Summary of Big Bluff of Warming Effect of CO2

CO2 alarmism fostered by IPCC is based on a proclaimed "heat trapping" or "radiation blocking" effect of CO2 as atmospheric trace gas causing a "radiative forcing" of 3.7 W/m2 upon doubling of preindustrial concentration into 600 pm from todays 390 ppm.

The evidence of substantial  "radiative forcing" of CO2 presented by IPCC consists of spectra of outgoing longwave radiation OLR and downwelling longwave radiation DLR produced by instruments specially designed to measure DLR and OLR.

In a recent sequence of posts on DLR and OLR as parts of Big Bluff, I have given evidence that

• DLR-measurement is based on a formula without physical reality.
• OLR-measurment shows non-physical strong emissivity of CO2 in the 600 - 800 band.    

The main reason of CO2 alarmism as a proclaimed warming effect of CO2 supposedly supported by measurement of DLR and OLR, thus evaporates upon inspection into fabricated evidence without real physics, only fictional invented physics.

In this fabrication governmental institutions use instruments and software designed by commercial companies according to governmental specifications, to fabricate instrumental evidence of non-existing physics, such as DLR.  The scale of this scientific fraud is unprecedented, with the DLR-Pyrgeometer Formula as a glaring example of unphysical fabricated physics.

Of course you may argue that because the fraud is unprecedented, it simply cannot be true that it is fabricated evidence, and thus it must be correct science. But this is not a scientific argument: The fact that the scale of the (possibly) fabricated evidence is beyond comparison, does not make it true.     

The "Hockey Stick" of the OLR Spectrum

As CO2 global warming alarmism is now losing credibility after 15 years of stationary temperatures and emerging fear of a coming ice age, it becomes possible for the first time scrutinize the core scientific evidence of the warming effect of CO2, which has been accepted by leading skeptics including Lindzen, Spencer, Singer and WUWT, namely the ditch between wave number 600 and 800 in the outgoing long wave radiation OLR spectrum produced by the IRIS and AIRS infrared spectrometers carried by satellites:

It is difficult to question evidence of this form, which bears the sign of hard physics as precise numbers produced by elaborate expensive instrumentation, because it requires knowledge of both instrument and processing of directly measured data, which both can be hidden in difficult technicalities.

Therefore the ditch in the spectrum, interpreted as a warming effect or "radiative forcing" from atmospheric CO2, has served CO2 alarmism as an "undeniable scientific fact" which cannot be questioned, with a warming effect of about 1 C upon doubling of atmospheric CO2. To refer to the spectrum has come to signify a deeper insight carried by both alarmists and skeptics, hidden to ordinary people not used to read spectra.

To question this "undeniable scientific fact" makes you into a "denier" destined to dwell on one of the lowest levels of Dante's Purgatorium.

In any case I have done so in a sequence of posts on OLR and I have come to the conclusion that the ditch in the spectrum attributed to CO2 is a misrepresentation of reality, or fabrication of fake evidence, similar to that of the "hockey stick", which started the fall of global warming alarmism.

I hope that skeptics are now read to question the OLR spectrum as the key evidence of CO2 warming with the same ardor as in the case of the hockey stick. Physicists have a special responsibility because the OLR spectrum is physics and not climate science.

But to be honest, very few seem to be interested in discussing the OLR spectrum, as if it is given once and for all by some superhuman intellect and thus beyond human understanding and scrutiny. But it is fabricated by people like you and me, and since it is the very basis of CO2 alarmism maybe some day someone will picks the thread. Since the first "hockey stick" attracted so much attention, may this new "hockey stick", if it is a "hockey stick", will deserve some as well.

Anyway, here are the key questions:

• How was the OLR spectrum produced? 
• What was directly measured by the sensors, and what was computed in post processing?
• Does the spectrum describe reality with radiation "blocked" by CO2?

These are precise scientific questions which can be answered by using basic physics and mathematics, if only there is an interest in doing so. Alarmists are not interested but skeptics should be.

Maybe Fred Singer will then find reason to reconsider his message:

• I am opposed to those who criticize the global warming scare, basing it on what I consider to be incorrect physics. CO2 is certainly a greenhouse gas and should produce some increase in atmospheric temperatures but it is so small we cannot detect it.

Singer is convinced that "CO2 certainly is a greenhouse gas", probably because he takes for granted that the OLR spectrum is correct science.  Singer is a physicist and should be able upon close inspection to tell if it is or not.  

If it is impossible to detect that "CO2 is a greenhouse gas", then it would be incorrect physics to declare that in any case "CO2 is a greenhouse gas". If ghosts cannot be detected, then it is not correct physics to nevertheless declare that "there certainly are ghosts" but they are "so small we cannot detect them". Right Fred?

PS1 WUWT reports:

• Following last night’s State of the Union Address in which the president pledged to implement a job-killing climate change agenda, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-3) today introduced legislation to prohibit the United States from contributing taxpayer dollars to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 
• “The American people should not have to foot the bill for an international organization that is fraught with waste, engaged in dubious science, and is promoting an agenda that will destroy jobs and drive up the cost of energy in the United States,” Luetkemeyer said. “Unfortunately, the president appears to be ready to fund these groups, revive harmful policies like cap and trade, and further empower out of control federal regulators at a time when we should be doing everything possible to cut wasteful spending, reduce regulatory red tape, and promote economic growth.”

Apparently, Luetkemeyer has read the OLR spectrum and understood that the science is dubious...

PS2 Fred does not seem to be willing to answer my question about the reality of the OLR spectrum, but I think the question asks for an answer.

OLR Spectra Decoded as Fake!?

