A lot has been written about the need for public debate between alarmists and skeptics on the science of climate change. Earlier this month there was an actual debate, at the Colorado State University, Pueblo, Colorado. The slides are available online and they tell a remarkable story about the emptiness of alarmism.
The debaters are two scientists who have long been active in the debate. On the alarmist side we have Scott Denning, Director of Education, Earth System Modeling Institute (ESMEI), Colorado State University. Modeling is central to climate alarmism so this seems like a good choice.
The skeptical scientist is Howard Cork Hayden, Emeritus Physics Professor, University of Connecticut. I have known Hayden for decades and have learned a lot from him. His operation is called The Energy Advocate. He has a great monthly newsletter plus lots of other stuff.
To my knowledge there is as yet no video of the debate, but Denning’s slides are here and Hayden’s are here. The differences are telling.
Deming’s title is “CLIMATE CHANGE SIMPLE, SERIOUS, SOLVABLE” and as he presents it, climate alarmism is indeed simple, too simple by far. He has 40 slides but virtually no science. All he does is to first briefly explain the greenhouse effect, then present the usual IPCC model forecast of significant warming due to our CO2 emissions.
The climate change debate is not about the basic greenhouse effect. It is about what warming, if any, the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration might bring and whether or not it is dangerous. Deming addresses none of this, which is certainly simple, but also useless.
He simply equates the increased CO2 concentration with global warming. The validity of this equation is what most of the debate is about, but there is no hint of this in his presentation. It is as if the debate did not exist. He even suggests that this entire issue was settled over 100 years ago, which is simply laughable.
He quickly moves on with a bunch of slides about all the damage this assumed warming will cause, especially wildfires as they are a hot topic in Colorado these days. This is indeed standard alarmism, skip over the science and go right to the imagined damages. He then finishes with a bunch of slides about how we can easily restructure the global energy system, if we just work as hard as our parents and grandparents did. I am not making this up.
Hayden’s slides are all science, probably too much. He has 99 slides, many of which are complex graphs that would take several minutes each to understand. But his points are all well made. Physicists and climate scientists in his audience will have no trouble following this stuff.
He begins with the paleoclimate evidence that CO2 does not control temperature or climate. He then takes a tour of IPCC trickery. To finish up he looks at the CO2 increase’s actual role in the greenhouse effect, in considerable technical detail. Real science and plenty of it.
The differences between these two presentations could not be starker. The alarmist is all scares and activism, with almost no science. The skeptic is all science and no scares.
So as debates go this one was not very good, because the alarmist did not actually debate, but that is the message. When it comes to alarmism, keep it simple, even if it is not. And by all means hype the scares.
Deming’s title is Director of Education. One hopes that his presentation is not what education looks like at Colorado State.
Thanks for reporting on this. I have come across Scott Denning before, and have deconstructed his position.
Denning’s comments, supported by several presentations at his website demonstrate how some scientists (all those known to Denning) engage in a classic form of reductionism.
The full complexity of earth’s climate includes many processes, some poorly understood, but known to have effects orders of magnitude greater than the potential of CO2 warming. The case for global warming alarm rests on simplifying away everything but the predetermined notion that humans are warming the planet. It goes like this:
https://rclutz.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/climate-reductions3.png
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/climate-reductionism/
Ron, thank you for that.
Indeed! Denning frames his argument as “If you add heat to a system then it must warm,” which is true. In fact he says this explicitly in a follow up email to Hayden. But his actual argument is “If one of many components of a system adds a tiny bit of heat then the system must warm,” which is obviously false. It all depends on what the other components do.
By analogy, Newton’s laws say a feather and a baseball will fall at the same rate. But not at the bottom of an ocean of air. An abstraction is not a prediction in the real world.
CO2 does not “ADD” any heat, it merely recycles what is in the system, temporarily delaying it’s exit to space.
I have been having this debate with Mr Eshenbach on WUWT who expounds exactly the same so called science that “back radiation” from CO2 actually warms the surface of the earth.
