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.
Jusper Machogu from Kisii, Kenya, discusses significant progress in his community, including the introduction of electricity, clean water access, and LPG for cooking. Despite obstacles such as local political interference and limited internet infrastructure, his initiatives aim to improve living standards for many families. Jusper also reflects on his experiences dealing with international perceptions and the potential for future development in Africa.
Jusper Machogu from Kisii, Kenya, discusses significant progress in his community, including the introduction of electricity, clean water access, and LPG for cooking. Despite obstacles such as local political interference and limited internet infrastructure, his initiatives aim to improve living standards for many families. Jusper also reflects on his experiences dealing with international perceptions and the potential for future development in Africa.
00:00 Introduction and Welcome Back 00:38 Community Improvements and Achievements 01:19 Challenges and Solutions in Water Access 03:25 Electrification Efforts and Impact 05:04 Personal Contributions and Skills 06:05 Media Misrepresentation and Fundraising Issues 10:43 Travel Challenges and Experiences 14:43 Internet and Technology in Kenya 24:56 Appliances and Daily Life in the Community 28:41 Navigating Local Transportation in Kenya 29:23 The Rise of Online Education 31:32 The Role of the Internet in Daily Life 33:16 Family and Community Support 35:30 Climate Change and Political Views 39:07 International Exposure and Networking 42:36 Challenges in African Conferences 48:29 Political Aspirations and Community Work 54:13 Future Plans and Final Thoughts
European energy expert Samuel Furfari sums up green hydrogen (GH) perfectly; “It’s like burning Louis Vuitton handbags for heat.” He says this because it is so very expensive. Federal law allocated $9.5 billion for GH hubs, and the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act (Inflation Causing Act) expanded tax subsidies. Even with massive taxpayer subsidies, GH is a money loser.
European energy expert Samuel Furfari sums up green hydrogen (GH) perfectly; “It’s like burning Louis Vuitton handbags for heat.” He says this because it is so very expensive. Federal law allocated $9.5 billion for GH hubs, and the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act (Inflation Causing Act) expanded tax subsidies. Even with massive taxpayer subsidies, GH is a money loser.
Leftists claim GH is a way to replace batteries for transportation. It is at least five times more expensive, which doesn’t include all the extra costs associated with the production of natural gas, such as purifying massive amounts of water, which takes about 13 times more water than the hydrogen it produces. Desalination is an additional cost. Putting these processes anywhere they’ll need to compete for water resources is just plain stupid.
Infrastructure costs are astounding because we currently have none, and hydrogen is not suitable for pipelines because it escapes easily, embrittles metal, and is prone to explode. It only takes a few massive hydrogen car or truck explosions to end hydrogen use for transportation, just like the Hindenburg disaster that ended hydrogen ballon travel.
GH is an excessive waste of money, and it hasn’t ever been made at scale—even after tens of billions spent by Europeans, Australians, and the United States.
All it takes is a little critical thinking to realize that something is amiss once one understands how GH is produced. First of all, we don’t have enough wind and solar to power the hydrogen plants. Second, wind and solar are part-time and weather dependent. The GH process is required to run at all times, not just the 30 percent of the time the wind blows and the 20 percent of the time the sun shines bright enough.
Making GH requires pure water to be heated to 2,000° F and is then electrocuted. This cracks the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The hydrogen is then chilled to 420° F below zero, turning it into a liquid, and then it is finally compressed to 10,000 psi, comparable to three times the average scuba tank or compressed natural gas (CNG). Without this chilling and compression, hydrogen has one-tenth the energy per volume as natural gas. Under normal compressed circumstances, hydrogen has less energy than CNG. A kilogram of this liquid hydrogen has the energy of a gallon of gas.
When working with the liquid near zero, compressed hydrogen is tricky, as it is the smallest molecule, escaping normal pipelines and embrittling metals, causing them to crack sooner than later.
“Every time you involve hydrogen, you get not small losses, but large, substantial losses,” an energy specialist tells us. “The main cause of the issue is that hydrogen is a molecule that is too small and volatile to be used, transported effectively using the gas pipelines, turbines, boilers, cooktops, or burner jets that are now in place.” Deep pocket oil companies are getting out of this boondoggle. BP cancelled 18 hydrogen projects because they were unprofitable, all in an effort to save $200 million a year. Shell cancelled a Norway hydrogen project and others for lack of demand, while a $750 million GH plant in Australia was cancelled because it was a money loser.
