camp.
[2] I might be wrong and the shots might have come from some TV pool arrangement.
I got to thinking about the classical way to measure the very poorly-named “greenhouse effect”, which has nothing to do with greenhouses. To my knowledge, this method of measuring the greenhouse effect was first proposed by Raval and Ramanathan in a 1989 paper yclept “Observational determination of the greenhouse effect“.
I got to thinking about the classical way to measure the very poorly-named “greenhouse effect”, which has nothing to do with greenhouses. To my knowledge, this method of measuring the greenhouse effect was first proposed by Raval and Ramanathan in a 1989 paper yclept “Observational determination of the greenhouse effect“.
Their method, followed up to the present by most everyone including me, is to subtract the upwelling (space-bound) longwave (LW) radiation measured by satellites at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), from the upwelling surface longwave radiation. Or as they describe it in the paper, which was only about the ocean:
” We obtain G by subtracting longwave radiation escaping to space from estimates of the radiation emitted by the ocean surface.”
This measurement is said to represent the amount of upwelling surface radiation absorbed by the atmosphere. This can be expressed either as watts per square meter, or as a percentage or a fraction of the surface emission.
Figure 1 shows this measurement of the all-sky “greenhouse effect” around the world. It shows the amount of energy absorbed by the atmosphere expressed as a fraction of the underlying surface emission.
Figure 1. Atmospheric upwelling longwave (LW) absorption as a fraction of surface longwave emission.Figure 1a. As in Figure 1. Changes over time of atmospheric longwave (LW) absorption as a fraction of surface longwave emission.
So … what’s not to like?
Today, while pondering a totally different question, I realized that the Ramanathan measurement, while not useless, is also not accurate. There are two issues I see with the measurement.
Other Energy Inputs To The Atmosphere
About 40 W/m2 of upwelling surface longwave goes directly to space. The rest of the ~240 W/m2 of upwelling LW comes from the atmosphere, not the surface.
The first issue with the Ramanathan method is that the atmosphere only gets about two-thirds of its energy flux from absorbed upwelling surface longwave radiation. The other third of its energy flux comes from two totally different sources— 1) solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere, aerosols, and clouds, and 2) latent (evaporative) and sensible (conductive) heat loss from the surface to the atmosphere.
As a result of these other energy fluxes entering and leaving the atmosphere, changes in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) longwave measured by satellites using the Ramanathan method may merely reflect changes in solar absorption or changes in latent/sensible heat loss. Here’s the total of the other energy going into the atmosphere.
Figure 2. The sum of two other sources of energy fluxes absorbed by the atmosphere.
As you can see, these other sources of atmospheric energy flux vary over time. Part of this additional energy flux is radiated to space, messing with the Ramanathan estimate of the greenhouse effect.
Up Versus Down
The second issue is that the atmosphere radiates in two directions, up and down. However, the ratio between upwelling and downwelling longwave (LW) radiation is not constant. Here is the variation in TOA upwelling longwave due solely to the changing upwelling/downwelling ratio.
Figure 3. Variations in top-of-atmosphere longwave (TOA LW) radiation due solely to the variations in the ratio of atmospheric energy going upwards and downwards.
The variations in these two other energy fluxes, variations that will appear in the amount of energy heading out to space, will cause spurious variations in the Ramanathan greenhouse measurement.
A Better Metric??
Seems like if we considered the TOA LW as a fraction of the total energy entering the atmosphere, rather than as a fraction of upwelling surface LW, it might be more instructive … hang on, never done this … well, dang, this is interesting.
Figure 4. As in Fig. 1a, except comparing the upwelling TOA longwave radiation going to space to total atmospheric energy flux, rather than comparing it just to upwelling surface longwave.
Hmmm … not sure what to say about that. It does seem that the fraction of atmospheric energy flux going out to space hasn’t changed much over the 22-year period of record. And it certainly has not increased by the amount we would expect from the increase in CO2 forcing …
All ideas welcome.
My best wishes to all,
w.
The Usual: Please quote the exact words you are discussing. It avoids a host of misunderstandings.
