by Nicola Scafetta reposted from Climate Etc.

Two publications examining the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) have recently been published in Climate Dynamics:

Scafetta, N. (2022a). CMIP6 GCM ensemble members versus global surface temperatures.

Lewis, N. (2022). Objectively combining climate sensitivity evidence.

These two papers are significant because they take different but complimentary approaches and achieve the same result – ECS <3°C. Scafetta (2022a) extends and confirm Scafetta (2022b) previously published in GRL.

Lewis study was discussed in a previous post, let us here briefly present the main findings of Scafetta (2022).

The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (phase 6) (CMIP6) global circulation (GCM) models project equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) values ranging from 1.8 to 5.7°C. To reduce this range, the 38 GCM were divided into low (1.5<ECS<3.0 °C), medium (3.0<ECS<4.5°C), and high (4.5<ECs<6.0°C) ECS subgroups and their accuracy and precision were evaluated in hindcasting the average global surface warming observed from 1980-1990 to 2011-2021. The study used global surface temperature records are ERA5-T2m, HadCRUT5, GISTEMP v4, NOAAGlobTemp v5, and the satellite-based lower troposphere global temperature UAH-MSU lt v6 record was added as well.

The satellite-based record was added since surface-based records are susceptible to many biases, including urban heat, among others (Connolly et al., 2021; Scafetta, 2021a). The validation tests were conducted using 688 GCM member simulations, 143 average GCM ensemble simulations, and Monte Carlo modeling of internal GCM variability in compliance with three alternative model accuracy requirements.

The period from 1980 to 2021 was chosen because it is when the global temperature records are believed to be affected by the least uncertainty. Moreover, the same time period is also covered by satellite measurements that offer an independent estimate.

The paper’s key finding was that the vast majority of the simulations by the medium and high-ECS GCMs run too hot. From 1980–1990 to 2011–2021, only the simulation of the low ECS GCM group seems to have accurately predicted the warming shown by the surface-based records. For instance, while all temperature data show a warming below 0.6 °C, all GCM averages from the medium and high ECS group forecast a warming over 0.6 °C up to 1.3 °C. These are plainly visible in Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1: GCM global surface temperature ensembles (yellow area, ±1σ) versus HadCRUT5 (infilled data), GISTEMP v4, NOAAGlobTemp v5, and UAH-MSU-lt v6 temperature records (black, 12-month moving average).

Figure 2: Average temperature changes (2011–2021 minus 1980–1990) hindcasted by 38 CMIP6 GCMs mean simulations. The blue vertical lines represent the temperature change measured by HadCRUT5 (infilled data), ERA5-T2m, GISTEMP v4, NOAAGlobTemp v5, and UAH-MSU-lt v6 temperature records.

If internal model variability is also considered, the conclusion remains unchanged because, as the research clearly shows, 95% and 97%, respectively, of the medium and high ECS ensemble member simulations run hotter than all temperature records. These findings are summarized in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Boxplots of the CMIP6 ensemble members for each CMIP6 GCM; # represents the number of the available simulations for each GCM. The horizontal blue lines represent the global surface warming from 1980–1990 to 2011–2021 reported by HadCRUT5 (infilled data), ERA5-T2m, GISTEMP v4, NOAAGlobTemp v5, and UAH-MSU-lt v6 temperature records, respectively.

Figures 1-3 make it abundantly evident that the warming hindcast by the GCM grows as the ECS increases and that only the low-ECS GCM group can be regarded as being consistent with the data. The research also demonstrates that the outcome holds true regardless of how statistically the internal variability of the models is modeled. Moreover, it is statistically insignificant that a small number of simulations of the medium and high ECS GCMs would seem to coincide with the evidence. Therefore, it follows that the actual ECS should be lower than 3 °C, as Lewis (2022) also found.

However, Figures 1-3 also show that if the actual warming from 1980-1990 to 2011-2021 is better represented by the UAH-MSU-lt v6 temperature record, also the low-ECS GCM would be running too hot. In fact, while the various available surface-based temperature records show a warming roughly ranging between 0.5 and 0.6 °C, the UAH-MSU-lt v6 temperature record show a warming of about 0.4 °C while the low-ECS GCMs show a warming of 0.6±0.1°C. It is worth mentioning that according to the GCMs, the troposphere should experience a greater warming trend than the surface (Mitchell et al., 2020) so that the UAH-MSU-lt v6 might even be overestimating the surface warming. The low-ECM GCMs would therefore need to be scaled down by roughly 33%, assuming that the warming of UAH-MSU-lt v6 is accurate and representative of the warming at the surface. This should imply that the actual ECS might likewise be between 1 and 2 °C.

Future warming would be moderate and not particularly concerning if the actual ECS was between 1.5 and 3.0°C. The IPCC’s predictions of future climate catastrophes if CO2 emissions are not severely cut to essentially zero would be unfounded if the actual ECS is considerably lower, which is 1-2°C. As a result, it’s critical to assess if a warming bias, as multiple studies have already revealed, may be affecting surface-based temperature data.

To check the last point, the work adds an extended section where the observed and GCM modelled warming over the land and over the ocean are compared. As a result, the land has warmed 2.0–2.3 times faster than the ocean according to surface-based temperature records, 1.5 times faster according to satellite-based temperature records, and somewhere in the middle according to the GCMs: 1.75±0.20. In addition, the surface-based temperature records over land show a warming that is around 0.4°C more than the satellite readings, whereas the surface-based temperature records over the ocean show a warming that is just slightly larger (up to 0.1°C) than the satellite observations. These results suggest that the warming reported by the surface-based temperature records, especially over land, is too large and incompatible both with the satellite measurements and the land/ocean ratio prediction of the models. These findings imply that the warming indicated by surface-based temperature records, particularly over land, is excessive and inconsistent with both satellite observations and theoretical model predictions of the land/ocean ratio.

Based on the aforementioned findings, it was determined that the surface-based temperature records may be at least 10% off when it comes to actual warming. By reducing the ECS of the low-ECS GCMs by 10%, the ECS range changes from 1.8-3.0°C to 1.6-2.7°C, which is in good agreement with Lewis’s conclusion (1.7-2.7 °C).

However, if the real warming is closer to that indicated by the UAH-MSU-lt v6 temperature record, or if the climate system is controlled by multidecadal and millennial natural oscillations that the GCMs are unable to replicate, it is possible that the ECS may be much lower (for example, 1-2°C). For example, Scafetta (2013, 2021b) deduced an ECS between 1.0 and 2.3 °C by assuming (solar-astronomically induced) natural climatic oscillations of quasi 20, 60, 115 and 1000 years, which are observed in many climatic data throughout the Holocene but not reproduced by the GCMs. The same result is obtain using solar records showing a large secular variability, while the GCMs use solar forcings taken from the solar proxy reconstructions that show the least secular variability (Connolly et al., 2021).

Because they imply that anthropogenic global warming for the upcoming decades will inevitably be moderate, the results by Scafetta (2022a) and Lewis (2022)  cast serious doubts on climatic alarmism.

Bibliography

Connolly R, Soon W, Connolly M et al. (2021). How much has the Sun influenced Northern hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate. Res Astron Astrophys 21:131. https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/21/6/131

Lewis, N. (2022). Objectively combining climate sensitivity evidence. Climate Dynamics https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06468-x

Mitchell DM, Lo YTE, Seviour WJM, Haimberger L, Polvani LM (2020). The vertical profile of recent tropical temperature trends: persistent model biases in the context of internal variability. Environ Res Lett 15:1040b4. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9af7

Scafetta N (2013). Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semiempirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles. Earth Sci Rev 126:321–357. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2013.08.008

Scafetta N (2021a). Detection of non-climatic biases in land surface temperature records by comparing climatic data and their model simulations. Clim Dyn 56:2959–2982. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05626-x

Scafetta N (2021b). Reconstruction of the interannual to millennial scale patterns of the global surface temperature. Atmosphere 12:147. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12020147

Scafetta, N. (2022a). CMIP6 GCM ensemble members versus global surface temperatures. Climate Dynamics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06493-w

Scafetta N (2022b). Advanced testing of low, medium, and high ECS CMIP6 GCM simulations versus ERA5-T2m. Geophys Res Lett 49:e2022GL097716. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL097716

The Greenland ice sheet’s melt season is over, bringing the 2021-2022 season to a close. Below I take a deep-dive into how the poster boy for global warming fared over the past 12-months.

‘SURFACE’ MASS BALANCE

Greenland’s ice sheet gains snow and ice from September through to the following June, and then, as temperatures climb with onset of late-Spring, begins to lose more ice through surface melt than it gains from fresh snowfall. This is known as ‘the melt season’, which generally lasts until the end of August, with snow gains minus ice losses called the ‘Surface Mass Balance’ (SMB).

The map below, courtesy of the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), plots the SMB over the past 12-months.

The blue line in the upper chart shows the day-to-day SMB (in Gigatons), while the blue line in the lower chart depicts the accumulated SMB (again, in Gts), from the beginning of the season (Sept 1 2021). The grey line is the multidecadal average.

[DMI]

This year –that is, Sept 1 2021 to Aug 31 2022– the Greenland ice sheet achieved a Surface Mass Balance of approximately 471Gt, ranking it as the 10th highest SMB year in data extending back to 1981.

2022 MELT SEASON

The summer of 2022 was anomalously cold and snowy across Greenland and was book-ended by huge snowfall events.

The first came in June, delaying the melt season by 17-days vs the 1981-2021 median; and the second brought seasonal melting to an abrupt stop in mid-August after a record-breaking 20bn tonnes (Gt) of snow accumulated on the south of the island.

This summer chimed with last years; that is, it was characterized by several monstrous, record-smashing snowfall events. Fresh snow reflects sunlight better than the old, darker glacial ice underneath; and as a result, the onset of melting, which is defined as the first day of three days in a row where the SMB is less than -1Gt, was on June 30, two-and-a-half weeks later than normal.

The end of August 2022 was then marked by truly mammoth snow event. More than 8Gts was added on Aug 30 alone, an unprecedented amount for summer–visualized below by the dramatic-looking ‘spike’ at the end of the DMI’s SMB chart:

The reason for these persistently cold and wet conditions across the Greenland ice sheet is linked to “atmospheric blocking”–a phenomenon shown to increase during times of low solar activity (such as the historically low output we’re experiencing now).

For much of the summer, a high-pressure blocking system stalled over Western Europe, leading to many nations experiencing record-breaking heatwaves. And far out to the west, across the pond, blocking systems also formed over Western Canada and the US. These setups altered the jet stream’s flow, reverting its usual straight (zonal) course to a wavy (meridional) one. The jet effectively ‘buckled’ with Greenland situated in the middle, on the ‘upper’ side of a southerly-plunging jet which saw it subject to influxes of frigid Arctic air; while, conversely, W Europe and the US found themselves located ‘below’ a northerly-arching jet, meaning they were open to rising tropical warm.

Map showing cold weather in Greenland and heat over North America/Western Europe in mid-July 2022 [DMI]. Note also the descending chills in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe/Western Russia (also Alaska and Northern Siberia).

The below graphic aims to clarify the general setup.

And as hinted at above, the prevalence of this ‘wavy’ jet stream setup increases during times of low solar activity. In short, with less energy entering the system, the usually-rigid west-to-east flowing jet weakens and its shape becomes Omega (Ω) or ‘meridional’. It is this mechanism –or more specifically its upshot, i.e. erratic weather patterns– that today’s activist-scientists broadly label ‘climate change’: A weakened jet stream caused by low solar activity.