The first argument raised by climate hawks is the production of GH, which costs 40 percent more in energy than it produces. Some of the GH will leak, as it is stored in salt caverns.
When there isn’t any wind or solar power, which is usually the case, they then say we can use this stored hydrogen to create second-generation GH. Using second-generation hydrogen alone will bear 80 percent of the cost of the energy that is actually produced—not including losses—which doesn’t even factor in all the other costs associated with the process.
And what about water needs?
It’s just stupid to put hydrogen hubs in areas without enough water. Houston, Utah, and Southern California, to name a few, are recognized as government sponsored GH hotspots.
Particularly in Utah, on the edge of the desert, where solar and wind power barely account for 2 percent of total electricity generated. Or California, which suffers from droughts, and often sees water shortages.
Trump and Congressional Republicans must stop wasting billions on GH. Any money spent on GH adds to our $36.5 trillion national debt, driving up inflation. While it was reported that Trump is considering killing hydrogen hubs in blue states, Trump should kill all of them.
Green hydrogen is an expensive pipedream we simply cannot afford.
One of my interests is in understanding how and why the climate is so stable, for sure it has been over the last several thousand years. Where I live, on the Tropic of Capricorn, daily atmospheric temperatures may fluctuate by 20C, yet the seasonal variation in sea temperatures is less than 10C and if there has been any warming over the last 100 years it is probably less than 2C. For sure the global temperature changes and that is especially the case at the higher latitudes towards the north and south poles.
One of my interests is in understanding how and why the climate is so stable, for sure it has been over the last several thousand years. Where I live, on the Tropic of Capricorn, daily atmospheric temperatures may fluctuate by 20C, yet the seasonal variation in sea temperatures is less than 10C and if there has been any warming over the last 100 years it is probably less than 2C. For sure the global temperature changes and that is especially the case at the higher latitudes towards the north and south poles. On these points of fact, I am very much in agreement with meteorologist William Kininmonth. We also agree that it is tropical convection, in particular the funnelling of energy from the boundary layer sometimes 13 kilometres straight up to the top of the troposphere that stops the tropical oceans from overheating.
I hosted a first two-hour zoom meeting about these things last night; we are working together towards a new paradigm for understanding weather and climate change.
One hundred registered, the maximum capacity given my zoom subscription, and there were 48 who joined to listening-in, mostly to Bill outline his model of tropical convection and how this is critical to understanding how energy moves within the troposphere and to the north and south poles.
William studied under Herbert Riehl at Colorado State University in the 1960s, and he acknowledges that he is building on the work of Riehl and also Joanne Simpson.
The meeting was at a time that suited William, and an Australian audience. I understand that this time was completely inappropriate for 60% of my Mailchimp subscribers who lives in places like Houston, Texas. I am hoping that I can host William again by Zoom all over again in the New Year and at a time that works for those in Texas.
In the meantime, following is a summary of our first Zoom meeting. This summary was compiled by Zoom’s AI and then I made some additions and edits.
After that there is a link to a Dropbox folder with an unedited audio file and the slides from the presentation.
None of this is tidy – especially not the audio, but it is authentic. And we will improve.
Indeed, we will have to work through the current mess that is climate change science if we are to get to something coherent that has integrity because for sure the climate is not chaotic. For sure it is possible to get closer to the truth, and to develop a paradigm consistent with the data and the laws of physics.
For sure I am tired of the many voices, especially on the right side of politics, that just make stuff-up because they want to be a part of a winning story for their team. Much of what they have written and said will soon become irrelevant.
In the meantime, I am very grateful to the B. Macfie Family Foundation for financial support over a long period of time.
SUMMARY OF ZOOM MEETING DECEMBER 5, 2024
1.Earth’s Climate System and Convection
In the meeting, William Kininmonth presented a model of the Earth’s climate system emphasising the role of convection by air rising within cumulonimbus clouds in the tropical convergence zone straddling the equator. He explained that in the tropics, atmospheric temperatures lag ocean temperatures and that the ocean is regulating the temperature of the atmosphere. Questions were raised about the role of carbon dioxide in the model, William contends that greenhouse gases emit more radiation than they absorb, and that greenhouse gases tend to cool the atmosphere. He stated that this is not contentious within traditional meteorology.
