The Test and Failure of the AGW Paradigm

CO2 airborne fraction falling as temperatures rise.
Defying Modeled Expectations Again: The CO2 Airborne Fraction Has Been Declining Since 1959
By Kenneth Richard on 11. April 2022

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The ratio of the annual CO2 increase divided by the annual fossil fuel emission rate increase is referred to as the “airborne fraction.” It has long been assumed the airborne fraction should increase as fossil fuel emissions increase. But the opposite has happened.
Scientists have expressed consternation that the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions has not been rising to any significant degree since 1850 (Knorr, 2009). The lack of an increasing trend defies modeled expectations.

“Despite the predictions of coupled climate-carbon cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found.”

Image Source: Knorr, 2009
A new study (van Merle et al., 2022) suggests there is even more reason to assume there should be an increasing trend in the airborne fraction – especially since the late 1950s.

Not only have our fossil fuel CO2 emissions exploded from ~2.5 PgC/year to ~9.5 PgC/year in the last 60 years, but a massive increase in deforestation in tropical regions as well as a warming ocean and melting permafrost (contributing to outgassing) also suggest that natural land-ocean carbon sinks should not be expanding proportionately to emissions increases; instead, sinks should be stable to shrinking.

But this hasn’t happened.

Instead, the CO2 airborne fraction has not just been stable, it has been declining at a rate of -0.014 per decade since 1959.



Image Source: van Merle et al., 2022

 

Another blow against the AGW paradigm.
2 More New Studies Reaffirm The CO2-Drives-Climate-Change Paradigm Has A Magnitude Problem
By Kenneth Richard on 14. April 2022

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It takes 10 years and 22 ppm for CO2 to amass just 0.2 W/m² in total surface energy flux. In contrast, short-wave cloud radiative forcing fluctuations vary in amplitude by ±300 W/m² within hours.
Earth’s surface energy imbalance is said to have been positive, +0.6 W/m², during the first decade of this century (Stephens et al., 2012). Problematically, the uncertainty in this assumptive estimation is ±17 W/m², which means the imbalance could be anywhere from -16.4 W/m² to +17.6 W/m².



Image Source: Stephens et al., 2012
As Sedlar and colleagues emphasize in a new study, clouds “directly modify the solar and infrared radiation reaching the surface,” and the “net result of these energy fluxes determines the warming and cooling processes at the surface.”

Quantitatively, shortwave cloud forcing modulates Earth’s surface radiative flux in magnitudes that vary by ±300 W/m² and up to 600 W/m².

“As clouds typically attenuate shortwave radiation, CRFSW at the surface is negative, resulting in a relative cloud cooling effect (e.g., Ramanathan et al., 1989). The CRFSW observed for the two low cloud types shows a wide range, from quite strong, −600 W/m², to quite modest near 0 W/m² (Figure 10a). Subsequently, THFs respond to the modification of SWD by the cloud type. Under low stratiform periods, individual scatter points of Hs + Hl were frequently observed between 0 and 300 W/m² and correspond to a median CRFSW (black square within blue scatter) approximately −300 W/m².”

Image Source: Sedlar et al., 2022
. . . .

 

What alarmists fear most is evidence in favor of a solar climate hypothesis.
Climate Feedback Fact Checks CO2 Coalition
Andy May
By Andy May The Climate Feedback website critiques my CO2Coalition article “Attributing global warming to humans.” Their factcheck is here. Like most “fact checks” these days it is a thinly…

 

Another failure of the CO2 paradigm.
Radiosonde Temps Show Northern Hemisphere, Tropical Warming Has Mostly Paused Since 1998
By Kenneth Richard on 16. May 2022

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A new study indicates nearly all the Northern Hemisphere and Tropical warming in the last 40 years occurred by the late 1990s.
CO2 has risen by about 50 ppm since 1998 (367 to 418 ppm).