MSM OBFUSCATION

Refocusing on Greenland, despite this year’s ‘healthy’ melt season, obfuscation was abound across the mainstream media.

CNN wrote the following in July 20 article: “The amount of ice that melted in Greenland between July 15 and 17 was enough to fill 7.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, or cover the entire state of West Virginia with a foot of water.”

They even have a quote from cLiMaTe ScIeNtIsT Ted Scambos: “The northern melt this past week is not normal, looking at 30 to 40 years of climate averages. But melting has been on the increase, and this event was a spike in melt.”

CNN is screaming about this period of melting (circled below):

[DMI]

I’ve already given you the data regarding the season as a whole.

The audacity of CNN to claim that the 2022 melt season was in anyway alarming is cherry-picking obfuscation at best and outright fraud at worst. Even the staunchest of AGW proponents must see this–the propaganda can’t be that blinding, surely?

‘TOTAL’ MASS BALANCE

The ‘Surface’ Mass Balance (SMB) is just one of three components when it comes to determining an ice sheet’s overall ‘health’ –its ‘Total’ Mass Balance (TMB)– with the others being the ‘Marine’ Mass Balance (MMB) and the “Basal’ Mass Balance (BMB).

In Greenland’s case, the MMB consists of the breaking off –or ‘calving’– of icebergs as well as the melting of glaciers that meet the warmer sea water. While the BMB, although largely unimpactful, refers to ice losses from the base of the ice sheet mainly caused by frictional effects and ground heat flux.

The components of the Total Mass Balance going back to 1987 are shown below — CNN pay close heed. The SMB is shown in blue, the MMB in green, the BMB in yellow and, most importantly, the TMB is marked in red.

Chart showing the surface (blue), marine (green), basal (yellow) and total (red) mass balances for 1987 to 2022 (in Gt p/year). Credit: Mankoff et al. (2021–updated to include 2022).

This is the official data. Every news outlet has access to it. And what it unambiguously shows is, well, not a lot, certainly nothing to write home about, and most-certainly nothing ‘catastrophic’.

The TMB (red line) did indeed decrease between 1996 to 2012; however, the trend has very clearly shifted since then, to one of overall growth. This is more clearly depicted in the next chart (which doesn’t yet include 2022’s higher reading):

Now, I’m not sat here scratching my head pondering why the MSM works so desperately hard to obfuscate. I’m not naive. Unalarming Greenland data does not serve the doom and gloom agenda and reporting on it honestly on would risk stopping the intravenous-dispensation of fear that requires constantly administering to the masses in order to be effective, in order to force through their controlled demolition of society–that now appears fully underway.

This is what the MSM are tasked with nowadays, perhaps it has always been the case — a population forever scared, always looking over their shoulder for the next ‘catastrophe’ that threatens to upend and ruin them are far easier to keep under the thumb, to marshal, to own, to control. It’s a travesty.

by Javier Vinós & Andy May reposted from Climate Etc.

“On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands climate change.” J. Vinós, paraphrasing Richard Feynman’s words about quantum mechanics.

7.1 Introduction

This plain-language summary has been written at the request of some readers of our series of articles on the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis:

(I) The search for a solar signal (II) Solar activity unexplained/ignored effects on climate (III) Meridional transport (IV) The climate shift of 1997 (V) A role for the sun in climate change (VI) Meridional transport as the main climate change driver

Climate is extremely complex, and people, including scientists, have a natural tendency to look for simple explanations. The Occam’s Razor principle is a good first approach but climate change cannot have a simple answer. Over the past seven years, one of the authors of this series (JV) has been laboriously reading many thousands of scientific articles and analyzing hundreds of climate datasets trying to understand how Earth’s climate changes naturally. This is a first step to understanding the human impact on climate change. The outcome of this work is the book “Climate of the Past, Present and Future.” It is a graduate-student level academic book that discusses many controversial issues about natural climate change over the past 800,000 years. In this book, a new hypothesis on natural climate change is presented. It relates changes in the strength of the meridional (poleward) transport of energy with climatic changes that have taken place, both in the past and recently.

The book can be downloaded here (open access) Vinos-CPPF(2022)

Since meridional transport is most variable during the winter of the Northern Hemisphere, and is modulated by solar activity, we named the concept the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis. The other author of the series (AM) is a writer of several published climate books, they are: “Climate Catastrophe! Science or Science Fiction?,” “Politics and Climate Change: A History,” and “The Great Climate Change Debate: Karoly v Happer.” We joined forces to explain this new hypothesis through this series and a new book we are co-writing that will be tailored toward a more general audience. An audience interested in climate change but not in its complex scientific details. The hypothesis grew out of an investigation into the effect of solar variability on climate. But solar variability turned out to be only part of natural climate change. As the scientific evidence for the hypothesis was presented in the first six parts of the series, this summary will present only the conclusions, some additional supporting evidence, and answer a few interesting questions and comments from readers.

7.2 A synopsis of the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis

The IPCC assessment reports published since 1990, reflect a scientific consensus that natural forces, including solar activity and ocean-atmosphere oscillations, like the Atlantic and Pacific multidecadal oscillations, had a net zero effect on the observed global average surface temperature changes since 1951. The IPCC consensus does not allow for changes in the poleward (meridional) transport of energy to have significantly affected this average temperature over the past 75 years.

The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis proposes that changes in the meridional transport of energy and moisture are the main way the climate changes now and in the past. Meridional transport variability has many causes and forces that act simultaneously and in different time frames on the climate system. They integrate into a very complex poleward energy transportation system. Among these are multidecadal ocean-atmosphere oscillations, solar variability, ozone, stratospheric-reaching tropical volcanic eruptions, orbital changes, and changing luni-solar gravitational pull. Meridional transport is therefore an integrator of internal and external signals. It is not the only way the climate changes, but evidence suggests it is the main one.

The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis does not disprove greenhouse gas effect induced climate change—manmade or otherwise—in fact, it acts through it. But it does not require changes in the atmospheric content of non-condensing greenhouse gases to cause significant climate change. Therefore, it does refute the hypothesis that CO2 is the main climate change control knob.

Meridional transport moves energy that is already in the climate system toward its exit point at the top of the atmosphere at a higher latitude. It is carried out mainly by the atmosphere, in both the stratosphere and troposphere, with an important oceanic contribution. The greenhouse effect is not homogeneous over the planet due to the unequal distribution of water vapor, and it is stronger in the wet tropics, weaker over deserts, and much weaker at the poles in winter. When meridional transport is stronger, more energy reaches the poles. There it can more efficiently exit the climate system, particularly during the winter, when there is no Sun in the sky. Most polar imported moisture in winter freezes, emitting its latent heat. Additional CO2 molecules increase outward radiation, as they are warmer than the surface. The net result is that all imported energy into the polar regions in winter exits the climate system at the top of the atmosphere (Peixoto & Oort, 1992, p. 363), and increasing the energy transported there at that time can only increase the loss.

When meridional transport is stronger, the planet loses more energy and cools down (or warms less) in a non-homogeneous way, because the net energy loss is greater in the polar regions. However, as more energy is directed toward the poles, the Arctic region warms, even as the rest of the world cools or warms more slowly. When meridional transport is weaker, less energy reaches the poles and exits the climate system. Then the planet loses less energy and warms, while the Arctic cools, because it receives less energy from the lower latitudes.

Most of the energy is transported through the lower troposphere and ocean track. As a result, changes in multidecadal ocean oscillations produce a greater effect on climate in the multidecadal timeframe than changes in solar activity. Solar changes have a stronger effect on stratospheric energy transport. Even so, there is a non-well defined link between changes in solar activity and changes in the multidecadal oscillations that result in major multidecadal climate shifts right after 11-year solar cycle minima (see Part IV). Nevertheless, modern global warming started c. 1850, when the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation increased its amplitude and period (Moore et al. 2017). The overall multidecadal oscillation (aka the stadium wave) currently has a period of c. 65 years, and the 20th century included two rising phases of the oscillation, explaining its two warming phases (1915-1945, and 1976-1997; Fig. 7.1).

Meridional transport was further reduced during the 20th century by the coincidence of the Modern Solar Maximum (Fig. 7.1): A long period of above average solar activity between 1935 and 2004. It is the longest such period in at least 600 years. Solar activity acts mainly on stratospheric energy transport, but since it affects the strength of the polar vortex and the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (see Part II), it also influences tropospheric transport.

Fig. 7.1. Changes in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and solar activity are consistent with temperature changes. Top, above average solar activity reduces poleward transport causing warming. Bottom, the ascending half-period of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation causes an even bigger reduction in transport and has a bigger temperature effect. Middle, temperature evolution for the past 120 years is consistent with the effect of these two factors on transport. Data from SILSO sunspots (top), HadCRUT4 deseasonalized temperature (middle), and AMO deseasonalized (bottom), have been smoothed with a gaussian filter.

As it can be seen in Fig. 7.1, most of the warming during the 20th century can be explained by the combined effect of the ocean multidecadal oscillations and the Modern Solar Maximum on meridional transport. No other proposed factor can satisfactorily explain the early 20th century warming period, the mid-20th century shallow cooling, and the late 20th century strong warming period, without resorting to ad-hoc explanations. In a single century two periods of reduced transport (warming), coincided with the ascent of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the effect of the modern solar maximum. This resulted in 80 years of diminished transport that contributed to the greatest warming in 600 years, triggering political and scientific alarm.

7.3 Solar changes, transport changes, and climate shifts

The amount of energy transported poleward varies continuously, with major seasonal changes. However, at certain times the annual average atmospheric transport at high latitudes changes more rapidly over a period of a few years and settles into a different average strength. These abrupt changes in transport are mainly a winter phenomenon, and cause climate shifts on average every 25 years. Climate shifts were first identified in 1991 (Ebbesmeyer et al. 1991), yet they are not considered a cause for climate change in the IPCC reports, despite numerous studies suggesting they are. After each shift, the climate settles into a new regime.

It is known that one of these shifts took place in 1976 resulting in accelerated warming, and another one in 1997, resulting in decelerated warming (see Part IV). The four known shifts that took place in the 20th century happened soon after solar cycle minimums. The climate regimes, or meridional transport phases, disproportionally affect the Arctic climate in an opposite direction to the climate of the northern mid-latitudes. The accelerated warming from 1976-1997 was characterized by a quite stable Arctic climate, but the decelerated warming since 1997 has coincided with strong Arctic warming. Figure 7.2 shows how the sudden Arctic shift of 1997 was caused by an increase in meridional transport. The only energy that reaches the Arctic in winter is through transport, and the shift was accompanied by an abrupt increase in the amount of energy radiated to space.

According to IPCC theory, without a change in solar energy and/or a change in albedo (solar energy reflected by clouds and ice), a change in outgoing longwave energy could not happen, because energy out must match energy in. Yet without a significant change in either solar energy or albedo, a significant change in outgoing longwave energy occurred, as shown in Fig. 7.2.

Fig. 7.2. The change in meridional transport at the 1997 climate shift resulted in an abrupt increase in the amount of energy radiated to space, particularly during the winter. This increase was not compensated for by a corresponding decrease elsewhere.

Climate scientists contributing to the IPCC reports cannot blame the 1976 climate shift on changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases, so they suggest it was caused by a coincidental small reduction in anthropogenic sulfate aerosols. They set the sulphate cooling effect to a point that allowed increasing CO2 levels to overcome the previous cooling trend in 1976. As the 1997 shift cannot be explained in terms of anthropogenic factors, any data that shows that the shift occurred is ignored, and the focus is shifted to the increased Arctic warming.

