This planet deserves a better class of climate denier
Consensus climate science is driven by a lack of criticism. Critical climate science is driven by a lack of competence. Both sides add to the impression of a settled science, with only idiots rejecting it. It is certainly a tragic story and to illustrate it, let me present a couple of examples to show what state the “critical side” is in. The named examples are not meant to ridicule the concerning individuals, but rather to discuss the prevailing incompetence, or disinterest in physics in general.
#1 Kevin Kirchman
Mr. Kirchman was recently featured1 on Tom Nelson’s Youtube Channel. He presents the pretty innovative idea, that radiation “blocked” by GHGs like CO2, would simply escape at other wavelengths, rendering the GHE obsolete in a way. Although the basic notion is true, as additional radiation DOES escape at other wavelengths, that is because the whole system is warmer. However, this is not what he has in mind.
Rather it is all about the special interpretation of the emission spectrum of Earth. Let me quote..
“You see two graphs here. One is wavenumber and the other one is wavelength. Then they are kind of inversely proportional, so they are kind of flipped backwards. But the wavelength is the one I like to work off.”
Then he brings up this graph, property of his “Climate Science Journal”2, allegedly presenting data of Earth(?) from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. I could actually not find it on his site.
As the chart suggests, there would be so much radiation emitted in the far-IR (beyond 15 micron), that the little CO2 dent at 15 micron would barely matter. Regrettably there is no information past 50 micron, but the chart suggests there might a lot more to come. All terra incognita. And with that much ignorance by “climate science” over the “true” emission spectrum, it is basically all falsified.
Well, is it?
To explain the problem, and I mean Mr. Kirchman’s problem, I will have to explain Planck’s equation. I mean not in a scientific way, but just some practical basics. There are different versions of it, depending on the metrics. Obviously it can be based on wavelength, then on wavenumber, and on (giga-)hertz. On the context “climate science” the first two are common.
Then we have a couple of constants. They are..
h .. 6.626E-34 – Planck’s constant
cc .. 299800000 – speed of light in m/s, denoted as “cc” as older versions of excel do not like “c”
k .. 1.381E-23 – Boltzman constant
..and two variables:
T .. Temperature in Kelvin (288K in this instance)
A8, A9.. .. wavelength – obviously a variation of wavelengths, typically in the range 0 to 50 micron
B8, B9.. wavenumber - obviously a variation of wavenumbers, typically in the range 0 to 30 WN
With these inputs you can draw beautiful graphs to represent Planck’s equation on black body radiation. First the formulas..
Wavelength:
=2*PI()*h*cc^2/(A8*0.000001)^5*1/(EXP(cc*h/k/(A8*0.000001)/T)-1)*0.000001
Wavenumber:
=2*PI()*h*cc^2/(0.01/B8)^5*1/(EXP(h*cc/k/(0.01/B8)/T)-1)*(0.1/B8)^2
And here the output as graphs..
Wavelength:
Wavenumber:
You may want to play around with it yourself, it certainly won’t hurt. You may also want to compare this to modtran3, or any other online tool on Planck’s equation. It is basic physics. But I know there is a lot of confusion over this. For instance it is easy to see, peak radiation occurs at ~10 micron in the wavelength chart. 10 micron mean 1000 wavenumber in the chart below, but that is not where the peak is there. Rather the wavenumber chart roughly peaks at 600. This is something trivial, but evidently it appears to be a mental challenge for some people. So let me explain.
Note that the WL is given in micrometer, the wavenumber in waves per centimeter. As there are 10,000 micrometers in a centimeter, the relation is..
WN = 10000 / WL
I arranged both charts in a way that they cover identical areas. I had to expand the y-scale on the wavenumber chart for that sake. Anyway, as an example I also highlighted a random segment from 5 to 10 micron which equates to WN 1,000 to 2,000. Of course, as the order is inverted, the segment is to the left on WL chart and to the right on the WN chart. Logically this segment will cover the same amount of radiation, about 92.5W/m2. And, as if it was not self evident, why does this segment have such a different shape on the respective charts? Obviously it is because it covers a small x-scale range in the WL chart, but a large one in the WN chart. The same will be true reversed for large WLs and small WNs.