2. Arctic Warming Rates and Seasonal Variations
In the meeting, William discussed the varying rates of temperature change across different latitude bands over the past 45 years. He highlighted that the rate of warming is significantly higher in the Arctic compared to the Southern Ocean, with the Arctic experiencing 6.6 degrees per century and the Southern Ocean experiencing only 0.1 degrees per century. I questioned the data source, to which William clarified that the data is from the National Center for Environment Prediction in the US, combining satellite and surface temperature data. We also discussed the seasonal variation in warming, with the greatest warming occurring in the wintertime in the Arctic and the Antarctic. William emphasised that this is not due to the greenhouse effect, but rather the transport of heat from the tropics. He also noted that the longer growing season due to earlier thaws and later freezes could be beneficial for high-latitude regions like Canada and Russia.
3.Carbon Dioxide’s Role in Climate Change
In the meeting, William discussed the role of carbon dioxide in climate change, presenting a chart that showed minimal increase in radiation absorption at the surface due to carbon dioxide concentration. He suggested that other factors, such as the slowing down of the Gulf Stream, could be responsible for the observed warming trends. Interest was expressed in understanding the physical mechanisms behind these changes and the discrepancy between the model output and the IPCC’s global warming projections.
4. New Climate Change Paradigm Discussion
There was discussion on the concept of a new paradigm for understanding climate change, referencing the work of Thomas Kuhn and the importance of having a clear language and testable theories to move forward. William Kininmonth shared his perspective on the existing climate change theories, emphasising the importance of understanding energy flow and the role of the Equatorial Trough Zone. Christopher Game raised concerns about the use of shorthand in scientific discussions particularly with respect to the word ‘heat’, arguing that it hinders clarity of thought. The group also discussed the Riehl and Simpson paper from 1979, and I suggesting it as a starting point for further discussions.
DROPBOX FOLDER WITH AUDIO
The meeting ran for two hours. The unedited audio, accompanying PowerPoint slides, an essay by William, and relevant technical paper (Riehl and Simpson 1979) can be downloaded from Dropbox here:
There is a difficulty with seventeenth century thinking that makes heat a property of a body, thinking in terms of heat as a sort of substance called ‘caloric’, is incompatible with heat as a mode of transfer between two bodies, which is built around the 1850 discovery of the notion of internal energy, further clarified substantially by G.H. Bryan in 1907.
The caloric theory way of thinking is widely and deeply ingrained and may be hard to dislodge. This is a truly Kuhnian change of paradigm.
The main defining formulas for clarity:
total body energy = whole body gravitational potential energy + whole body kinetic energy + internal energy.
Thermodynamics is focused on internal energy. The internal energy of a body can change in situ (1) by transfer of matter (evaporation); (2) thermodynamic work; (3) heat (conduction, radiation, friction). The internal energy of a body can be transported in convective circulation, loading up somewhere and unloading somewhere else.
Comments in Conclusion
I emphasised in the meeting that this was just the beginning of the conversation. That my objective is a new paradigm from which to understand weather, climate and how and why it changes and sometimes not at all.
I consider William’s model of tropical convection, with an emphasis on energy transfer from the tropical oceans to the poles critical to understanding weather and climate and why the Earth’s climate is fundamentally stable within limits and especially in the tropics.
I don’t agree with everything that William presented: the measurements that he relies upon to come to his conclusions about temperature trends, or his presentation of temperatures as per century linear trends. I do agree with his emphasis on latitudinal gradients and seasonal trends. I admire how he puts numbers around this, even if I don’t agree with them exactly because I see significant cooling at least in the northern hemisphere from 1940 to at least 1975.
If you would like to listen in to future Zoom meetings with different guest lecturers, consider subscribing to my irregular email news and be sure to tick the box ‘New theory of climate change’.
In his paper, “Relative Importance of Carbon Dioxide and Water in the Greenhouse Effect: Does the Tail Wag the Dog?”, Demetris Koutsoyiannis explores the greenhouse effect’s primary drivers, positing that water vapor and clouds vastly overshadow carbon dioxide (CO₂) in terms of their contribution.