I have been conducting many experiments in an attempt to get Radiation from a cold object to warm a hotter one, unheated, cooling, heated, it makes no difference.
I have failled every time.
Even 2 objects at the same temperature do not “warm” each other.
But he and his Acolytes are adamant, even in the face of real life data that it works, nothing will change their minds.
Or they are just plain lying, who knows.
AC: Your first sentence depends one what system you are referring to. If you mean the entire earth system then yes, the CO2 merely changes the random walk that energy (not heat) takes between entry and exit.
But if the system is just the atmosphere, then CO2 does add heat, by absorbing IR photons coming off of the surface. (It also absorbs photons coming from other GHG molecules in the air, which is adding heat in that has just been taken out.)
As for back radiation, I have not addressed that, as it is a different issue. It is true that some of the radiation from GHGs in the air is absorbed by the surface and this is a transfer of energy. But if the energy originated in the surface it is not an overall warming, although it might be a local warming.
The terms “warm,” warmth” and “warming” can have multiple meanings in this context, which is where some of the disagreements come from. For that matter, photons are not heat so it is best to talk about energy transfers and levels, some of which occur as heat. Heat appears and disappears, but energy does not.
But it is certainly true that radiation from a cold object can warm a hotter one. A photon does not care what the relative temperatures are. If an IR photon from my candle is absorbed by a molecule in the sun, the energy is transferred and the sun is warmed thereby, albeit not much.
Dr. Wojick your last paragraph is in error. Radiation from a cold object cannot warm a hotter one without work being done. The second law of thermodynamics is clear on this.
The second law only applies to heat, not to other forms of energy. For example, if I hook a battery to a wire the chemical energy is converted to electrical energy which turns the wire red hot, while the battery is still cool. So if a process includes other forms of energy, including radiation, then the second law does not govern that process.
What “Radiation” was used by your battery exactly?
How hot was the Battery when the Energy was PUT IN IT?
How hot was the Device charging the Battery?
They are all Work.
DWIR cannot do any Work, if you think it can, just name it.
Actually it seems pretty good at making stuff cold at night in Solar Ovens, but I am not sure it counts as “positive work”.
There is no radiation in the battery case. It is just an example of the fact that the second law only applies to one form of energy, namely molecular motion (also known as heat). It is really just about the statistical flow of heat via conduction. Where other forms of energy are involved, including radiation, it does not apply.
As for your questions, I did not charge the battery. I just put in the chemicals, which were also at room temperature, then drew off the chemical energy in the form of electrical energy.
Yes, I get that. The second law, as I understand it, states that heat travels from warm to cool. Radiation is energy but not necessarily heat, correct?
If you really believe that “it is certainly true that radiation from a cold object can warm a hotter one.”
I suggest that you actually try it as I have done.
I have conducted many experiments and not one of them has shown any increased energy manifesting itself as an increase in Temperature.
I do not care how many photons are absorbed, if the energy level and the Temperature do not increase then those photons have done nothing.
Try any of the following.
2 cooling objects of the same Temeperature.
2 cooling objects one hotter then the other where both are above ambient Temperature.
2 cooling objects one hot (above ambient) one cold (below ambient).
1 heated object at Equlibrium with ambient & 1 cooling above ambient.
1 heated object at Equlibrium with ambient & 1 cooling below ambient.
both items heated and above ambient, but one cooler than the other.
The only way that any of these can warm the hotter object is if they heat the air between them thus changing the ambient experienced by the hotter object.
It does not happen if the air between them is stirred by a low level fan.
I have tried them all, so over to you maestro
David:
Good job on the summary. Another fallacy of the Denning position is his “solutions.” At this point there is zero scientific proof that wind energy saves any consequential CO2. In fact studies show that Wind+Gas emits more CO2 than Gas by itself!
He is forced to rely on carefully fabricated future scenarios about how much he speculates that wind and solar will cost, and about how batteries (which he fails to show the cost of) will come to their rescue. Of course today none of his solutions makes sense, yet he ignores that inconvenient detail.
