And I’m not going to go read the models to find out.
Does anyone know?
But one aspect of CO2 emissions that global warming models fail to take into account, Mr. Happer said, is a phenomenon called “saturation,” or the diminishing effect of CO2 in the atmosphere at higher concentrations.
“At the current concentrations of CO2, around 400 parts per million, it decreases the radiation to space by about 30 percent, compared to what you would have if you took it all away,” Mr. Happer said. “So that’s enough to cause quite a bit of warming of the earth, and thank God for that; it helps make the earth habitable, along with the effects of water vapor and clouds.”
“But if you could double the amount of CO2 from 400 to 800, and that will take a long time, the amount that you decrease radiation to space is only one percent,” Mr. Happer said. “Very few people realize how hard it is for additional carbon dioxide to make a difference to the radiation to space. That’s what’s called saturation, and it’s been well known for a century.”
Given the source (Epoch Times via Zero Hedge) I’m sceptical. But who actually knows?
He’s right, it’s one aspect. Another is the generally unsatisfactory performance of the models themselves. Happer is as good as any AGW pusher and has a scientific rather than a noble cause corrupted propaganda approach.
As before, all I ask is due diligence before throwing away trillions, but that’s just me.
Put soup in a thermos, it keeps hot ‘cos the thermos is an extremely good insulator.
Put the thermos of soup inside another thermos: an insulator inside another insulator, and the soup will heat up. That’s the best xcience from the Climate Hysterics.
Try this on the uncertainty of the models.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/24/patrick-frank-nobody-understands-climate-tom-nelson-pod-139
There are plenty of coders here who will tell you whether it is right.
Judith Curry – an actual scientist – has a website where much of the climate hysteria is countered. Her new book ‘climate uncertainty and risk’ is worth reading.
Once lauded for her work, once she started saying ‘hang on, have we thought this through properly’ she suffered the usual bashing as a ‘denier’ which she isn’t.
Of course it’s true. Here’s a simulation, Tim. Set a light shining. Block the light with one sheet of paper; if the paper is thin enough you’ll still see a bit of the light. Now add a second sheet. You may see just a smidgen of light. Add a third: the light may now be too dim for you to detect. Add a fourth, fifth, sixth … the changes will now be so tiny as to be undetectable. Your obstruction of the light has effectively saturated with that third sheet.
Alternatively plot log x versus x and contemplate the result.
I accuse you of not paying attention in your lectures on infra-red spectroscopy.
The saturation effect, due to the logarithmic relation between CO2 and forcing, is well-known. That’s why the models utilize feedback effects to generate the warming they predict. These feedbacks are often poorly understood, and many are not modeled per se, but instead represented by parameters that are frequently SWAGs and which are twiddled to get the models to kinda sorta match historical data.
I am reminded of von Neumann, who said (quoting from memory) “give me four parameters and I can fit an elephant. Give me 5 and I can get it to wave its trunk.”
Even with feedbacks I am puzzled how a long term warming trend can be generated when the primary underlying CO2 forcing is subject to saturation. Crudely thinking of feedbacks as multipliers, multiplying a diminishing marginal direct impact of CO2 would suggest a diminishing marginal total impact
Mmmmm… Well we do have Venus as an example of runaway greenhouse. But that’s at over 90 times Earth’s atmospheric pressure & has taken a few billion years to get established. By that time Earth would have no water due to hydrogen leakage from the top of the atmosphere & the tidal effect of the moon would likely stripped most of the other gasses off. So probably not catastrophic global heating by next Tuesday, anyway.
It’s very well established that the effect is logarithmic, which is why climate sensitivity is expressed as the temperature increase caused by a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration.
Dateline 29 August 2024 – … William Happer, ex-professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, -ex professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are now flipping burgers at Burger King. In other news….
You reckon this will go unpunished?
. . . we do have Venus as an example of runaway greenhouse . . .