In his paper, “Relative Importance of Carbon Dioxide and Water in the Greenhouse Effect: Does the Tail Wag the Dog?”, Demetris Koutsoyiannis explores the greenhouse effect’s primary drivers, positing that water vapor and clouds vastly overshadow carbon dioxide (CO₂) in terms of their contribution. Using a radiative transfer model (MODTRAN), Koutsoyiannis analyzes downwelling and outgoing longwave radiation and derives macroscopic relationships that express greenhouse gas effects quantitatively. His calculations suggest that water vapor and clouds contribute between 87% to 95% of the greenhouse effect, while CO₂’s impact is only around 4% to 5%. The findings also indicate that recent increases in atmospheric CO₂, from 300 to 420 ppm, contribute negligibly—an effect quantified at just 0.5% for both downwelling and outgoing radiation.
Abstract
Using a detailed atmospheric radiative transfer model, we derive macroscopic relationships of downwelling and outgoing longwave radiation which enable determining the partial derivatives thereof with respect to the explanatory variables that represent the greenhouse gases. We validate these macroscopic relationships using empirical formulae based on downwelling radiation data, commonly used in hydrology, and satellite data for the outgoing radiation. We use the relationships and their partial derivatives to infer the relative importance of carbon dioxide and water vapour in the greenhouse effect.
The results show that the contribution of the former is 4% – 5%, while water and clouds dominate with a contribution of 87% – 95%. The minor effect of carbon dioxide is confirmed by the small, non-discernible effect of the recent escalation of atmospheric CO₂ concentration from 300 to 420 ppm. This effect is quantified at 0.5% for both downwelling and outgoing radiation.
Water and clouds also perform other important functions in climate, such as regulating heat storage and albedo, as well as cooling the Earth’s surface through latent heat transfer, contributing 50%. By confirming the major role of water on climate, these results suggest that hydrology should have a more prominent and more active role in climate research.
A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that anything that calls itself ‘science’ probably isn’t. J.R. Searle (1984)
The paper positions these findings in opposition to the widely held view that CO₂ is the critical driver of Earth’s greenhouse effect. Koutsoyiannis argues that water’s abundance and rapid hydrological cycling allow it to dominate atmospheric temperature regulation, effectively acting as the primary greenhouse gas. He claims that the historical focus on CO₂ has skewed climate research, diminishing hydrology’s role and limiting a complete understanding of climate dynamics.
Koutsoyiannis also critiques the mainstream climate science perspective, which he suggests has become too intertwined with political agendas. He points to discussions in prominent journals that frame CO₂ as the “control knob” of climate, a narrative he finds unsupported by empirical evidence. By applying his model, he challenges the assertion that removing CO₂ would dramatically alter Earth’s climate; instead, he contends that water vapor would continue to regulate temperature through its dominant greenhouse effect and short atmospheric residence time.
The study incorporates data from ERA5 Reanalysis and satellite-based radiation measurements, specifically the CERES project, for validation. These datasets provide insight into radiation profiles and support the author’s argument that water vapor’s regional variability and rapid cycling enable it to exert a powerful greenhouse effect that CO₂ cannot match.
However, Koutsoyiannis acknowledges that the hypothetical removal of CO₂, often discussed in theoretical studies, lacks empirical backing, as CO₂ has consistently been a part of Earth’s atmosphere over geological timescales. He also contrasts the rapid turnover of water vapor with CO₂’s longer residence time, highlighting the latter’s well-mixed nature across the atmosphere as a potential reason why its warming effects appear diffused.
Through his analysis, Koutsoyiannis calls for a reorientation of climate research, urging the scientific community to afford greater attention to hydrology and to reconsider CO₂’s central role in climate models. He concludes that the understanding of Earth’s climate may be limited by the current emphasis on CO₂ emissions, which he argues overlooks the nuanced and regionally specific effects of water vapor.
In sum, “Does the Tail Wag the Dog?” is a critique of prevailing climate science paradigms, advocating for a model that recognizes water vapor and clouds as the foremost greenhouse agents while downplaying CO₂’s overall effect. Koutsoyiannis’s paper encourages a shift in climate research focus toward hydrology and questions the mainstream positioning of CO₂ as the cornerstone of climate change theory.