Then there is another detail to mention. The total blackbody radiation at 288K will amount to 390W/m2. That is exactly the amount of radiation both charts are meant to represent, with the exception of the small cut-off part to the right. In the WL chart that is W/m2/micron. Just by estimating you can already see this will be true. The chart expands over 50 microns and if the curve has an average elevation of say 8, we get 8 * 50 = 400W/m2. Not far off, given it is just a rough estimate. The same will be true for the WN chart. I do not know exactly, but let us say the average elevation there is about 0.17. Over 2,200 WNs that would mean 0.17 * 2,200 = 374W/m2, again not too far off.
These numbers, these charts, have actual meaning. They work back and forth, in different contexts, if you do it properly. Mr. Kirchman’s chart however has like ~0.06W/m2/micron over 40 microns, which equates to 0.06 * 40 = 2.4W/m2??? It just makes no sense.
Now let us do the stupid experiment. What happens if we directly transfer a WN chart onto a WL scale, like Mr. Kirchman, erroneously believing it was just inverting the x scale, while holding on to the y scale, actually becoming senseless then. Then you get the red curve below, as compared to the appropriate blue curve (though unrelated to the y-scale). That is a miniaturisation to the left and elephantiasis to the right. Also peak radiation now moves to ~17 micron. It is complete nonsense. Unlike Mr. Kirchman thinks, WN and WL function are NOT inversely proportional, or just “flipped backwards”.
Beyond this it does not really matter where he took “the data” from, they were probably pieced together and misinterpreted. It is simply a very basic fallacy, evident to anyone who knows a little bit of physics. And I would not blame him for trying and failing, but it is something you should do before you seek a wider audience to tell “the truth”. Then it is not that embarrassing.
#2 Howard Hayden
H. Hayden is a common speaker with international conferences4 on (critical) “climate science”. He is describing himself as using “intellectual jiu-jitsu” against “consensus science”. I do not really understand what this is supposed to be, but probably it is derived from the ancient martial art of stumbling over your own feet. I digress..
Mr. Hayden at least made two earth-shattering discoveries. First he found out, that if “surface radiation” was 398W/m2, for which there are quite some “consensus scientific” sources, then the temperature of said surface would need to be (398 * 5.67e-8 )^0.25 = 289.45K. Gotcha! This is not the temperature (287-288K) otherwise claimed. They got it all wrong!
More importantly he identified to one big contradiction in the whole of “climate science”. If Earth was to warm by 3K for instance, a traditional central estimate for ECS, then surface radiation would need to increase by (291/288)^4 - 1 = 4.23%. Depending on what starting point you use, 390 or 398W/m2, this will mean 16.5 to 16.8W/m2 in additional surface radiation. He names 16.7W/m2 and rightfully reasons, more or less, the GHE then had to grow by this magnitude.
BUT, the GHE is only supposed to grow by 3.7W/m2 for a doubling of CO2 and “those changes are supposed to be identical”. Since 3.7 != 16.7, “climate science” is falsified by “intellectual jiu-jitsu”!
Or is it? Well, the first issue can easily be addressed. 288K or so is only the average surface temperature, while in reality there is a wide range of different temperatures. The hotter regions will emit more radiation, the colder ones less. But since emissions are a logarithmic function (by the power 4), in absolute terms that “more” will be larger than the “less”. So it comes that two black body hemispheres with 273K and 303K respectively have an average 288K, but will emit a combined (273 + 303)/2)^4 * 5.67e-8 = 396.4W/m2, evidently a bit more than just 390W/m2 you would expect from a blackbody at 288K.
The second issue comes from not understanding the GHE, or the concept of forcing, or feedbacks. The GHE is NOT about “blocking” surface radiation. Being as true to “consensus science” as possible, the GHE is rather about reducing outgoing emissions, relative to surface emissions, not by “blocking”, but by substituting. And yes, even that is not so clear, because there are different understandings of what GHE is, even within “consensus science”. Anyway..