Consider the following outgoing long wave radiation OLR spectrum delivered by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder AIRS flying on the Aqua satellite:

The graphs show the brightness temperature as function of wave number, with the brightness temperature the temperature of a blackbody with the same radiance at a given wave number as that recorded by the spectrometer (in principle bolometer) sensor, with in particular a zoom of the wave number interval 645 - 685 containing the main resonance at 667 of CO2.

We see a low brightness temperature of about 220 K and a peak at the main resonance at 667 of 250 K.  Both these brightness temperatures are lower than the temperature of 295 K in the atmospheric window between 800 and 1200, as if the sensor has recorded the presence of CO2 both at the tropopause (220 K) and in the middle of the troposphere (250 K).

We understand that a bolometer sensor measures radiance calibrated to blackbody radiance and thus cannot distinguish between low emissivity/high temperature and high emissivity/low temperature. This means that the assignment of brightness temperature is influenced by an unknown emissivity, which explains why the assigned brightness temperature is high at the main resonance 667 for which the emissivity is high, and low in the weak resonances surrounding the main resonance for which the emissivity is low. But it does not make sense that CO2 radiates from different temperatures for different frequencies, because all frequencies are assumed to have the same temperature.

The spectrum constructed is thus an artificial spectrum reflecting the sensitivity of the bolometer, which may be chosen so that resonances of CO2 are picked up before the continuous spectrum from the Earth surface, and then are assigned brightness temperatures according to radiance, as shown above. The weak resonances with low total emissivity of CO2 away from 667,  are then assigned a low brightness temperature (220 K) at full emissivity, as if all of the radiation from the Earth surface was blocked in the whole interval 600 - 800.

The OLR spectrum delivered by AIRS is thus an artificial spectrum constructed so as to hide that away from the main resonance 667, CO2 has small emissivity and thus cannot block all of the radiation from the Earth surface (even under doubled concentration from preindustrial level).

OLR spectra delivered by AIRS (and IRIS) are viewed as the key evidence of "heat trapping" or "radiation blocking" by atmospheric CO2. If these OLR spectra show to be fakes misrepresenting physics, the main scientific argument of CO2 alarmism evaporates.  So what does true science tell: fake or not fake?

PS To help discussion, recall the sparseness of the CO2 spectrum around 667 as pictured in the previous post.

Model of Atmosphere with CO2 shows Small Emissivity

Computed transmittance of atmosphere with CO2 with main resonance at wave number 667. Notice that the atmosphere is effectively transparent, except in a small interval around 667. The effect of CO2 is thus small.

Here is a another argument indicating that the effect of the atmospheric trace gas CO2 on the radiation balance of the Earth is small.

We recall the model of blackbody radiation studied on Computational Blackbody Radiation as a collection of oscillators with small damping with equal oscillator internal energy T representing temperature, with oscillator resonance frequencies n varying from 1 to a cut-off set at T and each oscillator radiating

• E_n = gamma T n^2    

where gamma is a universal constant, which is Planck's law. Summing over n from 1 to T, we obtain the total radiance

• E = sum_n gamma T n^2 = sigma T^4 

which is Stefan-Boltzmann's law with sigma = gamma/3. In the case of only one resonance frequency n = T, the radiance would be reduced to  

• e = gamma T T^2 = gamma T^3 ~ E/T

with the reduction factor 1/T. 

The radiance of an atmosphere which is fully opaque over the entire spectrum would radiate E, while an atmosphere opaque only for a specific frequency near cut-off T, would radiate e ~ E/T with a reduction factor  1/T. 

We conclude that the emissivity of transparent atmosphere with a trace gas like CO2 with only a few isolated resonances, would scale like 1/T and thus be small as soon as T is bigger than say 100 K.  

We thus find theoretical evidence from a basic model that the emissivity of the Earth's atmosphere with the trace gas CO2 would be small, and thus that CO2 would have little effect on the Earth's radiation balance.

Note that the sparseness of CO2 as a trace gas, gets expressed as a spareseness of absorption spectrum rather than small mass fraction because of the universality of blackbody radiation as being independent of the mass of the oscillators.

Story of Vanishing Evidence of CO2 Warming

In the late 20 century as the cold war was coming to an end, the fear of nuclear war was replaced by a fear of anthropogenic global warming caused by emissions of CO2 from burning of fossil fuels.

Governments united under UN gave massive support to science for producing evidence of global warming by CO2, evidence which governments could use to motivate a special tax on CO2, which would lead society into a new world without CO2-emissions, with lots of tax money to be spent by politicians.

Scientists started, with great enthusiasm stimulated by generous government grants, searching for evidence of a warming effect of CO2 in the form of a  "greenhouse effect" with CO2 named "greenhouse gas" because of its capability of absorbing and emitting infrared radiation at isolated specific frequencies, because of its unsymmetric molecular structure, as observed in an early study by the Swedish Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius from 1896.

But finding evidence was difficult because CO2 is an atmospheric trace gas (now 390 ppm) and it is always difficult to find evidence of a big effect from a small cause, because this can only happen in unstable systems and such systems have no permanence allowing study.

An idea which developed was that doubling of CO2 would cause a "radiative forcing" of extra 2 - 4 W/m2 to be added to the 240 W/m2 received from the Sun, which was connected to a global warming of 1 C. Of course 1 C would be barely noticeable, but that was the best that could be squeezed out of CO2 alone, but with feedback from the system under "radiative forcing" from doubled CO2, the warming could be inflated to 3 C, which would enough to motivate a tax on CO2 to save the world.

The whole story of global warming by CO2 then rested on finding evidence of "radiative forcing" of  2 - 4 W/m2 from doubled CO2 and scientists were ordered to construct instruments for recording radiation spectra, which could show this effect.