This file is the Supplementary Information of the paper “Relative importance of carbon dioxide and water in the greenhouse effect: Does the tail wag the dog?” It contains interesting material as it demonstrates the current practices of silencing voices that disagree with mainstream opinions, which are purported to be science. The contained materials include the rejection files from three journals, namely Hydrological Sciences Journal, MDPI Hydrology and Ecohydrology and Engineering. The document contains all reviews and replies to them, as well as key exchanges with the journal’s Editorial Offices. Replies to reviews are contained in the case that the Editor accepted the request to rebut them—otherwise no replies were prepared. [See the paper at:
“…elevated CO2 concentrations not only boosted vegetation growth through the fertilizer effect but also indirectly enhanced water availability [reducing drought risk] by improving water use efficiency.” – Song et al., 2024
“…elevated CO2 concentrations not only boosted vegetation growth through the fertilizer effect but also indirectly enhanced water availability [reducing drought risk] by improving water use efficiency.” – Song et al., 2024
One of the more commonly-stated concerns linked to “global warming” is that sweltering heat will parch the terrestrial landscape (browning), limit vegetation growth, and foment water shortages – even widespread drought.
However, a new study suggests the Earth’s rising CO2 concentration has the exact opposite effect in the real world.
In their extensive trend analysis spanning the last few decades, the scientists determined elevated CO2 was the single most “dominant driver” (accounting for 45% of the correlation) when assessing the link between reducing vegetation water demand and improved water use efficiency.
Compared to CO2, temperature and precipitation, for example, play a far less significant role (10-11% of the correlation) in influencing the trend in improved vegetation growth and water use efficiency.
“The CO2 fertilization effect has benefits for both vegetation growth and water use efficiency (WUE).”
“…elevated CO2 concentrations could indirectly enhance water availability by improving [water use efficiency]…reducing vegetation water demand.”
The whole mythology of Global Warming depends on having you NOT think about anything but radiative processes and physics. To trap you into the Radiative Model. But the Earth is more complex than that. Much more complex. Then there’s the fact that you DO have some essential Radiative Physics to deal with, so the bait is there. However…
One year time lapse of precipitable water (amount of water in the atmosphere) from Jan 1, 2016 to Dec 31, 2016, as modeled by the GFS. The Pacific ocean rotates into view just as the tropical cyclone season picks up steam.
Lately the media refers increasingly to how important is the water cycle in our climate system. Unfortunately, as usual, the headlines confuse cause and effect. For example, Climate change has a dramatic impact on the global water cycle, say researchers. from phys.org. How perverse to position climate change as an agent rather than the effect from water fluxes in the ocean and atmosphere. The headline misleads entirely (written by scientists or journos?) as the beginning texts shows (in italics with my bolds).
For Christoph Schär, ETH Zurich’s Professor of Climate and Water Cycle, “global warming” is not quite accurate when it comes to describing the driver of climate change. “A better term would be ‘climate humidification,’” he explains. “Most of the solar energy that reaches the Earth serves to evaporate water and thereby drives the hydrological cycle.” Properly accounting for the implications of this is the most challenging task of all for climate modelers.
In order to build a global climate model, grid points spaced around 50 to 100 kilometers apart are used. This scale is too coarse to map small-scale, local thunderstorm cells. Yet it is precisely these thunderstorm cells—and where they occur—that drive atmospheric circulation, especially in the tropics, where solar radiation is highest.
The workaround, at present, is to add extra parameters to the model in order to map clouds. “But predicting future climate change is still pretty imprecise,” Schär says. “If we don’t know how many clouds are forming in the tropics, then we don’t know how much sunlight is hitting the earth’s surface—and hence we don’t know the actual size of the global energy balance.”
The climatist paradigm is myopic and lopsided. A previous post below provides a cure for those whose vision is impaired by the IPCC consensus view of climate reality.
Curing Radiation Myopia Regarding Climate
E.M. Smith provides an helpful critique of a recent incomplete theory of earth’s climate functioning in his Chiefio blog post So Close–Missing Convection and Homeostasis. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
It is Soooo easy to get things just a little bit off and miss reality. Especially in complex systems and even more so when folks raking in $Millions are interested in misleading for profit. Sigh.