QUOTE: To finish up he looks at the CO2 increase’s actual role in the greenhouse effect, in considerable technical detail. Real science and plenty of it. UNQUOTE, Not real science unfortunately, but close to it. Please readhttp://tech-know-group.com/papers/Role_of_GHE-EaE.pdf and learn that there is no such atmospheric mechanism as the “greenhouse effect”, then please read http://tech-know-group.com/papers/Role_of_CO2-EaE.pdf So-called “greenhouse gases” are in fact the main mechanism by which our atmosphere can shed excess heat into space via radiation.
Oxygen and nitrogen are the real “greenhouse gases”. AGW “science” has it all exactly 180 degrees wrong. Using the terms “greenhouse effect” and “greenhouse gases” merely reinforces the false AGW “science”. Get the facts, make the right decisions.
Your link is broken.
Hans, I agree that the greenhouse gases, especially water and CO2, are in fact the main mechanism by which our atmosphere can shed excess heat into space via radiation. GHGs both add and remove heat in the atmosphere, which alarmism often fails to mention, falsely calling CO2 a “heat trapping” gas. But I do not see how that makes Oxygen and nitrogen the real “greenhouse gases.”
Dr. Wojick, they transfer heat but do not absorb IR
Yes, I-600, that is correct. The heat created, by GHG molecules absorbing IR photons, is then diffused (or transferred) by the N and O molecules. Then as it is eventually transferred to GHG molecules, it causes those molecules to produce photons, which remove heat.
This diffusion is not quantum in nature, so the heat is not traceable, but basically the GHG molecules are not emitting the energy they absorbed. That is a common misconception.
GHG molecules almost never emit a photon after having absorbed one. The molecule to molecule heat transfer process is thus the intermediary. This diffusing heat constitutes what is called the greenhouse effect, but it is nothing like how a greenhouse works. That is a very different mechanism.
Unfortunately, analogs like “the greenhouse effect” are often misleading. In the same way, the butterfly effect has nothing to do with butterflies. It is actually a mathematical phenomenon, not a physical one. No butterflies are involved, but I digress.
David,
Neither oxygen nor nitrogen are effective energy radiators and only gain or lose energy by conduction. Convection is the means by which those gases (and all others for that matter) ascend into higher altitudes but that does not cause much energy loss as such, just a dilution of the same energy, which is why it is colder as you go up into the atmosphere.
So oxygen and nitrogen can be seen as “trapping heat” (a concept that is strictly speaking impossible of course!) and those two gases are in fact the ones that cause a real greenhouse to become warmer than the outside air, in the presence of sunlight that is. At night the inside of a greenhouse cools down to the same low temperature as outside unless external heating is installed.
Under no circumstances can heat be “added” in the manner that you suggest, that would instantly create a perpetuum mobile!.
Please correct my statement below if I’m in error. Thanks.
Hans, I agree that the N and O can be regarded as the primary elements in the greenhouse effect, because it is their mass warming by the greenhouse gases that constitutes the greenhouse effect. But the term “greenhouse gas” already has a well defined meaning in physics, which refers to the molecules that absorb IR photons, not the N and O molecules that receive the resulting heat.
I have no idea what you mean by your last sentence. GHG’s absorb IR photons and convert their energy into heat, that is molecular motion, which is then transferred to the N and O molecules via kinetic collisions. Heat is also removed by reversing the process, converting the energy of motion into photons. Thus GHGs both add heat to the air and remove it, via separate processes.
David, you state yet another “definition” of the
“greenhouse effect” – in the past Alan Siddons collected some 67 version of
them. Please read these essays, just as an example tech-know-group.com/essays/Three_Impossible_Outcomes.pdf and
tech-know-group.com/essays/Greenhouse_Effect_Fact_or_Fiction.pdf and
then read some more tech-know-group.com/essays.html
Finally, please read my latest and final essay
on the matter: https://principia-scientific.org/tunnel-vision-on-co2-driven-greenhouse-gas-effect/ and
follow all of the references. There is no point to carry on with this discussion
as all that needed to be said and written has been done already over the past 11
years, with one misconception atop another one, all of them debunked with proper
science. Enjoy the festive days as I will no longer follow this
thread.
