By a strange path (reading adverse comments by alarmists in a paper I don’t mention) I came across this paper by Robert Ian Holmes which on the face of it would seem to disproves the Greenhouse effect as commonly stated:
Molar Mass Version of the Ideal Gas Law Points to a Very Low Climate Sensitivity
Stunningly it suggests a climate sensitivity for the doubling of CO2 of about 0.03C.

The change would in fact be extremely small and difficult
to estimate exactly, but would be of the order -0.03°C. That
is, a hundred times smaller than the ‘likely’ climate
sensitivity of 3°C cited in the IPCC’s reports,

The approach is brazenly simple. It starts with the ideal gas law:

PV = m/M RT

If converted to density this becomes:

ρ = P/(R T/M)

rearranged this becomes:

T = P /(R ρ/M)

The author then uses the figures from NASA (space) of surface pressure (P), the gas constant R, near surface atmospheric density and the near surface mean molar mass to calculate the Greenhouse temperature for the following:

The correlation is excellent as shown by the following actual versus calculated greenhouse effect:
The only substantial error is with the Greenhouse Temperature of Mars.

Discussion

Although this paper does not refer to them, this confirms the finding by Nikolov and Zeller in which they show that atmospheric pressure is the largest factor affecting Greenhouse temperature. But it then expands on their work to show that several other factors are alos important as well these being the molar mass and density.
One caveat I would have, is that these different parameters may not be independent, and particularly for the less well known planets & bodies some of the parameters may be back calculated so that a match is certain. However this argument will not apply to the better known planets.
Another caveat is that the formula clearly fell down with Mars, but the author rightly highlights that Mars is the body with the lowest pressure.
Taken at face value, the suggested 0.03C greenhouse effect for a doubling of CO2, does does seem to drive a cart and horse through any idea that CO2 could be a problem. However it may not be so simple. I need to think about it and do some analysis.
But at the very least, I will be very surprised if this paper doesn’t cause waves.

 ADDENDUM

After a bit of thinking, I’m wondering whether what we have here is that the temperature is setting other parameters. Pressure is set by the mass of the atmosphere divided by planetary surface area, however it may be that in effect the density and molar parameter are being affected by temperature. In which case it should be a perfect fit.
In other words it’s just a restatement of PV=nRT  in the form P=ρ (R/M) T (where ρ is density & M molar mass). In other words the ratio of pressure to density (P/ρ) =  (R/M) T.

For a long time I’ve been suggesting that reductions in the level of pollution from the 1970s clean air acts was likely to have caused some if not all the warming from the 1970s to the point that clean up effectively came to an end which is around 2000.
And if you look at almost every early picture of the past (before 1970s), what you will see is a clear smog haze created from the burning of coal high in sulphur.

It is hard, not to miss the obvious impact of pollutants in the past, unless that is, you are intentionally ignoring them because your real agenda is not to clean up pollution, but to destroy the modern industrialised economies of the West.
When looking at global temperatures I discovered what is clearly the smoking gun in that the warming from 1970-2000s occurred, not globally as would occur for CO2, but in regional hotspots about 3days downwind from the large 1970s economic zones as shown below.But this issue has become very problematic for those trying to ignore the massive changed due to the clean air acts of the 1970s. Because as the pause continues year after year, and the public just aren’t buying their made up data with the “added warming” flavour, on the one side alarmists want to use the recent increase in Chinese pollution to explain the lack of recent global warming – so a lot of work has gone into proving “it was the Chinese wot done it”. But by the same token, if Chinese pollution could stop warming now, then the reduction in pollution in other areas would cause warming.
So it’s great to see that Climate Depot have understood that 1970s pollution is a perfectly viable explanation of much of recent climate:

• Up to 1970s we saw increasing economic activity with associated pollution and we saw the global cooling scare
• From 1970-2000 concerted efforts were made by the advanced countries to clean up pollution and as a result we saw the cooling-pollution removed which resulted in a very predictable and short-term increase in temperature
• From 2000 not only was the effect of 1970s clean air acts coming to an end but there was increasing pollution from countries like China – and we saw the Pause.

