In a recent lecture, Nobel Laureate physicist John Clauser exposed how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models and analyses, which are relied upon by politicians and activists to support claims of a ‘climate crisis’, do not meet basic standards of scientific enquiry. Clauser received his Nobel prize in 2022 for the observational measurement of quantum entanglement and understands well the problem of distinguishing a physical signal from background noise.
Clauser shows that, when corrected for the IPCC’s error prone arithmetic and statistics, the observational data do not support the power imbalance claimed to be responsible for global warming. Furthermore, the outputs of climate models are at variance with the observational record. Clauser discusses the roles of convection, clouds and their variability in providing a negative feedback mechanism, and proposes that this acts as a thermostat that stabilises surface temperatures. Clauser’s conclusion is that claims of a ‘climate crisis’ lack scientific substance and that Net Zero policies are an unnecessary hindrance.
Clauser’s talk is available on YouTube. However, there is merit in reviewing the physics arguments that draw on the observational data about atmospheric energy flows to refute the notion of an anthropogenic global warming (AGW) induced climate crisis.
Energy Flows in the Climate System
It is useful to start with a simplified depiction of the solar energy flow that reaches the Earth, its transformation by the Earth’s climate system and the resulting (mostly thermal) energy flow that leaves the Earth’s atmosphere. This is shown in Figure 1, taken from a recent IPCC report.
The IPCC diagram shows an energy imbalance, being the difference between the incoming visible and UV solar radiation 340 W/m2, less the amount reflected (100 W/m2), less the outgoing infra-red (IR) thermal radiation (239 W/m2). The claimed imbalance at the Top of the Atmosphere is 0.7 W/m2 (give or take 0.2) and the IPCC asserts that this is driving the continuing warming of the climate system.
The radiation measurements necessary for this calculation are carried out at different wavelengths by instruments carried by satellites, and observational errors are inevitable. Combining the uncertainty ranges in the incoming, reflected and outgoing streams shown in Table 1, by using the standard statistical Root Mean Square rule, shows that the error margin in the calculated imbalance is actually 3 W/m2, some 15 times greater than the 0.2 W/m2 error margin claimed by the IPCC. In short, there is no observed energy imbalance. The claimed imbalance of 0.7 W/m2 is swamped by observational error, and, from a scientific perspective, it is described by Clauser as a “fudge”.
Natural Variability
Importantly, the IPCC treatment understates the natural variability of the solar energy flow that penetrates the climate system. One key element driving this variation is ‘albedo’, the proportion of sunlight that is reflected by clouds or the surface. The extent of cloud cover, which typically covers about two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, is actually quite dynamic, and as a consequence, albedo varies from month to month in a range of 0.275 to 0.305. Clauser estimates that the resulting monthly variation in reflected energy spans the range (95-105 W/m2). Clauser observes that this fluctuating monthly pattern is not well replicated by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) computer models used by the IPCC, which must therefore be missing key aspects of the physics of clouds.
This is significant because the natural variability introduced to the climate system by variations in clouds and albedo dwarfs the effect of secondary greenhouse gases such as CO2. Moreover, the relative stability of the Earth’s climate system in the face of these swings in the solar energy input indicates that there are negative feedback mechanisms at work.
Surface Heat Flows and the Nature of Atmospheric Equilibrium
Before returning to the subject of clouds, some more comments on the energy flows depicted in Figure 1 are in order. In thermodynamics it is crucial to distinguish between energy and heat. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy is conserved. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that entropy never decreases, and this in turn entails that heat only flows from hotter to colder objects and never the reverse. In order to understand the physics of atmospheric processes it is necessary to take this directionality of heat flows into account. Thus, the ‘greenhouse gases down surface’ energy flux (339-347 W/m2) shown in the IPCC diagram does not actually represent a heat flow; rather it simply acts to counter a portion of the ‘up surface’ energy flux (395-400 W/m2), with the result being that the rate of surface cooling by radiation is determined by the difference (56 +/-5 W/m2). We can use this insight to put the balance of heat flows at the surface into perspective, as shown in Table 2.
The general circulation climate models in use today were inspired by the work of Nobel Prize winning physicist Syukuro Manabe, who in 1967 introduced the paradigm of the atmospheric system as being in a radiative convective equilibrium1. It can be seen from Table 2, that the convective flow of latent and sensible heat is twice as important as radiation in cooling the Earth’s surface. Manabe’s incorporation of convection marked a distinct improvement on the earlier generation of radiative models. One can, however, ask if a predilection for trying to understand atmospheric dynamics purely in terms of radiation, rather than convective heat flows, still persists within the climate modelling community, and whether this is at the root of the continuing inability of climate models to match observation.