Climate shifts undoubtedly represent changes in the meridional transport of energy. No theory can successfully explain climate change without accounting for abrupt or gradual changes in transport. The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis has been developed to explain how climate has changed naturally for the past 50 million years and how it is changing now, integrating into a single interpretation tectonic, orbital, solar, oceanic, and atmospheric causes of climate change. It has tremendous explaining power, and many apparently unconnected phenomena can be linked through it. As an example, changes in wind speed and evaporation are discussed below. Many climate scientists will be able to reinterpret their results guided by this new energy transport view of climate change.

Particularly challenging was to find an explanation for all the previously unconnected evidence of a strong effect on climate from small changes in solar activity. This 220-year-old problem constituted the genesis of the hypothesis. The evidence that small changes in solar activity affect the meridional transport of energy is very solid. Two pieces of evidence are mentioned here.

The first is the repeated observation during the past six decades that changes in solar activity have affected the Earth’s speed of rotation (see Part II). This can only be accomplished by solar-induced changes to atmospheric angular momentum that affect the global atmospheric circulation. This is not a small feat for such small changes in incoming energy, and it derives from the dynamical changes caused by UV (ultraviolet radiation) absorption by ozone in the stratosphere.

The second piece of evidence is that Arctic temperatures display a negative correlation with solar activity. This is not a recent development, as shown in Fig. 5.5. This negative correlation was demonstrated for the past two millennia by Kobashi et al. in their 2015 article “Modern solar maximum forced late twentieth century Greenland cooling.” Part of their figure 3 is shown as Fig. 7.3.

Fig. 7.3. Greenland temperature anomaly and solar activity over the past 2100 years. (B) Greenland temperature anomaly. Average NH temperature from four NH records and combined Greenland temperatures. Periods of warm (cold) anomalies in Greenland are in red (blue). (C) Two TSI reconstructions by Steinhilber et al., 2012 and Roth and Joos, 2013 in z score. The blue (red) areas are the periods of stronger (weaker) solar activity corresponding to (B) with possible multidecadal lags. (E) Decomposition of the Greenland temperatures into solar-induced changes (blue) and hemispheric influences (orange) with a regression constant (–31.2°C; dots), constrained by the multiple linear regressions. The error bounds are the 95% confidence intervals. The green shaded area is the period (the late 20th century) when the modern solar maximum had strong negative influence (red circle) on the Greenland temperature. Figure from Kobashi et al. 2015.

The most plausible explanation for Arctic temperature displaying a negative correlation to solar activity is that changes in the Sun regulate meridional transport. An increase in solar activity reduces transport, cooling the Arctic, and a decrease in solar activity increases transport, warming the Arctic. The effect on the temperature in the mid-latitudes is the opposite.

More evidence is provided by the relationship between solar activity and the strength of the polar vortex (see Fig. 5.4). While this relationship provides an explanation for the Arctic temperature-solar correlation, the polar vortex data cannot be extended back in time as much as Greenland temperature data.

7.4 The explaining power of the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis

Climate research has increased enormously over the past few decades, and frequently changes in climate phenomena are discovered. When these changes do not fit into the IPCC-sponsored CO2 hypothesis, and are not properly reproduced by models using greenhouse gas-related theory, they are considered climate oddities and ignored by the climate science community, who are focused almost exclusively on anthropogenic changes. There are many of these phenomena. We have already mentioned the expansion of the Hadley cells (see Fig. 4.5f). We mention another example here.

At the turn of the century, it was noticed that wind speed over land had been decreasing for over two decades. The phenomenon was termed “global terrestrial stilling” (McVicar & Roderick 2010). It was worrisome because power generation by wind turbines is related to the wind speed to the third power, so the 15% reduction in wind speed observed over the U.S. translated into an almost 40% reduction in available wind energy. The land wind stilling is puzzling as models do not show it. Moreover, it was accompanied by an increase in wind speed over the ocean, so the proposed explanation at the time was that land surface roughness increased due to increases in biomass and land-use changes (Vautard et al. 2010), in another example of an ad-hoc explanation.

Then, unexpectedly, the wind stilling trend started to reverse between 1997 and 2010, and since 2010 all land regions in the Northern Hemisphere are experiencing an increase in wind speed (Zeng et al. 2019). The explanation turned to internal decadal ocean–atmosphere oscillations, that seemed to correlate.

It is unknown to many people, but evaporation over the oceans depends a lot more on wind speed than it does on sea-surface temperature. It was demonstrated that global sea-surface evaporation has closely followed changes in wind speed (Yu 2007; Fig. 7.4).

Fig. 7.4. Changes in wind speed and evaporation during climate regimes. At the 1976-97 period of low transport/high warming, global ocean wind speed (black continuous) increased in parallel to ocean evaporation (blue dashed), while land wind (red dotted) entered a period of stilling. At the 1997 climate shift the trends changed. Data from Yu 2007 and Zeng et al. 2019. Europe has been chosen because it is downwind of the main transport route to the Arctic in the North Atlantic and responds earlier to its changes. Since 2010 the trend is shared by wind over all terrestrial Northern Hemisphere regions.

Lisan Yu shows that between the 1970s and the 1990s, “the enhancement of Evp [evaporation] occurred primarily over the hemispheric wintertime,” while “the westerlies associated with the [Aleutian and the Icelandic] low systems strengthened and expanded southward” (Yu 2007).

The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis can explain this evidence, which, in turn, supports the hypothesis. The 1976 shift reduced meridional transport due to atmospheric circulation becoming more zonal, this increased wind speed and evaporation over the oceans while decreasing wind speed over land, because most meridional transport takes place over the ocean basins. The changes were more intense during the winter season, when more energy must be transported poleward, and resulted in a low-transport, high-warming, global climate regime (Fig. 7.1). At the 1997 shift the increase in meridional transport was caused by a more meridional atmospheric circulation, decreasing wind speed and evaporation over the oceans while increasing wind speed over land. The climate regime shifted into a high-transport, low-warming one.

It is obvious that changes in non-condensing greenhouse gases and anthropogenic aerosols could not have been the driving force behind these changes in meridional transport. This suggests they have been attributed too much climate sensitivity in climate change theory and models. However, the changes in transport and atmospheric circulation are clearly associated with changes in evaporation and air moisture that, without a doubt, must affect changes in cloud formation and transport, not forgetting changes in seawater salinity. Hypotheses that explain recent climate change in terms of water vapor and cloud changes might be subservient to the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis. The integration of solar, astronomical, and atmospheric-ocean oscillation changes makes this hypothesis an all-encompassing one. It is more likely to be correct than partial hypotheses.

7.5 Some questions and comments about the hypothesis

Given the complexity of the climate system we do not have answers to every question, nor it is required that we do for the essence of the hypothesis to be correct. Some interesting comments came up in the discussions and it is worthwhile to bring them up, for those readers that missed them. Here we review a few of the more interesting questions and comments:

(1) Q: Is it necessary that there has been an increasing trend in solar activity since the Little Ice Age?

A: While an increasing trend in solar activity since 1700 is defensible, it is not required for the solar part of the hypothesis to be correct. As Fig. 7.1 shows, it is enough that an above average activity has reduced meridional transport contributing to the warming. The displayed Modern Solar Maximum had that effect. Fig. 7.3 provides strong support for the solar-transport link over the past two millennia.

(2) Q: Is the greenhouse effect required for the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis?

A: Yes. In a thought experiment, it was proposed that a reader imagine that the polar regions are another planet (B) that is connected to a planet A made of the tropics and mid-latitudes. The connection allows the transfer of heat. The greenhouse effect in planet B is weaker since its atmosphere has a low water vapor content. During 6 months of a year planet B is in the dark. If more energy is allowed to pass to that planet, it is radiated more efficiently to space and the binary system average temperature decreases, despite planet B warming. The opposite happens if less energy is allowed to pass.

(3) Q: Why is there no correlation between surface temperature and solar activity if the hypothesis is true?

A: Because there shouldn’t be a correlation. At the multidecadal scale, meridional transport responds primarily to the multidecadal ocean-atmosphere oscillation. At the inter-annual scale, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation and El Niño/Southern Oscillation have a strong effect. The Sun is not dominant at these time-scales. The role of the Sun increases as the time scale lengthens due to its longer-term secular cycles and their longer-term cumulative effect.

(4) Q: How important is the role of ocean transport in climate change in your hypothesis?

A: Oceans store most of the energy in the climate system, and most of the solar energy flows through the ocean before reaching the atmosphere. It therefore has a crucial role in climate. However, the role of the ocean in meridional transport is secondary to the role of the atmosphere and so is its role in climate change. Ocean transport is currently considered to be mechanically driven, with winds and tides providing the required energy. The atmosphere transforms heat into mechanical energy, while the ocean does not. This does not diminish the effect of the heat the ocean transports, which is about one third of total meridional heat transported. It also carries all the heat transferred from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere. But the importance of ocean transport decreases with the increase in latitude, and so the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis cannot rely on ocean transport except in a supporting role.

(5) Q: Do changes in solar activity affect ocean currents?

A: Changes in solar output should not affect ocean currents directly because that requires mechanical energy. Changes in solar output must necessarily affect the atmosphere first. This is important because it essentially rules out solar hypotheses that propose an initial solar effect over the ocean.

(6) Q: Does your hypothesis rule out warming from anthropogenic forcing like greenhouse gas emissions, industrial aerosols, and land use changes?

A: No. It just leaves a lot less room for them. If the hypothesis is correct, it is unlikely that the anthropogenic effect on climate can account for more than half of the observed warming, and probably much less.

(7) Q: What about Svensmark’s cosmic rays-cloud hypothesis?

A: We have not found any evidence for that hypothesis.

(8) Q: Isn’t the change in irradiance during the solar cycle too small to affect climate?

A: The change in irradiance with the solar cycle is only 0.1%, too small to change the system energy budget significantly and drive climate change. The ultraviolet radiation part 200-320nm of the spectrum is only 1% of total solar irradiance energy, and it varies by 1% with the solar cycle (10 times the variation in total energy). So, the ultraviolet radiation change responsible for the solar cycle effect on climate is only 0.01% of the total energy delivered by the Sun. The other 0.09% of the energy change is irrelevant in terms of climate change and has no detectable effect. The solar effect on climate is not about the amount of ultraviolet solar energy, but its dynamical effects in the Earth’s atmosphere. 99.99% of the energy responsible for the solar effect is already in the climate system. An increase in meridional transport reduces its transit time through the system, while a decrease in transport increases its residence time causing the temperature changes.

(9) Q: Your hypothesis cannot be correct because the top of the atmosphere should be in radiative equilibrium and return the same amount of energy it receives.

A: That statement is incorrect. The radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere is never in equilibrium and the planet is warming or cooling all the time at any time frame considered. Nobody has ever identified a period when the amount of energy entering the climate system was the same as the amount of energy exiting the climate system. The Earth has no way of returning the same amount of energy it receives. Many not well constrained feedback mechanisms are responsible for what thermal homeostasis the planet is capable of.

(10) Q: Stratospheric temperature also shows a shift in 1997 from a declining trend to a flat trend.

A: Yes, that is evidence of the 1997 climate shift and the ongoing pause despite the 2016 El Niño. The stratospheric temperature trend has the reverse profile to surface temperature trend. Models believe this is due to changes in stratospheric CO2 and ozone, but models and observations disagree significantly (Thompson et al. 2012). The stratosphere temperature trend is consistent with what is expected if the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis is correct.