Interestingly, upper-air measurements of temperature from balloon-borne sensor radiosonde data, shown below in the image from a new study (Madonna et al., 2022), suggest there was more warming from the early 1980s to late 1990s – when CO2 only rose about 25 ppm (341 to 367 ppm) – than there has been this century.

Radiosonde measurements appear to depict mostly flat temperatures trends since 1998 in both the Northern Hemisphere (25°N to 70°N) and tropics (25°S to 25°N).

Image Source: Madonna et al., 2022

. . . .

 

Does this mean the "hot sport" isn't there?

Golly!

 

I will not repeat here what is increasingly obvious in other threads: the solar climate paradigm is shoving aside the AGW paradigm. As expected.

 

Telling point: in all the hysterical media coverage of this summer's heatwaves, I've yet to see a single mention of the fact that solar activity increased dramatically and unexpectedly this year.

 

Watts Up With That?

Greenhouse Efficiency

September 2, 2022

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Excerpt:

Buoyed by equal parts of derision and praise for my last post, “Surface Radiation: Absorption And Emission“, I once again venture into the arena. I had an odd thought. The temperature has been generally rising over the period 2000-2021. I wondered if there was a way I could measure the efficiency of the greenhouse effect to see if the warming was due to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs). If the GHGs were the cause, then the greenhouse effect would need to be more efficient in terms of warming the surface.

(snip)

To return to the question at hand, which is the efficiency of the greenhouse effect, here’s the temperature change during the period of the CERES satellite data.



LINK

=====

Another way of saying CO2 has a negligible warm effect in today's world.

 

Here is the follow up showing that CO2 is a negligible player at best for future warming possibilities.

Watts Up With That?

The Multiplier

September 3. 2022

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Excerpt:

This is a follow-on from my previous post entitled Greenhouse Equilibrium. If you haven’t read it, you might want to, as it introduces many of the concepts I’ll discuss in this post.

I got to thinking about the oft-repeated claim that a doubling of CO2 increases top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiative forcing by 3.7 watts per square meter (W/m2) … and that in turn, the additional 3.7 W/m2 of TOA forcing causes a ~3° warming of the temperature. In other words, they say that ~ 1.2 W/m2 of additional radiative forcing causes one degree of warming.

What set me to thinking was the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. It relates temperature to the amount of thermal radiation emitted. It turns out that the radiation varies as the fourth power of the temperature, T4. What this means is that the warmer an object is, the more energy needs to be added to the object to raise the object’s temperature by each additional degree.

So how much extra energy does it take to raise the temperature of the earth (which is at about 15°C) by one degree C?

LINK with charts included

 

This is under way.

Important new paper challenges IPCC’s claims about climate sensitivity
Posted on September 20, 2022 by niclewis | 33 comments
by Nic Lewis

Official estimates of future global warming may be overstated.

Continue reading →

Official estimates of future global warming may be overstated.

A brief summary in press release style of my new paper (written in the third person)

One of the most important conclusions of the recent 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6) was to reduce the uncertainty in estimates of climate sensitivity to doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since 1979, the likely range (66% chance) of climate sensitivity has been between 1.5°C and 4.5°C. This range has remained stubbornly wide, until the IPCC AR6 narrowed the likely range to be between 2.5°C and 4.0°C.

A new paper by independent scientist Nic Lewis published in the journal Climate Dynamics challenges the conclusions of the IPCC AR6 about climate sensitivity. Lewis’ analysis reduces the magnitude of climate sensitivity by one third, relative to the range provided by the IPCC AR6. These results suggest that future global warming in response to fossil fuel emissions could be significantly less than has been assumed by policy makers. . . .

 

More failure of the AGW paradigm to address ECS.

CMIP6 GCMs versus global surface temperatures: ECS discussion
Posted on September 25, 2022 by curryja | 38 comments
by Nicola Scafetta

Two publications examining the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) have recently been published in Climate Dynamics:

Scafetta, N. (2022a). CMIP6 GCM ensemble members versus global surface temperatures.

