Professor Singer Finds CO2 Has Little Affect on Global Temperature V2
I write to concur with conclusions in Dr S Fred Singer’s recent essay: “The Climate Sensitivity Controversy”, by S. Fred Singer, American Thinker, October 15, 2014. And to solve the puzzles he posed. 
In particular he concludes “climate sensitivity, CS, is close to zero”. This means any effect of CO2 on Earth’s temperature and climate is vanishingly small, hence unimportant. Singer leaves his warmist camp and joins the denier camp of skeptics.
I met Singer at his University of Houston lecture hosted by Prof Larry Bell on February 6, 2012 and his several talks at the latest Heartland Institute ICCC, Las Vegas, July 7-9, 2014. He has played an important role in disputing alarmist global warming claims for decades. He has received many awards.
Singer reveals he assumes CO2 warms Earth because it is called a greenhouse gas, which does not make it so. It is also green plant food, which does chemically make it a coolant. Great confusion arises when a radiating gas, which cools the atmosphere, is incorrectly labeled a greenhouse gas and then warming is arbitrarily assigned to it, by virtue of the nomenclature change.
I discovered in 2012 introducing radiating gases like H2O and CO2 to the atmosphere actually cools the Earth slightly and had useful direct email exchanges with Singer on the matter. Naturally I am pleased he has reached a similar conclusion, perhaps by another way.
The proper way to calculate CS is from the laws of physics, chemistry, biology and chemical engineering with correct physical properties. Relying on empiricism and data regression for large complex engineering systems is well known to be incorrect and flawed. They never represent the nonlinear world outside their domain of fit; cannot extrapolate, only interpolate. Same for stock market charting. The whole data fitting exercise to support GHGT (greenhouse gas theories) is worthless from its inception. (Except it conveniently proved CO2 lags temperature by 800 years from Al Gore’s 420,000 year trend, proving CO2 could not cause these temperature changes; the sun did it.)
My way is physics, the Stefan-Boltzmann Law of radiation intensity from all matter proportional to its temperature and emissivity. This Law works for entire planets, even when there are clouds, thermal feedbacks and hurricanes.
I parted company with Singer with his current “Of course, the proper way to determine Climate Sensitivity (CS) is empirically — by using the climate data.” two years ago. That is wrong. He expresses misgivings himself.
GHGT promoters are wedded to the idea of correlating temperature and CO2 data, which alone can only prove correlation, never causation. A corollary error is to account for other known causes driving temperature, like solar, and ascribe all response discrepancy actually due to unknown causes, to CO2. Another error is to statistically fit data to empirical equations and attempt to extrapolate outside the validity domain of the data. Interpolation is allowed, extrapolation of nonlinear natural world outside the domain is not. A fourth error is to deviate from the scientific method practice which uses experimental data to falsify proposed theories that don’t predict nature’s behavior well, rather than claim validity of when predictions are confirmed by luck. A fifth error is to keep data analysis methods used to support validity of hunches confidential, particularly when publically financed. (Newton’s Principia Mathematica made him famous by full disclosure.) Worst of all is filing defamation lawsuits against skeptics questioning secret GHGT methods, assumptions and scientific basis. Even smearing them and attacking their character is unacceptable. Five strikes and you are way out. These principles are well known to control systems engineers, but not UN IPCC GHGT promoters that lack credentials.
Singer correctly notes there are several different temperatures involved; a source of confusion I discovered years ago. The GHGT literature is intellectually incoherent, a mess. He is correct to point out atmospheric global warming ceased since 1997 until now, 2014. The globe warms about half the time, 4.6 billion/2 = 2.3 billion years. It cools half the time also.
He has been wandering around in the swamp of atmospheric feedbacks, positive or negative, proclaiming it is all too complicated and controversial. Like esteemed MIT Professor Richard Lindzen and other meteorologists, he is trapped in his feedback swamp and can’t get out.
Feedbacks are the province of control systems engineering. (I know what feedback control is and how to build it. In 1997 I proved any thermostat for Earth adjusting fossil fuel combustion is unmeasurable, unobservable and uncontrollable; it will never work. Even Lord Monckton is beginning to consider control systems engineering; I encountered him personally in Las Vegas.)
Singer calls for more research, while promoters at UN IPCC and global climate change organizations are already wasting $1 billion/day in hopeless controversy and useless assessment reports.
Inventing a new mechanism of radiant heat transfer, back-radiation, from cold atmospheric CO2 molecules back down to Earth’s surface, with intensity 333 w/m2 (compared to solar intensity reaching surface which averages 161 w/m2 of surface) warming it further, causing it to radiate up even more intensely at 396 w/m2, violates FLoT and SLoT, constituting a perpetual motion machine creating energy to drive global warming, an impossibility of nature. Heat does not flow from cold matter to hot matter, heating hot further; only from hot to cold. This is engineering fraud of the first order. GHGT has been falsified by eminent physicists.
Singer closes with two puzzles, both of which I have solved.
If non-radiating O2 is exchanged for absorbing/emitting CO2, emissivity, e, of planet to space must increase.
I = σ e (T/100)4
If e increases with CO2 at constant I, T goes down. Therefore CO2 causes global cooling.
I = intensity of any radiating body, w/m2, of its spherical surface, measured by Earth satellite spectrophotometers to be about 239.
T = temperature of radiating body, K
σ = Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law constant, 5.67
e = emissivity of radiating body, fraction 0 < e < 1. Perfect radiator black body e = 1, radiates a given intensity at lowest possible temperature. Colorful Earth radiator e = 0.612 emits given intensity at temperature higher than black body.
I = (1 – albedo)S/4, conservation of energy, in = out, neglecting photosynthesis, volcanoes.