Sabine Hosenfelder does a wonderful series of videos ‘explaining’ all sorts of interesting things in and about actual science and how the universe works. She is quite smart and generally “knows her stuff”.But… It looks like she has gotten trapped into the Radiative Model of Globull Warming.
The whole mythology of Global Warming depends on having you NOT think about anything but radiative processes and physics. To trap you into the Radiative Model. But the Earth is more complex than that. Much more complex. Then there’s the fact that you DO have some essential Radiative Physics to deal with, so the bait is there. However…
It is absolutely essential to pay attention to convection in the lower atmosphere and to the “feedback loops” or homeostasis in the system.
The system acts to restore its original state. There is NO “runaway greenhouse” or we would have never evolved into being since the early earth had astoundingly high levels of CO2 and we would have baked to death before getting out of our slime beds as microbes.
Figure 16. The geological history of CO2 level and temperature proxy for the past 400 million years. CO2 levels now are ~ 400ppm. Source: Davis, W. J. (2017).
OK, I’ll show you her video. It is quite good even with the “swing and a miss” at the end. She does 3 levels of The Greenhouse Gas Mythology so you can see the process evolving from grammar school to high school to college level of mythology. But then she doesn’t quite make it to Post-Doc Reality.
Where’s she wrong? (Well, not really wrong, but lacking…)
I see 2 major issues. First off, she talks about the “lower atmosphere warming”. Well, yes and no. It doesn’t “warm” in the sense of getting hotter, but it does speed up convection to move the added heat flow.
In English “heating” has 2 different meanings. Increasing temperature. Increasing heat flow at a temperature.
We see this in “warm up the TV dinner in the microwave” meaning to heat it up from frozen to edible; and in the part where the frozen dinner is defrosting at a constant temperature as it absorbs heat but turns it into the heat of fusion of water. So you can “warm it up” by melting at a constant temperature of frozen water (but adding a LOT of thermal energy – “heat”) then later as increasing temperature once the ice is melted. It is very important to keep in mind that there are 2 kinds of “heating”. NOT just “increasing temperature”.
In the lower atmosphere, the CO2 window / Infrared Window is already firmly slammed shut. Sabine “gets that”. Yay! One BIG point for her! No amount of “greenhouse gas” is going to shut that IR window any more. As she points out, you get about 20 meters of transmission and then it is back to molecular vibrations (aka “heat”).
So what’s an atmosphere to do? It has heat to move! Well, it convects. It evaporates water.
Those 2 things dominate by orders of magnitude any sort of Radiative Model Physics. Yes, you have radiation of light bringing energy in, but then it goes into the ocean and into the dirt and the plants and even warms your skin on a sunny day. And it sits there. It does NOT re-radiate to any significant degree. Once “warmed” by absorption, heat trying to leave as IR hits a slammed shut window.
The hydrological cycle. Estimates of the observed main water reservoirs (black numbers in 10^3 km3 ) and the flow of moisture through the system (red numbers, in 10^3 km3 yr À1 ). Adjusted from Trenberth et al. [2007a] for the period 2002-2008 as in Trenberth et al. [2011].
So what does happen? Look around, what do you see? Clouds. Rain. Snow. (sleet hail fog etc. etc.)
Our planet is a Water Planet. It moves that energy (vibrations of atoms, NOT radiation) by having water evaporate into the atmosphere. (Yes, there are a few very dry deserts where you get some radiative effects and can get quite cold at night via radiation through very dry air, but our planet is 70% or so oceans, so those areas are minor side bars on the dominant processes). This water vapor makes the IR window even more closed (less distance to absorption). It isn’t CO2 that matters, it is the global water vapor.
What happens next?
Well, water holds a LOT of heat (vibration of atoms and NOT “temperature”) as the heat of vaporization. About 540 calories per gram (compared to 80 for melting “heat of fusion” and 1 for specific heat of a gram of water). Compare those numbers again. 1 for a gram of water. 80 for melting a gram of ice. 540 for evaporating a gram of water. It’s dramatically the case that evaporation of water matters a lot more than melting ice, and both of them make “warming water” look like an irrelevant thing.
Warming water is 1/80 as important as melting ice, and it is 1/540 th as important as evaporation of the surface of the water. Warming air is another order of magnitude less important to heat content.
So to have clue, one MUST look at the evaporation of water from the oceans as everything else is in the small change.
