End is Near for UK Royal Society and US National Academy

        The END IS NEAR for the science of the UK Royal Society and US National Academy. 

The U.S. National Academies of Science and the U.K. Royal Society have issued a joint report Climate Change Evidence and Causes. The Royal Society introduces the report with:

• Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. 
• It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate. 
• The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, accompanied by sea-level rise, a strong decline in Arctic sea ice, and other climate-related changes.

The report is framed around 20 questions starting out with the following fundaments:

1. Is the climate warming?
2. How do scientists know that recent climate change is largely caused by human activities?

The answer to Question 1 gives the scientific observation in a nutshell:

• Yes. Earth’s average surface air temperature has increased by about 0.8 °C since 1900, with much of this increase taking place since the mid-1970s. 

The answer to Question 2 describes the theoretical science in a nutshell:

• Scientists know that recent climate change is largely caused by human activities from an understanding of basic physics, comparing observations with models, and fingerprinting the detailed patterns of climate change caused by different human and natural influences. 
• The expected changes in climate are based on our understanding of how greenhouse gases trap heat. 
• Since the mid-1800s, scientists have known that CO2 is one of the main greenhouse gases of importance to Earth’s energy balance. 
• Both this fundamental understanding of the physics of greenhouse gases and fingerprint studies show that natural causes alone 

We read that observations show a warming since 1900 of 0.8 C out of which 0.4 C is viewed as an effect of human induced CO2 since 1970, while the 0.4 C occuring before 1940 is unexplicable.

We read that the theory is basic physics understanding from 1850 that CO2 traps heat. We read that other causes than heat trapping CO2 are inadequate to explain the recent observed changes in climate. We read that human CO2 leaves theoretical fingerprint.

We see that the combined science in the US and UK is nothing but Penguin Logic of Penguin Science:

• The less you know, there more sure you can be that you are right. The evidence is clear.

No wonder that the END IS NEAR, for Western civilization.

The central concept of the science propagated by the RS and NA is:

• More CO2 will cause the Earth to warm by trapping (absorbing) more of the heat (infrared radiation) emitted from Earth's surface.

But trapping as absorption without emission is not something described in physics literature, because absorption comes together with emission as expressed by Kirchhoff's law stating that emisssion = absorption. The RS and NA as scientific societies thus are feeding the people disinformation, which cannot be within legal boundaries of a democratic open society. The RS and NA have trapped themselves into free fall of science and scientific credibility. To Newton at Trinity College in Cambridge as once the President of the RS, this is unthinkable:

•  I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

               Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

The Key Argument of CO2 Alarmism

The key argument of CO2 greenhouse gas alarmism is presented in IPCC AR4 Glossary as follows: 

• An increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases leads to an increased infrared opacity of the atmosphere, and therefore to an effective radiation into space from a higher altitude at a lower temperature. This causes a radiative forcing...
  

Even a skeptic like Lindzen buys this argument, but let us nevertheless seek to understand the logic, or lack thereof. 

Note that IPCC here motivates the greenhouse effect without any reference to backradiation; the only possible reason for this omission is that IPCC does not believe in backradiation.  

As noted by Anders in a comment to the previous post, the cited argument requires that the lapse rate and temperature profile is not determined by greenhouse gases, but by something else. Only then does it make sense to claim that increasing the effective emission altitude will decrease the emission temperature and thus the outgoing radiation and thus cause radiative forcing.

But if the temperature profile is determined by something else than greenhouse gases (e.g. thermodynamics with gravitation), then the amount of greenhouse gases has no influence on the temperature profile.  

So we have here another example of Penguin logic: By assuming that the temperature profile depends on something else than greenhouse gases, IPCC concludes that increasing greenhouse gases will change the temperature profile to warming of the Earth surface.

Do you see the lack of logic?

Note that it is always important to choose the argument depending on whom you are addressing: Backradiation works quite well for a not so sophisticated audience, while the above argument suits e.g. members of Royal Societies, because it has a higher level of abstraction. 

Penguin Logic of Greenhouse Gases

The basic argument behind CO2 climate alarmism goes as follows:

• Observation 1: An Earth with a transparent atmosphere would have a different climate than an Earth with an atmosphere which is not transparent (like the present).
• Definition 1: What makes an atmosphere not transparent is called a greenhouse gas.
• Conclusion 1: A greenhouse gas changes the climate.
  
• Observation 2: Water vapor and CO2 are greenhouse gases.
  
• Conclusion 2: Since CO2 is a greenhouse gas and greenhouse gases change the climate, CO2 changes the climate.

Can you see that this a form of Penguin Logic? Compare with the new report from the Max Planck Society:

• In order to achieve the long-term stabilisation of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, the emissions will then have to be reduced by 56 percent by the year 2050 and approach zero towards the end of this century. 

Compare with IPCC AR4 Glossary:

• Greenhouse gases are those gaseous constituents of the atmosphere, both natural and anthropogenic, that absorb and emit radiation at specific wavelengths within the spectrum of thermal infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface, the atmosphere itself, and by clouds. This property causes the greenhouse effect. Water vapour (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4) and ozone (O3) are the primary greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere.
• Greenhouse gases effectively absorb thermal infrared radiation, emitted by the Earth’s surface, by the atmosphere itself due to the same gases, and Appendix II Glossary 82 Atmospheric radiation is emitted to all sides, including downward to the Earth’s surface. Thus greenhouse gases trap heat within the surface-troposphere system. This is called the greenhouse effect.
• An increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases leads to an increased infrared opacity of the atmosphere, and therefore to an effective radiation into space from a higher altitude at a lower temperature. This causes a radiative forcing that leads to an enhancement of the greenhouse effect, the so-called enhanced greenhouse effect.
• Radiative forcing is the change in the net irradiance at the tropopause due to a change in an external driver of climate change, such as, for example, a change in the concentration of carbon dioxide or the output of the Sun. 

Can you make sense of this? If you cannot, is there anybody who can, except penguins?

Not only is there a greenhouse effect, but as if that was not enough, also an enhanced greenhouse effect able to supply a net radiative forcing. 

It is amazing to see physicists, including Nobel Laurates, endorsing this kind of penguin science

without actually examining the arguments put forward. Why?

Compare with Wikipedia controled by IPCC:

• The greenhouse effect is a process by which radiative energy leaving a planetary surface is absorbed by some atmospheric gases, called greenhouse gases. They transfer this energy to other components of the atmosphere, and it is re-radiated in all directions, including back down towards the surface. 
• This transfers energy to the surface and lower atmosphere, so the temperature there is higher than it would be if direct heating by solar radiation were the only warming mechanism. 
• This mechanism is fundamentally different from that of an actual greenhouse, which works by isolating warm air inside the structure so that heat is not lost by convection.
  

We see the crucial role of re-radiation or backradiation discussed in previous posts. 

Note that WUWT is gearing up to "support the role of CO2" but starts off with a guest post by

physicist Tom Vonk arguing that

• A volume of gas in Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE) cannot be heated by CO2.
  
• The main point is that every time you hear or read that “CO2 heats the atmosphere” , that “energy is trapped by CO2” , that “energy is stored by green house gases” and similar statements , you may be sure that this source is not to be trusted for information about radiation questions.
  

Nevertheless Vonk concludes his essay by

•  The concentrations of CO2 (and H2O) play a role in this (climate) dynamics but it is not the purpose of this post to examine these much more complex and not well understood aspects.
  

It will be interesting to see what role WUWT will give to CO2. None?