But this turned out to be virtually impossible, because 2 - 4 W/m2 was too small to be measured: It required an accuracy below 1% which was impossible to achieve in practice. The difficulty of a big effect from a small cause showed its real face.

To counter this "small cause - big effect" syndrome, new physics of "back radiation" was invented showing a warming of 300 W/m2 of the Earth surface from the colder atmosphere as a big cause, but the new physics violated the 2nd law of thermodynamics and thus belonged to fiction.

What then remained of scientific support of CO2 alarmism based on observation, was a recorded global warming 1970 - 1998 of 0.5 C, which was connected to an increase of atmospheric CO2 from 330 to 370 ppm during the same time.

But this connection disappeared during 1998 - 2013, which went by without global warming, while CO2 continued to increase to 390 ppm.

The evidence of global warming by CO2 has thus today crumbled to nil,  which presents a difficult case for the new report by IPPC under UN in charge of CO2 alarmism, to be presented in September. Without scientific support, a CO2 tax cannot be motivated and the whole BIG BLUFF project of unprecedented  dimensions, collapses.

... and All the King's Horses and all the King's Men Couldn't put Humpty together again...

This is a summary of a study I was led into starting in 2009 and I have reported on this blog.

Inflated Modtran Effect of Atmospheric Trace Gases

What is the effect of the atmospheric trace gas CO2 (390 ppm or 0.039%) on global climate? The answer by IPCC consensus is given in the following graph:

which shows the spectrum of the outgoing longwave radiation OLR from the Earth with atmosphere as computed by the software Modtran on the basis of certain satellite measurements.

The idea is that the ditch in the spectrum in the wave number interval 600 - 800 can be attributed to the main absorption line at 667 of CO2.  The total effect is then supposed to be the area between the Planck curves for 288 K and 220 K in the interval 600 - 800, which comes out to be about 40 W/m2. The total "radiative forcing" of atmospheric CO2 is thus supposed to be about 40 W/m2 (disregarding overlap with H2O),  which by Stefan-Boltzann's Law can be connected to a temperature rise of about 10 C.  The total effect of CO2 as the main cause of the ditch, would thus be global warming of 10 C. (With half the ditch attributed to CO2, the effect would be 5 C,  which by Lindzen is cut down to 2.5 C without disclosing the reason). PS With 20 instead of 40, and half of 20 attributed to CO2 one would get 10 W/m2 and thus Lindzen's 2.5 C.

If CO2 was complemented by other trace gases together covering the whole spectrum, the warming effect would be 288 - 220, that is a whopping 68 K, from the mere presence of trace gases.

Is this reasonable? Is it possible that trace gases, making the atmosphere opaque for certain wave numbers, can make the full atmosphere opaque over the entire spectrum?

No, it does not seem to be reasonable, as detailed in an earlier discussion, which means that the above spectrum computed by Modtran does not seem to describe reality.

Yet the Modtran spectrum is the very basis of CO2 alarmism as the core evidence that the presence of of a trace gas can cause substantial global warming.

So there is the question: Can the presence of trace gases make the atmosphere fully opaque?

AGW vs WMD

NASA is now spending big money on projects such as CERES to find instrumental evidence of anthropogenic global warming AGW, but finds nothing. It is similar to the fruitless efforts by CIA to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction WMD in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Is this an expression of paralyzed US politics?

LB Överger IPCC: När Kommer KVAs Avbön?

Katternö-tidningen rappoterar att Lennart Bengtsson är på god väg att överge den CO2 alarmism han tidigare har har framfört för som ansvarig för KVAs uttalande till stöd för IPCC:

• Temperaturhöjningen är så liten att någon knappast skulle märka den, om inte vi meteorologer hade upplyst om saken.
• Jag vill snarare jämföra med katolska kyrkans medeltida avlatsbrev, vilket var ett effektivt sätt att få en förskrämd allmänhet att betala för att undslippa helvetets fasor. Dåtidens katolska kyrka visade här stor skicklighet. Vi får vara tacksamma att Luther lyckades få stopp på detta oskick, åtminstone i våra protestantiska trakter.
• Jag är inte bara surprised, jag är astonished!
• Att oroa sig för att Antarktis är på väg att smälta är nästan på samma nivå som att oroa sig för att jorden och Venus kan komma att kollidera inom så där en miljard år [vilket vissa modellberäkningar visar].

Nu väntar vi bara på att LB skriver om KVAs uttalande från stöd till avståndstagande från IPCCs CO2 alarmism. När kommer detta LB? Sveriges folk och regering väntar på besked för att kunna gå vidare! 

Kanske t o m LB skulle kunna börja uppskatta en person som jag, och inte bara anse att det jag skriver  är "rappakalja" enligt tidigare uttalande i DN? Kanske klockan har gått ett varv.

CERES and Radiative Forcing

      The Earth's energy budget according to CERES showing unphysical "back radiation" of 340 W/m2
'
An overview of the CERES project is given in CERES, a review: Past, present and Future (2011):

• The Clouds and Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES) project’s objectives are to measure the reflected solar radiance (shortwave) and Earth-emitted (longwave) radiances and from these measurements to compute the shortwave and longwave radiation fluxes at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) and the surface and radiation divergence within the atmosphere. The fluxes at TOA are to be retrieved to an accuracy of 2%. 
• The first objective of CERES is to measure OLR radiances to an accuracy of 1% and reflected solar radiances to 2%. The global mean OLR flux is approximately 240 W/m2, so the requirement is 2.4 W/m2 accuracy. Likewise the global mean reflected flux is 100 W/m2, thus the requirement for shortwave flux is 2 W/m2.