It is stated we do, but I don’t think the idea is supportable by the known evidence. It’s quite possible that Venus’s surface being hot and the planet having a thick atmosphere with a lot of CO2 are symptoms of the same cause – a recent global volcanic event (perhaps ongoing). As has been stated here before, at a height where the atmospheric pressure is the same as earth sea level, the temperature is about 10C warmer. Just 10C with virtually 100% CO2 and a third closer to the sun.
. . . the tidal effect of the moon would likely stripped most of the other gasses off.
Wha? There’s no way lunar tides can strip the atmosphere. Not even if Gerry Anderson blew it out of orbit.
@rhoda, TtC, AndrewC, dearieme, Craig
Agree. Harrper is correct as is 2022 Nobel Laurreate Physics John F Clauser
Regarding CO2 from fossil fuel: burrning it is merely restoration of some of the CO2 removed in past when Earth was much greener
As for the climate models: full of errors such as earth can have have 100% H2O cloud
The prooblem with vast majority of Climate “Scientists” is they’re Social scientists bought and paid for, not real Scientists
Lionel Shriver has a good piece in Pro Green Times
Recommended Read, Subscribe:
https://dailysceptic.org/todays-update/
Some jolity as ‘The Scientists’ rearing their heads again to panic sheeple
Buy the Lie
Modeling systems with nonlinear feedback is very difficult. The earth has an incredible number of interacting nonlinear systems. Despite this the earth has managed to survive 4 billion years in a fairly narrow temperature range. It has also been able to survive a number of impulse inputs, returning to normal each time (think meteor strike). To think that human input will cause this system to careen out of control is laughable.
Of course, it may impinge on some people’s comfortable lives. That is more a political problem than a physics one.
‘Well we do have Venus as an example of runaway greenhouse.’
BiS. The tale I remember reading was that Venus is believed to have suffered a huge meteor impact. Which evaporated any oceans and completely interrupted any plate tectonics and the subduction of CO2 into the mantle. The argument is that this explains why Venus’ day is longer than its year.
In consequence the volcanoes have dumped the total planetary supply of CO2 into the Venusian atmosphere.
CO2 is believed to have ended (twice) the snowball earth. How total was the ice cover (were there some areas of shifting open water in the tropics?) is a matter of debate, but a model of those earths would have been a lot simpler. Largely uniform surface, little to no actual cloud, the normal carbon cycle largely inoperable etc.
But the ongoing volcanism would be slowly adding CO2, and with nothing to absorb it. It took tens of millions of years but the greenhouse eventually overcame the icehouse and in the geological blink of an eye – perhaps a few thousand years – transformed into a fetid sauna.
But in a few thousand more years, had settled down again.
It’s not just a bit of warming (to levels well within the range of variability of the last few thousand years) it’s the secondary, tertiary etc effects which are claimed as certainties: droughts, floods, storminess, plagues of locusts and zombies – whatever fevered imaginings can imagine.
Sorry, invent.
@Pcar “The prooblem with vast majority of Climate “Scientists” is they’re Social scientists”
Judith A Curry. BSc geography. Geophysical sciences Ph.D. University of Chicago. Professor Emerita School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology.
Andrew C; it’s the treatment of the likes of Ms Curry that has convinced this retired accountant that the Gretafunk is a crock of shit…
Sorry and all that, Happer is just another priviledged, white, patriarchal, credentialed old fart (like Clauser, Dyson, Feynman, Lindzen, Gray, cont. P94).
I mean, who can possibly argue with Greta when it comes to science?
p.s.
“And I’m not going to go read the models to find out”. So please stop coming up with bullshit ‘solutions’ to a problem you are not willing to educate yourself on* (although I do realise that’ll hit the number of comments you get – these threads always have a good response).
*Apologies if that seems harsh.
Saturation is in the radiation codes, obvs. How could it not be? Happer is clueless.
WC @ 6.13, it’s not THE William Connolley is it? You know, of ‘Wiki infamy’???
@WC Yes, of course he is. No idea at all. They give out Nobels like confetti, you know.
This is the kind of experiment used to show that CO2 is a more potent greenhouse gas than air.
