Real Climate Science

To better visualize the absurdity of the runaway greenhouse idea, I did RRTM runs for the tropical atmosphere – with increasing amounts of CO2. That is represented by the blue line below. The red line shows the same experiment with no water vapor in the atmosphere.

The first thing to note is that without water vapor, the Earth would be very cold, no matter how much CO2 there was in the atmosphere. The CO2 runaway greenhouse idea is beyond ludicrous.

The second thing to note is that in the real atmosphere (with water vapor) the effect of even huge increases in CO2 is minimal.

Now here is the real kicker. In the real atmosphere, a doubling of CO2 to 550ppm has almost no effect in the tropics. Downwelling LW radiation only increases by 0.2% from 397.1 to 397.7 w/m^2.

Thanks everyone!

Gusting over 70MPH at NCAR today. Most days this month have had wind gusts over 40 MPH. A huge branch just broke off on to the roof of my house.

http://www.eol.ucar.edu/

[UPDATE : Correction below. It doesn’t change the conclusion.]

I tried an experiment on RRTM – the radiative transfer model used by NCAR’s climate and weather models – which shows how ridiculous the Hansen/Sagan runaway greenhouse effect is. The control run used current conditions in the tropics – 299K, 2% H20, 393 ppm CO2. This is what it produced :

 LEVEL    PRESSURE   UPWARD FLUX   DOWNWARD FLUX    NET FLUX       HEATING RATE
             mb          W/m2          W/m2           W/m2          degree/day
   0     1013.         459.2934      397.0788        62.2146           -2.92635

The downward LW flux at the surface is 397 w/m2. Next I tried the same experiment with a 95% CO2/0% water atmosphere, which is similar to Venus :

[UPDATE : The numbers below are incorrect. It turns out that the model is not stable at 95% CO2]

 LEVEL PRESSURE UPWARD FLUX DOWNWARD FLUX NET FLUX HEATING RATE mb W/m2 W/m2 W/m2 degree/day    0     1013.         459.2930       36.8353       422.4577           -0.50246

The downward LW flux drops to less than one-tenth of the normal atmosphere.

[UPDATE : Here are more accurate numbers at 60% CO2]

Next I tried the same experiment with a 60% CO2/0% water atmosphere. That is 1,500 times more CO2 than the atmosphere actually has.

 LEVEL    PRESSURE   UPWARD FLUX   DOWNWARD FLUX    NET FLUX       HEATING RATE
             mb          W/m2          W/m2           W/m2          degree/day
   0     1013.         459.2943      308.5074       150.7869           -0.99265

The downwards LW flux drops by 23%. Snowball Earth.

Why? because H2O is by far the most important greenhouse gas. The absorption spectra of H2O at 1000mb is much wider than CO2. Without the high pressure on Venus, it would be a cold planet more like Mars – which also has 95% CO2.

Conclusion : the Sagan/Hansen runaway greenhouse effect is complete nonsense, and if Hansen was a competent climate modeler he would already know this.

In 1988, Hansenlocks was lost in the climate forest when she stumbled upon the home of three scenarios. She was hot from having sabotaged the air conditioner, and looked for some Kool-Aid to cool down.

First she tried scenario A, and that was too hot. Then she tried scenario B, and that was also too hot. Scenario C had been in the refrigerator for over a decade, but even that was too hot.

So Hansenlocks was embarrassed and moved to a different venue on Venus – where it was hot enough to melt lead and she could show off her golden locks.

The world’s “top-rated” climate scientist implies that 437 degrees is on the way real soon.

The top-rated climate scientist in the world, James Hansen from NASA stated, “If we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the run-away greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus Syndrome is a dead certainty.”

Venus has a temperature of 450°C (842°F), hot enough to melt lead. It once held water but the runaway greenhouse effect heated the planet so much that the water molecules were destroyed.

The sun’s energy hitting Earth is slightly more than half that of Venus. Burning the tar sands and tar shale could, over time, put Earth’s temperature to around 225°C (437°F).

http://www.bclocalnews.com/

h/t to Marc Morano

“[…] a marked increase in the number of weather-related events. For instance, globally, loss-related floods have more than tripled since 1980, and windstorm natural catastrophes more than doubled, with particularly heavy losses from Atlantic hurricanes. This rise cannot be explained without global warming. Worldwide, 2010 has been the warmest year since records began over 130 years ago.”

This supports the argument that we will see more frequent and more intense extreme weather events from climate change, such as floods, droughts, and storms. It also clearly stresses the need for pro-active adaptation. Pro-active adaptation refers to anticipatory strategies that help build capacity to deal with the future impacts of climate change. These strategies acknowledge that certain impacts of climate change are inevitable due to historic greenhouse gas emissions.

http://csr-asia.com/weekly_detail.php?id=12328

Truth and the global warming religion don’t mix. We are approaching 1,000 days since any hurricane hit the US. The longest hurricane free spell since before the Civil War.  The 1990s was one of the quietest decades on record for Atlantic hurricanes. HadCRUT, UAH and RSS all have 1998 as the warmest year.

Fires in Russia, droughts in the Southwest, and floods in Pakistan all have one thing in common, according to former Vice President Al Gore, and it’s that they’re all effects of global warming.

http://thinksb.com/

There is almost a balance with 30 gauge records showing deceleration and 27 showing acceleration, clustering around 0.0 mm/y2. The mean is a slight deceleration of
-0.0014 +/- 0.0161 mm/y2 (95%)

http://www.jcronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1

h/t to Jimbo

Over several months during fall and winter, dozens of volunteers fanned out across the Mojave Desert in search of the smallest Joshua tree they could find.

They were part of a project to determine whether Joshua Tree National Park will lose its namesake plants to global warming within the next century — a problem that park officials have been grappling with.

Previous studies painted a dire picture about the Joshua trees’ future. But scientist Cameron Barrows found the park’s plants are better adapted to handle drought and are less likely to give up so easily; he expects them to be reproducing in the park 100 years from now.

http://www.vvdailypress.com/