Lewis, N. (2022). Objectively combining climate sensitivity evidence.

Continue reading →

 

Another optic on the problem:

Why It Matters That Climatologists Forgot the Sun Was Shining
Guest Blogger
Yet our result shows that official climatology’s conclusions, based as they are on the outputs of general-circulation models, are mere guesswork. They do not in any degree warrant or justify…

". . . Why does any of this matter? It matters because, if we are right, two important scientific conclusions follow. First, by the energy-budget method it is possible to demonstrate that, using mainstream, midrange data, ECS is likely to be as little as 1.1 K, and is necessarily as little as that if one adopts climatology’s own not unreasonable assumption (critics would call it an “extrapolation”) that the feedback regime has not changed since 1850.

Secondly, once the extreme sensitivity of ECS to very small changes in the feedback regime is properly understood – as it is not at present understood in climatology – it becomes immediately self-evident that models’ outputs provide no basis whatsoever for deriving ECS values any better than guesswork, because the data uncertainties exceed the very narrow interval of system-gain factors that would allow reasonable constraint of ECS. . . ."

 

The AGW paradigm takes another hit.

New Study Claims The CO2 Increase Since 1850 Can Account For Only Half Of Modern Global Warming
By Kenneth Richard on 17. October 2022

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“The cause of global warming is still under debate.” – Choi and Manousiouthakis, 2022
Radiative models estimating the temperature effects of increasing CO2 to 420 ppm indicate 0.64°C of the alleged 1.2°C warming since the 19th century could be explained by CO2 increases.



Image Source: Choi and Manousiouthakis, 2022

 

The solar hypothesis requires that ocean heat content be, at a the highest, increasing at a decreasing rate, or holding steady or decreasing. Instead, we observe ocean heating increasing at an increasing rate. And thus the solar hypothesis crashes and burns.

This is top-of-the-line science here, not papers-for-a-fee written by denier cranks and tossed in vanity no-peer-review journals.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-022-00345-1
---
The rate of warming increased from <5 to ~10 ZJ yr−1 from the 1960s to the 2010s.
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The solar theory, as bad as it was, was all the deniers had, so they have nothing now. They can't explain the current fast warming, meaning their beliefs are purely religious in nature. Declaring that any data you don't like must be faked just confirms that religious nature. Actual scientists don't just handwave away data that contradicts them.

 

The "solar hypothesis" (whatever you mean by that) requires no such thing.
And I'm not sure you can base a definitive claim about anything on a paper whose abstract includes this language (bolding mine).
"This Review synthesizes estimates of past and future OHC changes using observations and models."

 

No it doesn't. Until we can elucidate the exact mechanisms whereby solar activity affects the earth's surface temperature, there is no such implication.

No we don't.

Nope. With every passing year, its superiority to CO2-centered climatology becomes more and more undeniable.

No it isn't. It's a pile of intelligence-insulting, anti-scientific garbage by all the usual AGW suspects -- even Lyin' Michael Mann, the inventor of Science by Lawsuit -- except their pals who pal-reviewed it.

Just pal-reviewed junk science in the service of AGW gaslighting.

If you ignore facts and just use cherry-picked proxies (Mann is the master of that fraud), models and estimates.

Except actual physical events, which have always proved, and will continue to prove, that the CO2-controls-surface-temperature wheeze is anti-scientific tripe.

Wrong again. The sun has (very unexpectedly) been extremely active this year. And before that, the earth had been cooling.

Climate realists are not the ones telling everyone they have to repent of their wicked ways or perish in brimstone and flame.

Unlike AGW hysteria mongers who deny that the natural factors that caused all previous climate changes could still be operative, climate realists don't pre-judge data.

"Data"?? You wish. From your silly "paper":

Got it? There aren't any credible empirical data that support your ridiculous CO2-centered climate hypothesis, that's why the pals constantly have to make $#!+ up, and retroactively alter the actual data to fit their proved-false theory.