And the alarmists ask? “How can you explain 20th century warming without CO2?” The real problem is how do you explain 20th century climate and the very regionalised nature of 1970-2000 with CO2!

The New/Old Consensus?! Pollution is ‘helping to cool the climate’ – Cleaning Up Air Pollution May Strengthen ‘Global Warming’
Continue reading →

I was supposed to be going to visit in laws today, but looking at the weather we had to call off the visit again – and it’s not like we live somewhere remote – the journey is largely on motorways and what is not is heavily used suburban roads of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
So I went onto twitter – and there what did I read? Yet more rubbish about the “warmist year evah” based solely on the bogus non global temperature metrics they invented when they couldn’t keep denying the pause.
Eventually after contemplating even cleaning the oven, I remembered I wanted to see whether if like sand there was an easily produced critical angle for snow.
Here’s the angle on sand:

And here is what I managed to produce with snow:

Oops how did that get there?
No this is what I managed to produce for snow:

From this experience there are several learning points:

1. That it’s really difficult to photo a white snow pile on a snowy path. (And that recycling bins, whilst entirely useless, do seem to make good backdrops for photos).
2. That it takes a very long time to build even a small pile of snow using a small trowel (I didn’t want to artificially compact the snow using a large spade).
3. That it does form the critical angle
4. Snow is cold and it’s precipitation and it’s a bit stupid going outside without a coat as it melts and runs down your neck.

If you look at any explanation of the “Greenhouse effect” you will undoubtedly find it explained in simple terms as CO2 acting to “trap heat” in the atmosphere like a blanket. That is provably false and this article explains why.
The “heat trapping” or “blanket” model invariably goes along with the following type of diagram. This diagram is not “wrong” in the sense it largely correctly accounts for the various heat “flows”, but it is wrong as a physical model of the greenhouse effect because it doesn’t even mention the critical factor which is the temperature of the atmosphere. And without knowing that the model is nothing but a set of meaningless numbers and any explanation using it is complete twaddle.

Do Academics believe the heat trapping model?

Continue reading →

For a while I’ve known that the 1970-2000 warming which caused the Global warming scare was a result of 1970s moves to reduce atmospheric pollution. This is clearly shown by the strong correlation between the areas with most intense warming and the areas with SO2 emissions (which I use a a proxy for industrial activity).
However, when I compare these with areas of acid rain (timescale unknown – I couldn’t find anything which clearly showed the areas subject to acid rain and gave a timescale)
It seems that the areas of acid rain are between the areas of emission, and highest rise in temperature (in other words greatest reduction in 1970s cooling causing pollution).
From this it is possible to conclude:

1. That the process is not the direct formation of cloud by sulphates
2. That the process takes longer to affect the weather than the simple formation of acid clouds

I have no doubt that the 1970-2000 warming was due to the reduction in pollution. However the exact nature of what was causing the cooling in the 1970s remains a mystery. It still seems likely to be cloud, and I wonder whether it could be stratospheric cloud, but to put it bluntly … it is very difficult researching something that went away in the 1970-2000 before much of the more modern monitoring and about 40 years before anyone even considered it a driver of global temperature.

In any subject a culture can be created, and that culture may make some things permissible that otherwise would not as well as making taboo that which would normally considered acceptable.
For years, having seen the protestations of self-styled “Climate scientists”, it’s been clear to me they had completely wondered off the scientific path and were indulging in fantasies not science. However, by chance I came across this tweet from Michael Mann in which he makes it very clear that his working methods, and so presumably the culture in climate “science” is to change the data to fit the model. That’s not science.

