Climate Change Contrarians - claims examined

[Graeme M]

Vat, I don't know about in the US but here in Australia we seem to have rampant climate catastrophe alarmism. Extinction Rebellion is telling people they need to get the government to transition to fully renewable energy and electric vehicles by 2025 to save us from extinction. Numerous media articles sound like Doomer scripts with claims of the breakdown of civilisation within 10 years and so on. Schoolkids are even fearing for their lives. While there seem clear signs of some degree of warming from the temperature dataset and concomitant climate related events, I'm not sure they are THAT perilous as yet. Sure, tipping points *might* be reached but I don't think there is much evidence for that any time soon. All such suggestions are always couched in the language of might, may, could, which of course has always been the case. Things MIGHT happen.

[TheVat]

Yes, the alarmism doesn't help with getting the science done (nor does total denial). The stakes are high enough that a calm clear-headed approach is vital.


Tyndall experiment has been done many times, and is often done in physics classes....

https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.2768699

https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1.1987255

I think where research is lacking (or hard to find with casual search terms) is in getting a better dataset from professional labs on how much warming occurs from each GHG, with precise measures of kinetic energy changes in a countable set of molecules and countable monochromatic photons. It is reallly hard to find lab work that really gets into the basics of, say, longwave absorption by CO2 molecules, average kinetic energy changes, and so on. It's there, but I am going to have to take a few hours this weekend to refine search terms and wade through abstracts. I also want to look at research that looks at GHGs "in situ" i.e. in the atmosphere, where their distribution through the atmospheric column isn't the same as what is found in a lab setup.

[TheVat]

Here's a pretty good start, which may also interest Doogles, from Earth Science Stack Exchange....

https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/7502/is-there-any-experiment-to-prove-that-co2-with-the-atmosphere-concentration-can

(relevant passage quoted below)

You seem to be particularly interested in laboratory experiments on carbon dioxide absorption. As an excellent starting point, I can recommend the (currently) 26 publications in AGW Observer's list of papers on laboratory measurements of CO2 absorption properties.

https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/papers-on-laboratory-measurements-of-co2-absorption-properties/

If you're really keen to see experimental confirmation that CO2 can still absorb radiation even at atmospheric concentrations, you could take a look at (for example) Taylor and Yates (1957), Yates and Taylor (1960), or Streete (1968), all of which clearly demonstrate that CO2 absorption bands are present in normal atmospheric air.

As an aside: personally I find find that the numerous spectroscopic observations of the whole atmospheric column -- from satellites or ground stations -- provide a more compelling demonstration of the greenhouse effect. After all, the atmosphere isn't a homogeneous bottle of gas that can be faithfully scaled down into a lab sample. But your question and subsequent comments indicate that you're not interested in measurements of the atmospheric column itself, so here I'm just concentrating on ground-level experiments which demonstrate the long-wave absorption properties of CO2.

I hope that this may ease concerns that take the form of "no one has researched CO2 absorption since Tyndall 150 years ago."

[doogles]

Thank you for the response Graeme M. I'm so pleased that you were able to see that if N and O had a miniscule greenhouse effect, that they could they could have a meaningful effect overall. I'm surprised that no one else commented on that. Your contribution on Raman Spectroscopy caused me to have another look at Tyndall's work. I looked at his 'fraction of a degree' in a new light.

Methane is consensually regarded as having a high coefficient of absorption, but a very low volume among the atmospheric gases, but now that you come to mention that, I'm not sure where the basic work on methane was performed. It's not listed amongst Tyndall's gases, so there must have been another basic experiment somewhere.

You also said that "It seems hard to believe there has been no experimental confirmation of Tyndall's findings though, are you sure this is the case?" You'll note that I mentioned in my last post that the bloggers after Braithwaite's video only referred to Tyndall's work. All I can say is that I've spent hours chook-scratching amongst the literature without finding anything remotely approaching the rough quantitative work of Tyndall's. I've invited members of this forum to help with this search several times, because I'd love to see some sort of confirmation. Some years ago, one member gave me a list of 25 references. I went through the lot, but they all referred to work concerning the ranges of wavelengths at which carbon dioxide could be detected.

As you can see, TheVat has now presented me with a mountain of refs. I'll work my way through them.

I've given you a thumbs-up for your most recent post, because I agree with every word of it

[doogles]

I've given TheVat a 'like' because of the work and effort he has put into finding possible references. I give an 'A' for effort. It's no mean job. But please bear wih me for some days while I work through them.

I must comment on his last sentence though -- "I hope that this may ease concerns that take the form of "no one has researched CO2 absorption since Tyndall 150 years ago." I don't know if that was anybody's else's claim, but it certainly was not mine.

My personal problem is the absence of further quantitative evaluation of the properties of absorption and radiation of infrared radiation by the greenhouse gases (now including N and O). As I said in my second last post " ... we're investing much into carbon dioxide-emission reduction, and yet, no one appears to have repeated and expanded on Tyndall's basic science with modern equipment."

Just to remove any doubts as to what I have in mind, this is a mud-map of the equipment I would set up if I had access to a lab and some resources myself. It simulates Tyndall's equipment to some extent, except that instead of a can of hot water, we would have an infrared lamp (or range of such), a vacuum chamber instead of carbon rods and flame devices, and a spectrometer instead of a galvanometer. Between 1975 and 1980, I spent much spare time (weekends and days off) using an atomic absorption spectrophotometer at a regional university to analyse trace elements (for which radiation lamps were commercially available) in bovine blood samples to see if there was any correlation between clinical diseases and concentrations of those elements in blood samples.

In light of the posts initiated by Graeme M, I would now include N and O as well as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane.

[doogles]

Maybe I should expand a little on where my thoughts are, because some posts suggest a misinterpretation of what I have in mind.

Firstly I have no problems at all with the principles of the greenhouse effect and I have no problems with the claims that average near-surface global temperatures (ANSGTs) have increased by approximately 1 degree C or more over the last hundred years and that a percentage of this is anthropogenic.