A forcing on the other side could be a lot of different things, like a change in sunshine or albedo. In the context of GHGs, it would rather mean some 3.7W/m2 forcing relative to 240W/m2 of energy budget, and that happens higher up in the atmosphere, not at the surface. Basically and simplified it would yield about 1K (= 3.7 / 240 / 4 * 255) warming at 5,000m altitude. At the surface, with a blackbody assumption, the same 1K warming would yield about 5.5W/m2 in surface emissions. Most of those surface emissions will be absorbed by the atmosphere in anyway and thus remain within a closed system, not making any difference.
If you multiply this figure by 3, because feedbacks, you are already in the named 16.7W/m2 range. Is there ANY contradiction? No, not at all.
#3 Uli Weber (and many alter egos)5
Mr. Weber has discovered the Stefan Boltzmann law, I mean for himself. Apparently he was quite fascinated by it and so he started a couple of calculations. We all, hopefully, know the blackbody temperature of Earth would be some 279K at its distance from the sun, because (342 / 5.67e-8)^0.25 = 278.7K. Including an albedo of 0.3 the grey body(!) temperature would only be 255K ( = (1-0.3) * 342 / 5.67e-8)^0.25 ), but that is kind of a stupid figure anyway.
But now, what if we considered a sphere without any storage of heat, attaining just the temperature due to the SB law? Obviously the dark side then will have 0K, ignoring cosmic background radiation, or geothermal heat. The lit side, still given an albedo of 0.3 but an emissivity of 1, would have a temperature just like in the chart below.
To explain the starting point to the left, with the sun in the zenith, you would get (1-0.3) * 342 * 4 / 5.67e-8)^0.25 = 360.5K. Considering all the gradients with their respective insolation and their share in the total surface area of the hemisphere, the chart above is just what you get. Bear in mind, those gradients around the nadir, where the sun is high up, only cover a small share of the hemisphere, while those gradients with little insolation have an overproportional share. The temperature falls below freezing below a 19 degree elevation of the sun, and that area covers 1/3 of the hemisphere.
The average temperature over the whole sphere then is 144K (144.2K to be exact, but that depends on the exact parameters for TSI and albedo), and the whole idea looks completely pointless. But if you only look at the lit side, there the arithmetic average is 288K. Incidentally it is a pretty good match to the average surface temperature Earth actually has. Sure that has to have some deeper meaning. Given those 288K Mr. Weber thinks he has falsified the GHE, as he believes he could explain the surface temperature of Earth without it. In fact he has tortured the readers of “eike-klima-energie.eu”, likely the most popular German “climate denier” site, with about 50 articles over his find. Ouch!
Where to start?
First of all, obviously, the surface temperature you get like this is 144K, not 288K. This would not nullify the GHE, but rather maximize it to equally 144K. To overcome this problem, Mr. Weber argues in reality the heat would simply be “stored”, so that the dark hemisphere remains just as warm as the lit side. Do not ask for reason here!
However, the lit side itself only arithmetically averages to 288K because of the very cold gradients with low solar intensity. To be consistent, if the dark side was to remain warm because of “stored heat”, the not so well insolated gradients of the lit side should also stay reasonably warm. Otherwise these low gradients on the lit side would be much colder than the dark side. But without these very cold gradients, the average would be no more 288K, but rather much higher. As this is the coincidence the “theory” was all based on, it renders pointless even by its own standards. No wonder it took over 50 articles of copium so far just to overcome the obvious contradictions within his theory. I mean, not that he managed.
#4 Willis Eschenbach
“Well, every time I go to look at the climate models, I come away more confused. And today is no exception. I decided to take a look at the relationship between the change in forcing (downwelling radiation) and the change in temperature.”6
I have a little idea where that confusion comes from, lol. Anyway, as many others, he still firmly believes “back radiation” (or downwelling LW radiation) had anything to do with the GHE. I explained this stupidity a coupleof times already and will not repeat it here. The interesting thing about his statement is that he explicitly goes the next logical step, claiming the forcing was the increment of “back radiation”.
I guess anyone with an IQ over 100 should easily see the problem. Of course “back radiation” is not just a function of the optical thickness of the atmosphere, but moreover of its temperature, which again is linked to surface temperature. Over the day/night cycle “back radiation” will go up and down, just like temperatures do, as the chart below shows. It gives the pyrgeometer data for Potsdam7 over 2 weeks in June. Clouds of course have a major impact there, increasing “back radiation” in their presence, thereby adding lots of noise. Still the diurnal pattern is well visible. Although it is just a rough guesstimate, it looks like delta “back radiation” to delta temperature is about a 5:1 W/K relation.