We compare the accuracy of 2-3 W/m2 with by IPCC supposed "radiative forcing of  CO2" of 1.8 W/m2 and "total anthropogenic radiative forcing" of 1.6 W/m2 during 1750-2005 and 3.7 W/m2 from doubled CO2. 

We conclude that the accuracy of CERES even at the lower level of 1% for OLR, would not be good enough to detect effects of "radiative forcing" by CO2. 

That the "radiative forcing" of doubled CO2 would be 3.7 W/m2 is a wild guess by IPCC without experimental support, which serves as the following cornerstone of CO2 alarmism:

• Without any feedbacks, a doubling of CO2 (which amounts to a forcing of 3.7 W/m2) would result in 1 °C global warming, which is easy to calculate and is undisputed. 

Here the "easy undisputed calculation" is dQ = 4 dT, where dQ is "radiative forcing" and dT corresponding global warming as a differentiated form of Stefan-Boltzmann's Law Q = sigma T^4. 

The number 3.7 or 4 W/m2 is so chosen by IPCC that the global warming would be 1 C, according to the "easy undisputed calculation", which is not too big to not be possible and not too small to be negligible. The basic argument of CO2 alarmism is that with feedback 1 C can become 3 C which is alarming. 

The whole idea of "radiative forcing" lacks sound physics basis since the forcing comes from the Sun and only from the Sun, and this is reflected by the fact that it cannot be discovered by instruments measuring physical phenomena, that is, it is fiction of a BIG BLUFF.

PS CERES is selling itself e.g. on a video telling us

• When you add greenhouse gasses such as CO2 and methane you change that radiation balance on the top of the atmosphere and you change the amount of outgoing radiation so that imbalance means more energy in the system...part of it goes into the ocean...and part of goes into actually warming the Earth...all of those things should give you a coherent picture of how things are changing as we warm the climate...

The purpose is obvious: Use CERES to show global warming by radiative forcing from CO2. The only trouble is that CERES shows nothing of this sort...all attempts to measure radiative forcing by CO2 seem to fail miserably...the scale of the BIG BLUFF with its organized governmental science support, is really impressive...  

CERES: No Global Warming Detected

In previous posts we have decoded the BIG BLUFF of CO2 alarmism based on fabricating evidence of a global warming effect of CO2 in large scale experimental projects such as ERBE followed by CERES designed to produce measurements of radiative fluxes. While ERBE focussed on outgoing long wave radiation OLR as one-way heat flux from the Earth + atmosphere into outer space at 3 K, which is physical heat flux, CERES has lifted the ambition to include two-way heat fluxes between different parts of the atmosphere and the Earth surface, which lack physical reality:

 

The objective of CERES is described as follows on Daily Press Febr 14 2012:

• Clouds and the Earth's Radiant System CERES is one of five earth science experiments aboard Suomi NPP, a $1.5 billion satellite NASA launched into space Oct. 28 2012 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
• Managed at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, CERES measures the amount of sunlight that enters Earth and how much sunlight and thermal radiation is reflected back to space. The concept is known as Earth's energy budget.
• According to NASA, the sun annually provides the planet about 340 watts per square meter — roughly the energy radiated from six incandescent light bulbs. If the planet returned an equal amount of energy to space, temperatures would be constant, Loeb said.
• That is not occurring. Instead, roughly 0.8 watts per square meter stays on Earth.
• The energy is trapped by greenhouse gases, such as water vapor and carbon dioxide, that come from burning fossil fuels and other sources. Clouds also play a role; they reflect sunlight back into space and, depending on their height and thickness, prevent it from leaving the planet.
• The imbalance helps explain why global temperatures increased 1.4 degrees since last century and sea levels are rising, Loeb said.
• NASA uses computer models to summarize the images into daily and monthly reports that date back to 1985. That's when another Langley instrument, ERBE, or Earth Radiation Budget Experiment, began monitoring the planet.
• Four successive CERES instruments — the one launched in October is a fifth generation — followed, providing data used by, among others, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 
• The panel, which shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore, wrote what many view as the definitive report on climate change.

CERES has four main objectives:

1. For climate change analysis, provide a continuation of the ERBE record of radiative fluxes at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), analyzed using the same algorithms that produced the ERBE data.
2. Double the accuracy of estimates of radiative fluxes at TOA and the Earth's surface.
3. Provide the first long-term global estimates of the radiative fluxes within the Earth's atmosphere.
4. Provide cloud property estimates that are consistent with the radiative fluxes from surface to TOA.

CERES primary measured data are obtained as output:  

• scanning thermistor bolometer sensors which measure Earth-reflected and Earth- emitted filtered radiances in the broadband shortwave (0.3 μm - 5.0 μm), broadband total-wave (0.3 μm - >100 μm), and narrow-band water vapor window (8 μm-12 μm) spectral regions. 

We see that CERES is used to record radiative heat fluxes using sophisticated technology with the ambition to discover effects of global warming by CO2 as an radiative imbalance.  To the disappointment of the designers and users of CERES including IPCC Al Gore,  the instruments show next to nothing: An imbalance of 0.8 W/m2 out of 340 W/m2 is smaller than any thinkable measurement error. 

CERES (like LHC) thus discovers nothing, and what we can now expect is a new bigger project with more sensitive instruments with doubled accuracy with the hope of finding something which is not zero as evidence of global warming by CO2. 

This will not be cheap, but when you go to an expensive restaurant you expect to be offered something special, and so the high price and sophistication of the instrumentation can be seen as a guarantee that something will be discovered.  

