Science Friday

The Inconvenient Skeptic – why global warming is a scientific impossibility

I am citing John Kehr again because I have finally made my way through his book, taking down 21 pages of notes and 12,680 words. That’s a lot to process, but then, as I see it, reading a book without paying such close attention means that the experience will not stick. I should, however, stick to fiction to avoid the intense work involved in dictating content from highlighted passages.

Since 1979, science has had the capability to measure the amount of energy that is leaving the Earth. It is called the Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR). This infra-red energy is how the Earth loses energy to space. It is possible to see how OLR has responded to the temperature change that has taken place over the past 30 years. It should be no surprise that the amount of energy escaping the earth is increased with the temperature. That is the most basic rule of radiative energy.

A 0.2°C change in temperature resulted in a two W/m2* increase in the amount of energy that the Earth is losing. That energy is simply gone forever. Any additional increase in temperature will result in even more energy being lost to space. There is no way that can be avoided.

If I compare the increasing OLR for the IPCC projection that the Earth will warm up 3°C for a doubling of CO2 it is possible to plot out the projected increase in OLR that will result as the level of CO2 in the atmosphere increases. Remember that the “forcing” for a doubling of CO2 is 3.7 W/m2. I am even going to base that 3.7 W/m2 is being achieved at 600 ppm which is a doubling from 300 ppm, but base the increase of OLR as from the modern-day. That gives the theory of global warming a 100-year head start. My projection for future CO2 level at 600 ppm in 2100 is pretty much in line with predictions.

The result is that the “forcing” of CO2 is 3.7 W/m2. The Earth would be warmer by 3°C according to the Theory of Global Warming, but the problem is the Earth would then be losing 7.5 W/m2 more energy than it does today. The earth would be losing more than twice the energy to space than the “forcing” effect of CO2. That ratio increases the more the Earth warms up. Warming up the Earth will always ensure that it will cool down in the future. (Page 250)

*W/m2 = watts per square meter, a measure, in this case, of the amount of sunlight reaching the earth.

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I ran across the paper Chemtrails are Not Contrails: Radiometric Evidence by J. Marvin Herndon, Mark Whiteside and Raymond D. Hoisington after traipsing through link after link ‘splaining to us that “Chemtrails” do not exist, per se, and belief that they are anything more than condensation is a conspiracy theory. As we know here at POM, use of the term “conspiracy theory” is a thought-stopping device, a form of suggestion that keeps people from looking into issues that need looking into.

(The CVs of these three men can be viewed by clicking on their names on the linked paper.)

Long ago I had a blog post here that measured the time it takes for a real contrail to evaporate. It depended on the size of ice crystals, ambient air temperature, and intensity of rays of the sun, as I recall. The overarching point, as I recall, was that if it took longer than 30 seconds, we were looking at a chemtrail, not a contrail. That blog post disappeared. I did not delete it. But because of it, I knew there was more, far more, to the chemtrail matter than people were letting on. I will cite a few paragraphs from the paper below. Their methodology involved measuring a con/chemtrail from down below, using a spectral radiometer and positioning it so that the con/chemtrail was positioned between the device and the sun. They are measuring the particulate matter that is in a chemtrail if indeed it is that. (Note that the authors of this paper are believers in climate change/global warming. We have to accept that and move on. Reasonable people differ on the matter.)

The public and the scientific community have been systematically deceived into falsely believing that the pervasive, jet-sprayed ‘chemtrails’ are harmless ice-crystal contrails. We have presented radiometric measurements which unambiguously prove the falsity of that characterization for one specific, but typical instance. We show in a more general framework that the physical manifestations of the aerial trails are inconsistent with ice-crystal contrails, but entirely consistent with aerosol particulate trails. We describe  potential reasons for the deception, and cite the extremely adverse consequences of the aerial spraying on human and environmental health. For the sake of life on Earth, the modification of the natural environment by aerial particulate spraying and other  methodologies must immediately and permanently end.

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The extraordinary climate events of 2022-24

Ask a Climate Scientist what “Hunga Tonga” is, and you’ll likely get a blank stare of perhaps spiral eyes. The essential feature of modern climate science is confirmation bias. They avoid any research into any area where they are not assured that their pet theories about climate are reinforced.

2023 was the warmest year on record for the planet, which the author of the above piece, Javier Vinós gives a detailed treatment. Hunga Tonga was a volcano that erupted in January of 2022. It is located off the east coast of Queensland, Australia. The remarkable feature of this particular volcano is that it did not load the troposphere with particulate matter, as did Tambora in 1815. Particulate matter has a cooling effect on the planet, and 1815 was followed by 1816, known as “the year without a summer”. New England and much of Europe experienced frosts in summer, leading to crop failures. Were it not for southern farms and plantations, the effects of Tambora would have been far worse.

Hunga Tonga, seen to the left here from in a satellite photo, was quite a different event, one that Vinós suggests might have been a once-in-250-year event, perhaps even a millennial event. The blast launched water vapor into the stratosphere, and not particulate matter. Many elements have to be in place for that to happen, which is why it is such a rarity.

It will take a few years for the water in the stratosphere to make its way down to Earth again. In the meantime, water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, far more abundant than CO2, a gas that hardly matters. So no need to look further for the cause of the 2023 heating up of the planet. However, because Climate Science is hell-bent on attacking fossil fuels using CO2 as its primary weapon, there’s no Hunga-Tonga talk going on in those circles. It is not mentioned!

The article above is rather long, I know, and is at this point followed by 168 comments. One thing about Judith Curry’s site – Climate Etc. – is a great group of commenters. But that only adds to the reading. Just warning you should you make your way to the Vinós article. He also writes about the polar winds that have recently broken down, a routine occurrence that results in very cold weather than sometimes even makes its way as far south as Texas. The breakdown this year, the Polar Vortex as we call it, is not so routine.

That, and a bunch of other stuff.