(11) Q: Scientists are already aware that changes in meridional transport are a possible cause for warming. See Herweijer et al. 2005.

A: The IPCC does not believe changes in transport have significantly contributed to the observed warming since 1951. If they did it would be included in the natural (internal) variability that they have assigned a net zero effect (see Fig. 5.1). Models do not reproduce transport correctly, and Herweijer et al. 2005 is an example. Models assume that the sum of ocean and atmospheric transport is nearly constant. This is called the Bjerknes compensation hypothesis (see Part IV). In their model experiment they increase ocean transport by 50% and observe warming from water vapor redistribution changes (greenhouse effect changes) and a reduction in low cloud albedo and sea-ice albedo. The problem is they fail to mention that their model-based proposed mechanism should work as negative feedback to warming. In a warming planet with polar amplification and a reducing latitudinal temperature gradient, a reduction in ocean transport is both implied and observed (they acknowledge it, referring to McPhaden & Zhang 2002). According to their model experiment this should drive cooling from transport changes, not warming. Their failure to mention this is misleading, to say the least. In a serious challenge to the model-based Bjerknes compensation hypothesis, researchers have found a strengthening of the North Atlantic Current since 1997 (Oziel et al. 2020) simultaneous with the strengthening of the atmospheric transport shown—and referenced in our articles—and in agreement with the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis.

(12) Q: Shouldn’t the tropical convection zones be the main radiators of the planet, responsible for cooling? Directing heat away from the wet tropics should warm the planet.

A: That is incorrect. More energy is lost at the tropics than at the poles, but the energy loss at the tropics is essentially capped by deep convection. There is a point when additional downward energy does not increase surface temperature because it is used to increase convection. The proposal that deep convection acts as a thermostat in the tropics is over 20 years old (Sud et al. 1999). Deep convection transfers excess energy to the atmosphere but reduces outgoing longwave radiation through cloud formation. Most of the energy remains within the climate system. The negative correlation between sea surface temperature and outgoing longwave radiation, once temperature exceeds 27°C, is a well-known feature of tropical climate (Lau et al. 1997). The standard view is that transporting more energy toward the poles warms the planet. Our hypothesis and the evidence we have presented supports the opposite view.

(13) Q: The essence of Arctic amplification in winter is not what you say, but the impact of increasing sea temperatures, the decline in sea-ice and the increase in winter clouds, that are changing the Arctic to a warmer regime.

A: That is the position of most climate scientists. We disagree. That is the effect. The cause is a change in the amount of heat transported by the atmosphere to the Arctic that took place quite abruptly in a few years after the 1997 climate regime as shown in Fig. 7.2. This increase in heat and moisture transport produced the rapid decline in sea-ice and increase in cloudiness that are features of the new Arctic regime. All consensus Arctic predictions are failing because the situation stabilized in the new transport regime instead of causing positive feedback—the logical conclusion if the consensus position were correct.

(14) Q: Your view of El Niño/Southern Oscillation is incorrect. La Niña and El Niño are the alternating states of an oscillator.

A: That is not supported by a frequency analysis of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. El Niño and La Niña are opposite deviations from the neutral state. Our analysis shows the frequency of La Niña years displays a strong negative correlation with the frequency of neutral years (see Fig. 2.4), not El Niño years. And the frequency of neutral years follows the solar cycle. There is only one way to interpret this evidence. La Niña and neutral are the alternating states of an oscillator that responds to solar activity. As neutral conditions are not opposite La Niña conditions, the oscillator tends to accumulate too much subsurface ocean heat. El Niño resets the oscillator. El Niño frequency depends upon how much extra heat the oscillator collects, which, in turn, depends upon whether the planet, overall, is warming or cooling. This is a very unorthodox view but it is supported by the evidence.

(15) Q: You show in Fig. 6.9 that over 85% of the surface warming shown in HadCRUT5 for the period 1997-2014 is the product of changes made to the temperature datasets since HadCRUT3. Is this correct?

A: Yes. Global annual average surface warming is not only a poor measure of climate change but, since it is calculated as an anomaly to an average, it is also a very small number relative to the accuracy of the measurements, and to the much larger seasonal temperature changes from which it is subtracted. The planet is warming but the numbers used to show it are not as meaningful as we are led to believe. A significant part of the warming claimed is due to the way it is calculated, as shown in the figure.

(16) Q: Do you really believe that you are correct and the IPCC is wrong?

A: Paraphrasing Einstein, if the IPCC is wrong it should not be necessary that one hundred authors show it. One is sufficient.

(17) Q: According to your theory, what should we expect from climate change in the next years and the rest of the century?

A: The current below average solar activity and an expected cooling phase in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation indicate a probable continuation, or even accentuation, of the reduced rate of warming during the first third of the 21st century. A modest cooling during this period is possible. Unlike the 20th century, this century should contain two cooling phases of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Even if another extended solar maximum takes place for most of the century, the 21st century should see significantly less warming than the previous one, regardless of CO2 emissions. A grand solar minimum is highly improbable according to our interpretation of solar cycles, which is a relief. Based on past evidence, a grand solar minimum sets the planet into a severe cooling trend.

(18) Q: What would be a good test of your hypothesis?

A: The expected climate change for the next 30 years, as described above is consistent with several alternative theories to the IPCC’s, based on the effect of the multidecadal oscillations. The Winter Gatekeeper explains better why the shift took place in 1997, and predicts the next shift for c. 2032, i.e., three solar cycles. The best test will be when a very active solar cycle takes place, if Arctic amplification turns into cooling and Arctic sea-ice grows it will support our hypothesis. If this happens, proposed alternatives to our hypothesis will be entertaining.

The CLINTEL World Climate Declaration that there is no climate emergency and we do have time has more than 1200 science and scholarly signatories, and thus collapses the climate catastrophe ‘consensus’ narrative, says Friends of Science Society. Likewise, since there is no emergency, society must abandon NetZero targets and ramp up conventional, reliable energy sources to stop the energy, food, fuel, fertilizer, and famine crises sweeping the world

CLINTEL’s World Climate Declaration is signed by over 1,200 international scientists and scholars, declaring there is no climate emergency. https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/

Abandoning Net Zero targets and climate hysteria – particularly in health care, energy investment markets, and banking – should be the goal of COP27, says Friends of Science Society.

CALGARY, ALBERTA (PRWEB) SEPTEMBER 01, 2022

As reported by the Epoch Times on Aug. 26, 2022, more than 1,100 scientists signatory to the CLINTEL World Climate Declaration say there is no climate emergency, thus collapsing the ‘97% consensus’ claim of activists, says Friends of Science Society. The number of signatories has grown to more than 1,200 in the past few days since publication of the story.

Since there is no climate emergency, we do have time. Net Zero climate targets are unnecessary, says Friends of Science. The fear of a climate emergency came from the misuse of a scenario known as RCP 8.5, as shown by Roger Pielke, Jr., and Justin Ritchie in “Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios.” RCP 8.5 is an implausible scenario that is not “business-as-usual,” a fact acknowledged by ‘consensus’ scientists like Zeke Hausfather in Nature, Jan. 2020.

Italian professor Franco Battaglia has published a book in several languages titled “There Is No Climate Emergency” outlining the petition sent to the UN by CLINTEL signatories. Physics Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever was the first signatory. Battaglia was part of a group of 100 dissenting Italian scientists who started the “No Climate Emergency” movement in 2019 which rapidly grew as CLINTEL developed.

Friends of Science has long disputed the claimed consensus, in their 2014 report “97% Consensus? NO! Global Warming Math Myths and Social Proofs.”

Friends of Science is particularly concerned that the climate movement has coopted the medical community into Net Zero health care targets, trying to cut health care emissions in half by 2030. This is a goal which Friends of Science Society is ludicrous, and murderous. Most national health bodies signed on to the COP26 WHO sustainability program in Nov. 2021. In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) is approaching net zero health care with a disturbing zealotry, says Friends of Science.

A health care paper by Davies and Bhutta (2022) titled “Geriatric medicine in the era of climate change” incorrectly gives the impression that climate change has only happened in the present time. Earth’s climate has had dramatic cyclical changes over 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history; geriatric patients are hardly a contributing cause.

Measuring the carbon footprint of ‘frail’ elderly patients against national Net Zero targets disturbingly aligns with the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) futurist Yuval Noah Harari’s statements about ‘useless eaters.’ Conflating health care and climate change is dangerous public policy, says Friends of Science.

OECD countries face >$78 trillion in pension liabilities according to a 2016 CITI Bank report, but using climate change, individual carbon footprints or Net Zero targets as a cover for decades of incompetent financial management and bad investments is cruel and disingenuous, says Friends of Science Society.

Friends of Science says the difficulty in trying to inform the public of these dangers is that large media collaborations, like Covering Climate Now and Poynter Institute’s agenda-driven fact-checking network (which drives Facebook censorship) have locked dissenting views out of the MSM press. Covering Climate Now has over 400 media signatory outlets and reaches an audience of 2 billion people with its fearmongering.

Covering Climate Now has never interviewed any of the CLINTEL scientists who dispute the claim of a climate emergency. In the spring 2020 magazine edition, Kyle Pope interviewed the director of Mad Max, who told journos “how to make climate fear compelling.” A new #FactsMatter Friends of Science/CLINTEL video shows there’s no climate catastrophe – things are getting better.

The Canadian Association of Journalists and others ran an opinion survey as to whether climate change should be reported as an emergency, driving activist – not accurate – reporting, says Friends of Science. This video deconstructs the faulty ‘logic’ and breach of journalistic ethics of the CAJ et al.

As Europe teeters on the brink of social and economic disaster due to the energy crisis, amplified by the Russian incursion into Ukraine, the developing world faces famine. Across the EU, blackouts and serious heat-or-eat poverty are predicted for this winter.

Abandoning Net Zero targets and climate hysteria – particularly in health care, energy investment markets, and banking – should be the goal of COP27, says Friends of Science Society.

About
Friends of Science Society is an independent group of earth, atmospheric and solar scientists, engineers, and citizens that is celebrating its 20th year of offering climate science insights. After a thorough review of a broad spectrum of literature on climate change, Friends of Science Society has concluded that the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide (CO2).
Friends of Science Society
PO Box 61172 RPO Kensington
Calgary AB T2N 4S6
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Toll-free Telephone: 1-888-789-9597
Web: friendsofscience.org
E-mail: contact(at)friendsofscience(dot)org
Web: climatechange101.ca

© Clintel Foundation / Wednesday August 31, 2022

Number of signatories of World Climate Declaration growing fast

The number of signatories of the World Climate Declaration (WCD), stating that “there is no climate emergency”, is growing fast and now stands at 1200 (and counting). There are too many new signees to mention in this newsletter, therefore we published them on our website.

The WCD recently got a lot of attention, for instance in a post on The Daily Sceptic by Chris Morrison (see here and later also on wattsupwiththat.com. “The Declaration is an event of enormous importance, although it will be ignored by the mainstream media”, says Morrison.

Clintel cofounder Marcel Crok was quoted extensively in an article on The Epoch Times website: “Conservative in its statements, “the message is plain and clear: there is no climate emergency. Very important: this is true even if you accept that CO2 is the main driver of the current climate change,” Crok told The Epoch Times in an email.”

On August 22, statistician Matt Briggs also endorsed the WCD. “The Science shifts depending on the ‘solutions’ desired by the regime. As we have seen many times. The real science can only be solved by accident, as it were. This means the only real chance of progress is outside the Consensus. From people like those who signed the statement.”