I have problems with the apparent assumption that infra-red radiation is absorbed by carbon dioxide at a linear correlation rate, ie that a doubling of the concentration will result in a doubling of infra-red absorption.

This is in spite of the fact that a climate scientist of the reputation of Sherwood Idso produced a paper based on 8 separate studies of real world data, suggesting that a doubling of carbon dioxide from 300 to 600 ppm would raise the ANSGTs by only 0.4 degrees C.

I would like to see some more basic experimentation on this.

We need to be more certain that a reduction of carbon emissions will result in a slowing of the ANSGTs. So far there is not a single blip on the Cape Grim or Mauna Loa annual carbon dioxide curves after the 23 years since the Kyoto Protocol. I'm disappointed that no group has made an attempt to evaluate the success of this approach.

The experiment I have in mind would clarify some aspects of the above apparent contradictions. We need more basic quantitative experimentation.

Bear in mind that I have seldom undertaken a novel project in my life without modifying my original intentions as I go because of unforeseen problems or of insights into better procedures. I've seldom completed a novel project in my life in which I not had to modify my procedure. So my suggestions from here could undergo radical modification.

First I would produce a basic vacuum in the glass tube. Realising that a pure vacuum is impossible, whatever the available machinery achieves will be regarded as zero gas.

Room temperature will be recorded, the spectrometer will be set on an IR wavelength that gives high readings of absorption with CO2 and a series of 10 readings will be taken to produce a coefficient of variation for the reliability of the method. The Spectrometer readings will be regarded as zero gas absorption.

Secondly I would try a variety of inert gases at atmospheric pressure to see if any can be regarded as having 'zero' absorption properties. Argon appears to be a good prospect.

If I found such a gas, I would begin doing readings with increasing concentrations of high grade CO2, ranging from maybe 200 ppm in the inert gas at one atmosphere pressure up to 1000 or so ppm in 50 ppm increments. Obviously I would take repetitive samples at each concentration. Then we would have our first graph of a correlation between absorption of IR (at one wavelength) and increasing concentrations of CO2. If the results turned out to be constant and repetitive, we would have no more debate between people like Idso and the IPCC position. The basic science would be in, and we would know once and for all whether we should worry about a doubling of CO2 or whether we would find that a doubling of CO2 is not really an issue and that we should put our energies into other multiple-pronged attacks. Does this seem rational to anyone else?

Next, or even first up, we could measure just laboratory air after the inert gas experiment and see the readings on the spectrometer (CO2 would be c400 ppm). Then try increments of 50 ppm CO2.

After that of course, experiments could be performed using a large variety of computations and variations of pure gases (including N and O now), a range of lower pressures and temperatures and a range IR wavelengths.

How hard would this be to organise? It's a repeat of Tyndall's work with more modern equipment. If I was back in my 40s and still had access to such a lab, I'm sure I would have had a go at this personally. My biggest problem would be getting a glass blower to manufacture the tube required and to insert the required number of ports.

I'm sure anyone reading this can see what I have in mind, and I'm also sure that if any research group has already performed such experiments that they would have been cited in the mountain of literature on CO2 absorption of IR somewhere. To date I have not found anything resembling an up-dated repetition of Tyndall's work.

I'm about to go through the pile of literature that TheVat has dug up for me.

I must apologise to you, TheVat, in that I missed the New Topic you posted on Alt views on greenhouse gases absorption of longwave EMF. I think my eye caught the post by Graeme M in the Climate Change thread first. But I note that you virtually repeated the same reference list in the Climate Change thread.

[doogles]

I looked at all of the following. In a few cases, the Title or the Abstract (I had to copy and paste the Titles into Google Scholar) was enough to judge the nature of the content.

RE https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.2768699 -- I have no problems with the principles of the Greenhouse Effect
Re https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1.1987255 -- I have no problems with the principles of the Greenhouse Effect

Re Stack Exchange -- Earth Science Beta -- I couldn't work out who the person was who answered questions on this site, but I noted that he said the following at one stage "So in order to have a lab experiment that could replicate the mechanism of the greenhouse effect, we would need a vacuum chamber large enough to contain a vessel containing a column of air high enough to have a measurable lapse rate. This is clearly impractical. We can perform experiments in the lab to investigate the absorption of IR by greenhouse gases, and indeed Tyndall did this over a century ago, but we can't experimentally verify the greenhouse effect in laboratory conditions, just as we cannot experimentally demonstrate gravitational lensing in the laboratory." This suggests that my design of an experiment may be a waste of time, but I assume that it would be possible to alter the atmospheric pressure in the glass tube to simulate higher altitudes. Not only that, but the whole science of the greenhouse effect was based on Tyndall's findings. At least it would be a repeat and expansion of Tyndall's actual work and no doubt, support or cast doubt on some current assumptions.

I looked at the following -- 26 publications in AGW Observer's list of papers on laboratory measurements of CO2 absorption properties. Tyndall's work is listed at the bottom if anyone is interested. I have a feeling that this is the list that Natural ChemE provided me with a number of years ago. I can't find a repeat of Tyndall's work amongst the refs.