BIG BLUFF: Pyrgeometer DLR as Bolometer OLR

The Earth's energy budget is surveyed by

• pyrgeometers on ground measuring downwelling longwave radiation DLR (GEWEX)
• bolometers on satellites measuring outgoing longwave radiation OLR (ERBE and CERES)

where

• DLR = heat flux from atmosphere to the Earth surface (in W/m2)
• OLR = heat flux from atmosphere into outer space at 0 K (or 3 K)

operating according to the following algebraic formulas:

• DLR  = V/K + sigma T_i^4 = DLR-Pyrgeometer Formula
• OLR = E + sigma T_i^4 = OLR-Bolometer Formula 

where 

• T_i is measured instrument temperature
• V is voltage measured by pyrgeometer sensor and K is a sensitivity coefficient
• E is heat flux measured by a bolometer thermal link.

The Bolometer Formula is obtained from Stefan-Boltzmann's Law 

•  E = sigma (T_a^4 - T_i^4)

where sigma = 5.67 x 10^-8 is Stefan-Boltzmann's constant, T_a is the bolometric temperature obtained by calibrating the bolometer against a blackbody. Defining OLR = sigma T_a^4 gives the Bolometer Formula with OLR representing the heat flux from the atmosphere into outer space as stated. 

OLR as reported by ERBE and CERES based on the OLR-Bolometer Formula is thus the heat flux from the Earth with atmosphere into outer space based on Stefan-Boltzmann's Law, and as such represents real physics: The Earth + atmosphere transforms shortwave heat energy received from the Sun into longwave heat energy which is returned to outer space as OLR.  This makes sense as true real physics.

We now turn to DLR, which we know by previous posts represents the BIG BLUFF of CO2 alarmism: The DLR-Pyrgeometer Formula seems to be an analog of the OLR-Bolometer Formula and the BIG BLUFF is now to argue that since the OLR-Bolometer Formula makes sense as an expression of Stefan-Boltzmann's Law, also the DLR-Pyrgeometer Formula makes sense. But this is not true!

The DLR-Pyrgeometer Formula is supposed to be an algebraic reformulation of  

• sigma (T_a^4 - T_i^4) = V/K with DLR = sigma T_a^4,

where sigma (T_a^4 - T_i^4) is the heat flux between the atmosphere at temperature T_a and the pyrgeometer at T_i  > T_a according to Stefan-Boltzmann's Law, as measured by the (negative) voltage V. The BIG BLUFF is to give the algebraic reformulation a physical meaning with DLR = sigma T_a^4 interpreted  as the heat flux from the atmosphere to the Earth surface. But this is not the physics:

• sigma T_a^4 is heat flux from a blackbody into outer space at 0 K.
• sigma T_a^4 is not heat flux from the atmosphere to the Earth surface because there is no such heat flux because T_a <  T_i.

We can see through the BIG BLUFF of CO2-alarmism with DLR as heat flux from the atmosphere to the Earth surface with a warming effect:

DLR is computed from a non-physical DLR-Pyrgeometer Formula which is deceptively similar to a physical OLR-Bolometer Formula, and the BIG BLUFF is to say that because OLR is real so is DLR and global warming. 

The BIG BLUFF of DLR is

• cleverly constructed with a clever mixing of OLR and DLR 
• cleverly covered up in technical documents presenting the non-physical DLR-Pyrgeometer Formula as a version of the True Stefan-Boltzmann's Law, which expresses one-way heat flux from warm to cold,  
• hiding that the DLR-Pyrgeometer Formula represents a False Stefan-Boltzmann Law expressing two-way heat flux with in particular heat flux from a cold atmosphere to a warm Earth surface in violation with the 2nd Law of thermodynamics.      

Global warming alarmism is based on DLR demonstrated by instrumental evidence as a scientific evidence of warming from "greenhouse gasses" including the trace gas CO2. But this is fabricated evidence without physics reality and so it is a BIG BLUFF. 

It is not hard to see the bluff once you understand where to look and not get diverted away from what is really happening when the trick is performed.

LB and the BIG BLUFF: Good News for Humanity

DN rapporterar idag att Lennart Bengtsson förnyar sitt stöd för IPCC, som han tidigare formulerat i KVAs uttalande om klimatvetenskap:

• Det Lennart Bengtsson förmedlar avviker inte från vad forskarkollegerna i FN:s klimatpanel kommit fram till. 

LB förtydligar för DN:

• Att koldioxid och andra växthusgaser höjer temperaturen är känt sedan över 100 år, och att människan bidrar till koldioxidhalten i atmosfären är det vid det här laget heller knappast någon som tvivlar på.
• Det är ingen tvekan om att människan har en påverkan.
• Vad vi inte är säkra på är varför uppvärmningen går så långsamt. 
• Det är möjligt att planeten kyler ned sig mer effektivt än vad vi tidigare räknat med. 

Detta är the BIG BLUFF som är grunden till koldioxid-alarmismen. Det finns ingen vetenskap som visar att spårgasen koldioxid skulle kunna påverka jordens klimat nämnvärt. LB bluffar väl medveten om att DN inte ifrågasätter koldioxid-alarmismen utom möjligen i rubriken:

• Vi skapar en väldig ängslan utan att det är befogat. 

LB vet att människan har  en påverkan, genom sina koldoxid-utsläpp, men tycker inte att ängslan är befogad, kanske därför att uppvärmingen konstigt nog "går så långsamt". 

Skall man tolka det som att LB som en modig man utan ängslan ser fram emot en kvävningsdöd i koldioxid eller som att detta med koldoxid bara är påhitt? Vad säger LB själv?  Kanske LB kan få lite vägledning av Rummukainen också i dagens DN:

• Om det visade sig att klimatkänsligheten snarare är låg än hög, är det goda nyheter.

