Lacis et al 2010

It seems this is considered something of a 'key study', as it was presented to me as evidence for a greenhouse gas effect; AKA man-made climate change and anthropogenic global warming, AGW.

The difference between the nominal global mean surface temperature (TS = 288 K) and the global mean effective temperature (TE = 255 K) is a common measure of the terrestrial greenhouse effect (GT = TS – TE = 33 K).

<- This statement in Lacis' paper is a not true. I will call it a straight lie because the reasons why it's not true have been explained to Lacis et al, time and again. Yet they continue to use their priveledge, as scientists or academics to mislead in the academic literature by, essentially publishing speculation. There is no 'terrestrial greenhouse effect' = 33 K.

By 'terrestrial greenhouse effect' they mean two things:

1. warming of earth's surface by +33K above what it would otherwise be (without the effect)
2. the cause of this 'warming' being ONLY due to "radiative gases" such as CO2, H2O, ... in earth's atmosphere which are able to absorb and emit infrared radiation due to electron orbital transitions.

This, above quote, is a speculative statement made by Lacis and co. There is no empirical science in their paper to show it. They did no empirical work to arrive at their conclusion. It's speculation. They made it u, or rather, they repeated other people's speculations.

Besides direct solar heating of the ground, there is also indirect longwave (LW) warming arising from the thermal radiation that is emitted by the ground, then absorbed locally within the atmosphere, from which it is re-emitted in both upward and downward directions

<- They don't cite a single source to show any "indirect longwave warming of the 'ground'". Once again they made it up. It is not science. There isn't a single study they refer back to which empirically shows what they claim. BTW: by 'ground' they mean earth's surface. Don't forget that 70% of earth's surface is water. But I'll let them off here; after all they clearly wrote their paper in a hurry for maximum rhetorical effect.

This radiative interaction is the greenhouse effect, which was first discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824 verified by John Tyndall in 1863 (3), and quantified by Svante Arrhenius in 1896

<- Yet more lies, Joseph Fourier did not 'discover' a greenhouse effect in 1824. Tyndall verifies nothing, Arrhenius quantified nothing. None of these 3 men did any experimental or empirical work to show earth's surface warmed due these so-called greenhouse gases. They just announced it. A bit like the mythical planet X, or the mammal population where COVID-19 was supposedly living before it crossed over to humanity. Pure speculation. It does not matter how many experts and scientists speculate. The speculation of 1 million scientists is not more true than that of one. Speculation is just word salad. It is not 'science'. It becomes science when a hypothesis is testable. When the hypothesis is written in such a way that experiments and tests are implied such that projections of the idea can be compared to the real world when both are subject to the same circumstances.

These studies established long ago that water vapor and CO2 are indeed the principal terrestrial GHGs. Now, further consideration shows that CO2 is the one that controls climate change.

<- Yet another lie. CO2 does not control 'climate change'. No study done even attempts to show that. Lacis does not cite such a study.

CO2 is a well-mixed gas that does not condense or precipitate from the atmosphere. Water vapor and clouds, on the other hand, are highly active components of the climate system that respond rapidly to changes in temperature and air pressure by evaporating, condensing, and precipitating. This identifies water vapor and clouds as the fast feedback processes in the climate system.

<- That last paragraph was almost honest; but has an error and a lie in it. Lacis says:

Water vapor and clouds, ... respond rapidly to changes in temperature and air pressure by evaporating, condensing, and precipitating.

No. Clouds do not evaporate in any meaningful way. Evaporation of liquid water happens at the surface.

This identifies water vapor and clouds as the fast feedback processes in the climate system.

<- Lacis added the word feedback out-of-the-blue. Like a magician, he conjures 'feedback' into his system by just saying it. Not with any science, or experiment. He made it up (again)

We'll pause here because in the next sentence they say "experiment" - which is a scientific term. To be treated seriously. Prior to that everything else in the first side (displayed above) is speculation and modelling layered on top of more speculation & modelling. It is "not even wrong"; because it is not even science.

Note: For the purpose of this refutation

• Lacis - means Lacis et al - all the authors. We summarize it with Lacis because he's the corresponding author.
• 'greenhouse effect', GHE, 'greenhouse gas effect', GHGE, both mean the same thing. They are supposed due to these greenhouse gases, GHG, mainly CO2 and H2O. The words are, essentially owned by the climate alarmist political party of which Lacis is a typical example.