1 Spectroscopic database of CO2 line parameters: 4300–7000 cm−1 – Toth et al. (2008) -- Deals with wavelengths
2 Line shape parameters measurement and computations for self-broadened carbon dioxide transitions in the 30012 ← 00001 and 30013 ← 00001 bands, line mixing, and speed dependence – Predoi-Cross et al. (2007) -- Deals with wavelengths
3 Spectroscopic challenges for high accuracy retrievals of atmospheric CO2 and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) experiment – Miller et al. (2005) -- This deals with the measurement of CO2 in the atmosphere
4 Near infrared spectroscopy of carbon dioxide I. 16O12C16O line positions – Miller & Brown (2004) -- Deals with spectroscopic wavelengths
5 Spectra calculations in central and wing regions of CO2 IR bands between 10 and 20 μm. I: model and laboratory measurements – Niro et al. (2004) -- Deals with wavelengths
6 Collisional effects on spectral line-shapes – Boulet (2004) -- Deals with wavelengths
7 On far-wing Raman profiles by CO2 – Benech et al. (2002) -- Deals with Raman Spectrometry of CO2 and N
8 Collision-induced scattering in CO2 gas – Teboul et al. (1995) -- Deals with wavelengths
9 The HITRAN database: 1986 edition – Rothman et al. (1987) -- Deals with wavelengths
10 Rotational structure in the infrared spectra of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide dimers – Miller & Watts (1984) -- Deals with wavelengths
11 Broadening of Infrared Absorption Lines at Reduced Temperatures: Carbon Dioxide – Tubbs & Williams (1972) -- Deals with wavelengths
12 Investigation of the Absorption of Infrared Radiation by Atmospheric Gases – Burch et al. (1970) -- Deals with wavelengths
13 Absorption of Infrared Radiant Energy by CO2 and H2O. IV. Shapes of Collision-Broadened CO2 Lines – Burch et al. (1969) -- Deals with wavelengths
14 High-Temperature Spectral Emissivities and Total Intensities of the 15-µ Band System of CO2 – Ludwig et al. (1966) -- Deals with wavelengths
15 Laboratory investigation of the absorption and emission of infrared radiation – Burch & Gryvnak (1966) -- Deals with wavelengths
16 Line shape in the wing beyond the band head of the 4·3 μ band of CO2 – Winters et al. (1964) -- Deals with wavelengths
17 Emissivity of Carbon Dioxide at 4.3 µ – Davies (1964) -- Talks about emissivity of IR by CO2 at 1500K
18 Absorption Line Broadening in the Infrared – Burch et al. (1962) -- Effects of a variety of gases on the absorption bands of GHGs
19 Total Absorptance of Carbon Dioxide in the Infrared – Burch et al. (1962) -- Deals with wavelengths
20 Rotation-Vibration Spectra of Diatomic and Simple Polyatomic Molecules with Long Absorbing Paths – Herzberg & Herzberg (1953) -- Deals with wavelengths
21 The Infrared Absorption Spectrum of Carbon Dioxide – Martin & Barker (1932) -- Deals with wavelengths
22 Carbon Dioxide Absorption in the Near Infra-Red – Barker (1922) -- Deals with wavelengths
23 Observations on the Absorption and Emission of Aqueous Vapor and Carbon Dioxide in the Infra-Red Spectrum – Rubens & Aschkinass (1898) -- Deals with wavelengths
24 On the absorption of dark heat-rays by gases and vapours – Lecher & Pernter (1881) Svante Arrhenius wrote in his famous 1897 paper: “Tyndall held the opinion that the water-vapour has the greatest influence, whilst other authors, for instance Lecher and Pernter, are inclined to think that the carbonic acid plays the more important part.”.
25 The Bakerian Lecture – On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and on the Physical Connexion of Radiation, Absorption, and Conduction – Tyndall (1861) This of course is the famous paper by Tyndall. I think that because this list virtually starts with Tyndall's paper, that the author who compiled it would have included any similar study. This site by the way will give you access to this paper, the only one I've seen on quantitative absorption of heat by a range of gases -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/108724?seq ... b_contents

So to date I have not seen anything resembling a repeat of Tyndall's work, but I would still appreciate others keeping an eye open for me.

[TheVat]

Somewhere I posted a link from a physics teachers website, in which it looked like Tyndall's experiment was so routine and widely done that it was a lab assignment in high school and college classes. Here it is:

https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.2768699

I completely agree that more lab work is needed on reproducing the effects of a doubling of CO2 and how that affects longwave absorption across the frequency range, and where a saturation effect occurs. I welcome anyone who can point us towards research in that area.

[TheVat]

I hope my posts don't seem curt or brusque. Things got a little busy here lately. Will try to get to some of the List of 26 as time permits.

[doogles]

Somewhere I posted a link from a physics teachers website, in which it looked like Tyndall's experiment was so routine and widely done that it was a lab assignment in high school and college classes. Here it is:

https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.2768699

.

You had already listed that experiment TheVat. It was the very first one I commented upon in my last post. I have no problems with the principles of the Greenhouse Effect. It's Tyndall's crude experiments on the quantitative properties of absorption and radiation of IR by carbon dioxide that does not appear to have been repeated.

I thank you for encouraging others to keep an eye out for such a repeat experiment -- "I completely agree that more lab work is needed on reproducing the effects of a doubling of CO2 and how that affects longwave absorption across the frequency range, and where a saturation effect occurs. I welcome anyone who can point us towards research in that area."

[doogles]

I've just had an afterthought on this topic as to why it's important to either find some repetition of Tyndall's work on the quantitative absorption and radiation if IR by carbon dioxide or else to urge somebody to do an experiment along the lines I've been discussing.

If it turns out that Tyndall's is the only such experiment so far, a point to remember is that his experiment did not study carbon dioxide per se. It studied carbonic acid, which is carbon dioxide in water. I would have to guess that he had to nebulise it.

But if he did use such a solution, his results would include the absorption effects of H20 as well as CO2. So the question to ask is how much of today's quantitative models on the effects of carbon dioxide on average global near surface temperatures are based on pure carbon dioxide absorption of IR and how much on H20?

[doogles]

This soft reference provided by davidm in another thread (https://cosmosmagazine.com/geoscience/w ... s-shifting) prompted me to post a further study relating to polar bears.

The article was written by Karl Kruszelnicki and purports to indicate that the Earth's polarity is shifting as we speak, because of Climate Change.

I was disappointed that Karl did not mention any scientific references in the article because I would like to have been able to check on the coefficient of variation of a measurement that detected differences of the order of magnitude of 6 or so cm over the distance from the North Pole to Labrador. I hope that all readers realise that in establishing the accuracy of any test of any kind, it is customary to do at least 10 measurements using the same machines or systems on the same item under measurement as quickly as possible to get a coefficient of variation of the test itself. And my experience in biological areas is that very few measurements of anything reproduce a consistency with a Standard Deviation of less than 0.01 of the mean. If these geographical measurements were made by satellites, the satellite would have to have been extremely stable and maybe even stationary to achieve such accuracy.