Goda nyheter för mänskligheten, men inte för koldioxid-alarmismen och Rummukainen och LB.

PS LBs avslöjanden skapar nu svallvågor i klimatvärlden: Warming Not Noticeable without Meteorologists!

Politicised Nobel Laureate Science

An Open Letter to the American People signed by 68 Nobel Lauerates endorsed reelection of Obama
in 2012 with the following motivation (repeated in a political speech after the Nobel dinner by Chemistry Awardee Lefkowitz, see PS below):

• President Obama understands the key role science has played in building a prosperous America, has delivered on his promise to renew our faith in science-based decision making and has championed investment in science and technology research that is the engine of our economy. 
• He has built strong programs to educate young Americans in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and programs to provide Americans the training they need to keep pace with a technology-driven economy. 
• His opponent supports a budget that, if implemented, would devastate a long tradition of support for depends, as never before, on innovation. He has also taken positions that privilege ideology over clear scientific evidence on climate change. 
• As a nation we must continue the investments that revolutionized agriculture, invented the Internet, gave us modern medicine and enabled a strong national defense. 
• Abandoning this tradition would be ways to science and innovation, we urge you to join us in working to ensure the reelection of President Obama.

We read that Obama is to be preferred before His Opponent because Obama would not (like His Opponent) take positions that: 

• privilege ideology over clear scientific evidence on climate change. 

But this statement contradicts observation: Everyone knows that in Obama's climate politics ideology privileges over clear scientific evidence, something which is questioned by His Opponent. 

The 68 Laureates thus let ideology, obviously with expectations of continued generous Democratic support to basic physics and chemistry in particular, privilege over clear scientific evidence. It is a collapse of scientific values which tells us something about our post-modern society.

The Open Letter can be seen as a shameless support of the BIG BLUFF of CO2 alarmism. And who can question the combined wisdom of 68 Nobel Lauraetes?

Compare with Science must be seen to bridge the political divide.

PS Nobel Laureate Lefkowitz told the Swedish King (starting at 3 min 50 sec) in his speech:

• We just had a presidential election in the US. One of the fought-lines in the campaign was the role of science plays in shaping public policy decisions. 
• A clear anti-science bias was apparent in many who sought the presidential nomination of one of our major political parties. 
• This was manifest as a refusal to accept, for example, the theory of evolution, the existence of global warming much less the role of humans in this process, the value of vaccines or ... stem cell research. 
• Each of us Laureates aspires in our own way to do what we can to counter this.... anti-science.     

The King was comforted by the message that all scientists (and they are many) who do not see clear evidence of anthropogenic global warming, represent anti-science and will be blocked from government science grants by Lefkowitz and his Laureate buddies acting through Obama, because this was the same message the King had from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The DLR-meter Formula behind CO2 Alarmism

In previous posts we have seen that measurements of downwelling long wave radiation DLR is standardized by WMO to be measured by a ground-based pyrgeometer equipped with a thermopile according to the following DLR-meter Formula:

• DLR = V/K + sigma T_s^4

where V is measured voltage by the thermopile, K is a sensitivity coefficient to be determined by calibration to a reference, T_s is the measured temperature of the pyrgeometer and sigma is Stefan-Boltzmann's constant. Typical values are 

•  V/K = - 100 W/m2 with V measured by the thermopile 
• sigma T_s^4 = 400 W/m2 with T_s = + 15 C
• DLR = 300 W/m2

which can be illustrated as follows:

We understand that the output of the measurement as specified by WMO is DLR = 300 W/m2, which is obtained from the measured V/K = - 100 W/m2 and the standardized sigma T_s^4 = 400 W/m2. We understand that sigma T_s^4 = 400 W/m2 represents Stefan-Boltzmann's Law for radiation of a blackbody of temperature T_s into a surrounding at 0 K as represented by the red arrow.

But the physics described by the DLR-meter Formula as pictured above, is fictional physics, because the Earth surface with the pyrgeometer is not radiating directly into outer space at 0 K since the atmosphere is in between. The standardization of DLR measurement as stipulated by WMO thus lacks physics rationale.

The blue arrow representing DLR or "back radiation" is fabricated from an unphysical False Stefan Boltzmann Law represented by the red arrow. The only real physics is the measured voltage V translated to heat flux by the sensitivity coefficient K. The black arrow is real heat flux through the DLR-meter while the red and blue arrows represent nothing but non-physical fiction.

In the history of science there is no bigger bluff. It is the BIG BLUFF feeding CO2 alarmism. It remains to explain why physicists have not identified the bluff.

It is like the CEO of the Swedish state-owned company Telia, who claims that he did not know about bribes paid by Telia to get a license in Uzbekistan, bribes which everybody knows about: Either the CEO knows way too little to run the company or he is lying. In any case he is today resigning.

To say that the Earth is flat is a minor bluff compared to the BIG red arrow BLUFF, since there is some truth to the flatness of the Earth in the sense that it is approximately true on smaller scales, while there is no truth whatsoever in the red arrow of the BIG BLUFF.

PS1 Energy Secretary Steven Chu is also leaving his position, The Washington Post reports:

• Republicans criticized Chu for a $528 million loan to Solyndra, a solar power company that is now bankrupt.

Obama said in a statement Friday, referring to billions of dollars in Energy Department loans to boost renewable energy such as wind and solar power:

• Chu brought a unique understanding of both the urgent challenge presented by climate change and the tremendous opportunity that clean energy represents for our economy.
• During his tenure, Chu helped move the country toward energy independence, Obama said,
• Thanks to Steve, we also expanded support for our brightest engineers and entrepreneurs as they pursue groundbreaking innovations that could transform our energy future.