I can not tell for certain, and I will not waste time on analyzing the question profoundly, but roughly a doubling of CO2 should increase “back radiation” by about 2W/m2 globally. With clear skies modtran gives 2 to 3.5W/m2. Notably you get the lower figures in warmer climate, due to strong overlaps with WV, while 3 to 3.5W/m2 are with colder or dry climates. But then low clouds in cold climates almost nullify the effect.
For a single Kelvin in delta T “back radiation” will change by about 1.4% (=289/288^4-1). As I have just pointed out the atmospheric window is understated in “consensus science” and equally “back radiation” will be overstated. Yet the 1.4% will translate to about 4.5W/m2 (=0.014 * 320) and so the question is what to do with that. If “back radiation” was the forcing mechanism, the temperature related increment would mean a feedback substantially larger than the forcing.
For one moment let us just forget that the whole of “climate science” knows nothing about a “back radiation” feedback. Also a forcing of only 2W/m2 will not suffice to increase surface temperature by at least 1K. But even ignoring all these issues, with a lambda of 0.3, the feedback factor will be substantially larger than 1 (as 0.3 * 4.5 > 1), meaning a perfectly unstable climate that wants to run away towards indefinite cold or heat at any time, at the slightest perturbation. The whole concept falsifies itself. A kingdom for a brain cell!!!
#5 Philipp Zeller
Mr. Zeller, a swiss guy, is a little bit beyond the competition since he presents on “weather manipulation”8. After the 20 minute mark he argues against contrails (in the sense of “chemtrails”), because jet fuels were very dry?! Ok, let me explain. I am naturally very interested in contrails and their effect on climate. But most of the time I watch a possibly related video, I fall for someone actually talking about “chemtrails”. Now Mr. Zeller argues there was very little traces of water in common gasoline and jet fuels, just for safety, would contain even less water. Since there was almost no water in jet fuels, it would not make sense for them to produce contrails, consisting of water. That video has been watched by over 30,000 people so far.
Indeed contrails consist mainly of frozen water and the contamination of jet fuel by water will be negligible. So where would the water come from? Carbon hydrates, as the names suggests, consist of carbon and hydrogen. Burning them, one could also say oxidizing them, means linking them to the oxygen present in the atmosphere. The carbon atoms bind with oxygen to CO2. The hydrogen atoms equally bind with oxygen to H2O. That is where the water comes from!
It is a bit complicated because fuel consists of a wide range of different carbon hydrate molecules, so let me just give one random example. Octane (C8H18) has an atomic weight of 8*12 + 18*1 = 114. The respective and basic atomic weights are 16 for O, 12 for C and 1 for H. When oxidized it will turn into 8*CO2 and 9*H2O. The CO2 part will have a mass of 8 * 44 = 352 and the H2O part 9 * 18 = 162. In this calculation one kilogram of fuel turns into 352/114 = 3.1kg of CO2 and 1.4kg of water. But there will be other molecules, like cycloalkanes or arenes, that are relatively richer in carbon and sometimes contain other elements. A more generalized relation would be 3kg of CO2 and 1.25kg of water per kg of burnt fuel.
The actual physics of contrail formation is yet another story and most of the water they consist of, is simply absorbed by the condensation nuclei from the ambient atmosphere. But that is a different, and most of all real story I already explained.
Oh the bullshit
These are just five examples and I could name many more, with more (or less) famous names attached to them. The basic scheme is always the same. People look at a certain question, do not understand or even care about physics, and make the most stupid mistakes. Of course doing it wrong means getting the wrong results, but equipped with a healthy Kruger-Dunning syndrome, to our proponents wrong is not wrong, but different. As the “different” result contradicts “the science”, the latter has been falsified. Period!
Any sane person at this point would naturally want to find out how such a contradiction came across and question himself. Only when you have thoroughly checked your own work AND identified the mistake on the other side, you would dare to claim to have something falsified. But that will be based on perfectly understanding and describing the problem.