See the full article by Briggs here .

Andrew Montford, deputy director of Net Zero Watch, was interviewed on TalkTV about the WCD (link via twitter: here). And finally Friends of Science (also see item below) has launched a promotional video, recommending Clintel. See: here

Last but not least, cartoonist Josh made a wonderful cartoon about the WCD and how people on both sides respond to it.

If you want to sign the World Climate Declaration as well go here
If you would like to support us in expanding this project, please consider a donation or consider to become Friend of Clintel.

Series on Sun and Climate

Andy May and Javier Vinós have written a series of articles (6) on the relation between Solar Actitity and the Climate. Each article is quite long and together it will be the basis for a book about the sun-climate connection. So far we published the first 5 articles.

Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

They write:

“Over the following five parts in this series of articles we will explain the recently proposed Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis of sun-climate effect (Vinós 2022). It involves some very complex climate phenomena, which explains why it escaped discovery for 220 years. In the next part we will see that the orthodox IPCC sanctioned climate change view ignores the effects of solar variability on at least five very important climate-related phenomena that essentially refute it. It is hoped that the time has arrived for another reversal in the sun-climate consensus.”

Interviews with climate realists in Italian newspaper La Verità

Lord Monckton

The Italian newspaper La Verità continues to publish interviews with prominent climate sceptics/realists. After CLINTEL President Guus Berkhout (see translation here) last month, it recently interviewed  Steven Koonin and  Lord Monckton.

Theoretical Physicist Koonin was asked, amongst other things, about the value of climate models: “The models are coarse descriptions, in part because their grids are about 100 km X 100 km. So they can give a rough, qualitative picture of how human influences affect the global climate, but are entirely unsuited to project local climates.”

See the full English translation of the interview with Koonin: here

In his interview Lord Monckton says that “The new British Prime Minister should appoint a High Court judge to hold a blue-team vs. red-team debate on whether the science behind the climate scam is soundly based, on whether the true purpose or likely consequence of the scam will be the bankruptcy of the West and the transfer of global hegemony to the Communist-led nations who originated and profiteer from the scam at our people’s expense, and on whether, even if global warming were a problem rather than a benefit, the cost of attempting to abate it would – as the above example shows – comfortably exceed any legitimately conceivable benefit from abatement.”

See the full English translation of the interview with Lord Monckton: here

Koonin wins debate with Dessler 

Earlier this month climate alarmist Andrew Dessler and climate realist Steven Koonin held a debate in New York. The central statement was: “Climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions”. Koonin won the Oxford Style debate since 25% of the in-person and online audience shifted to his view that the statement is false.

One of the topics discussed was solar and wind power.”While Dessler was correct that solar and wind can produce electricity cheaper than fossil fuels under ideal conditions, the cost to make that electricity reliable drives the total wind and solar cost much higher”, says Andy May in a short review of the debate, “Other problems not properly accounted for in wind and solar accounting, are the land required for them and the cost of high value materials, such a rare earth metals lithium, copper, zinc, dysprosium, and many others.”

Read the posts by Andy May on the debate: here and here

The entire debate should be available on YouTube shortly (we will post a link in the two articles mentioned above as soon as it is available).

WEF should engage in an open debate with Clintel, says Friends of Science

“The World Economic Forum is a purveyor of climate change misinformation and should engage in an open scientific debate with Clintel on the fact that there is no climate emergency”, says Friends of Science, a Canadian non-profit society that offers independent insights on climate science and related energy policies for the public and policy makers.

The statement is a reaction to an opinion piece by Inbal Goldberger posted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on their website on August 10, which proposed using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to censor harmful online misinformation. “The WEF regularly engages in climate misinformation”, says Friends of Science, “noting that WEF gave Greta Thunberg a public stage and much media coverage (posted Jan. 25, 2019 and again Jan. 1, 2020) over her “I want you to panic”… “Our house is on fire” commentaries. Greta’s comments terrified millions of children and adults worldwide, but in testimony to the US Congress on April 21, 2021, Greta stated that there is ‘no science’ behind her comment; it was just a metaphor.”

Friends of Science has also launched a promotional video, recommending CLINTEL. See: here

See the full article: here

Clintel is an Amsterdam (The Netherlands) based thinktank founded in 2019 by Dutch emeritus professor Guus Berkhout and science writer Marcel Crok. Clintel operates as a climate science and climate policy watchdog. In its first year it launched the World Climate Declaration, stating firmly “there is no climate emergency”. That declaration is now signed by more than 1200 scientists and experts.
Clintel wants to be independent from governments as these are the main funders of climate science and policy. In practice it means we need broad support from citizens and small and medium enterprises around the world.

For more information, please contact Marcel Crok, +31 6 16 236275, marcel.crok@clintel.org

You can support us by becoming Friends of Clintel or you can make a one-time donation.
Many thanks in advance for your support!

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Rick Willoughby

Name: Rick Willoughby
Country: Australia

What is your background?
I graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Queensland and was employed by Conzinc Riotinto Australia (CRA); initially in the underground mine at Broken Hill. I subsequently transferred to Dampier iron ore operations where I worked on plant maintenance systems and machine automation. I then transferred to the zinc smelter in Newcastle as the site electrical engineer before moving on to the new coal terminal at Dalrymple Bay; being the third person on the payroll of that business, monitoring the terminal construction and developing the maintenance systems and plant automation.

After gaining extensive field experience in mining and port operations, I moved to the Sydney head office of CRA subsidiary AM&S Mining that was later separated from CRA and publicly listed as Pasminco. During this period I was involved in mining technology research, developing automated mining systems and new processing technology. I was instrumental in technology transfer of ultra-fine grinding mills used in the paper industry to processing zinc minerals exploited at Century Mine. I was the owner’s representative in the design office for the design of the AUD1.5bn Century Mine processing plant, 303km slurry transport pipeline and Karumba port operation.

I remained at Pasminco, often on site at Century Mine, until the mine achieved performance targets, and then joined international insurance giant AIG as an engineering risk consultant, travelling globally assessing large scale operations and construction sites for the insurer.

Since when and why are you interested in climate change? 
Weather and climate are key factors in the engineering design of large mines, processing plants and industrial complexes. The ability of the built world to withstand cyclonic winds, storm surge, flooding rain, temperature extremes, earthquake, ground subsidence etc. are all factors that need to be considered and allowed for in the site and plant design. Assessing the risk and defining survivability parameters are key inputs to the design that reflect in the project cost and its operational performance to deliver economic benefit. The design envelope is highly dependent on weather and climate. Experiencing cyclones in Dampier and preparing the equipment to withstand the onslaught was the first experience connecting plant design and climate.

How did your views on climate change evolve?
Knowing how important weather is to the design envelope of large scale sites, plant and equipment, the prospect of climate change takes on new meaning in the insurance industry. It becomes very expensive to cater for changing risk once the plant is built.  

To gain an understanding of how climate was changing in Australia, when I joined AIG, I looked into the temperature trend at Broken Hill. I considered Broken Hill to be the birth place of industrialisation in Australia. It has spawned two of the largest mining companies in the world and has solid engineering credentials dating back to the 19th century. It was also a remote location with little industrial change for more than a century. That temperature record revealed to me that Broken Hill was warmer in the 1890s than the early 2000s. That observation began my journey of discovery into the fabricated nonsense that CO2 induces climate change.

Is climate change a big issue in your country and how do you notice this?  
Australia is now full throttle on fixing the weather with “renewables”. Australia is following Germany and the UK over the abyss.

How would climate policy ideally look like in your view?
Australia is being poorly served by three, primarily government funded, institutions:

BoM is fabricating data – they call it “homogenisation”; CSIRO have separated the business from reality – models are viewed as evidence and measurements are there to be adjusted to suit models. ABC has become a CO2 demonising propaganda machine. All these organisations should be defunded and those parts that can survive without subsidy should be left to find their niche.

Also, eliminate all subsidies on so-called “renewable” electricity and battery electric vehicles.

What is your motivation to sign the Clintel World Climate Declaration? 
Humans are inevitably becoming more reliant on conserving natural resources and smart utilisation of resources. China is consuming more than 4,000,000,000 tonnes of coal each year; a good proportion to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels that cannot recover the energy that they consumed in manufacture during their operating life. It is a massive waste of natural resources.

The current crop of battery electric vehicles on offer in the developed world are an insult to the engineering profession. They are literally behemoths. Gross indulgences that depend on massive subsidies for their production.

What question did we forget? 
I have a reasonable knowledge of field theory and an admiration for mathematicians and physicists who command field theory and derive observed behaviours from first principals rather than empirical fits. When I first saw James Hansen’s famous radiation diagram showing “back-radiation”, the alarm bells rang. Here was someone, who obviously had no idea of electro-magnetic radiation, producing silly diagrams that had gained wide credibility. I was buoyed to find that NASA/GISS had employed Russian physicist Michael Mishchenko to apply his knowledge of the electro-magnetic field to climate science. Michael passed away in 2020 but has produced copious papers on electro-magnetics as applied to understanding climate and has often pointed out that EMR is mono-directional. Sadly his work is not yet reflected in the IPCC reports because they are political documents – Hansen’s silly diagram persists.

by Judith Curry – Reposted from Climate Etc.

In which wicked scientists are the good guys.

Activism by climate scientists has been the topic of numerous prior blog posts at Climate Etc.  Such activism is generally focused on eliminating fossil fuels.  This post presents a new framing for the activism issue. While many scientists prefer to remain in the ivory tower, others desire to engage in the messiness of politics and policy making.  Why most scientists reject admonitions to “stay in their lane,” there are more and less useful ways for scientists to engage with politics.

Simpleton climate scientists

I’m defining ‘simpleton climate scientists’ to be academics, mostly in disciplines that are far afield from the core discipline of climate dynamics, who think that both the climate problem and its solutions are simple.  Their preferred modes of activism are twitter rants, demonstrations and increasingly civil disobedience.

The issue of simpleton scientists was brought to the forefront last week by a publication in Nature Climate Change entitled Civil disobedience by scientists helps press for urgent climate action.   The authors are faculty members in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Cardiff:

Stuart Capstick, psychologist Aaron Thierry, social scientist Emily Cox, psychologist Oscar Berglund, policy studies (U. of Bristol) Steve Westlake, psychologist Julia Steinberger, geography (U. of Lausanne)

The Nature article is behind paywall, but a Guardian article interviews the authors. It is clear that this is not just a scholarly article on civil disobedience.  The quote that really popped out for me was by Berglund:

“We have a kind of what we call epistemic authority here: people listen to what we are saying, as scientists, and it becomes a way of showing howserious the situation is, that we see ourselves forced to go to these lengths.”

Since when do psychologists have epistemic authority to speak on climate change, its impacts and relevant policies?

Inside Climate News  has another choice quote from the actual paper:

“Civil disobedience by scientists has the potential to cut through the myriad complexities and confusion surrounding the climate crisis.”

Ya think?  Is this all it takes?

Also cited in this article is a statement from Peter Kalmus:

Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, agrees. In April, Kalmus was arrested for locking himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase bank branch and has since urged other scientists to join him in protest, saying it’s their duty as experts to convey the weight of their findings to the public and convince elected officials to take proper recourse.

“For the sake of our children, for the sake of the future of humanity,” Kalmus said, “you have a responsibility to do everything you can to get that information out there.”