Chu, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, has not only been silent about the fictional physics of the BIG BLUFF, but has actively promoted CO2 alarmism based on the bluff. In a letter to Energy Department employees, Chu said he 

• was proud of his tenure and cited dozens of accomplishments, including doubling the production of renewable energy from wind and solar power. 
• Installations of solar electric systems have nearly doubled in each of the last three years, he said, while fully 42 percent of new energy capacity in the U.S. last year was from wind - more than any other energy source.

PS2 Notice that to question standarization is in a way meaningless because it is like questioning a definition, like questioning that there are 100 centimeters on a 1 meter. But when a definition is twisted into a statement about physics, a basic principle of science is violated, and such violation always has a purpose to twist the brains of people. To define DLR by formula is the first step towards CO2 alarmism with the atmosphere suddenly out of the blue by definition given the capacity to heat the Earth surface by 300 W/m2.  This is the BIG BLUFF which must be questioned. This is what Chu should have done, but did not in what can only be described as a corruption of the ideals of physics and science.

The Birth of the BIG BLUFF of CO2 Alarmism

                          The IRIS satellite reporting outgoing longwave radiation OLR

The previous post revealed that the basic argument of CO2 alarmism in the form of "downwelling long wave radiation" DLR from the atmosphere to the Earth surface of size 300 W/m2, is supported by specific DLR-meters designed to report measurements of DLR. A DLR-meter is based on a DLR-meter Formula producing DLR from measurements of net radiation between the Earth surface and the atmosphere. 

The DLR-meter Formula was first formulated by the meteorologist Anders Ångström, chief of
Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute SMHI 1949-54, when in A Study of the Radiation of the Atmosphere (1915) reporting measurements using a pyrgeometer designed by his father Knut Ångström made during expeditions to Algeria in 1912 and California in 1913 to study "nocturnal radiation to the sky" from the Earth surface:

• It was found the water vapor exerted a very marked influence on the nocturnal radiation to the sky.
• From the observations it was possible to arrive at a logically founded mathematical expression for this influence. 
• The outgoing radiation of a blackened body in the night must be regarded as the sum of several terms: the radiation from the surface toward space given by Stefan's radiation law (E_c), the radiation from the atmosphere to the surface E_a...with effective radiation: 
• J = E_c - E_a.
• If the observed effective radiation is not more than 100 W/m2 when at 15 C one has E_c ~ 400 W/m2, it must be that 300 W/m2 is radiated to the surface from some other source of radiation; in the case of the Earth this other source of radiation is probably to a large extent its own atmosphere...ignoring the fact that a small fraction of it is due to the stars and the planetary bodies.

We see here how Anders Ångström expresses net "effective" radiation as the difference of two gross quantities:  

• E_c = sigma T_s^4 radiation from surface to outer space (according to Stefan-Boltzmann bypassing the atmosphere)
• E_a radiation from the atmosphere to the surface ("back radiation")

What Ångström wanted to measure was E_a, by measuring J by the pyrgeometer and reporting

• E_a = J + sigma T_s^4 = DLR-meter Formula.

Notice that Anders Ångström introduced E_c as the radiation from the surface to outer space according to Stefan-Boltzmann, which however has no physical meaning since the surface is in radiative contact with the atmosphere and not directly with outer space at 0 K.

Ångström claimed that the outgoing radiation E_a "must be regarded" to satisfy E_c - E_a = J and thus E_a = J + sigma T_s^4. But this "must be" lacks physics rationale, which is evident from the fact that Ångström offered no motivation other than "must be" which is no motivation. 

Ångström thus introduced the non-physical quantity E_c and then from this non-physical quantity constructed another non-physical quantity E_a = J + E_c, by measuring the physical quantity J.

The scientific mistake committed by Anders Ångström is so elementary that it has not been identified as an error but instead has come to serve CO2 alarmism as the prime evidence of massive warming of about 300 W/m2 of the Earth surface by the atmosphere. 

To understand that the DLR-meter Formula lacks physics rationale is in principle simple, since it only requires to understand that the quantity E_c as the radiation from the Earth surface to outer space lacks physical meaning, because the atmosphere is between the Earth surface and outer space. 

But to understand how it is possible that the elementary mistake by the meteorologist Anders Ångström has not been identified during 100 years of modern physics, is more difficult. 

It seems that meteorology in its birth in the beginning of the 20th century from thermodynamics and radiation physics, was searching for a place in science and found this by inventing specific instruments for measuring specific phenomena such as "nocturnal radiation to the sky". This strategy is today taken to its extreme by massive measurements of DLR coordinated and standardized by the World Meteorological Organization WMO. Climate science is this way made into the King of Sciences but

• Pride goeth before a fall.

The discovery that the King is naked is imminent.

The BIG BLUFF of CO2 Alarmism: DLR

Inside this building the False Stefan-Boltzmann Law of two-way radiative heat transfer underlying CO2 alarmism was fabricated.

The road to CO2 alarmism paved by IPCC is covered with fabricated stories of hockey-stick temperatures, melting glaciers and suffering ice-bears. But these stories can be viewed as minor bluffs compared to the BIG BLUFF of "Downwelling Longwave Radiation DLR" as radiation from "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere with a proclaimed warming effect of the Earth surface of about 300 W/m2, almost twice as much as the 170 W/m2 of absorbed shortwave radiation from the Sun, and a specific "radiative forcing" of about 3.7 W/m2 from doubled CO2 with an alarming warming of 3 C.