Radiative Forcing and Negative Feedbacks
The early work by Manabe, recently confirmed in refined calculations carried out by Happer and van Wjngaarden2, describes the impact of greenhouse gases in terms of ‘radiative forcing’, that is to say, their transient impact on the Top of Atmosphere (ToA) energy balance. Both calculate that the radiative forcing due to a doubling of CO2 leads to around 3 W/m2 reduction in the outgoing thermal radiation in clear skies. Applying the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, according to which black body radiation increases as the fourth power of temperature (measured in degrees Kelvin), tells us that the radiating sources in the atmosphere would need to increase in temperature by about 0.75°C to produce extra compensating radiation. The key question for climate physics is, what is the compensating ground surface temperature response required in order to restore the thermal radiation at the ToA?
The 27 CMIP climate models in use by the IPCC incorporate an Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) with a range of 1.8°C to 5.6°C increase in ground surface temperature per doubling of CO23. This is between 2.5 and 7.5 times higher than the temperature response 0.75°C in the atmosphere, implying the presence of some very substantial positive feedback mechanisms incorporated in the CMIP models that multiply the initial forcing.
Clauser makes the general observation, based on Le Chatelier’s principle, that a complex physical system in equilibrium typically contains multiple negative feedback mechanisms that act to oppose rather than amplify forcing and questions the basis of the IPCC’s supposed positive feedbacks.
Indeed, it is far easier to identify negative feedback mechanisms than it is to identify positive feedbacks. Table 3 sets out the obvious negative feedbacks in response to a surface temperature increase of 1°C, that follow by the application of basic physics to the heat flows in Figure 1.
The Clausius-Clapeyron relation entails that the saturated water vapour content of air increases by 7% for an increase in temperature of 1°C from the current global average around 15°C. Based on this, the IPCC estimates a positive feedback of 1.3 W/m2 due to increased water vapour content of the atmosphere and the consequent absorption of surface radiation. However, as Clauser points out, the Clausius-Clapeyron relation must also lead to comparable increases in evaporation, cloud formation and rainfall, along with the accompanying transfer of latent heat (of evaporation of water) away from the ground surface. The consequent negative feedbacks act to offset radiative forcing. In particular, (a) the effect of increased solar reflection by clouds has a direct impact on the ToA energy balance, and (b) the physics of convection entails that heated air expands, acquires buoyancy and rises to the Tropopause (at around 11 km altitude), while releasing its extra heat as thermal radiation to space. While some of the surface thermal radiation will be absorbed in the atmosphere, it is manifest from Table 3 that the identified negative feedbacks dwarf the positive feedback calculated by the IPCC.
Clauser points out that the amount of negative feedback from clouds depends not only on their extent, but also on their distribution over the Earth’s surface and on their reflectivity. Most clouds are formed by the strong absorption of sunlight by the oceans, where the cooling impact of reflection from clouds is greater than over land. Taken together, the thermal, convective and cloud negative feedbacks combine to provide a thermostat mechanism that stabilises the temperature of the Earth’s surface against forcing, regardless of whether this originates from variability in solar insolation (for example, due to changes in cloud cover) or from the effect of greenhouse gasses. Clauser estimates a combined negative net feedback strength in the range 7-14 W/m2 per 1°C, consistent with the magnitudes in Table 3.
If we assume an overall net negative feedback of (10) W/m2 per 1°C at the surface, in the middle of Clauser’s range, this would be three times greater than the radiative forcing from a doubling of CO2 in clear skies of 3 W/m2, so the surface temperature increase necessary to offset the radiative forcing would imply an ECS of only 0.3°C. With this level of negative feedback, the ECS range of 1.8°C to 5.6°C used by the IPCC overestimates the effect of CO2 by a factor of between 6 and 19 times.
Equivalently, under this range of negative feedbacks, the ECS range of 1.8°C to 5.6°C would imply that an increase in heat flux from the surface of between 18-56 W/m2 is required to compensate for a mere 3 W/m2 radiative forcing in the atmosphere. Where does the remainder of the heat flux go? The First Law of Thermodynamics entails that this energy cannot disappear, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics entails that heat in the atmosphere can only transfer to a cooler surface (i.e., radiate out to space). The IPCC climate models appear to violate either the First or Second Laws of Thermodynamics, possibly both.