Instead our proponents not just do not understand what they are doing, they also have no sense for critically judging their own actions. In fact the latter is always the starting point. Just like someone saying “I don’t need to wash because I don’t stink”; it is the lack of hygiene, or quality control, that leads people to believe they were on the right track. If your ship is unsinkable, why worry about ice bergs? If you produce the best aircraft, why worry about safety regulations? You get the point.
“The science must be wrong”
In a way the psychology is easy to understand. “The science must be wrong” is the conviction, the starting point. Next you only need to find the mistake and you have already falsified it. With this firm belief, anything that looks subjectively suspicious will serve as evidence to our trigger happy, “climate denying” falsifiers. It is strong conviction coupled with poor intellect that leads to “flat-Earth science”.
This is, I am afraid, what the “critical side” is mainly made of. Whether it is websites like WUWT, Eike, notrickszone and so on, conferences, webblogs, new revolutionary articles in some low level pay to publish papers, when it comes to the physics, the situation is precarious. No one knows anything.
I will not deny there is otherwise some reasonable talk, but that is on downstream issues like temperature records, energy policies or criticism of climate activism. These are all much simpler issues, but for the same reason they are also relatively boring. There is a reason the IPCC has a working group ONE on the “physical science basis”. It is what it all boils down to in the end, the alpha and the omega, nothing else. Naturally it also gathers the most interest, the most comments, anywhere. And the “critical side” there has little to offer, except for said flat-Earth science.
Be with us or..
If you point out the nonsense, people get angry. Why would you speak out against “climate falsification”, unless you happen to be a climate activist? There are just two sides and you have to pick your affiliation, don’t you? Pfff, well. It is likely the cheapest and most stupid give-away by the “critical side”, meaning largely conservative politics.
First of all, science is not politics. Secondly taking a position, and consensus science has taken one, or rather a number positions, will not mean all other positions were the “other side”. Reality is not bi-polar. The notion of “two sides” is extremely useful in denying criticism, which could rightfully occur from any direction, making any position much harder to defend. But that is absolutely not how science works. It is supposed to be open in all directions. Me btw. I am not doing it either. I would never claim just because Al Gore presented some comprehensible nonsense, that would falsify the whole of “climate science”.
Given I have already named jiu-jitsu, in martial arts it is very much about keeping your balance. You could invest all your energy and weight into a certain attack, but that could be used against you. Actual “intellectual jiu-jitsu” will not make you expose yourself, unless you have real leverage. Doing so means wasting resources that could be employed far better. While punching air is not just ineffective, claiming there were just two sides will illicitly fraternize with- and embarrass anyone who actually has something to say.
The ugly creature in the mirror
In a weird way all this mirrors “consensus science” somehow. Of course any “consensus scientist” would be deeply offended by me suggesting such blatant incompetence had any alikes on the side of the venerable “real” science. How dare you?! However, such vanity would be baseless, given I have presented many fallacies of “the science” here already, even extremely embarrassing ones. In a way it is bad science vs. worse science, idiots vs. morons. And from that perspective, which side would you want to join?
If I call out bullshit, regardless of its affiliation, I do it because it is the proper thing to do. Being stupid will not get us anywhere. There are two opposing “wisdoms”: “the path is the goal” (Confucious) and “thinking things from the end” (A. Merkel). The first one means doing things properly will lead you to the right outcome, whatever that will be, the latter means being true to your agenda, nothing else. Which one was actually wise? It was Confucious, trust me!
Merkel on the other side just quoted the modus operandi idealized in evil, totalitarian politics, the like she learned in the system she grew up in - and her father opted for. Not just is this exactly not how politics is supposed to work, given we prefer democracy, but especially it has no place in any other civilized field, like science. Science, more than anything else, is a rule based procedure to promote our understanding.
“Politicized science” is just politics, nothing else. Indeed this is what invalidates “climate science” formally. You can not serve two masters, or two conflicting principles respectively. Pushing for an agenda to serve a “bigger cause” is simply unscientific. Claiming there was a “scientific consensus” along this agenda, will only make it worse. So will the claim of a “settled science”. One of the most basic scientific principles is the irrelevance of dogmas. Science NEVER settles and knows no taboos.