Naturally I would be pleased if anyone could give me a lead to the evidence that Dr Karl used in his soft reference.

But the above was just a side comment on that article. My main concern was that the article begins with this sentence -- "We are only a little way into the 21st century, but signs of a warming planet are already evident around the globe: More frequent droughts in East Africa; stranded polar bears in the Arctic; bleached coral reefs in the tropics; and retreating glaciers in the high latitudes. Along the coasts, sea levels are rising."

It disturbs me that such statements flow so readily off the typewriter or computer of such a well-known scientist as Dr Karl -- "More frequent droughts in East Africa (are evidence of a warming planet)." I've never looked at droughts in Africa before, but this article states that the records prior to 1980 on East Africa are sparse and somewhat unreliable -- https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... resilience.

I found another article on droughts in Africa based on records of longer duration. I like to see balanced reports. This one, in Wikipedia -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahel_drought -- has data going back hundreds of years and covers a much wider area. It therefore presents a more balanced picture with respect to 'climate change' effects. I'll present an excerpt -- "The Sahel has long experienced a series of historic droughts, dating back to at least the 17th century. The Sahel region is a climate zone sandwiched between the Sudanian Savanna to the south and the Sahara desert to the north, across West and Central Africa. While the frequency of drought in the region is thought to have increased from the end of the 19th century, three long droughts have had dramatic environmental and societal effects upon the Sahel nations. Famine followed severe droughts in the 1910s, the 1940s, and the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, although a partial recovery occurred from 1975-80. The most recent drought occurred in 2012.
While at least one particularly severe drought has been confirmed each century since the 17th century, the frequency and severity of recent Sahelian droughts stands out. Famine and dislocation on a massive scale—from 1968 to 1974 and again in the early and mid-1980s—was blamed on two spikes in the severity of the 1960-1980s drought period.[1] From the late 1960s to early 1980s famine killed 100,000 people, left 750,000 dependent on food aid, and affected most of the Sahel's 50 million people.[2] The economies, agriculture, livestock and human populations of much of Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso (known as Upper Volta during the time of the drought) were severely impacted. As disruptive as the droughts of the late 20th century were, evidence of past droughts recorded in Ghanaian lake sediments suggest that multi-decadal megadroughts were common in West Africa over the past 3,000 years and that several droughts lasted far longer and were far more severe.[3][4]
Since the 1980s, summer rainfall in the Sahel has been increasing; this has been associated with an increase in vegetation, forming what has been called a 'greening' of the Sahel. The observed increase in rainfall is accounted for by enhancements in the African easterly jet, which is known to induce wet anomalies. A 2011 study found that the positional shifts in the African easterly jet and African easterly waves accompanied the northward migration of the Sahel rainband.[5]"

That history of droughts in the Sahel suggests that droughts there are a periodically-occurring phenomenon and not due to 'climate change' which is generally dated as occurring since 1970s. On the contrary, the Sahel appears to be 'greening' at the moment. I note that Dr Karl attributes the droughts in East Africa to a 'warming planet'. Is it possible to sustain a SANE discussion if we also blame the increased rain in the Sahel on a 'warming planet'. AS confirmation, I found a more up-to-date 2019 article on rain in the Sahel here -- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ful ... /wcc.591-- by Michela Biasutti in an article titled Rainfall trends in the African Sahel: Characteristics, processes, and causes, if anyone is interested.

I don't understand why our scientists are so selective in their presentation of research to the public, nor why they seem so convinced about what they are saying. I like a scientist to always manifest an element of doubt, and to present evidence rather than dogmatic conclusions.

The main reason I raised the subject of 'Climate Change' again was because just this week I came across what I considered to be a balanced article on the status of the stranding of polar bears which Dr Karl also included as evidence of a 'warming planet'. I published some references in this thread earlier about polar bears and about the mixed reports regarding their survival and adaptability.

This article -- https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.w ... /acv.12439 -- by Hamilton and Derocher (2018) , titled Assessment of global polar bear abundance and vulnerability, made the point that Polar bears Ursus maritimus have become an iconic species for climate change , yet information on abundance and status for significant parts of their range is unknown. They point out the difficulties involved in keeping track of polar bear numbers.

The article is open-access and the following paragraphs that I cite, seem to indicate that we do not yet have enough objective data on polar bear numbers to make any scientific evaluation of the effects of climate change on those numbers and that 'ball-park' figures (not accurate data yet) suggest that their numbers may be on the increase -- "Mid‐20th century estimates for the global polar bear population ranged widely, from 5000 to 19 000 animals (Scott et al., 1959; Harington, 1964; Uspensky, 1965; Uspensky & Shilnikov, 1969; Larsen, 1972), but lacked scientific rigor, sometimes relying on educated guesses, as standard methods for polar bear population estimation had not been established. More recently, the global population of polar bears was believed to be between 20 000 and 26 000 animals (IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group, 2010; Wiig et al., 2015). The global estimate, however, was acknowledged for its lack of precision and accuracy, and was not used for population assessment. Because of widespread interest in polar bears, the global estimate was sometimes referenced to satisfy public curiosity. Nonetheless, these estimates were misapplied by some to create doubt on the effects of anthropogenic climate change on polar bears (Harvey et al., 2018). Noting the challenges and expense of obtaining subpopulation estimates, Vongraven et al. (2012) proposed exploring occupancy models or extrapolation, yet there has been no effort to assess global abundance using such approaches."

I noted that Dr Karl uses the term 'stranding of polar bears'. I would be surprised if polar bears have not been stranded commonly over the past millennia, considering their habitat and the nature of their lifestyle. Certainly there are isolated reports of polar bears getting closer to settled areas, looking for food, but isn't this common to many species when natural food becomes scarce periodically? One of the scientific findings of the above article on polar bears by Hamilton and Derocher, was that the only correlation between polar bear numbers and a variety of other variables was the 'availability of primary prey'.

I'll leave it at that for now, but enough to say that I find statements such as "We are only a little way into the 21st century, but signs of a warming planet are already evident around the globe: More frequent droughts in East Africa; stranded polar bears in the Arctic; bleached coral reefs in the tropics; and retreating glaciers in the high latitudes. Along the coasts, sea levels are rising.", as not befitting a serious scientist.

