Climate nutters won't give up
Ignoring the laws of physics makes them feel powerful
In 1997, Kenneth Trenberth and J.T. Kiehl published an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society entitled: “Earth’s annual global mean energy budget”. The article included what has become almost folklore - this chart of the “budget”.
Who put Earth on a budget anyway? And, why did they express the budget in watts per meter squared (w/m2) of the 512 million square kilometer of the surface of the Earth?
In any event, the “budget” is balance according to Trenberth’s chart. Outgoing longwave radiation of 235 w/m2 and reflected solar radiation of 107 w/m2 equals incoming solar radiation of 342 w/m2. I wish my own budget were that balanced.
The numbers are all estimates which pile assumptions on top of other assumptions, and the chart is used incessantly to argue that increases in CO2 alter the balance such that more of the Sun’s energy is either “trapped” in the atmosphere (a frequent claim by climate alarmists) or at least “delayed” in its return to space. The claim is frequently accompanied by estimates promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its routine “reports” that each doubling of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will lead to an excess of 3.77 w/m2 of energy being retained in the atmosphere and increasing global average temperatures.
Fortunately, in 1841 Julius Robert Von Mayer (a young German physician at the time) took the time to think about thermodyamics and arrived at the conclusion (since proven) which today forms the first law of thermodynamics - "The total energy of an isolated system is neither created nor destroyed, it remains constant". James Prescott Joule followed demonstrating the accuracy of Mayer’s work and, among other things, contributed to the development of the SI system of measurement. The term “joule” is named after him and for those who have forgotten a joule is the unit of work done by a force of one newton through a distance of one meter. A watt (the energy released in one second by a current of one ampere through resistance of one ohm) is equal to one joule per second. A lot of terms, all related and useful. It is convenient that climate scientists (and climate nutters) present their “energy budget” in w/m2.
A property of all matter is its specific heat capacity, another defined and useful term. It is the number of joules of energy needed to increase the temperature of one kilogram of a mass by one degree Celsius (or Kelvin, since the units are identical even if the scale differs).
The idea behind Trenberth’s “energy budget” is simple enough. Earth’s surface temperature may change from place to place but on average it will be an approximate constant if the energy reaching Earth’s surface from the Sun’s insolation is precisely offset by the energy reflected or radiated back to space in an equilibrium. The anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) posits that higher levels of CO2 will shift the equilibrium to a different temperature reflecting a new equilibrium with more energy being temporarily retained in the atmosphere by delay in its escape to space. The term “climate sensitivity” has been used to estimate how much “global average temperature” would increase owing to a doubling of CO2 concentrations.
So much for the high level tutorial. The nitty gritty is more useful. After Cavendish first estimated the mass of the Earth in 1978, scientists were able to estimate the mass of the atmosphere with simple mathematics based on measurements of atmospheric pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch. The arithmetic is trivial:
Since the SI measurement system and metric measurements are used widely, it is useful to convert to kilograms and the mass of atmosphere comes to approximately 5.146e18 kilograms.
Once you have data on the mass of the atmosphere and the specific heat capacity of air (1,004 joules per kilogram) it is similarly trivial to calculate how many joules of energy are needed to increase the temperature of the atmosphere by one degree Celsius. It is similarly trivial to estimate how many joules of energy are added to atmosphere if a doubling of CO2 adds 3.77 w/m2 setting a new equilibrium global average temperature (whatever that is).
What Mayer, Cavendish and Joule had in common and what is notably absent from world leaders today is the ability to think. Today’s “scientists” promoting AGW and world leaders hopping on that power trip bandwagon seem devoid of that ability.
Rather than go through the arithmetic laboriously, I direct readers to another article I published two weeks ago that does just that and determines that each doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere is only capable of adding 0.52 degrees Celsius1 to the temperature of our atmosphere if all added energy is directed to warming of the atmosphere. It should be obvious that a lot of any “added energy” does not warm the atmosphere but warms the ocean, the land itself, and anyone sunning themselves on the beaches of Costa Rica or anywhere else. The concept of “global average temperature” promoted by alarmists is atmospheric temperature near the surface of Earth and you have to be deluded to believe that an added 0.52 degrees Celsius is dangerous or that even an added 1.56 degrees Celsius (the result if CO2 concentations double three times or reach eight times pre-industrial levels) is a terrifying risk. In fact, the popular NetZero fad (another stupid idea) signed on to by hundreds of world leaders claims the whole charade is to keep global average temperatures from rising no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, and that would require CO2 levels of over 2,000 ppm by volume, something combustion of all known fossil fuels is incapable of producing (basic chemistry).
Biden, Trudeau, Macron, Scholz, Sunak, Klaus Schwab, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Antonio Guterres have in common the delusion that CO2 is harmful, or more likely, that pretending it is harmful has political capital that increases their power. In the now famous words of H.L. Mencken:
When world leaders fly to Davos in private jets to agree on “climate actions”, live in large ocean-side homes they warn us will soon be under water, and tell us we need to trash our natural gas stoves and eat insects to save the planet, you can readily see their motives for what they are. And, they have nothing to do with climate.
Virtually identical results were found by Dieter Schildknecht in a paper published October 2020 in The International Journal of Modern Physics, where the abstract reads in part: “We find an equilibrium climate sensitivity (temperature increase due to doubling atmospheric CO2 concentration) of ~0.5 degrees C.” The paper also reports that any effect of CO2 is “saturated” when CO2 concentrations exceed 300 ppm of atmosphere.
Al Gore has made somewhere between $350million to 1 billion off the narrative. For the most part the little ice age approx 1650-1750, the heat in the 1930's and the cooling from 1950 to 1979 has been removed from the records. Climategate emails are ignored which showed the collision of the "weather record managers" to deplatform and fire any one not agreeing with the storyline and of course remove the decline(1955-1979 cooling). I talk to many young people and they are so brainwashed, they will say the are critical thinkers, but somehow someone like Gore is not biased yet someone like Will Happer is bought off by big oil. They will quote the propaganda and its impossible to question it... Quite amazing really.. Its like a religion, but these days much more entrenched... The history can still be seen through writings and paintings from England in the 1700's, Capt Cook's exploration of Alaska and charting of glaciers, newspapers from the 1930's, 1970's and just the fact that 2 submarines were able to surface at the Northpole in the mid 1950's... I have a slight advantage in that I have studied Global warming since 2002 and also trained, worked and reported weather observations for a few small airports in Northern Canada in the 1970's.