Exactly how does civil disobedience get meaningful information out there? These scientists seem to be taking their cues from Michael Mann’s book for children entitled The Tantrum That Saved the World 

Further:

Kalmus told me that he’s “disappointed” that, so far, fewer scientists than he had hoped have joined in his call to action, but he sees Monday’s article as a positive sign and believes more researchers will join the movement—especially as extreme weather and other consequences of global warming accelerate in scope and severity.

Have any of these climate scientists actually read the IPCC AR6?

So why haven’t more climate scientists joined this call to action?  Maybe because they find this kind of behavior embarrassing and counterproductive.

More credible approaches to climate activism

Jim Hansen was probably the first high-profile climate activist.  Has anyone ever heard Hansen claim “epistemic authority” to speak publicly on climate change?  Of course not. Hansen doesn’t need to claim such authority – he has it.  Hansen has worked assiduously to communicate with public.  He has done the hard work to understand the economics and politics of carbon pricing and also nuclear power.  He has worked closely with policy makers, most famously with Al Gore.  Have some of his actions been over-the-top?  Yes.  Whether or not you agree with Hansen, it is undeniable that he has been effective in the political and policy arenas.  Hansen is now in his 80’s, it would be interesting for him to write an essay that reflects on his activism, what worked and what didn’t, any general or specific regrets, and recommendations for current activists.

An interesting essay on this topic was written recently by  Rick Pancost,  entitled Climate Scientist Activism. The entire essay is well worth reading, here are some quotes:

I am not sure what sort of activism will be most effective to bring about transformative change. I certainly cannot speak to where you will be most effective in your activism. Those who do have political influence – real influence – should recognise what a rare commodity that is; they should neither casually discard it nor should they waste it. The climate movement must be a thriving mosaic of approaches, with each leveraging the successes of the others to increase cultural, popular or political capital and drive a Just Transformation.

We must find what activism is most effective, is most genuine, for each of us – but be self-critical when doing so. Some of us DO need to engage governments, some of us must be IN government. But let us not be complicit in our own deception. After all, engaging politicians is difficult but activism is hard. You sacrifice more than your time, but also your reputation, job prospects, even your freedom. Sometimes the logical choice is the right choice; sometimes it is just the easy choice.

But you do have to make a choice. We cannot have our cake and eat it too. We cannot be the vizier to the king as well as the court jester. We cannot participate in civil disobedience and still serve on government advisory boards.

Activist scientists must also be humble and remember that we are not experts on what is effective. We did not know what would be effective when we allowed ourselves to be bound by others´ rules of engagement, when we allowed ourselves to be captured by governments and by extension the lobbyists and special interests who influence them. Because we are not experts on how policy is made, we were tricked. So perhaps rather than deciding who and how to engage, we should join those who do know.

Finally and most importantly, I would urge you to consider that maybe we should stop partnering with governments and start partnering with communities. “

Pangost’s essay reflects scientists attempting to work constructively with policy makers, planners and stakeholders, primarily on the issue of mitigation (reduction of CO2 emissions) and associated societal changes.  There are clearly frustrations, but this approach is far more effective than simpleton tantrums.

Wicked scientists

And finally we come to wicked scientists.   As I have written in multiple previous posts, a wicked problem is characterized by multiple problem definitions, contentious methods of understanding, chronic conditions of ignorance, and lack of capacity to imagine future eventualities of both the problem and the proposed solutions. The complex web of causality may result in surprising unintended consequences of attempted solutions that generate new vulnerabilities or exacerbate the original harm. Further, wickedness makes it difficult to identify points of irrefutable failure or success in either the science or the policies. Wicked problems are both complex and political.

Although much has been written about wicked problems and the need to address them, there is not much in the way of guidance for effectively tackling wicked problems.  Two recent articles have addressed this issue:

The World Needs Wicked Scientists  A Philosophy for Working on Wicked Problems .

“Wicked science” is a process that is tailored to the dual scientific and political natures of wicked societal problems. As such, wicked science is massively transdisciplinary, including natural sciences and engineering along with social sciences and humanities. Wicked science uses approaches from complexity science and systems thinking in a context that engages with the political roles and perspectives of decision makers, planners and other stakeholders. Wicked problems and the strategies devised to address them cannot be defined by scientific experts alone, but include the experiential and operational knowledge of a range of stakeholders.

Two recent papers by atmospheric/climate scientists have articulated something similar to wicked science for the climate sciences, that notably focus more on adaptation than mitigation.

Adam Sobel’s paper “Usable climate science is adaptation science”  emphasizes that the localness of adaptation implies much greater uncertainty in the relevant climate science.  Climate science for adaptation is more about characterizing uncertainty for robust decision making. Usable climate science requires that scientists engage in co-production of usable science with stakeholders, with a willingness to learn to understand how the human factors are manifest in a particular setting.

Regina Rodrigues and Ted Shepherd’s paper entitled “Small is beautiful: climate-change science as if people mattered”  addresses strategies for grappling with the complexity of local situations. The strategies include expressing climate knowledge in conditional form in terms of scenarios developed via the storyline approach, and working with local communities to make sense of their own situations.

Combining and integrating knowledge from diverse disciplines and other sources to provide insights, explanations and solutions to wicked problems is a substantial challenge. For the solution orientation of wicked science to be meaningful, we need an overarching philosophy for navigating wicked problems. We need to acknowledge that control is limited, the future is unknown, and it is difficult to determine whether the impact you make will be positive. We need to accept that climate change will continue to disrupt natural systems and human wellbeing; this acknowledgement helps avoid the urgency trap. By acknowledging that there is no road back, we can focus on the road ahead.

Wicked scientists are willing to become embroiled in political debates and thorny social problems. As such, wicked scientists are not activists that are advocating for a preferred political/policy solution and recognize the reality of political disagreement as a key aspect for dealing with wicked problems.

Wicked scientists are needed to break the hegemony of disciplinary researchers, particularly those who are strident political activists, as being regarded as experts for solutions to the wicked problem of climate change. While the IPCC has operated via a loose cooperation between multiple disciplines, genuine transdisciplinary understanding and collaborations, across disciplines and with a broad range of stakeholders, is needed for meaningful contributions to wicked problems.

Some universities are starting to grapple with how to train wicked scientists.  Working in the private weather/climate services sector provides a crash course in being a wicked scientist, in terms of becoming conversant with additional disciplines, working in transdisciplinary teams, an emphasis on uncertainty, and actually listening to and working with policy makers, planners and stakeholders.  Not only is activism not needed for problem solving, but it mostly seems counterproductive to actually formulating and evaluating solutions.

The road ahead can be facilitated by broader, transdisciplinary thinking about the climate change problem and its solutions. This requires moving away from the consensus-enforcing and cancel culture approach of attempting to restrict the dialogue surrounding climate change and the policy options. We need to open up space for dissent, disagreement and discussion about scientific uncertainty and policy options, so that multiple perspectives can be considered and broader support can be built for a range of policy options.  Bring on the wicked scientists.

But if a scientist is dominated by their political instincts on this issue, they will continue to take the court jester path and not contribute to solutions in a meaningful way.

“If it [a scientific hypothesis] disagrees with experiment, it’s WRONG.”
Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman

Like Nikolov and Zeller, Holmes claims that the temperatures of all planets and moons with an atmosphere are determined only by solar insolation and surface atmospheric pressure, but with a twist. The twist, in the case of Earth, is that its temperature of -19.0 degrees Celsius (-2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in the absence of an atmosphere is entirely due to heating by the sun, but the additional 33 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) of warmth provided by the atmosphere comes solely from atmospheric compression heating.

Holmes argues that the extra 33 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) of heating cannot be provided by the greenhouse effect. If it were, he says, planetary surface temperatures could not be accurately calculated using the ideal gas law, as Holmes shows that they can.

The next figure compares Holmes’ calculated temperatures for seven planets including Earth, the moon Titan and Earth’s South Pole, using the ideal gas law in the form T = PM/Rρ, where T is the near-surface temperature, M is the mean molar mass near the surface, R is the gas constant and ρ is the near-surface atmospheric density.

However, the close agreement between calculated and actual surface temperatures is not as remarkable as Holmes thinks, simply because we would expect planets and moons with an atmosphere to obey the ideal gas law. And the actual temperature he uses for Earth of 288 Kelvin (15 degrees Celsius or 59 degrees Fahrenheit) is too high and doesn’t take global warming into account – whether the warming comes from greenhouse gases or not.

Earth’s current average surface temperature is in fact only 13.9 degrees Celsius (57 degrees Fahrenheit), of which approximately 0.85 degrees Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) is due to modern global warming as mentioned above.

In any case, the argument of both Holmes and Nikolov and Zeller that compression of the atmosphere can explain greenhouse heating has been invalidated by PhD meteorologist Roy Spencer. Spencer points out that, if atmospheric pressure causes the lower troposphere (the lowest layer of the atmosphere) to be warmer than the upper troposphere, then the same should be true of the stratosphere, where the pressure at the bottom of this atmospheric layer is about 100 times larger than that at the top.

Yet the bottom of the stratosphere is cooler than the top for all planets except Venus, as can be seen clearly from the following figure of Holmes. The vertical scale of decreasing pressure is equivalent to increasing altitude; the dotted horizontal line at 0.100 bar (10 kilopascals) marks the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere.

Both of these farfetched claims that there is no greenhouse effect stem from misunderstandings about energy, as I discussed in my earlier post.

Next: Arctic Sea Ice Refuses to Disappear, despite Rising Arctic Temperatures

Author

Guest post by Wim Röst

Foreword Especially for Policymakers
The greenhouse effect appears to be much higher than previously assumed. However, that also means that the greenhouse effect does not determine the temperature. Earth’s temperatures are way lower. The level of Earth’s temperatures appears to be completely dependent on cooling by the H2O molecule that has been able to keep Earth’s temperatures within narrow limits for four billion years. Given the enormous power of cooling by means of water vapor, the influence of additional greenhouse gases cannot be more than zero percent. The consequence of what is set out below is that policymakers again have complete freedom in searching for the most practical, the most strategically correct, and the most inexpensive solution for the current (2022) energy problem. All options are open again.

Abstract
The Earth’s greenhouse effect is much larger than suggested so far. If surface radiation and the greenhouse effect set surface temperatures, our oceans would be boiling. Fortunately, they don’t. Water Earth has a strong water-vapor-based evaporative surface cooling mechanism that effectively sets and stabilizes surface temperatures at a much lower level than cooling by surface radiation emissions can do. Thanks to water vapor our temperature system is far more stable than admitted by the consensus, and thanks to water, water vapor, and clouds surface temperatures are favorable for present life.

Introduction
Early Earth consisted of hot molten lava covered by an extreme greenhouse atmosphere: hardly any surface radiation could reach space, if any. Nevertheless, its surface cooled. Upward convection brought sensible and latent heat from hot surfaces to elevations on the very edge of the atmosphere from where energy effectively could be radiated into space. Despite the near maximal greenhouse effect the surface of Early Earth cooled down and at a certain moment the first oceans developed. Those boiling oceans still resulted in a huge upward convective transport of energy, further cooling the surface. Until now, convective upward transport of energy plays the main role in surface cooling. Convection sets and regulates surface temperatures at actual level. Without evaporative-convective-cloud-cooling, our actual greenhouse atmosphere would theoretically result in a surface temperature of 202.3°C. On the real Earth the greenhouse effect warms the surface, but greenhouse warming does not set and control final surface temperatures. Earth’s H2O-based cooling system does.