[Serpent]

Australia is burning.
Or so I've heard. I can't prove it.

[Graeme M]

Well, Australia more generally isn't burning, though around 5 million hectares has been burned so far this fire season (though technically, fire season is pretty much all of the year). We typically do have a lot of bushfires at this time of year, more so during droughts. This summer we have had several megafires and the speed and intensity of fires has been notable. How much out of the norm is hard to say because there isn't really a norm. So much depends on a variety of factors - weather conditions, forest conditions, management practices, sources of ignition, etc. The main link to climate change that is claimed is the dry conditions - the recent drought has been extensive. Winter rains have failed in the south-east for the past three years, which is unusual. Personally I don't know how we can quantify how much this is due to "climate change", after all, a changing climate is only something we can see over time. Extreme events on their own aren't necessarily indicative of anything.

Trends here seem to be drying of SE Australia, warmer average temperatures, and more frequent extensive droughts. I don't know how these trends stack up taken over say the past 1000 years, though I do know that research using various proxies suggest that long wet spells are often followed by long dry spells with some previous records of drought showing equally extensive and brutal dry conditions. It would be very interesting to see a summary of research that tackles the past 1000 years to get a better sense of things.

The period from 1950 to about 1990 or so was fairly wet on the east coast, but since then it has been very dry (except for a really wet year or two around 2010). Dunno what that tells us about things more generally. Is Australia's climate changing? Beats me.

[doogles]

Graeme M, I liked your attempt to put a balance into Serpent's comment. Nevertheless I thank him for that comment.

When he said "Australia is burning. Or so I've heard. I can't prove it. ", I have to assume that he is making a case that the current massive bushfires throughout Australia are evidence of a warming planet -- in the same manner that Dr Karl did in the popular science article I commented upon. He did not expand on that statement, but I'm sure he wasn't just letting the world know that we are again experiencing extensive bushfires currently in Australia.

We'd be struggling to get evidence going back millennia, because the original inhabitants did not have a written language

I'm always hoping for more balanced comments such as yours Graeme M in all areas of discussion.

We do have records going back to the 1850s. A Wikipedia researcher has so far cited 87 references (still ongoing) that demonstrates quite clearly that bushfires in Australia have been a major problem long before the 1980s, on this site -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia. It's worth a look. There is a Table listing the major recorded outbreaks.

You will see that 12,000,000 acres were burnt out in Victoria alone in 1851 with a loss of 1,000,000 sheep and thousands of cattle. In 1939, approximately 5,000,000 acres were burnt out with damage to 3700 properties. Almost 10,000,000 acres were burnt in 1951/2. In 1974/75, over 18,000,000 acres were burnt in NSW.

For the current season 2019/20, the author has listed a total of 15,000,000 acres for the combined States of Victoria, NSW, QLD, SA, WA and Tasmania so far.

The 1850s by the way was when we had partial 'global cooling'. It was the time when the last mini-ice-age began to thaw. A couple of our politicians are blaming the current fires on 'Climate Change' for political gain, but our history of bushfires so far in Australia indicates that we had plenty before the 1980s.

[Graeme M]

I think it is very hard to draw a clear connection between climate change and these bushfires, but given that events match so closely the catastrophic warming narrative you would have no hope of dissuading anyone of the link. There are quite a few factors as I mentioned, but the one clear trend seems to be the speed and size of fires in recent times. Is that due to climate change? I dunno. We'd need to see the records of rainfall and temperatures for the last decade and compare that to the same kinds of data records for other decades, say 1930-1940 and 1900-1910. But clearly the very dry conditions are contributors. I was reading some research from a few years ago - these guys had been looking at proxies from the past 500 years to ascertain Australian drought risk and more or less found that we have quite wet periods followed by quite dry periods. Generally speaking, it seems that we have had very brutal droughts bfore now - 179-1792 being an example. They also pointed out that we had been experiencing generally cooler and wetter conditions until recently, ie from 1950 until about 1990 and a lot of modern management approaches have grown up on top of relatively benign conditions. They suggested that if things did get very dry due to a positive phase of the IPO we would be struggling to cope. All of that said, I am still worrying at the possible contribution of land use changes with more rapid transition to land surfaces more likely to generate greater thermal radiation. A recent paper has actually examined exactly that and did confirm something along these lines though I didn't quite grasp their point and the paper is behind a paywall.

https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d ... 2/joc.4694

[davidm]

The link between the current extremes [in Australia] and anthropogenic climate change is scientifically undisputable.

[TheVat]

Oz has increased a bit over one degree Celsius over the past century. This has had the effects covered in the SciAm link that David posted.

CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology made this report on the climate:

http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/

Seas in the S. hemisphere have especially increased in temps, as well.

[Serpent]

Let's not jump to any hasty conclusions.
Wait-and-see has has always been sound enough policy. After all, just think what might have happened if somebody took the first climate change warnings seriously!

[Graeme M]

I'm not arguing against the warming of temperatures. However, climate change is exactly that, a change in the climate. Weather and its effects are somewhat chaotic and we know that extremes don't necessarily always stay within a particular range - in other words, records are always broken. The SciAm article draws a whole bunch of conclusions that may not be accurate. Other than temperatures, we'd need to know more about broader climatic behaviors over the past 500-1000 years before we can make such certain claims. Take for instance the author's suggestion that most years in his life saw average temperatures over the 1961-1990 average. But if that period was a cooler and wetter time due to the negative phase of the IPO, as I understand it was, that is hardly remarkable. Taking an average and ignoring where that average fits in some larger time scale tells us nothing about why temperatures later fall above or below that average.

The same applies to claims that rainfall has decreased since the 1970s. The 1950s were a very wet decade, the 1960s dry, the 1970s wet. Record breaking rains and floods fell in the 50s and 70s with two of the largest floods in Queensland's post white settlement period. It would be more interesting to tell us how different rainfall patterns are in 1990-2020 from 1920-1950.