CO2 “only affects a small range of long-wave re-radiation from the surface of the Earth,” and there “seems to be no connection between carbon dioxide and the temperature of the Earth.” − Harris, 2023
CO2 “only affects a small range of long-wave re-radiation from the surface of the Earth,” and there “seems to be no connection between carbon dioxide and the temperature of the Earth.” − Harris, 2023
New research published in the MDPI journal atmosphere by Dr. Stuart A. Harris asserts past and modern climate changes are natural and not driven by variations in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Some key points from the paper include:
• Past and modern climate change is driven by solar cycle (Milankovitch) variations and their affect on ocean circulation and heat transport.
• Throughout the last hundreds of thousands of years, temperature changes precede the lagging changes in CO2.
• The UN IPCC position that atmospheric CO2 is the cause of the warming since the onset of the Industrial Revolution is only an assumption that is “not consistent with studies involving changes in temperature in rural areas of the northern [NH] hemisphere.”
• The natural 23 thousand year (23 ka) Milankovitch cycle has begun to reduce insolation in the NH “starting in 2020,” and this “heralds the start of the next glaciation.”
• CO2 is essential for life on Earth (photosynthesis), and a reduction in CO2 would be harmful to the biosphere. On the other hand, there “seems to be no connection between carbon dioxide and the temperature of the Earth.”
How this guy still has a job at the Telegraph is a mystery to me:
The Rosebank oilfield is located around 80 miles north-west of the Shetland Islands, 3,600 feet below the surface of the North Sea.
It is into this black abyss that any semblance of a coherent plan to power Britain has slipped after its owners were granted permission to drill for new oil and gas.
The timing of the announcement alone was comically bad. Just 24 hours after the International Energy Agency warned that any new oil and gas infrastructure was incompatible with the Paris Climate Agreements of limiting global warming to 1.5C – an accord of which the UK is a signatory – the North Sea Transition Authority gave the green light to a development that is expected to produce as much as 500m barrels of oil over its lifetime.
A cross-party group of MPs and peers estimate that is equivalent to 200m tonnes of carbon dioxide – “more than the combined annual CO2 emissions of all 28 low-income countries in the world.”
The truth of Rosebank is that it does none of the things that ministers and its cheerleaders claim. Instead, it underlines how desperately muddled our energy policy has become. It is the price we must pay for decades of failure to invest in, and plan for, an energy system capable of replacing one dominated by fossil fuels.
It’s the same load of old tripe we are used to getting from Marlow.
The fact that his main argument against it is the Paris Agreement says it all! Does he not realise that the Paris Agreement actually formalised rapid increases in emissions? Does he not realise that it gave carte blanche to China, India and the rest of the developing world to carry on using as much fossil fuels as they want? Whatever your beliefs about global warming, nobody should pretend that it should be an economic blueprint for the UK, more a straitjacket.
Marlow clearly has not realised that we will still be using huge amounts of oil and gas for many years to come. It’s not me saying that, even the CCC accept this. So why should it make more sense to ship the stuff half way round the world, when we could supply some of it ourselves.
His main complaint seems to be that the amounts involved at Rosebank are small fry, in terms of our overall energy consumption. But so what? The same argument could be made about every economic policy decision.
He goes on to moan about the failure of the offshore wind auction this month. Evidently he is happy for the public to pay even greater subsidies for their electricity. As ever, he offers no solutions to the problems of intermittency.
His final moan is about our failure to build more nuclear, especially since he says there is a risk that Hinkley Point might not be ready till 2036. Maybe he should have been arguing for this 20 years ago, when his favourite Miliband and the rest of the Labour Party banned new nuclear, whilst setting the destruction of our energy security into motion.
The delays show just how short sighted it would have been to put all of our eggs in the nuclear/wind basket, as Marlow suggests.
Is it not time for the Telegraph to employ somebody who actually understands the energy sector, and send Ben Marlow packing to the Guardian, where he should feel more at home (judging by the avalanche of critical comments he gets every time he writes this nonsense!)
Tom Nelson
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