Look at any photo of the Earth from space. The Blue Marble covered in clouds. Water and clouds. The product of evaporation, convection, and condensation. Physical flows carrying all that heat (“vibration of atoms” and NOT temperature, remember). IF you add more heat energy, you can speed up the flows, but it will not cause a huge increase in temperature (and mostly none at all). It is mass flow that changes. The number of vibrating molecules at a temperature, not the temperature of each.
In the end, a lot of mass flow happens, lofting all that water vapor with all that heat of vaporization way up toward the Stratosphere. This is why we have a troposphere, a tropopause (where it runs out of steam… literally…) and a stratosphere.
What happens when it gets to the stratosphere boundary? Well, along the way that water vapor turns into water liquid very tiny drops (clouds) and eventually condenses to big drops of water (rain) and some of it even freezes (hail, snow, etc.). Now think about that for a minute. That’s 540 calories per gram of heat (molecular vibration NOT temperature, remember) being “dumped” way up high in the top of the troposphere as it condenses, and another 80 / gram if if freezes. 620 total. That’s just huge.
This is WHY we have a globe covered with rain, snow, hail, etc. etc. THAT is all that heat moving. NOT any IR Radiation from the surface. Let that sink in a minute. Fix it in your mind. WATER and ICE and Water Vapor are what moves the heat, not radiation. We ski on it, swim in it, have it water our crops and flood the land. That’s huge and it is ALL evidence of heat flows via heat of vaporization and fusion of water.
It is all those giga-tons of water cycling to snow, ice and rain, then falling back to be lofted again as evaporation in the next cycle. That’s what moves the heat to the stratosphere where CO2 then radiates it to space (after all, radiation toward the surface hits that closed IR window and stops.) At most, more CO2 can let the Stratosphere radiate (and “cool”) better. It can not make the Troposphere any less convective and non-radiative.
Then any more energy “trapped” at the surface would just run the mass transport water cycle faster. It would not increase the temperature.
More molecules would move, but at a limit on temperature. Homeostasis wins. We can see this already in the Sub-Tropics. As the seasons move to fall and winter, water flows slow dramatically. I have to water my Florida lawn and garden. As the seasons move to spring and summer, the mass flow picks up dramatically. Eventually reaching hurricane size. Dumping up to FEET of condensed water (that all started as warm water vapor evaporating from the ocean). It is presently headed for about 72 F today (and no rain). At the peak of hurricane season, we get to about 84 or 85 F ocean surface temperature as the water vapor cycle is running full blast and we get “frog strangler” levels of rain. That’s the difference. Slow water cycle or fast.
IF (and it is only an “if”, not a when) you could manage to increase the heat at the surface of the planet in, say, Alaska: At most you would get a bit more rain in summer, a bit more snow in winter, and MAYBE only a slight possible, of one or two days that are rain which could have been snow or sleet.
Then there’s the fact that natural cycles swamp all of that CO2 fantasy anyway. The Sun, as just one example, had a large change of IR / UV levels with both the Great Pacific Climate Shift (about 1975) and then back again in about 2000. Planetary tilt, wobble, eccentricity of the orbit and more put us in ice ages (as we ARE right now, but in an “interglacial” in this ice age… a nice period of warmth that WILL end) and pulls us out of them. Glacials and interglacials come and go on various cycles (100,000 years, 40,000 years, and 12,000 year interglacials – ours ending now, but slowly). The simple fact is that Nature Dominates, and we are just not relevant. To think we are is hubris of the highest order.
Figure 9: Two contrasting views of the effects of how the continuous intensification of deep cumulus convection would act to alter radiation flux to space. The top (bottom) diagram represents a net increase (decrease) in radiation to space
Footnote
There are two main reasons why investigators are skeptical of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) alarm. This post intends to be an antidote to myopic and lop-sided understandings of our climate system.
CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.
Myopia is a failure of perception by focusing on one near thing to the exclusion of the other realities present, thus missing the big picture. For example: “Not seeing the forest for the trees.” AKA “tunnel vision.”
2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.
Lop-sided refers to a failure in judging values, whereby someone lacking in sense of proportion, places great weight on a factor which actually has a minor influence compared to other forces. For example: “Making a mountain out of a mole hill.”
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