Both the SciAm article and the BOM report only tell us about short term changes. I'd like to know more about long term changes before I'd be willing to grant some significant shift in climate. Especially when I have read research that points to extreme dry periods in the relatively recent past.

The problem as I see it is that it is very hard to compare modern weather data with that of the past. The past record of temperatures has been considerably adjusted. There are probably good reasons to doubt the accuracy of old data, but the adjusted record is NOT a true record of what happened. It's a good guess. Comparing that to digitally obtained and analysed data is a bit iffy, I reckon.

Examining the rest of the claims in the SciAm piece obtain the same result - a lot of supposition, based on some facts. Is Australia's climate changing, when compared to the cycles of the past 1000 years? I have no idea, but I don't see a convincing case. Is it changing compared to how it might have been in the past 50-100 years? Very probably, but at different rates, scales and in different places.

The fact that we had a confluence of natural cycles (eg SAM, IOD, IPO etc) that led to a particular weather regime isn't proof of climate change, it IS evidence for the cause of an excursion in average conditions.

None of this invalidates the fact that right now, trends in weather conditions suggest that we should prepare for drier and more extreme fire conditions and authorities would be foolish to ignore this. But to what extent genuine climate change is driving this seems less clear. To me, at least.

[doogles]

Thank you Graeme M. Re the changes in surface albedo between bushy areas and open areas, TheVat posted some evidence on that matter in this thread earlier. And is it possible that after rain, there is more cloud, therfore less insolation and therefore less albedo?

Just having a think about your statement "but the one clear trend seems to be the speed and size of fires in recent times. Is that due to climate change? I dunno." One of the problems here is that we have no clear records of the speed of fires. We certainly have sensational media coverage of the extent and severity of fires currently; we only had local newspapers 150 years ago. I did present a link to a Table showing the extent in terms of acreages burnt out. Did anyone look at those figures?

By the way, there is a collection of first hand reports on the severity and extent of the 1851 Victorian fires on this site Graeme M. It's frightening and is well prior to 'Climate Change' -- http://web.archive.org/web/201104061216 ... ursday.htm

I can give you some anecdotal evidence relating to the 1983 southwestern Victorian fires. I was living in Brisbane at the time but still in touch with all of the locals. Most farmers were active members of local fire brigades. Many farmers left their farms to fight the fires some miles north. On a day when the temperature topped 40 degrees C and the wind was blowing 100 kph, one farmer timed the speed of the fire between 2 roads one mile apart at one minute. The consensus of that group of farmers was that their presence was futile and they all went back to their own properties as fast as possible simply to open all their farm gates to let their stock have some chance of escape. Some of my friends died in attempts to save stock.

Another factor we have to consider is that more property and stock will be destroyed with each succeeding bushfire (and other natural catastrophes as well) simply because of increasing population density. So far we have only 170 years of records. As you said in your last post Graeme M, it would be interesting to see records over 1000 years.

As far as the causes of the fires is concerned, there was a Royal Commission into the 1939 fires and this was one finding (https://www.ffm.vic.gov.au/history-and- ... riday-1939) "Land owners, graziers, miners, forest workers and campers either deliberately or carelessly contributed to the 1939 fires by lighting fires before 13 January. The causes included burning off for land clearing and grass growth, lighting campfires, inappropriate sawmill operations and domestic fires. Many of these fires still smouldered when the hot, dry, windy conditions occurred on 13 January, 1939. Judge Stretton wrote in his report: 'it will appear that no one cause may properly be said to have been the sole cause', however the fires were 'lit by the hand of man'." It's the only official 'cause' of a fire I've seen and a more balanced view would take much research. But if more research did produce a similar finding, then one would expect that bushfires will increase with population increases.

I did find another reference on causes of bushfires on this site -- https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/201 ... w/11701132. It's a soft reference on a website called Science and written by a Nick Kilvert. He shows a Pie Graph in which only 6% are regarded as 'natural' eg lightning. This Pie Graph is attributed to The Australian Institute of Criminology. Like the Judge in the 1939 Royal Commission, the Institute incriminates human error and mischief. If that is really the case, is it possible that we then we can expect an increasing number of bushfires with increases in population.

Dry conditions certainly result in plenty of fuel for bushfires and there is evidence of reduced cloud over various areas of the planet during the last 20 years. I have posted a fair number off references about that in this thread. The IPCC itself acknowledges that. Less cloud is associated with cleaner air. Water vapour needs cloud condensation or hygroscopic nuclei to form into cloud droplets.

davidm, that soft reference you posted is only Nerilie Abram's opinion in a popular science magazine. Did you look at the Table I cited that was based on 87 references. The comparison of figures in that Table are far more convincing to me than Nerilie Abram's version. Please have a look and also note that 12,000,000 acres (4.8 million hectares) were burnt out in Victoria alone in 1851 with a loss of 1,000,000 sheep and thousands of cattle -- and that was when the partial mini-ice-age had not begun to thaw out. If you read the account of that fire above, you may extrapolate that the loss of human life was also high. And by the way, nothing is scientifically indisputable (unless it's a basic definition that we all accept eg 2 plus 2 = 4). The best we can conclude scientifically about most things is that "The evidence suggests such and such." It is my opinion that the Wikipedia reference is much better researched and the data in the Table is much more objective than Nerilie Abram's. I note that the Wikipedia author makes a mention without comment on Nerilie Abram's article which suggests that he/she has been very thorough. I have one criticism of the Wikipedia article but I'll leave that for now.

Thanks TheVat for that reference, but I do check on that report from time to time. I must admit that I have lost some faith in the integrity of our Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) since they changed some of their primary data. in 2012 I cut and pasted some extensive Excel data on Insolation readings to compare with Maximum Temperature readings from about 20 Weather Stations distributed over Australia. The correlations were quite significant. In early 2019, when I was talking about Clouds and 'Climate Change' on this forum, I thought I would mention my findings, only to find on checking that the BOM figures for Insolation over the last 4 years had been adjusted downwards and this made my findings non-significant statistically. My attempts to find out why they had fiddled with the data only resulted in the statement that they had amended many figures in 2014. There is one researcher whose name eludes me at the moment and who has published two articles to my knowledge suggesting manipulation of data by BOM on recorded near-surface temperatures and on sea level measurements. He may be wrong, but then again, my own personal experience suggests a possibility that he could be right. It's a personal thing.

