FROM QUORA

“It’s a fact, we can’t be more sure; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”, Professor Ed Hawkins told the BBC. What do you think? We’ve known CO2 trapped infrared light and increase air temperatures since experiments in the 1850s. The first calculation of what this might mean was published by Arrhenius in the 1890s. Neato factoid I just heard: he’s one of Greta Thunberg’s ancestors. I’m really not sure how I missed that before. By the late 1970s there was no doubt that warming was occurring. When we sent satellites up with sensors which could detect atmosphere temperatures across large areas and correlated the findings with them, it was clear that global warming was indeed occurring. There was very little scientific doubt in the 1980s when the UN established the IPCC, produced the first report and the Kyoto Protocol was drafted. There was far more than enough evidence 40 years ago to know that climate change was real, serious and caused by us. The only doubts were how serious, how soon and what we would do about it. And the last 40 years has been an abject lesson in the power of propaganda, funded by the fossil fuel industry which is the primary source of greenhouse gases globally. Of course, within the past couple of years we’ve achieved the gold standard of evidence, 99.9999% confidence that the temperature changes we’ve been seeing are caused by us. So when a person acquainted with the evidence says in 2021 that “It’s a fact, we can’t be more sure; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”, I agree with them. The amount of uncertainty remaining, 0.0001%, is so insignificant that it’s not worth talking about. Unless you are a climate change denying idiot or fossil fuel industry PR flak or lobbyist. The former is biased, ignorant and likely stupid. The latter is venal, biased and possibly ignorant and stupid. Keeping Quora’s signal to noise ratio higher. The new IPCC report has the deniers on Quora all riled up, raising them from their drunken day sleep, keyboard patterns on their cheeks, week-old food on their shirts , their fists shaking at clouds. As a request from your non-sponsor, make Quora bit better for yourself and others when you see a denier in action. Go to their profiles. Report or downvote as much of their content as you can stomach. Report them for whichever of the many Quora policies they have violated, from harassment to insincere questions to inappropriate credentials. This will not only improve your feed as you’ll see less of their content, but improve the feeds for everyone else using Quora as well. Pass it forward.

RESPONSE: SINCE THE AUTHOR OF THE EMAIL CITED THE ED HAWKINS PAPER I WOULD LIKE TO ADD A FEW COMMENTS RELATIVE TO THAT PAPER. HERE IS THE ABSTRACT OF THE PAPER WITH LINK TO THE FULL TEXT.

Anderson, Thomas R., Ed Hawkins, and Philip D. Jones. “CO2, the greenhouse effect and global warming: from the pioneering work of Arrhenius and Callendar to today’s Earth System Models.” Endeavour 40.3 (2016): 178-187. Climate warming during the course of the twenty-first century is projected to be between 1.0 and 3.7 °C depending on future greenhouse gas emissions, based on the ensemble-mean results of state-of-the-art Earth System Models (ESMs). Just how reliable are these projections, given the complexity of the climate system? The early history of climate research provides insight into the understanding and science needed to answer this question. We examine the mathematical quantifications of planetary energy budget developed by Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) and Guy Stewart Callendar (1898–1964) and construct an empirical approximation of the latter, which we show to be successful at retrospectively predicting global warming over the course of the twentieth century. This approximation is then used to calculate warming in response to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases during the twenty-first century, projecting a temperature increase at the lower bound of results generated by an ensemble of ESMs (as presented in the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). This result can be interpreted as follows. The climate system is conceptually complex but has at its heart the physical laws of radiative transfer. This basic, or “core” physics is relatively straightforward to compute mathematically, as exemplified by Callendar’s calculations, leading to quantitatively robust projections of baseline warming. The ESMs include not only the physical core but also climate feedbacks that introduce uncertainty into the projections in terms of magnitude, but not sign: positive (amplification of warming). As such, the projections of end-of-century global warming by ESMs are fundamentally trustworthy: quantitatively robust baseline warming based on the well-understood physics of radiative transfer, with extra warming due to climate feedbacks. These projections thus provide a compelling case that global climate will continue to undergo significant warming in response to ongoing emissions of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. FULL TEXT https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160932716300308

AND HERE ARE SOME OF MY COMMENTS ABOUT THIS PAPER.

#1: QUOTE: “The early history of climate research provides insight into the understanding and science needed to answer this question. We examine the mathematical quantifications of planetary energy budget developed by Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) and Guy Stewart Callendar (1898–1964) and construct an empirical approximation of the latter, which we show to be successful at retrospectively predicting global warming over the course of the twentieth century”

RESPONSE:

ARRHENIUS WAS USING THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT OF CO2 AND H20 OVER TIME SCALES OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS TO EXPLAIN GLACIATION CYCLES. HIS THEORY OF GLACIATION CYCLES HAS SINCE BEEN DISCREDITED AND DISCARDED IN FAVOR OF THE MILANKOVITCH THEORY. IN ANY CASE, THE INTERPRETATION OF THE WORK OF ARRHENIUS IN TERMS OF INTERGLACIAL WARMING AND COOLING CYCLES AT MILLENNIAL AND CENTENNIAL TIME SCALES IS NOT POSSIBLE.