Create your own little Venus at home
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7540758/
Wha? There’s no way lunar tides can strip the atmosphere
The top of the atmosphere does “leak” as solar emissions energise molecules & atoms in the atmosphere up to escape velocity. How Venus lost its hydrogen & thus water. And there will be a cooling of the Earth’s interior as radioactive elements decay away. That’ll shut down both plate tectonics & volcanism & thus atmospheric replacement. So eventually in the process, the Earth will be losing atmosphere faster than it’s being replaced. Yes, the moon’s tides do affect the atmosphere as well as the oceans & the increase in angular momentum does boost particles towards escape velocity. On the other hand, the same tides also result in a transfer of orbital momentum from the Earth to the Moon, so raising its orbit. So the tides are on a decreasing path. All adds up to something very small, but with a hundred billion years to work with? Although the sun’s atmosphere expanding to engulf the Earth may get there first.
“Given the source (Epoch Times via Zero Hedge) I’m sceptical. But who actually knows?”
Given the evidence of the all out shenanigans, statistical manipulation & outright venal fibbing over the past 3 years, which the Epoch times has been at the forefront of reporting upon, it may be time to check ones premises?
After all – we are supposed to be guided by experience- so which bunch has the more reliable track record?
The answer to Mr Connelly’s Saturation is in the radiation codes, obvs. is obviously; but was it done correctly? Since observed effects don’t seem to match models’ predictions…
Ah yes, BiS, but the magnetosphere will go first and that will allow the solar wind to strip our atmosphere away. Like wot it did to Mars. Because Earth is so much bigger all this catastrophic stuff is going to be a long time a-coming.
@BiS, Otto. And well after we’re gone as a species…
We’ll either have evolved to adapt to the chaning environment, gone extinct because we couldn’t ( not bloody likely, but still..), or we’ll have buggered off into space to find greener pastures, and evolved there to adapt to whatever local Gaia throws at us.
It’s that kind of timeframe…
M.Happer is on the right track but the numbers don’t, cough cough, add up. The total greenhouse effect is roughly 38 degrees or very roughly by proxy three per cent of the total insolation upon Earth. CO2 is responsible for roughly ten per cent of the greenhouse effect, water vapour and other gases making up the difference. Thus the effect that CO2 has is to retard radiation of one third of one per cent of total insolation. Thirty per cent or 417 watts per square metre is what our transatlantic cousins would call M.Happer talking out of his ass.
Greenhouse gases are like wearing a sweater on a chilly night. The sweater delays the radiation of heat in the infrared. Upon reaching equilibrium the radiation of heat is exactly the same as before putting on the sweater. If it were less, you would cook. Temperature is one measure of the amount of heat energy in a system. Increase the residence time of the energy in the system and temperature rises. It’s as simple as that.
“Greenhouse gases are like wearing a sweater on a chilly night.”
Not a good analogy. Humans (apart from the dead ones) generate heat by respiration and operate at an internal temperature of 310K. The sweater keeps you warm by retarding loss of heat from your torso. In really cold weather you should also put on a Balaklava because your head radiates a lot of heat.
The earth’s internally generated heat loss is way less than 1 watt per sq metre. The ineffectiveness of greenhouse gases as ‘insulators’ is revealed by how much the temperature falls between sunset and sunrise.
– Saturation is in the radiation codes, obvs. How could it not be? Happer is clueless.
This admits that saturation is real (while attempting to own it). The ad hominem against Happer is only appropriate (in this case) to his statement that global warming models fail to take it into account.
It’s worth pursuing the saturation angle because it exposes the fact that climate science doesn’t stand on the firm ground of first order effects. Rather, it bobs up and down on the complex, treacherous waters of interacting non-linear feedbacks – and it’s full of holes.
Another William Connolley driveby; more flight than fight.
The theory says that if you burn fossil fuels atmospheric carbon dioxide goes up, and if atmospheric carbon dioxide goes up the earth has to get hotter to radiate the same amount of heat. We’ve tried the experiment, and found that the theory is, unsurprisingly, correct.