Here is the original source, but given Twitter is now censoring content and blocking users it disapproves of, and given this is such a clanger by Mann, it may not remain available

Copy the URL into an anonymous web browser pic.twitter.com/8q0qp62yuh

— Jonathan Jones (@nmrqip) January 2, 2018

I often find this. I hear someone in the public eye say something I think is extremely mild and so hardly give it a passing thought, and then when I finally start reading about it, it turns out to have created a media storm. Clearly the only thing the global warming Libtard media in the US want to talk about is Trump tweet which I think was only “we could do with a bit of global warming”.
Now, even someone who believed in Global warming could find that funny – because even if you believe in catastrophic warming, you must also believe in natural climate change which will from time to time bring much colder weather.
However Libtards don’t have a sense of proportion, they only think weather is climate when it is hot and they have no sense of humour. In short this is a blasphemy and so they are reacting with the normal religious fervour against anyone who dare express the heretical view that global warming is laughable.
 

An interesting tweet across came I

Destroyers of wealth. https://t.co/UPUw8DMHdA

— Patrick Moore (@EcoSenseNow) December 31, 2017

It contained the following graph
First we need to recognise that capacity is nowhere near the same as average delivered power. I think the figure for what is currently delivered is closer to 20-30% of capacity, so the actual capacity will be lower. But it gets worse, because it gets even lower the higher the % of unreliables. Because whereas it is now cheap conventional that gets turned off when there is excess power, if you were insane enough to get rid of conventionals then much of the time it is expensive unreliables would be turned off because unreliables were producing too much … and much of the time industry and consumers would be turned off as they produce too little. So the available capacity from unreliables would be much smaller.
However if we assume a 25% delivery for convenience, the above graph suggests the cost per W per person of unreliables is 0.018*1000/0.25 =  74cent/kwh per person. On average a household of 2.5people consumes about 400w. So that yearly cost of unreliables for a household if anyone were mad enough to go for 100% unreliables appears to be around

74 * 0.4 * 24 * 365  = ~2600 Euros per Household

This is however the direct cost. But as raw materials and manufacturing costs are all directly related then the cost will be higher. A while back I wrote about The Enerconic multiplier (expanded later in the  The Enerconic or society energy multiplier). This provides the useful figure that energy is reused in society about 4x. As such, if everyone we sourced goods and services were to adopt the same crazy policy of 100% unreliables, I can work out the cost per household as

2600 x 4 = ~10,000 Euros.

With an average EU salary of 17640, an average wage single earner household will be spending 56% of their salary solely on extra costs incurred by this crazy policy. Of course, not every country is mad enough to go along with this insanity. So, the effect at the moment is that it is cheaper to produce things in countries who have not been infected with the madness. Thus in addition to seeing large cost increases, there is also a steady drain of jobs abroad. That will depress EU economies & hence wages until it has much the same effect  as if we were all being taxed an additional ~ 56%. But there is one small issue here. The average tax rate in the EU is 40%. So between the increase costs for unreliables and massive government taxes (also added to the cost of unreliables) there is frankly very little left.
There is however one ray of hope … as the UK isn’t in the Euro, and with the Italian financial crisis looming, the cost of unrelieables in Euros will be much smaller (… I’m just joking, the green parasites suck us dry whatever the currency).
But can you now see why I call this policy insane? The direct cost is massive, but the indirect cost is totally bonkers and would leave all of us with almost no personal salary – or more likely, we’d end up being able to afford to purchase a fraction of what we do now. We will all be a lot lot poorer. It is total bonkers and if politicians were mad enough to push it through would cause those countries adopting it to descend into an economic decline heading toward third world status. And with that I would like to wish you all …

Happy New Year

As a scientist, you’d expect me to make decisions rationally. So why have I stopped being a full time sceptic. The reason is that people just didn’t seem to be interested in the subject any longer. I couldn’t point to any statistic to justify that feeling, I couldn’t show you a graph or do a cost benefit analysis showing I had done what I could to change public opinion and my time was now better spent getting around to the things I had neglected for so many years.
However as always  Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depot has hit the nail on the head with his explanation of the series of global warming film flops this year:

“Hollywood is finding out that the climate scare continues to be nothing more than a big yawn for the public,” Mr. Morano said. “Lecturing the public on climate change is boring, and ticket receipts prove this.” (Link)