AS FOR GUY CALLENDAR, HE HAD DETERMINED, USING A CLIMATE SENSITIVITY OF ecs=2, THAT THE WARMING FROM 1900 TO 1936 WAS CAUSED BY RISING ATMOSPHERIC CO2 FROM THE BURNING OF COAL IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION BY WAY OF THE HEAT TRAPPING EFFECT OF CO2 DESCRIBED BY TYNDAL. HOWEVER, THIS WORK OF CALLENDAR IS DISCREDITED BY THE SO CALLED ETCW ISSUE IN CLIMATE SCIENCE DESCRIBED IN A RELATED POST: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/10/09/the-etcw-issue-in-climate-science/

BRIEFLY, THE ETCW ISSUE IN CLIMATE SCIENCE IS THAT WARMING FROM THE TURN OF THE CENTURY TO 1950 CANNOT BE EXPLAINED IN TERMS OF ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING (AGW) SUCH THAT IT IS SOME KIND OF ANOMALY FOR WHICH CLIMATE SCIENCE HAS NO EXPLANATION. THUS, THE ETCW PRETTY MUCH WIPES POOR OLD CALLENDAR OFF THE MAP.

MORE ON THE CALLENDAR PAPER: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/06/29/peer-review-comments-on-callendar-1938/

AS FOR WARMING “SINCE PRE-INDUSTRIAL” BY WAY OF THE FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS OF THE INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY, THE ETCW ANOMALY PRETTY MUCH WIPES OUT THE ORIGINAL IPCC AND CLIMATE SCIENCE POSITION THAT THE REFERENCE PRE-INDUSTRIAL YEAR WAS 1760.

IT HAS SINCE BEEN MOVEUP UP TO 1850 AND LATER TO 1950. CURRENTLY, NASA AND CLIMATE SCIENCE IN GENERAL HOLDS THAT THE REFERENCE PRE-INDUSTRIAL YEAR WHEN THE FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION STARTED THE GLOBAL WARMING WAS THE YEAR 1950 WHEN THE 1940S COOLING HAD BOTTOMED OUT AND WARMING TREND HAD BEGUN.

THESE DETAILS SHOW THAT THE CLIMATE SCIENCE THEORY OF ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT AS BLACK AND WHITE AS PEOPLE THINK IT IS.

YET ANOTHER COMPLICATION IN THE THEORY OF ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING THAT IS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN IS THE EXTREME UNCERTAINTY IN THE ECS CLIMATE SENSITIVITY – THE AMOUNT OF WARMING EXPECTED FROM A DOUBLING OF CARBON DIOXIDE. THE STANDARD IPCC POSITION IS THAT ECS=3 WITH AN UNCERTAINTY DESCRIBED AS 3 +/- 1.5, IN OTHER WORDS CLIMATE SENSITIVITY IS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 1.5 AND 4.5, A HUGE RANGE THAT CREATES WILDLY DIFFERENT FORECASTS OF HOW BAD IT WILL GET EXCEPT THAT THE UNCERTAINTY ISSUE IS ACTUALLY WORSE THAN THAT AS EXPLAINED IN THIS RELATED POST: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/10/the-climate-sensitivity-issue/ THE BOTTOM LINE IN THE ECS UNCERTAINTY ISSUE IS THAT “YES WE KNOW THAT CO2 CAUSES WARMING BUT WE DON’T REALLY KNOW HOW MUCH EXACTLY.

THESE VEXING HEADACHES WITH THE CLIMATE SENSITIVITY ISSUE DROVE CLIMATE SCIENCE TO ABANDON THE ECS ALTOGETHER WITH A NEW THEORY CALLED “TRANSIENT CLIMATE RESPONSE TO CUMULATIVE EMISSIONS” OR TCRE. IT SAYS THAT THE AMOUNT OF WARMING IS PROPORTIONAL TO CUMULATIVE EMISSIONS. HOWEVER, AS IT TURNED OUT, THE TCRE DID NOT SAVE CLIMATE SCIENCE FROM THE ECS UNCERTAINTY ISSUE. IT ENTICED CLIMATE SCIENCE INTO DEEPER AND MORE HORRIFIC STATISTICAL ERRORS THAN WHAT IT NORMALLY COMMITS, AS EXPLAINED IN RELATED POSTS ON STATISTICAL ERRORS IN CLIMATE SCIENCE LINKED BELOW.

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/18/climate-science-vs-statistics/