Why is earth's surface warmer?

Earth is warmer at the surface, due to our atmosphere, because of adiabatic compression. First described by James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century in his book "Theory of Heat". To put it simply. Gravity causes the atmosphere closer to the surface to be more dense, than that further away. The ideal gas law: PV = nRT describes this. Rearranging for T
T = P • V / (n • R). R is a constant and n is the number of atoms. T = temperature, P = pressure, V = volume. The more dense the atmosphere, the warmer it is.

Adiabatic compression is found on all planets and moons with a thick atmosphere. Denser atmosphere is warmer. It is densest when closest to the surface. When a mine shaft is dug the Lapse rate continues and temperature continues to increase below the surface level as the air gets denser still. Whether the shaft is covered, or not, it is warmer than the surface. When covered, there can be no backradiation warming it! Just the adiabatic compression. With a greenhouse gas effect, how would be air below a covered mine shaft be irradiated with back-radiation?

Adiabatic compression leads to a Lapse rate in the planet/moon's troposphere.

Many of the warmest places on earth are found below sea level on land in depressions; at locations such as the Dead Sea, Death Valley, Dallot (Afar depression in Ethiopia).

Fourier, Tyndall, and Arrhenius can all be forgiven for not knowing about the atmosphere's of planets and moons. Activist scientists such as Lacis et al cannot be forgiven.

In the diagram above, some of these solar system bodies have next to no greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, others such as Venus are nearly all greenhouse gas. Venus's atmosphere is 96% CO2, and its atmospheric mass is 95 times earth's. Yet it's greenhouse gas effect, if any, doesn't give it a significantly different Lapse Rate to any other planet. Venus is very warm because it has a very thick atmosphere. Even though Venus has a quarter million times more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere than earth, there is no greenhouse gas effect there - just strong adiabatic warming at the surface.

	million km from sun	atmospheric composition
Neptune	4474	80% hydrogen, 19% helium, trace methane
Uranus	2871	82.5% hydrogen, 15% helium, trace methane, water and ammonia
Titan	1400	95% nitrogen, 5% methane
Saturn	1400	75% hydrogen, 25% helium, trace methane & water vapour
Jupiter	778	73% hydrogen, 25% helium, trace: methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide
Earth	93	78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, ~0.5% water vapour, trace: carbon dioxide
Venus	68	96.5% carbon dioxide, 3.5% Nitrogen, trace: sulfur dioxide: 150ppm, Argon 70ppm; Water: 20ppm, Carbon Monoxide: 17ppm

Greenhouse gases are written in salmon/pink
Mars is not shown as the surface atmosphere is below 0.1bar. It should not show a Lapse rate.
Only Titan and Venus have significant 'greenhouse gas'.
Titan is a moon of Saturn. Titan has more greenhouse gas than Saturn. But why is Saturn's Lapse rate more pronounced than Titan's?

Climate influence on early modern European grain prices

The paper, by 6 Europeans: Ljungqvist, Thejll, Christiansen, Seim, Hartl & Esper is published in Cliometrica 16, 29–77 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-021-00224-7

Abstract

Grain was the most important food source in early modern Europe (c. 1500–1800), and its price influenced the entire economy. The extent to which climate variability determined grain price variations remains contested, and claims of solar cycle influences on prices are disputed. We thoroughly reassess these questions, within a framework of comprehensive statistical analysis, by employing an unprecedentedly large grain price data set together with state-of-the-art palaeoclimate reconstructions and long meteorological series. A highly significant negative grain price–temperature relationship (i.e. colder = high prices and vice versa) is found across Europe. This association increases at larger spatial and temporal scales and reaches a correlation of −0.41 considering the European grain price average and previous year June–August temperatures at annual resolution, and of −0.63 at decadal timescales. This strong relationship is of episodic rather than periodic (cyclic) nature. Only weak and spatially inconsistent signals of hydroclimate (precipitation and drought), and no meaningful association with solar variations, are detected in the grain prices. The significant and persistent temperature effects on grain prices imply that this now rapidly changing climate element has been a more important factor in European economic history, even in southern Europe, than commonly acknowledged.

No Trick Zone discussion

Reblog: Physicist Howard Hayden’s one-letter disproof of global warming claims

Reblog from OP at mises.org

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Physicist Howard Hayden’s one-letter disproof of global warming claims

October 29, 2009 - 12:00 AMStephan Kinsella [1]

Physicist Howard Hayden, a staunch advocate of sound energy policy, sent me a copy of his letter [2] to the EPA about global warming. The text is also appended below, with permission.