Conclusions
In conclusion, Clauser argues that the negative feedback mechanisms in the Earth’s climate system stabilise temperatures against warming due to increases in radiative forcing. As a corollary, there is no CO2 induced anthropogenic global warming climate crisis. The negative feedbacks similarly serve to stabilise surface temperatures against cooling. Such a thermostatic mechanism that draws on the thermodynamic properties of water can explain how a water-rich planet such as the Earth has been hospitable to life throughout history.
The climate narrative promulgated by the IPCC and its advocates is based on poor statistics, the flawed cherry-picking of data and an incomplete treatment of physical mechanisms, which includes ignoring important negative feedbacks.
An analysis of negative feedbacks implies that the 50% increase in CO2 from pre-industrial times (280 ppm) to the current level (420 ppm) is plausibly the cause of only about 0.15°C of global warming.
A physics explanation of the Earth’s observed historic warming and cooling cycles and the warming observed since the 1970s has to look to the variability induced by the many other natural mechanisms discussed in the climate literature, such as solar cycles, orbital/lunar cycles, cloud variability, ocean cycles, volcanoes, ozone variability, urban heat islands and so on. These are beyond the scope of this note.
Dr. Rudolph Kalveks is a retired executive. His PhD was in theoretical physics.
- S. Manabe and R. T. Wetherald, Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity, J. Atmos. Sci. 24, 241 (1967). ↩︎
- van Wijngaarden, W.A. and Happer, W., 2020. Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases. arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.03098. ↩︎
- Zelinka, M.D., Myers, T.A., McCoy, D.T., Po‐Chedley, S., Caldwell, P.M., Ceppi, P., Klein, S.A. and Taylor, K.E., 2020. Causes of higher climate sensitivity in CMIP6 models. Geophysical Research Letters, 47(1), p.e2019GL085782. ↩︎
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
“In conclusion, Clauser argues that the negative feedback mechanisms in the Earth’s climate system stabilise temperatures against warming due to increases in radiative forcing.”
Yet one more amazing example among so many of intelligent design – that makes us literally unique in the universe we experience in our lives, in time and space. Our fine tuning is so fine that an infintesemal change in gravity or weak force that holds matter together and we don’t exist.
It’s called the Anthropic Principle – things are the way they are because it they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to notice them. Strictly speaking, this is the Weak Anthropic Principle. Read ‘Just Six Numbers’ by Sir Martin Rees (Astronomer Royal) for an interesting discussion on just how ‘finely balanced’ six fundamental constants have to be for us to be here.
For some people, this provides evidence of a Divinity that arranged the Universe for us. For other (perhaps more humble) people it is not evidence that we are so special as to deserve the attention of the Divinity.
Consider the puddle which observes “Isn’t it amazing! This dip in the ground is EXACTLY the right shape to accommodate me”
So do you think all the incredible fine tuning that enables us to exist just happened by accident for no purpose?
I’m fascinated by the way Earth-colliding asteroids always manage to land in a crater. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220403-an-icy-mystery-deep-in-arctic-canada
Yes, it did. Because if it hadn’t, we wouldn’t exist. There is no old man with a beard hiding out of sight, or even behind the curtain.
Rolling the dice a lot of times got us to where we are, with advantageous conditions leading to things persisting and disadvantageous ones destroying them.
Well I’m inclined to agree because if there were a ‘God’, not only would he not allow kids to suffer and die from terminal cancer but he wouldn’t have invented wasps. They’re not even very effective pollinators, compared with all the lovely, benign bees and flutterbies. No, wasps are the jihadis of the insect world, they lurk in litter bins and wait for an unsuspecting victim to pass by then chase them down the street, completely ignoring all other people, and I think they get a smug satisfaction out of making people behave like Mr Bean doing a demented windmill impersonation, basically humiliating themselves in public. They’re really hard to kill and i once squirted one with WD40 and it didn’t even die. It was like a bloody terminator! One stung me below my eye last year ( a wheelie bin ambush ) and it hurt like a f***er, so when one landed next to me I squashed it with my sandal and thought that was payback at least.
, but I find staying consistently keto and those plug-ins you use overnight very helpful. No amount of garlic consumption works, alas.
Creatures are only meant to attack you if they feel threatened or you’re on their menu, therefore there can’t be a god because such a benevolent being would never create such evil little b’stards.