I don’t know what third-hand quibbling about the accuracy of climate models is supposed to achieve.
We’ve tried the experiment? How did we eliminate all the other things that were going on while the CO2 increased? How did the temperature change before industrial-age CO2? Lots of things are going on and nothing stands still. And we are expected to believe that some people know beyond doubt how it all interacts so they can impose their solution on the rest of us. Prove it.
. . . the earth has to get hotter to radiate the same amount of heat.
Lol, your explanation badly violates the “everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler” rule.
your explanation badly violates …
I’ve got no idea why you think that. What I said is simple and correct.
“The theory says that if you burn fossil fuels atmospheric carbon dioxide goes up”
yes, but only really very very slightly.
– The human element vs the natural bits is small
– there is massive – very much larger – inflows and outflows through other natural processes
– your average volcano dwarves the human component
– then the oceans absorb a lot (with possible increaese in acidification, but again marginal)
– and plants grow better absorbing more
“and if atmospheric carbon dioxide goes up the earth has to get hotter to radiate the same amount of heat.”
yes, but only really very very slightly.
– we’re well up the log curve already as discussed above
– it’s really not at all clear what the interaction is – even which direction – between higher temps and water vapour. Increased cloud cover can reflect and therefore reduce the isolation input giving a negative, not a positive, feedback and keeping the system stable
We’ve tried the experiment, and found that the theory is, unsurprisingly, correct.”
well yes sorta, but only in the absence of all the other confounding factors.
“I don’t know what third-hand quibbling about the accuracy of climate models is supposed to achieve.”
Because they’re wildly, wildly inaccurate. They have completely failed to track current temperatures, even as the modellers – dirch – have been straining sinews to try and fudge recent temps upwards/deny (see that word?) the UHI effect/erase (deny?) the Medieval Warm Period/force everyone only to consider the ludicrously alarmist emissions scenarios
– What I said is simple and correct.
No, if something gets hotter it radiates more heat, not the same amount.
if something gets hotter it radiates more heat, not the same amount
If the emissivity of a planet goes down, for example because of increased carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, it radiates less heat at a given temperature. So its temperature has to go up to get back to radiating the same amount of heat as before.
Sorry, you were right, what I said wasn’t simple enough for some of the readership.
@Craig Pirrong
I am reminded of von Neumann, who said (quoting from memory) “give me four parameters and I can fit an elephant. Give me 5 and I can get it to wave its trunk.”
You got the spirit of the quote spot on. The actual wording:
If you allow me four free parameters I can build a mathematical model that describes exactly everything that an elephant can do. If you allow me a fifth free parameter, the model I build will forecast that the elephant will fly.
Sorry, you were right . . .
Yes, your less simple explanation is better (your sarc is misplaced).
So now we have a reasonably clear explanation that is near the limits of its power. Carbon dioxide levels are well up the log curve toward saturation such that additional CO2 effect is small. That small effect comes up against the reality of the Earth’s climate systems being highly complex rather than simple. Thus the many and varied climate models are complex rather than simple – and, so far, all insufficient.
And that’s the purpose of “third-hand quibbling about the accuracy of climate models” – to show that the climate science we are banking our civilisation on isn’t clear and settled in the manner it is propagandised, but woolly and vague and floundering.
If the emissivity of a planet goes down, for example because of increased carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, it radiates less heat at a given temperature.
Why would it go down ? Isn’t the whole point that carbon dioxide will eventually become so ubiquitous that it will either reflect all energy back to the Earth or onto clouds that will also reflect down and hey presto ! We live on Venus MkII.
@Nessimmersion
+1 Epoch Times has been doing great investigative journalisim.
As have others eg DS, TCW, TrialsiteNews and many on Substack
@Southerner
+1
@decnine
revealed by how much the temperature falls between sunset and sunrise
Yes, that difference is way more than the 1.5c we told to panic about. As is day to day and winter/summer
1.5c – less than change between breakfast and lunch
Adapt not futilely trying to stop change