Yes Serpent, you are correct. Time will tell. But in fact I do see that one of our main problems appears to be that people DID take the first warnings seriously. James Hansen is the father of 'Global Warming'. He coined the term and he suggested that the United Nations set up an Intergovernmental panel on 'climate change'. And he suggested that increasing carbon dioxide emissions was the main cause on theoretical grounds alone (without duplicating Tyndall's experiment quantitatively). After 23 years, nobody appears to have EVALUATED the success or failure of our ATTEMPTS to reduce temperatures by reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. The Cape Grim and Mauna Loa graphs of carbon dioxide show no signs of even a blip since the Kyoto Protocol or the Marakesh Accord. (Yes, I know about China and India). But all we seem to be calling for, world-wide, is more of the same.

The IPCC acknowledges cloud as an area of possible approach, but so far, there appears to be no coordinated field of attack and our financial resources are being invested in an approach that so far, after 23 years, has yielded no positive results.

If the IPCC were paid on results, I believe they would go broke.

[TheVat]

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/1 ... 9283-7.pdf

Current study in atmospheric science journal on oceanic warming.

[Graeme M]

"The ocean heating is irrefutable, and a key measure of the Earth’s energy imbalance: the excess GHGs in the air trap
more heat inside the climate system and drives global warming. More than 90% of the heat accumulates in the ocean because of its large heat capacity, and the remaining heating manifests as atmospheric warming, a drying and warming landmass, and melting of land and sea ice. There are no reasonable alternatives aside from anthropogenic emissions of heat-trapping gases".

I have seen endless discussion about this but it still makes me wonder. The only way that rising GHGs can warm the oceans if on average air temps above the oceans are warmer than sea surface temps. Is this really likely? Or would global brightening be more likely to be associated with this? Direct radiative warming from solar insolation always seems more likely as the source of oceanic heating.

I see Joe Bastardi commenting about an anomalous MJO at present which apparently has led to an unusually cloudless sky over the Idina Ocean north-west of Australia. I wonder how many such events have occurred in the past 20-30 years?

[doogles]

Thanks for that reference TheVat. Just outside of the meat of the article itself, it was interesting to see its publication date as Feb 2020. I've never seen an article before with an advance publication date.

I also see that Michael E Mann of the 'Hockey Stick' graph fame is a co-author.

I have no personal doubts that the oceanic and the average global near-surface temperatures will continue to steadily rise and that we will see plenty of evidence of that in the scientific journals.

I'm having a problem with carbon dioxide being cited as THE cause as I have elaborated in earlier posts. I notice that this article even begins with the statement "Human-emitted greenhouse gases (GHGs) have resulted in a long-term and unequivocal warming of the planet (IPCC, 2019)."

Yet I've seen no replication of Tyndall's experiment; I've seen no serious criticism of Idso's 8 experiments in which he produced evidence that a doubling of carbon dioxide will result in maybe only a 0.4 degreees C rise in average global near-surface temperatures, and I've seen absolutely no evidence of any kind that that the current world expenditure on reduction of carbon dioxide emissions has resulted in any slow-down of either the world GHG emissions or the slowly increasing temperatures.

Graeme M's suggestion about insolation being a main cause of ocean warming makes sense to me.

I've seen increasing amounts of literature suggesting that cloud cover has decreased in various parts of the world, and that a decrease in cloud cover results in far more radiative forcing than carbon dioxide, yet I don't see much literature on attempts to mitigate that situation. And I see no global plans for population slow-down either.

I would imagine that warming of the oceans would produce more water vapour, but unfortunately water vapour requires cloud condensation nuclei and hygroscopic nuclei to form into cloud. And the 'cleaner' we keep our atmosphere, the less we will have of these nuclei.

Graeme M, your reference to a Joe Bastardi was lost on me. Could you elaborate on that?

[Graeme M]

Doogles, Joe Bastardi is some weather forecasting guy from the States. I have seen his name mentioned a fair bit but don't know anything about him. This video of his a week or two back mentions a very interesting current state of the Madden-Julian oscillation. https://youtu.be/7GmxNkDQntA

[TheVat]

Doog,

I wish I had more free time to chase down post-Tyndall experiments. A while back, somewhere in this forum, I did post links that showed that Tyndall's experiment was rarely repeated (except in science classes, which I also linked) because better methods had been developed to demonstrate how heat is absorbed/emitted by GHGs. I regret I must leave this basic researching to the interested reader. Also, remember that most of the degree rise is due to feedback mechanisms rather than just radiative forcing. Again, this has been discussed, and linked, many many times. I will keep posting links, when I find time, but my role here is going to shift largely to monitoring and making sure that guidelines on posting, peer review, and referencing, are adhered to.

[doogles]

I note that John D said in the thread 'Seek and ye shall Find', "Fact of the matter is we all need to discuss every aspect of what is and what needs to be done and see about setting up steps for action to be realised." I like the sentiment, but I do not see it being applied by the IPCC to Climate Change.

I personally attempt to be objective and realistic about all of life's situations using evidence-based arguments of all aspects of problems where appropriate.

I've pointed out many times that the thrust of the IPCC for the last 23 years since the Kyoto Protocol has been to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in an attempt to slow down or reverse the slowly but steadily-rising average near-surface global temeratures (ANSGT). But in spite of all the efforts, there is no significant change in the atmospheric carbon dioxide graphs from Cape Grim or Mauna Loa.

One of the main theories driving these, so far fruitless, attempts to reduce emissions is based on a calculation that a doubling of the carbon dioxide from 300 to 600 ppm will cause an increase of average near-surface global temperatures of maybe 2.5 to 3 degrees C.