As noted in my post Access to Energy [3], Hayden helped the late, great Petr Beckmann found the dissident physics [4] journal Galilean Electrodynamics [5] (brochures and further Beckmann info here [6]; further dissident physics links [4]). Hayden later began to publish his own pro-energy newsletter, The Energy Advocate [7], following in the footsteps of Beckmann’s own journal Access to Energy [8]I love Hayden’s email sign-off, “People will do anything to save the world … except take a course in science.” Here’s the letter:

***

Howard C. Hayden
785 S. McCoy Drive
Pueblo West, CO 81007

October 27, 2009

The Honorable Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20460

Dear Administrator Jackson:

I write in regard to the Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, Proposed Rule, 74 Fed. Reg. 18,886 (Apr. 24, 2009), the so-called “Endangerment Finding.”

It has been often said that the “science is settled” on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.

The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.

Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.

We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.

Let me next address the horror story that we are approaching (or have passed) a “tipping point.” Anybody who has worked with amplifiers knows about tipping points. The output “goes to the rail.” Not only that, but it stays there. That’s the official worry coming from the likes of James Hansen (of NASA­GISS) and Al Gore.

But therein lies the proof that we are nowhere near a tipping point. The earth, it seems, has seen times when the CO2 concentration was up to 8,000 ppm, and that did not lead to a tipping point. If it did, we would not be here talking about it. In fact, seen on the long scale, the CO2 concentration in the present cycle of glacials (ca. 200 ppm) and interglacials (ca. 300-400 ppm) is lower than it has been for the last 300 million years.

Global-warming alarmists tell us that the rising CO2 concentration is (A) anthropogenic and (B) leading to global warming.

(A) CO2 concentration has risen and fallen in the past with no help from mankind. The present rise began in the 1700s, long before humans could have made a meaningful contribution. Alarmists have failed to ask, let alone answer, what the CO2 level would be today if we had never burned any fuels. They simply assume that it would be the “pre-industrial” value.

• The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as water warms, and increases as water cools. The warming of the earth since the Little Ice Age has thus caused the oceans to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.

(B) The first principle of causality is that the cause has to come before the effect. The historical record shows that climate changes precede CO2 changes. How, then, can one conclude that CO2 is responsible for the current warming?

Nobody doubts that CO2 has some greenhouse effect, and nobody doubts that CO2 concentration is increasing. But what would we have to fear if CO2 and temperature actually increased?

• A warmer world is a better world. Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is overwhelming that warmer is better.
• The higher the CO2 levels, the more vibrant is the biosphere, as numerous experiments in greenhouses have shown. But a quick trip to the museum can make that case in spades. Those huge dinosaurs could not exist anywhere on the earth today because the land is not productive enough. CO2 is plant food, pure and simple.
• CO2 is not pollution by any reasonable definition.
• A warmer world begets more precipitation.
• All computer models predict a smaller temperature gradient between the poles and the equator. Necessarily, this would mean fewer and less violent storms.
• The melting point of ice is 0 ºC in Antarctica, just as it is everywhere else. The highest recorded temperature at the South Pole is -14 ºC, and the lowest is -117 ºC. How, pray, will a putative few degrees of warming melt all the ice and inundate Florida, as is claimed by the warming alarmists?

Consider the change in vocabulary that has occurred. The term global warming has given way to the term climate change, because the former is not supported by the data. The latter term, climate change, admits of all kinds of illogical attributions. If it warms up, that’s climate change. If it cools down, ditto. Any change whatsoever can be said by alarmists to be proof of climate change.

In a way, we have been here before. Lord Kelvin “proved” that the earth could not possibly be as old as the geologists said. He “proved” it using the conservation of energy. What he didn’t know was that nuclear energy, not gravitation, provides the internal heat of the sun and the earth.

Similarly, the global-warming alarmists have “proved” that CO2 causes global warming.

Except when it doesn’t.

To put it fairly but bluntly, the global-warming alarmists have relied on a pathetic version of science in which computer models take precedence over data, and numerical averages of computer outputs are believed to be able to predict the future climate. It would be a travesty if the EPA were to countenance such nonsense.

Best Regards,

Howard C. Hayden
Professor Emeritus of Physics, UConn

Update: Global warming, false science, and one-world government [9]