Regrettably the “critical side” is doing just the same! It is all about their agenda and neither about science. The most ridiculous arguments are fielded and rejecting that will make you a “warmist” or something. Choose your side, you know. That would make some sense in a way, if it potentially was a winning strategy. But when it comes to “politizied science”, the “consensus side” easily leads by 97% to 3%. They are fighting a losing battle with pathetic means.
What they do not realize, is that you can do things properly. Not everyone on the “other side” is deeply corrupted or so entangled in politics, that he could never take on a dissenting argument. The basic process of science still exists, despite its current corruption, which by the way is not a new phenomenon. I could name numerous historic examples. But to make it work, you will have to pull the right strings and deliver good arguments. For that you first of all need to be critical about yourself, secondly about your affiliation. Ambition (only) bites the nails of success.
Misinformation by intent?
Or course I can not tell for certain, but it seems to me there is some interest in misinforming the public over “climate science”. School books, wikipedia, educational material of whatsoever kind, are full of nonsense. Do not get me wrong, I do not mean that I had a different take on it and would consider it wrong. Rather it is simply not representing “consensus science”. It is wrong by all metrics.
For instance on wikipedia, both on the German as on the English version, you could learn methane had a share of “4 to 9%” in the GHE. This is simply wrong. Schmidt et al 2010 has it some reasonable 0.7% and 1.6%, meaning net and gross respectively. And these are basically precise net and gross, not from - to figures. The sources were all dead ends, not providing the information they were claimed to. Yet it was up there for about 16 years, with no one bothering. Imagine you would edit something that could be considered critical to “climate science”, it would instantly be deleted. But factual nonsense like this? No problem!
I posted the issue in the comments and it was finally removed and changed for the better. But that is just one instance, and there is so much of it, it seems futile to fix it all. Anyway, you would expect some “experts”, we employ lots of them with tax money, to look at it and make necessary corrections. But it does not happen. Either they do not care, do not know, or simply have no interest in accurately informing the public. “Climate science” remains an enigma to anyone not able to decipher the code.
We are stuck!
And that is where we are stuck. Both sides push politics and partisanship instead of science. The bullshit is flying so low, you might want to keep your head down, just for safety. The only thing that will advance us, is getting out of the trenches. Attacking “the science” is a good thing, because that is how science works. We need open discussions, regardless of any affiliation, just to sort things out and get rid of “flat-Earth climate denialists”.
Yet this is something our denialists do not like. On the one side of course they would not want to see their unsubstantiated arguments exposed and so they prefer a “safe space”. On the other side it seems like they actually believe in “consensus science” being right, which sounds unheard-of and absurd. But please transpire the thought for a moment. They are just as prone to follow authorities, the news, as anyone else. Given how wrong their objections are, given how much they fail in delivering arguments and how defensive they are over it, deep inside they will not believe in what they claim.
Do not trust them! You know, this is a “rabbit whole” to explore, a universe on its own, like why people gather in flat-Earth societies, what the individual has to gain from it, and so on. And if you think it through, of course it is just the same psychology that got us religions. If you want to be a star, you have to lead, and leading means pushing in the foreseeable, proper direction. Do not waste time on logic, on reasoning, just push ahead. And it goes both ways.
“Climate science” is very much lead by climate activism. Where are the venerable true scientists calling out Al Gore, or Greta? Why do they not stand up to call out the bullshit being spread on their behalf? It is because they choose the easy way. Why crash the party, if it serves you well? They are not doing that for the “bigger sake”, and their own benefit. Except there is no such thing as a bigger sake in science, than the process of truth finding.
What we need
“I like to prove others wrong” (Barry Marshall). Proving others wrong may sound a bit rude and sinister, because people love confirmation and hate the very opposite. Imagine kids building castles in the sand and then a jerk (kid) just running over it. Mean, isn’t it? But being safe from that is the kind of comfort we ultimately can not afford. In the end, despite all idealized social security, which is largely an illusion after all, there has to be a stage for competition where the better wins over the good, or the worse, or the evil. There needs to be some healthy sportsmanship, where we care about physics and logical consistency in the first place, and politics or affiliation in the last place, if at all.
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