 

You overlook the well-known understanding that the dominant source for warming the ocean waters is the SUN.

 

Entertaining and informative:

Willie Soon on the Tom Nelson Podcast
Charles Rotter
This CO2 stuff is…pure delusion. You cannot find any signature of that.

 

Another brick in the wall . . .
Detection Of A CO2 Climate Signal In Radiative Forcing Is Again Foiled By Clouds
By Kenneth Richard on 20. October 2022

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It so difficult to constrain errors in identifying the cloud impact on Earth’s radiation budget that the orders-of-magnitude smaller radiative impact of CO2 cannot be distinguished from noise.
According to a new study using CERES data, the observed biases in detecting the radiative effects of clouds on climate are 2.5 to 6.25 W/m² for longwave (LW) and shortwave (SW), respectively (Sun et al., 2022). Standard deviations in cloud radiative effects amount to 8 (LW) to 20 (SW) W/m². This variability and built-in estimation error wipes out the isolation of CO2 as a detectable factor in top of atmosphere (TOA) climate forcing.

This is because the cloud radiative effects (CRE) bias and standard deviation values are 15 to 100 times larger than the presumed cumulative surface radiative effects of CO2 forcing over a span of 10 years (0.2 W/m²).



Image Source: Sun et al., 2022

 

I'm now wondering how me saying:

"direct measurements of ocean temperature show that ocean temperatures are increasing at an increasing rate, which disproves the solar theory"

has you translating it as:

"the sun doesn't affect temperature."

Please, explain that for us.

 

So you admit you don't understand how the sun is causing the current fast warming, but you just _know_ it has to be the case, therefore all other theories are wrong.

That's pure religious mania on your part. It's about as far as a person can get from science.

You got to the "ANY DATA I DON'T LIKE IS FAKED!" stage quicker than you usually do. You're not even trying any more.

 

Why don't you explain what the solar hypothesis is? I need to pin you down on what it is before I can discuss it.

Make sure you tell us how that hypothesis explains past ocean and air temperatures. AGW theory explains them perfectly, after all, so your hypothesis needs to do so as well.

Then tell us what your hypothesis predicts in terms of ocean and air temperatures. AGW theory has done that, so you'll need to do the same.

Then tell us what observed data would _disprove_ your theory. If your theory can't be falsified, it's not science.

 

You're the one who made a claim about what "the solar hypothesis" requires. I suggest you should be the one to explain your own claim. I have no obligation to explain your post.

 

Right. Unlike the faith-driven, anti-fossil-fuel religious fanatics of CO2-centered climatology, I am willing to admit I don't know things that no one knows. Because your CO2 religion really is a religion, you do claim to know things that no one knows. I observe that the earth was cooling for several years while CO2 continued to rise; and then this year, when the sun unexpectedly became very active, the cooling trend appears to have been interrupted. I don't know what the causal mechanism is, although there are some plausible candidates. You, by contrast, claim to know with absolute certainty that the rapid increase in solar activity could not have caused an interruption of the cooling trend, and that CO2 must have caused it, even though CO2 was rising for several years while temperature was falling along with solar activity.

No, that is just another fabrication on your part, and another example of psychological projection: you are falsely and baselessly accusing me of that attitude because you are aware that it is your own attitude. I have made a judgment based on the available facts, and am prepared to be proved wrong -- but only by facts, by actual physical events. So far, all the actual physical events have shown that I am right and your CO2 religion is wrong.

No, not on my part, because it is something you have made up and falsely attributed to me as another example of psychological projection: you accuse me of religious faith based on zero (0) evidence because you are aware that your CO2 religion really is a religion.

Because it is your attitude, not mine.

I said nothing remotely resembling that. You simply made it up.

You're not even trying any more.

 

The explanation is very simple: like most of what you say about what climate realists say, you simply made it up. What you say he said does not resemble what he actually said.