The IPCC Trick: Climate Instability from Backradiation 1

In a sequence of posts I will sum up my criticism of the CO2 climate alarmism presented

by IPCC, as a follow up on Ten Facts: Setting the Record Straight. I start with a general remark and then proceed to specifics.

Climate sensitivity as the increase of global mean temperature upon doubling of atmospheric CO2 (from preindustrial 0.028% to 0.056%), is by IPCC claimed to be in the range 1.5 - 4.5 C with a best estimate of + 3 C. Doubled CO2 represents a small perturbation of the absorption properties of the atmosphere, while a global warming of 3 C could lead to major changes of global climate. IPCC thus claims a big effect of a small cause as the greenhouse effect GHE, which requires identification of some instability capable of inflating a small cause to a big effect.

To sell climate alarmism with a climate sensitivity of 3 C to the world and in particular to its leaders, IPCC had to identify an instability mechanism. But no such mechanism was readily available in climate science. In fact global climate had shown a remarkable stability over billions of years under large perturbations.

To find an instability mechanism in a stable system is not easy and so IPCC had to fabricate one, which came out under the name of backradiation with the wonderful property of creating an instability out of nothing in a stable system by letting energy bounce back and forth without net energy transfer. The number 0 could now be written 0 = 1000 - 1000, and suddenly out of nothing big numbers could be introduced where there before was only 0. A small percentage of a big number could represent a substantial change and thus a small cause could have a big effect.

Backradiation showed to be a smart move by IPCC: To the layman it could be presented in simple terms as as energy bouncing back to the Earth surface from the atmosphere, while it was so mysterious that Nobel Laurates of Physics could not grasp it and even less question its

existence.

Is then backradiation fabricated science? Is IPCC climate alarmism based on a trick of pseudo-sience? My answer is yes, as developed in my contribution Computational Blackbody Radiation

in Slaying the Sky Dragon. More substance to my argument is given in the next post.

Recall that any claim of a big effect of a small cause, runs the risk of representing pseudo-science in the sense that it can neither be proved nor disproved. To directly prove that the flap of a butterfly in the Amazonas cannot set off a tornado in Texas, is not feasible. But observing

butterfly flaps without tornados gives evidence that there is no connection. Similarly, observing increasing CO2 together with global non-warming as during the last decade, indicates that IPCC alarmism is not based on real physics.