Speaking of being on critters’ menus, I’m an ‘all you can eat’ buffet for
Yes, it is difficult to understand why God allows suffering. You need to know that you would not exist to comment on the Internet if not for cancer, heart attacks etc. If nobody dies from disease then you have no chance at life at all because the planet could not support life at those levels. Suffering, ie Pain, is necessary to stay alive in our world so we know when things are harmful, when we become sick and that we shouldn’t put our hands in fire. If you have an alternative that is more sustainavle for the big picture,
love to hear it.
Bees mind their own business and are pretty polite. But wasps are nasty pieces of work sticking their nose into everything. “The jihadi’s of the insect world” is a pretty good analogy. A bee would never pass Net Zero, but wasps are a combination of Jim Dale, Ed Miliband and Antonio Guterres.
But wasn’t Jim Dale on Neighbours? Then he seemed to pop up all over the place after that, a bit like Guy Pierce..
Something that I’ve often wondered about bees though is why is it only the fluffy bumble bees i regularly rescue from getting squished on the ground during summer? I’ve never ever needed to come to the rescue of a honey bee.
Answers on a postcard please….
Are we getting mixed up with our Jim Dales?—-The one I am talking about is the cretin always on GB news spouting junk science and running rings around Eammon Holmes and Anne Diamond etc because they don’t know anything about the issue.
Why do you assume that the only two possibilities are a man with a beard controlling everything or a universe which came into being somehow by complete accident with no purpose, and therefore as the former is implausible, it must be the latter? Those are clearly not the only two possibilities.
Quite. Given what we don’t know, the chances of what we do know explaining our reality is close to zero. Most people seem unable to grasp any other idea of an overarching force other than the one of God as depicted by religion. And, for most people, that depiction of God explaining our reality is either true or false – there are no grey areas. But it seems to me to only be a small step to consider other possibilities for our perception of reality. One possibility, for example, is that it is an old man with a beard. This old man, however, sits in a lab, in a future time, running an infinite number of simulations with subtly different inputs. That’s a possibility the ‘there is only science’ people should be able to consider.
Not sure what I believe, but I’ve had a small handful of experiences that cannot be adequately explained by our common understanding of reality. I don’t know what reality is, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t this.
Total nonsense and defies logic.
This is what I send to people that aren’t sure or, amazingly, are sure there is no God. Yet alone intelligent design.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ajqH4y8G0MI
I don’t know about purpose. I don’t see how anyone can know about purpose. But we’re all different and I can only see this from my perspective.
Existence and consciousness seem utterly miraculous, mysterious and intrinsically inexplicable to me. I sometimes wonder if that’s what others call God. The whole business of existence seems utterly surreal to me. And we should keep using hydrocarbons and build more nuclear power stations.
Carbon mechanics are a useful long term storage method, but it’s also reasonable to make real time use of light from the Sun, in a similar fashion as the plants do. Alright, the plants do the medium to long term storage that we exploit, but the somewhat simplistic route of grabbing some energy to generate electrical power is still a decent idea.
Well maybe but you need a backup when the sun isn’t shining, which costs money, or affordable storage.
There is no ‘fine tuning’ – just billions of years of evolutionary trial and error, spontaneous order.
in a word: Yes.
It isn’t known, and probably can’t be known if other combinations of values for the six numbers would also result in a universe in which life could exist. If physicists ever manage to produce a grand theory of everything it could turn out that the values of the six numbers can’t be any different to what they are.
All that means is that in the entire Universe we are exceedingly, infinitely, rare; a probability with lots of zeros to the right of the decimal point, and no integers to its left. One doesn’t have to invoke ‘intelligent design’ – a concept with even even lower probability.
The point is that if some thing, some state, some combination of states, is possible (i.e. that is not prevented by physics) then in a big enough arena, of time and space, the probability of it happening is 100%. We just happen to be it; our universe has adequate temporal and spatial dimensions.
In terms of corporate capture I think the university provides a good illustration of the malaise at large generally in society. You become so dependent on sources of funding and rather used to lavish amounts of money for fancy new buildings – always soulless though regardless of how much they cost, that to go back to a purer time is both unthinkable and unworkable.. And at the point of deep capture it is impossible to relinquish them because everything has been scaled up. Just like how we are complentely dependent on existing systems of trade and global finance because huge populations means there is no credible way to scale back without catastrophe. This Ponzi scheme problem has already started to manifest in terms of falling numbers of overseas cashcow students and loans that were taken out on the assumption of ever growing numbers.