I've been having another look at Idso's 1998 paper (https://www.int-res.com/articles/cr/10//c010p069.pdf) in which he uses officially-recorded data to establish a factor which he called the surface air temperature sensitivity factor (SATSF) which can be used to convert surface radiative estimations into degrees C. In this paper he calculated that a doubling of carbon dioxide from 300 to 600 ppm would result in an increase in ANSGT of no more than 0.4 degrees C.

Idso is a very experienced Climate Scientist. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherwood_B._Idso), "Idso is the author or co-author of over 500 publications including the books Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? (1982) and Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition (1989). He served on the editorial board of the international journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology from 1973 to 1993 and since 1993 has served on the editorial board of Environmental and Experimental Botany. Over the course of his career, he has been an invited reviewer of manuscripts for 56 different scientific journals and 17 different funding agencies, representing an unusually large array of disciplines. He is an ISI highly cited researcher.[5][6]"

I was intrigued to find that none of his work appears in any of the reference lists of either the 2001 IPCC Report nor in the 2019 modification of the 2016 Report.

Yet in the 1998 paper, he summarised 8 experiments using officially collected data, as distinct from theoretical models to produce his SATSF which ranged from 0.071 degrees C per Watt/m2 to 0.196 degrees C per W/m2, depending whether the measurements were made near the ocean or land masses. He received criticism for his first 3 experiments conducted at Phoenix, Alabama (first 2) and for one using data from 81 weather stations throughout the USA, on the basis that the results he found may have been applicable only to the USA, and he acknowledged that those criticisms were scientifically valid.

Subsequently, he obtained similar 'ball park' figures using data for his 4th experiment using whole world data. The mean global warming effect of the whole atmosphere is 33.6 degrees C, which when divided by the mean flux of thermal radiation that originates with the atmosphere and which would be non-existent without it is 348 Wm-2. The world SATSF figure came out at 0.097 degrees C per Wm-2. The 5th one used officially gathered Pole to Pole data and came up with two distinct sets of results -- a SATSF of 0.196 from 90 NS to 63 NS and of 0.09 from 63 NS to the equator. The 6th involved officially agreed data on the CO2 atmospheres of Mars and Venus. He concluded that present day Earth would yield a mean warming of 0.4 degrees C for a doubling of CO2 from 300 to 600 ppm. I could not follow the rationale of the 7th experiment but it involved use of estimates of the luminosity of the sun from 3.5 billion years ago and estimates of the amount of carbon dioxide necessary to support life from that time. His 8th experiment was very simple and straightforward. He used the data from other researchers "who used airborne radiometric measurements and sea surface temperature data to evaluate its magnitude over the equatorial Pacific. Their direct measurements reveal that a 14.0 W m–2 increase in downward-directed thermal radiation at the surface of the sea increases surface water temperatures by 1.0°C; and dividing the latter of these 2 numbers by the former yields a surface water temperature sensitivity factor of 0.071°C/(W m–2)."

Nobody appears to have questioned the last 5 experiments.

If he is correct, this means that carbon dioxide is only about one third to one tenth of the threat in being a cause of uncontrollable increases in ANSGTs, and that the IPCC may have been a bit remiss in not considering all of the evidence from qualified people.

I'm not a Climate Scientist, but I favour Idso over the IPCC because Idso's main thrust is in the manipulation of experimental data, while the IPCC appears to have been pre-occupied with theoretical models.

I would appreciate any evidence-based or logical input to show that Idso is incorrect. If he is correct then we have to look for other reasons for the slight increases in ANSGTs. Idso himself has suggested some reasons if anybody is interested in making the effort to read his 1998 article. He expressed the opinion that the warming of the planet over the last 100 years may be highly unrelated to the concurrent rise in carbon dioxide. He mentions possible roles of the sun, of natural recovery from the little ice age, and of cloud.

You may remember earlier in this thread that I discussed a 1989 article by Ramanathan et al in which they had found an increase of 4 Wm-2 in surface radiative forcing associated with a 3% reduction in cloud cover. Idso has given us a factor (SATSF) of maybe 0.15 degrees C per Wm-2 which would credit cloud-reduction with 0.6 degrees of the 1.0 degrees C warming over the last 100 years. So far, land-based cloud reduction has been studied only in some localised areas and not widely enough yet to make global predictions. But it's a start on which we can " ... discuss every aspect of what is and what needs to be done and see about setting up steps for action ... ".

I just do not understand why his opinions have not been considered by the IPCC, whose efforts over a generation to date have achieved zilch in a either a reduction of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide or of a steady temperature rise.

[TheVat]

C02 reduction is failing due to rapid industrialization in large Asian countries and production keeping pace with the more than a billion people added to Earth in the 23 year period you mention. Also, feedback effects - see my new post yesterday on the permafrost melts - continue to play out. And any successful mitigation will not quickly remove CO2 that's already been added. And, as you surely know, methane and NOx are also key players. Mankind can only hope to slow the effects of all those GHGs and allow time for more comprehensive solutions.

The "thrust" of the IPCC is not just on CO2, but on all the GHGs, and also diesel soot and nanoparticles,
so it's not fair to say they are solely focused on carbon emissions.

[TheVat]

I'm not a Climate Scientist, but I favour Idso over the IPCC because Idso's main thrust is in the manipulation of experimental data, while the IPCC appears to have been pre-occupied with theoretical models.

Duly noted. However, the IPCC is composed of climatologists and atmospheric chemists and so on who have plenty of input that is experimental data. So, again, I would warn against giving too much credence to sources that falsely characterize the IPCCs work - sometimes that is a source with an agenda serving the fossil fuel industry and looking for a strawman argument to undercut the findings of dedicated and scrupulous scientists. The IPCC, a consortium of thousands of climate scientists, is very much data driven.

[TheVat]

I would appreciate any evidence-based or logical input to show that Idso is incorrect. If he is correct then we have to look for other reasons for the slight increases in ANSGTs.

If you know the rules of this forum, and of science generally, you know that the burden of evidence is upon Idso to demonstrate that he is correct. And his work should be reproducible, around the world, from many other researchers. Sagan's Law is pertinent here.