S = solar radiation intensity, 1365 to 1370 w/m2 incident disk or 1365/4 to 1370/4 w/m2 of incident sphere.
Albedo = reflectivity, fraction, mostly by clouds, estimate 0.7.
Substituting: I = (1 – alb) S/4 = σ e (T/100)4
Dividing by σ e: (T/100)4 = (1 – alb) S/4 σ e = I/σ e
If S increases, T increases. If alb or e increase, T decreases.
If Earth were a perfect black body emitter,
(1 – 0.3) 1366/4*5.67*1.000 = 42.16 = 2.5484 or T = 254.8K = -18.33C
Actually GHGT promoters say it is a colorful 0.612 emitter,
(1 – 0.3) 1366/4*5.67*0.612 = 68.890 = 2.8814 or T = 288.1K = 14.95C
The difference 14.95 – (-18.33) = +33.3C is the difference between colorful Earth’s radiating temperature and its theoretical black body equivalent when radiating at same intensity, 239.
J Hanson, Al Gore and EPA mistakenly declared this 33C to be the greenhouse gas effect.
Double radiating atmospheric CO2 concentration and emissivity to space increases a small amount, say 0.001 to 0.613.
(1 – 0.3) 1366/4*5.67*0.613 = 68.777 = 2.8804 or T = 288.0K = 14.83C.
So global sensitivity is 14.83 – 14.95 = -0.12C, global cooling. Controversy resolved by elementary algebra; no need for $1 billion/day research to prove the impossible, global warming. If you disagree with Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law of physics, used successfully since 1884, take it up with them, not me.
Latest estimate of emissivities fits observation of radiation intensity to space from globe and surface.
Three S-B equations, plus energy conservation equation, Is + Ia = Ig, plus emissivity combo assumption eg = (es*Is + ea*Ia)/(Is + Ia) is five equations with 9 unknowns. Specify four unknowns from measurement; Ts, Ta, Ig, Is, and solve for remaining five unknowns: Ia, es, ea, eg, Tg.
To estimate CS, must estimate the effect of doubling [CO2] on ea and Is. Then resolve for Ia, eg, Ts, Ta, Tg.
For example, assume [CO2} from 400 to 800 ppm, ea from 0.82811 to 0.82911 and Is from 40 to 39.9. Result is:
CO2 400 ppm Intensity Emissivity S-B Temperature
Surface 40 0.10233 15.000
Atmosphere 199 0.82811 -18.000
Globe 239 0.70664 4.760
CO2 800 ppm
Surface 39.9 0.10233 14.820
Atmosphere 199.1 0.82911 -18.045
Globe 239 0.70778 4.648
Change
Surface -0.1 -0- -0.180
Atmosphere 0.1 0.001 -0.045
Globe -0- 0.0012 -0.112
CO2 increases emissivities, 0.828 and 0.707, slightly. Surface intensity, 40, drops as atmosphere absorptivity increases and atmosphere intensity, 199, increases by that amount. Total intensity, 239, is fixed by energy balance. So radiating temperature of surface 15.0C drops, global 4.6C drops and atmosphere -18.0C drops. My assumptions give CS = -0.112C.
The difficult part to quantify this is to estimate the effect of CO2 on atmospheric emissivity and absorptivity. In any case the effect is cooling, CS < 0. This is one of the ways radiating gases like CO2 affects global cooling. Global warming by CO2 induced radiant energy transfer does not exist, even if you call it a greenhouse gas.
Since heat capacity, Cp, of CO2 is greater than the heat capacity of the O2 it displaced by the oxidation reaction, increasing CO2 increases heat capacity of the atmosphere. This rotates the temperature vs altitude profile counterclockwise about its centroid, at about 5 km and -18C, since its slope for any planet is –g/Cp, easily derived from conservation of energy, SLoT, as kinetic energy is converted to potential energy with altitude, cooling. While bulk average global atmospheric temperature is unaffected, lower altitude air warms and upper altitude cools. Surface would warm accordingly.
There are several mechanisms for CO2 to affect temperatures; I have identified two warming and four cooling. My best guess net is -0.5C < CS < 0.3C. No wonder data regression can’t find it.
The dear fellow Singer is on the right track to suspect “CS is indeed close to zero”. I salute his candor, bravery and scientific correctness. He just didn’t know why. Now he should. Skepticism is a valid intellectual position of philosophy.
If Dr S Fred Singer can just convince his colleague Dr Roy W Spencer that CS = 0 and get Spencer to disclose how he determines Earth’s emissivity vs CO2 in order to estimate its temperature from his satellite spectrometer measurements of intensity, we would learn together what Earth’s global temperature is and strengthen scientific consensus that anthropogenic CO2 is innocent. It is green plant food after all. Which is very cool.
Acknowledgment
This is an edited version of earlier “Singer Closing in on Fact: CO2 Doesn’t Affect Global Temperature”, Pierre R Latour, October 26, 2014, http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/fred-singer-closing-in-on-fact-co2-doesnt-affect-global-temperature.html.
Under fear and duress of threat of lawsuit by Lord Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchly on April 16, 2015, author Latour succumbed to Monckton’s unreasonable demand and requested PSI to remove it the same day. This version has been edited and approved by Monckton to satisfy his demands, recognizing him as the self-appointed censor of skeptics of the GHGT.
He was kind enough to provide his version of GHGT1. While the approach is different, he concludes the upper bound on CS < 0.8C, which does not conflict with my work. I believe my climate model is simpler and more rigorous than his, with no adjustable fudge factors or assumptions.
- Christopher Monckton, Willie W H Soon, David R Legates, William M Briggs, “Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model”, Science Bulletin (Jan 2015) v60 n1:pp 122-135, Science China Press. http://wmbriggs.com/public/Monckton.et.al.pdf
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