The BIG BLUFF is documented in Guide to Meteorological Instruments and Methods of Observation (2008) issued by World Meteorological Organization WMO by the stipulation to measure DLR = L-arrowdown using a DLR-meter (pyrometer, bolometer, radiometer) as follows:

• DLR = V/K + sigma x T_s^4 = DLR-meter Formula

where sigma = 5.67 10^-8 is Stefan-Boltzmann's constant, T_s is measured temperature of the DLR-meter, V is the voltage reading of the thermopile as the effective recording element of the DLR-meter and K is a sensitivity coefficient determined by calibration, as expressed in the following excerpts from Chapter 7 of the Guide:

The DLR-meter Formula has a the form

• DLR = sigma T_a^4 = V/K + sigma T_s^4 = Net-Input + ULR
• ULR = sigma T_s^4 = "Upwelling Longwave Radiation" from the DLR-meter
• DLR = sigma T_a^4 = "Downwelling Longwave Radiation" from the atmosphere
• Net-Input = V/K = net absorbed radiation by the DLR-meter 

which is supposed to be a reformulation of Stefan-Boltzmann's Law 

• Net-Input = sigma (T_a^4 - T_s^4) = True Stefan-Boltzmann Law

of the form

• Net-Input = sigma T_a^4  -  sigma T_s^4 = False Stefan Boltzmann Law,
• sigma T_a^4 = Net-Input + sigma T_s^4  = False Stefan Boltzmann Law, 

obtained by algebraic reformulation of the True Stefan-Boltzmann Law. But the seemingly innocent algebraic reformulation leads to a False Stefan-Boltzmann Law, because the algebra has no physical meaning: 

To rewrite Net-Input as the difference of the gross quantities sigma T_a^4 and sigma T_s^4 has no physical meaning, since sigma T_a^4 is the radiance from the atmosphere into a surrounding at 0 K and sigma T_s^4 is the radiance from the DLR-meter into a surrounding at 0 K, and this is not the physics of the interaction between atmosphere and DLR-meter described by sigma (T_a^4 - T_s^4) according to the True Stefan-Boltzmann Law.

WMO refers to a False Stefan-Boltzmann Law expressing simultaneous two-way heat transfer between
two bodies in radiative contact, gross heat transfer from warm minus gross heat transfer from cold,
while the True Stefan-Boltzmann Law expresses one-way net heat transfer from warm to cold. 

WMO thus prescribes to use of a False Stefan-Boltzmann Law when measuring DLR and thus fabricates physics, which is false physics. The bluff in giving the unphysical algebraic reformulation of the True Stefan-Boltzmann Law, a physical meaning as DLR measured by DLR-meters, has such big dimension that it has become a truth not questioned by even strong critics of CO2-alarmism. 

This means that critics of CO2 alarmism have been diverted to focus efforts on revealing little lies, while the BIG BLUFF has been left free to fool the world that massive DLR from greenhouse gases with "radiative forcing" of 3.7 W/m2 of doubled CO2, is threatening to over-heat the globe. 

That it is a False Stefan-Boltzmann Law, obtained by a non-physical algebraic manipulation of the True  Stefan-Boltzmann Law, which underlies CO2 alarmism, is so unbelievable, that it has become a truth, like a bluff poker bet which so high that it cannot be matched. The bet is maintained by requirements of universal calibration in the hands of WMO, which effectively makes it impossible to question the false physics:

• These instruments should be calibrated at national or regional calibration centres by using black- body calibration units. Experiments using near-black-body radiators fashioned from large hollowed blocks of ice have also met with good success. The calibration centre should provide information on the best method of determining the atmospheric irradiance from a pyrgeometer depending upon which of the above recommendations are being followed. 

The fact that in our time a False Stefan-Boltzmann Law by universal calibration can be twisted into a true physical law, can only be understood as an exodus of physicists from physics.

The concept of "man-made" global warming as evidenced by DLR-meters is by WMO taken to an unprecedented level in the history of science by 

• promoting cooperation in the establishment of networks for making meteorological, climatological, hydrological and geophysical observations, as well as the exchange, processing and standardization of related data, and assisting technology transfer, training and research..

To understand that this is a BIG BLUFF requires understanding of the True Stefan-Boltzmann Law which can only be properly understood by understanding the elements of its mathematical proof.  A proof of the True Stefan-Boltzmann Law and a further discussion of the False Stefan-Boltzmann Law, is presented in Mathematical Physics of Blackbody Radiation and in Computational Blackbody Radiation from Slaying the Sky Dragon.

The BIG BLUFF of DLR is so cleverly concocted that even clever critics like Lindzen, Singer, Monckton, Spencer,  WUWT and many others, have been been fooled.

PS Here is the terminology postulated by WMO with an abundance of symbols with arrows up and down supposedly representing (non-physical) two-way heat transfer in "downward" and "upward" radiation:

Recall that to make a lie convincing, make it big and make incredible; the bigger and the more incredible, the more convincing: To motivate the Iraq war, Bush presented evidence that Saddam was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, like long-distance rockets with nuclear heads ready to be launched, and the utter improbability of anything like that made the lie into a truth which could be used to start a war. WMO is now using the big improbable story about DLR to motivate a war on climate.

Notice that what WMO effectively does is to rewrite 0 = 1 - 1 and then use algebra to get 1 = 0 + 1 or DLR =  Net + ULR with DLR = 1, Net = 0, and ULR = 1, which miraculously generates DLR = 1 from observing Net = 0, or DLR = 10 by rewriting 0 = 10 - 10, or DLR = 100....

The innovative idea of creating values from nothing has created fictional financial markets, which we now see imploding under the weight of realities, and fictional science will also eventually meet reality.