Theoretical greenhouse effect
We can calculate the warming effect of present greenhouse atmosphere for a theoretical planet[1] in the case where its surface is cooled just by radiation. Without a greenhouse atmosphere and if optimally cooled by radiation[2] the temperature of such a theoretical planet is minus 42.3 degrees Celsius. But a greenhouse atmosphere makes a huge difference. Initially.

Present Earth’s greenhouse atmosphere is still ‘a near perfect’ greenhouse atmosphere. As shown in Figure 1, only 22 W/m2 of surface radiated energy (396 W/m2) can reach space without being absorbed. A surface cooling efficiency of only 5.556%.

Figure 1: The Earth’s radiation budget. Of all 396 W/m2 surface radiated energy 22 W/m2 reaches space without being absorbed (Added: red oval). Source Trenberth and Fasullo 2011[3]

The efficiency of cooling by surface radiation is very low: after absorption, nearly all surface emitted energy returns to the surface as downwelling radiation or (without convection) and stays as sensible heat in the lower atmosphere. Knowing the cooling efficiency of the Earth’s surface radiation, we can calculate the greenhouse surface temperature in the case where the surface of our imaginary planet is only cooled by radiation, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Surface temperature for a theoretical planet, calculated for the case of surface cooling by radiation only. Input: solar radiation absorbed by the surface and surface emitted longwave radiation of 161 W/m2, the effective emissivity is 5.556% (‘Emissivity 0.05556’). Calculation by Stefan-Boltzmann Law calculator.

With Earth’s present greenhouse effect, the surface of our imaginary planet would have had a temperature of 202.3 degrees Celsius, if only cooled by surface radiation. Total initial greenhouse warming is huge, see Table 1.

Table 1: The greenhouse warming effect per Stefan-Boltzmann for a theoretical planet only cooled by radiation. Calculated for a planet without greenhouse atmosphere and for a planet with Earth’s present greenhouse atmosphere. Radiated power equal to solar absorption 161 W/m2.

Given the high initial greenhouse warming effect, on our relatively cool Earth other factors than surface radiation must control the level of surface temperatures; probably H2O-related surface cooling.

The level of Earth’s surface temperatures
Where in the range of ‘greenhouse temperatures’ do we find Earth’s surface temperatures? On Earth, surface temperatures are best indicated by the surface temperature of ocean water, covering 71% of the Earth’s surface. The maximum average yearly temperature is 30°C while the minimum temperature is minus 1.8°C, shown in green in Figure 3.

Figure 3: The level of the Earth’s actual surface temperatures shown within the range for theoretical greenhouse warming as calculated for the theoretical situation of cooling only by surface radiation in the case of a theoretical planet. The greenhouse effect would warm the surface from – 42.3°C to + 202.3°C. Earth’s actual ocean temperatures are shown in green: from + 30°C to – 1.8°C. Blue shows the temperature range that is too cold for life, red shows the temperature range too hot for life.

‘Radiation only’ would have stopped cooling the planet’s surface at 202.3°C. Actual Earth yearly average surface temperatures are much lower, about 15°C. On real Earth, additional cooling by evaporation, conduction, convection and clouds has lowered surface temperatures far below the level ‘radiation only cooling’ would have resulted in. Why? The answer is that H2O-related cooling (evaporative, convective and tropical cloud cooling) is very strong, very dynamic, and very effective in the temperature range above 15°C.

Evaporation
Evaporation rises by 6-7% (Clausius-Clapeyron) per degree of temperature rise, a huge percentage. In the higher temperature range evaporative cooling cools extremely: think about boiling water of 100°C. In case of temperatures lower than 15 degrees Celsius, evaporative cooling diminishes by the same high percentage of 6-7%. At some point H2O related surface cooling and warming resulting from surface solar absorption came into balance at 15°C.

Convection
Convection in the atmosphere is the upward transport of latent and sensible heat from the surface to higher elevations. Convective removal of surface heat effectively cools the surface and brings energy to elevations lacking most of the main greenhouse gas, water vapor. At these elevations emission to space is more effective than surface emission. Convection is highly stimulated by the low-density water vapor molecules resulting from evaporation. Evaporative-convective cooling is huge in the higher temperature range and produces large quantities of solar reflecting tropical clouds. When tropical clouds develop, evaporative surface cooling is combined with diminished surface solar warming: very effective.

Conduction
Strong convection firmly enhances wind over the surface and brings in drier and colder air from elsewhere, resulting in higher conductive surface heat loss.

Diminishing H2O-based cooling
The whole evaporation-based cooling machine is very dynamic. All H2O-based surface cooling is fueled by rising evaporation, as temperatures rise. But evaporation also strongly diminishes when temperatures fall, even by just one degree, ending further cooling of the surface. At present, the Earth’s[4] total surface cooling and total surface warming are balanced at a yearly average of 15 degrees Celsius.

Solar radiation
The oceanic uptake of solar energy is very dependent on the presence/absence of tropical clouds. As temperatures go down, lower-level tropical clouds diminish strongly, and more solar energy is able to reach and warm the surface. Surface warming causes a rise in evaporation. Rising evaporation, thunderstorms, and related processes ending in tropical clouds soon end the extra solar warming. Hence the incredible stability of the Earth’s surface temperatures.

Balance
At 15°C there is a balance between surface warming by solar uptake and surface cooling. Any further surface cooling results in higher solar uptake, neutralizing initial cooling. And any surface warming results in higher evaporative-convective-cloud cooling, neutralizing any initial surface warming.

Initial warming by extra greenhouse gases is fully neutralized like all other surface warming. Neutralizing warming happens at different time scales, sometimes seconds (radiation) or hours, a day, or by season, but often over decades (by longer-term ocean oscillations) and sometimes over even longer periods like the recovery from the cold Little Ice Age which might take centuries.

Why 15°C and why not 202.3°C?
Radiative cooling is less dynamic than H2O based cooling. For one degree of difference in surface temperature, radiative cooling goes up or down by only 1.4%, but H2O- based cooling by 6-7%. Early Earth started hot and then cooled down after its creation. At a current surface temperature of only 15°C (the temperature level for this geological period and for this orbital setting) the H2O related surface cooling has balanced surface solar absorption.

Early Earth
Early Earth was hot and steamy. Heat of accretion did melt all the colliding material coming from space that formed the Earth. A nearly perfect sphere formed and its atmosphere was the perfect greenhouse atmosphere: an atmosphere with a superhigh water vapor content, very rich in carbon dioxide, and a sky covered by clouds. Hardly any surface radiation could reach space without being absorbed. Convection had to transport surface energy to the edge of the steamy atmosphere where spaceward emission could take place. For early Earth surface cooling depended on the strength of convection. As temperatures fell, convective cooling continued but continuously diminished in strength. Tropical cloud coverage also diminished, allowing the Sun to warm the tropical oceans. Despite Earth’s huge greenhouse effect, surface temperatures have never been dependent on the strength of the greenhouse effect but on the temperature set by where H2O-related surface cooling balances warming by rising surface solar uptake.

Intrinsic properties
The fascinating H2O molecule has many intrinsic properties. One of its properties gives the molecules a strong cohesion resulting in a strong surface tension which creates ‘tight’ surfaces some insects can even walk on. Strong surface tension makes it difficult for a surface molecule to escape into the atmosphere, which raises the temperature at which enough water vapor will be released to cause ‘super-convection’. Another intrinsic property sets the freezing temperature at zero degrees Celsius and not at +10, +20 or minus 20 degrees. Binding one oxygen atom to two low-density hydrogen atoms results in a low-density water molecule, so very humid, low density, air easily rises. H2O’s intrinsic properties determine all essential elements of Earth’s main cooling system, which is dominated by H2O. The properties are intrinsic to the molecule itself: they don’t change over time. Therefore, the surface temperature of the Earth could have remained at the same level over billions of years if Earth’s orbital settings and the distribution of oceans and continents over its surface hadn’t changed. H2O’s intrinsic properties set the level of Earth’s surface temperatures for every specific orientation and surface arrangement of the Earth. The H2O molecule, nothing else.

Faint young Sun paradox
During the first years of early Earth, the Sun’s output must have been about 30 percent less intense as nowadays. Less solar energy reached the Earth. Nevertheless, the surface of the Earth has never been much colder than present Earth. This is called the faint young Sun paradox. Knowing the role of H2O-related surface cooling, that paradox is solved. As total insolation reaching the surface is controlled by tropical clouds and the Earth’s surface temperatures are controlled by H2O-related surface cooling, the Earth’s surface temperatures don’t simply depend on the intensity of solar irradiation reaching the Earth. In the case of a faint Sun, evaporation diminishes, less tropical clouds cover tropical oceans and enable more (but weaker) solar rays to reach and warm a larger surface area. End result for tropical oceans: about the same.

No Snowball Earth
Because the quantity of insolation reaching the surface is controlled by tropical clouds and because of H2O-controlled surface cooling, no complete snowball Earth has probably existed. A slightly colder surface strongly diminishes H2O related surface cooling. Diminishing tropical clouds result in a higher uptake of solar energy by tropical oceans. The final result is tropical oceans still remaining warm. On water Earth no full snowball Earth is possible. Even when all present land (29% of the total surface) is concentrated on both poles, the result is just a partial snow- and ice-covered surface. Most of the other 71% of the surface will be covered by relatively warm oceans, oceans that are redistributing tropical absorbed solar energy over mid-latitudes, not hindered by any continent.

Conclusions
The Earth’s greenhouse effect is huge, much higher than normally assumed. If cooled by ‘surface radiation only’ the surface of a theoretical planet would have had a surface temperature of 202.3°C. But the Earth’s surface temperatures are not set by the strength of Earth’s greenhouse effect. Additional H2O-based cooling systems keep the surface at a much lower temperature, balancing rising surface radiation uptake. At present, that balance is reached at a yearly average of 15 degrees Celsius.

Thanks to H2O-related surface cooling the Earth’s surface temperatures are bound to a narrow range, at a temperature level well suited for life on Earth. Due to its stability, life developed over many hundreds of millions of years.

Temperature regulates the cooling system; the cooling system regulates temperature.

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With regards to commenting, please adhere to the rules known for this site: quote and react, not personal. And when commenting, please don’t use abbreviations but words

About the author: Wim Röst studied geography in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The above is his personal view. He is not connected to firms or NGO’s or funded by government(s).

Andy May was so kind to correct and improve the English text where necessary or helpful. Thanks!

Footnotes

Calculations are for a theoretical planet fully responding to Stefan-Boltzmann Law. The theoretical planet is a perfect absorber/emitter (blackbody) and consists of an ‘infinitely thin shell’ not able to store any energy. Its surface is superconducting, resulting in the lowest emission temperature possible. Calculated for actual solar surface absorbed (161 W/m2) assuming maximal absorption and maximal emission and assuming all surface radiation is directly radiated to space, meaning: without being absorbed. Efficiency of surface emission is 100% or an effective emissivity of ‘1’. Calculation by Stefan-Boltzmann calculator. This 2011 version of the graphic is the corrected one. The caption on the image: “The global annual mean earth’s energy budget for 2000–2005 (W m−2). The broad arrows indicate the schematic flow of energy in proportion to their importance. Adapted from Trenberth et al. (2009) with changes noted in the text”. The present state of the Earth includes the Earth’s orbital configuration and the location, size, and topography of continents and oceans. The total state results in a specific distribution and redistribution of solar energy over latitudes. Weather patterns depend on the distribution and redistribution of solar energy. Climate by definition is the average of 30 years of weather. Changes in climate are the result of changes in the distribution and redistribution of solar energy over the Earth’s surface.