There is a real emergency which could’ve been prepared for if it hadn’t been clouded by the fake one and therein lies one of its evils. Virtually no potato crop in Britain this year because of the wetness. Any attempt to grow stuff in your garden would’ve been met by an unvanquishable number of slugs and snails. There are natural cycles and any responsible leadership would be thinking about how to maintain such high populations under current conditions given long term trends There would be no easy fix but with international collaboration it could be done but it is too late now. We, the golden billion as the Russians call us, think we can just always rely on imports because of the permanence of the petrodollar. The luxury of imports is closing down on many levels. And many other countries are experiencing weather-related difficulties. I used to buy a litre of olive oil for £3 in the supermarket. Now it is £7.50. Things are at crisis point when you can’t even grow your own tatties. Do you really have to meet up with a spiv under furtive conditions in order to buy a vegetable. We think root vegetables are as hard as nails and will be with us forever.
We thought the events of 22/11/63 meant very little at that the time to us.All over Europe there was a geneartion who called themselves Kennedy’s children It was the start of a slow moving plague. Killed in broad daylight. They could’ve killed him by poison but they wanted it to be in the bright sunshine for maximum trauma. Any movement towards redemptive change acknowledges this. Dylan wrote a song about it a couple of years ago called Murder Most Foul.
It is sad for me because I love the Brits but all I see is a suicide pact or acquiesence to doom. No direction home. We are beyond the eleventh hour.
Off-T
https://thenewconservative.co.uk/sunaks-mask-slips/
Frank Haviland gives Fishy a good going over for his desertion at the D-Day ceremony. He’s a horrible weaselly little traitor.
“Unfortunately for Rishi, there is a reason beyond the general election why this D-Day storm is unlikely to blow over: it perfectly adumbrates the fault line along which all political issues are now at play in our nation– the stark divide between patriots and traitors.”
As I have posted more than once, Fishy is definitely on the side of the traitors.
True but I have been slagging them off when they are there including Charles that GBN are sycophants over. Neil Oliver alluded to similar lines in his monologue, maybe he reads the comments LOL.
I like the very simple quote from Judith Curry (Climatologist formerly of Georgia Tech) ———-“Sure, all things being equal CO2 may cause a little warming, but all things in Earth’s climate are not equal”.
How many ordinary people have head of John Clauser or other people like him, and how many will ever read an article like this or these type of studies? I suggest a tiny percentage only will do that. This means they will only be hearing the alarmist version of reality as presented on mainstream media (BBC, SKY News etc)
Here is a little story I read in a book by Stephen Einhorn called “Climate Change, What they rarely tech you in College”———-According to Jewish folklore, The Lord sent two Angels down with a sack full of foolish souls to be evenly distributed over Earth, but they tripped and fell spiling them in a little Polish town called Chelm. Soon a heated argument started in the town about what was more important, the Sun or the Moon. After careful consideration the Chief Rabbi decided the Moon was more important because it shone light at night when people needed it and not during the day when there as already plenty of light. It therefore quickly became settled that the Moon was more important. In fact there was a “consensus” and those who disagreed were classed as “Moon Deniers”.
There is something very similar happening today and many people getting their information from mainstream TV News are like the people of Chelm. They don’t look at facts and empirical science. They listen to Authority.
I don’t pretend to understand all this.
But I do know when I’m being fed bullshit and am being scammed – and the Climate Change propaganda is clearly bullshit and Net Zero is just a scam.
Put another way: what caused 12 000 years of global warming prior to Mankind burning fossil fuels, and when C02 levels were much lower, and what evidence is there that this process stopped at the end of the 20th Century or was so weak to be replaced by Man-made – and only Man-made – CO2 emissions?
Since nobody can answer that, the whole Man-made climate change crisis is a pack of lies. (Like CoVid and ‘vaccines’.)
Am I mistaken in what I seem to read here? A recently accoladed Nobel laureate, qualified in a highly relevant field, denouncing the entire climate scare as a scientifically-illiterate scam?
Why isn’t this covered by the BBC?
Since 2005, BBC policy has been to give no coverage to the climate sceptic viewpoint. And apparently never to revise or even reconsider that policy.
Prof Clauser is by no means alone. His thesis above is a condensed version of Prof Roy Spencer’s small highly readable book Global Warming Scepticism for Busy People. Prof Ian Plimer, distinguished emeritus professor of geology, would stand beside them both in a debate, if the BBC would allow one.
Add Professor William Happer, Professor Richard Lindzen, and many others.
The story of unanimous science support for AGW is simply a lie. It incenses me to think of it.
I will not pay the BBC’s wretched license fee. Let them come and put me in jail.