Author

George Sowers

Name: George Sowers
Country: USA

What is your background?
I was born in Atlanta in 1958. My father was a professor of Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech and was eventually inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.

My university training is in physics. I have a bachelor’s degree in physics from Georgia Tech and a PhD in physics from the University of Colorado in Boulder. I’ve lived in Colorado since 1981. My thesis research was in numerical simulations of quarks under the influence of the strong nuclear force using the techniques of lattice gauge theory. This work first exposed me to large scale numerical modelling: its utility and its limitations.

My 30+ years of work experience were entirely within the aerospace industry, starting at Martin Marietta which became Lockheed Martin. I rose through the engineering ranks, working on the Titan and Atlas space launch vehicles. I was the Chief System Engineer for the development of the Atlas V launch vehicle, still active. Atlas V has launched spacecraft to Pluto and Mars as well as dozens of commercial, military and intelligence satellites into Earth orbit. Countless computer models are used in the development of a launch system, but extraordinary care is taken to validate these models given the enormous stakes involved.

In 2006, Lockheed Martin and Boeing formed a joint venture called United Launch Alliance (ULA). I became the Vice President of Business Development and Advanced Programs. I was also responsible for the company’s Washington DC operations that included regular interactions with Congress and the Executive Branch agencies dealing in space activities. I became the Vice President of a newly formed human spaceflight division of ULA that included a human rated version of Atlas to carry the Boeing Starliner capsule and the upper stage of NASA’s SLS rocket whose first launch is imminent.

I ended my ULA career as Chief Scientist and Vice President of Advanced Programs. In that role, I started the Vulcan rocket development program and orchestrated a partnership with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to develop the BE-4 engine. My group developed concepts for fully reusable in space vehicles designed to be refuelled with propellant sourced from space.

In 2017, I retired from ULA and joined the faculty of the Colorado School of Mines. I am part of the world’s first and only graduate program in space resources, devoted to harnessing the vast resources of space for the benefit of humankind. I teach systems engineering and a projects course. My research interest is in developing the water resources of the Moon and asteroids to produce and distribute liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen propellants. Water is the oil of space!

Since when and why are you interested in climate change?
I have had an intellectual interest in the science of climate change for many decades. As a teenager, I remember the global cooling scare. While a young adult, that morphed into global warming and eventually climate change. From the first, I was sceptical that catastrophic consequences could arise from relatively modest increases in the trace gas CO2. For many years, the climate scare advocates could be dismissed as unserious and relatively harmless. But as their political influence increased, I became more alarmed. Their policy recommendations, if pursued, would destroy the economic foundation that has led to the incredible increase in human flourishing experienced since the Industrial Revolution. That is frankly insane.

In the 2000’s, I began to educate myself on the actual science behind the climate catastrophe claims. I studied climate history over human and geologic scales and read several books on climate modelling. I investigated the actual data on severe weather. In no case did the facts support the catastrophic claims. Nevertheless, many countries are now starting down the path of economic destruction. It must be stopped, and soon.

How did your views on climate change evolve?
I have always been sceptical of climate catastrophe claims. However, it did not really matter so long as those making the claims were on the fringe with little political power. One could laugh it off, like the predictions of mass famine made by Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome.

However, over the past decades, the political power of the climate catastrophe movement has grown to the point where it has taken over international organizations like the UN and many of the highest government offices in affluent nations in Europe, North America, and Australia.

My aha moment came when I realized that most of those in positions of power were not particularly worried about the climate crisis per se but saw it as an opportunity to implement socialist/Marxist policies, i.e., complete government control of the economy, to save us from the claimed climate crisis.

Over time, many of these politicians have become quite open about their aims. For example, Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, stated that “this is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.” A top aide to socialist US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admitted that the Green New Deal was not conceived as an effort to deal with climate change, but instead a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing.”

As a scientist by education, I am deeply disappointed by the willingness of the science community to be an accomplice to the takeover. I have no doubt that many scientists really believe that increasing CO2 poses a danger to the climate, but the community has completely abandoned cherished principles of scientific practice and discovery. Honest debate regarding data and research is suppressed and those expressing contrary views are vilified as deniers. Grants for contrary research are denied and papers describing contrary results are refused publication. Even worse, data are manipulated, e.g., the US temperature records, to exaggerate evidence of warming.

Perhaps most egregious, as a long-time developer and user of scientific and engineering models, is the indiscriminate use of unvalidated, even falsified, climate models to predict a crisis in the future. I am a firm believer in the maxim “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” For a model to be useful in a particular domain, it must be validated. Validation is a rigorous process of proving that a model provides a faithful representation of the relevant aspects of the real world. In engineering applications, this usually entails anchoring the model to test data obtained under carefully controlled conditions. This is clearly not possible for climate models.

Furthermore, the usefulness of a model resides in its ability to make accurate predictions. Again, climate models fall short. Current models greatly overestimate the amount of warming experienced over the past 20 years. This problem is finally being recognized within the climate modelling community, who now admit their models “run hot.”

Is climate change a big issue in your country and how do you notice this?
The political left has made climate change a huge issue within the US. Now controlling the White House and both branches of Congress, they have been able to pass harmful and wasteful legislation suppressing the use of fossil fuels and supporting unreliable solar and wind. Many more destructive policies have also been pursued via executive action. Most media in the US are “all in” with the climate crisis narrative. Every adverse weather event is claimed to be due to climate change. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a cold snap, a heat wave, floods or drought, frequent storms, or a lack of storms (like the current lack of Atlantic hurricanes), it’s all due to climate change.

There are still some media that remain skeptical, but they are under increasing attack.

How would climate policy ideally look like in your view (suppose you are the minister for climate)?
I would first eliminate the position of climate minister!

Fundamentally, there is no climate crisis. Any policy that purports to address climate change should be eliminated. Most importantly, we should stop the war against fossil fuels (and nuclear power) and return to a free market approach to energy. In a free market, coal, oil, and natural gas will continue to provide very low cost, efficient, and convenient energy. Abundant, low-cost energy is the key to lifting billions of people out of poverty. We need to return to the trajectory of ever-increasing abundance that has dramatically enhanced human flourishing over the past 150 years. Keeping the climate change boot on the necks of the developing world countries is grossly immoral.

Since climate is always changing regardless of what humans do, we should continue to invest in technologies and infrastructure that enhance resilience to weather events. This policy has resulted in a 50-fold reduction in weather related deaths over the past century.

What is your motivation to sign the Clintel World Climate Declaration?
The current political trajectory in the western world is deeply alarming. It has resulted in the current energy disaster in Europe and the looming one in the US, Canada and Australia. The time is now to reverse course. Ordinary people are waking up. The Covid experience revealed the corruption and ineptitude of so-called experts. The same corruption and ineptitude lie behind “climate science.”

The Clintel Declaration is a small step toward eliminating the “science” justification from the ongoing destructive and immoral economic transition.

What question did we forget?
The following is a short summary of what we know about the real science of climate change and CO2. Each of these statements is well supported by data and analysis:

Throughout the history of the Earth, the climate has always changed. Climate change observed over the past century is well within that seen in recorded history and geologic history. Severe weather has not increased in either frequency or severity over the past century. The 1 degree C warming experienced in the past century has been overall beneficial to human flourishing. An order of magnitude more people die each year due to extreme cold than to extreme heat. Overall per capita weather deaths have decreased 50-fold. The increase in CO2 observed over the past century has resulted in an increase in both the amount of the Earth’s surface covered by plants and overall plant biomass. Food productivity and drought tolerance of food crops has been enhanced. Climate models cannot be used to accurately predict the future effects of increased CO2. Climate models have not and cannot be validated. Climate models cannot accurately simulate clouds or model the hydrological cycle that are so important in regulating the temperature of the Earth. Most climate models run hot, overestimating global temperature rise over the past 20-40 years.

The following is a short summary of what we know about the engineering of the world’s energy system. Again, each statement is well supported by facts and analysis:

Over 80% of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels are abundant, low cost, transportable, and have high energy density. They are well suited for all the energy needs of advanced society: electricity generation, transportation, and heavy industry. Fossil fuels have enabled the astonishing increase inhuman flourishing (wealth, health, technology, etc.) experienced over the past 150 years. Other energy sources: nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc.) each have drawbacks compared to fossil fuels. Nuclear is excellent for electricity generation but has been wrongly vilified. It is the safest and cleanest of all energy options. Solar and wind are intermittent, unreliable, and of very low energy density. They currently supply around 3% of the world’s energy despite trillions of dollars in subsidies in the past several decades. Reliability can be improved by including enormous storage capacity, but the necessary technologies don’t exist. Hydro and geothermal are geographically limited to regions with fast moving rivers or volcanic regions, respectively. A transition to “green” energy is impossible without economic collapse, misery, and death. Expanded use of fossil fuels can lift the developing world out of poverty and continue the trajectory of ever-increasing human flourishing. Eventually, other energy sources will be developed like nuclear fusion and space based solar power that will eliminate energy scarcity forever.

Official IPCC estimates of future global warming may be overstated
Press Release by GWPF

A new paper reduces the estimate of climate sensitivity – the amount of warming expected for a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations – by one third. The results therefore suggest that future global warming will be much less than expected.

The paper, by independent scientist Nic Lewis, has just appeared in the journal Climate Dynamics. It is an important challenge to the official view of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Lewis has critiqued a 2020 assessment of climate sensitivity by Sherwood et al., which strongly influenced the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, in 2021. Lewis commented:

“It is unfortunate that Sherwood et al.’s assessment of climate sensitivity, which underpinned the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, contained such serious errors, inconsistencies and deficiencies in its methods”.

After correcting the Sherwood et al. methods and revising key input data to reflect, primarily, more recent evidence, the central estimate for climate sensitivity comes down from 3.1°C per doubling of CO2 concentration in the original study to 2.16°C in the new paper.

This large reduction shows how sensitive climate sensitivity estimates still are to input assumptions, and that values between 1.5°C and 2°C remain quite plausible.

Climate sensitivity represents the long-term global temperature increase caused by a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. There are different measures of climate sensitivity. Both the Sherwood and Lewis papers estimate the so-called ‘effective’ climate sensitivity, which reflects a new equilibrium state projected from centennial changes after a doubling of the CO2 concentration. This measure is considered the most relevant one for predicting climate change in the coming two centuries. Climate sensitivity has always been a very important, but also highly uncertain, parameter in the climate change discourse. Earlier IPCC reports assessed its value as likely to be somewhere between 1.5°C and 4.5°C, with a best estimate of 3°C. However, prompted by the Sherwood paper, the 2021 Sixth Assessment Report moved that range upwards, to 2.5 to 4°C. Although for outsiders this might sound boring, for insiders it was a revolutionary change. Lewis’s corrections and revisions lead to a likely range of 1.75 to 2.7°C, which is not only lower but is also much less uncertain than either the 2021 official IPCC assessment or the very similar Sherwood et al. estimate (2.6 to 3.9°C). Nic Lewis is the lead or sole author of ten peer-reviewed papers on climate sensitivity. He was a participant in the 2015 workshop that kicked off the World Climate Research Programme project that led to the Sherwood et al. 2020 paper, but he was not a co-author of that paper.

Lewis commented:

“The substantial reduction in assessed climate sensitivity upon updating key input data suggests that the increase in the bottom of the climate sensitivity range in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report was unjustified”.

Lewis’s paper is entitled ‘Objectively combining climate sensitivity evidence’. It can be freely downloaded here. A detailed explanatory article about the paper is available here.