Thanks but no thanks, Hans. I do not take the “read this and get back to me” gambit. If you cannot reply then we are indeed done.
When I read your post this is what I saw: “You’ve indicated where I can go to find the answers to the question(s) posed and I am unwilling to go there.”
In other words, you were never truly interested in the question(s) at hand.
I disagree, Tokken. This is a public forum with many participants, so it is inappropriate to pose an argument via an opaque reference to a distant document or documents of unknown length. The argument needs to be presented and defended here in the comments.
References are merely for those (few) who might want to research the issue. They are not the vehicle for the debate.
In this situation, my reason for refusing to follow links to the evidence is that they seldom contain the evidence and often are quite lengthy – i.e. a big waste of time.
Instead of a link, one needs to post a precise statement, including quotes of the argument, probably backed up with the link showing the quotes in context with the evidence.
Sounds like another translation needs to be made.
“they seldom contain evidence” = “they often don’t conform to my preconceived beliefs”.
These are comment sections, not a class room full of students presenting papers for grading. If you really want to know the potential answer then don’t be intellectually lazy, read the linked article and then come back and dispute it.
Tokkenn —-“they seldom contain evidence” = “they often don’t conform to my preconceived beliefs”
ME–NO!! Far too many links DO NOT show the claimed information. Far too many alarmists do not have a clue what evidence is.
Basic science question: how many times does a model, theory or idea have to fail when tested before the scientists begin choosing a different trajectory?
Answer:
By a scientist: just one.
By a global warming/climate change cultist: as many times as it takes.
I agree with your general premise; however, the solar heating of land surfaces and absorption of heat by the oceans must be included in the argument. Those who believe as I do that solar cycles are a more important driver of the climate than CO2 are looking forward to seeing climatic conditions during the coming solar output minimum where predicted sunspot activity will be the lowest since the Little Ice Age.
We are told that 99% of the atmosphere, Nitrogen, Oxygen and Argon do not absorb or emit significant IR.
It is obvious that this 99% is heated by contact with the heated surface. The rate of increase in air temperature where I live cannot possibly be due to 0.04% of the atmosphere that is CO2 and a few % that is water vapour.
Just this morning the air temperature rose from ~21°C at 5:00 am to ~29°at 7:00 am.
Thus 99% of the atmosphere cannot emit significant quantities of IR to space and we are told must rely on transference of energy to 0.04% CO2 and a few % water vapour.
Such collisions are obviously rare as the majority of collisions are predominantly N-N, O-N, O-O, N-Ar, O-Ar and only 1 in about 50 or 30 N-H2O or O-H2O and even less likely N – CO2 or O – CO2.
I wrote years ago that Trenberth et al claim that ~83% of the IR to space originates from GHGs and that ~17% is direct from the surface.
If this is true – 99% of the atmosphere can’t emit the energy it obviously gains by contact with the surfaces and increases in temperature – then it is difficult to logically claim that increasing the concentration of the only molecules claimed to have the ability to radiate IR will result in less IR to space.
As is shown the satellites show more IR to space anyway thus demonstrating the “heat trapping” by GHGs is not true anyway.
Look at the graph from https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Nimbus/nimbus2.php.
The anomaly for radiation to space is basically positive for most of the period from 1979 – 2005 AND of the order of at least 2.5 W/m2 to ~1991 and higher after.
This is a sure sign of a hotter object emitting more IR (external forcing) but hardly evidence for any “heat trapping” !
However, it is also interesting that the 40th anniversary of the Nimbus program from 1965 – 2005 excludes the first 14 years of data ??
You first link may have a typo, doesn’t work. The article on the second link is quite good and has more information on the false claim of anthropogenic CO2 sources and it’s alleged forcing effect on climate change.
The importance of Professor Tom Segalstad of who is was should be emphasized. Many Alarmists dismiss him as just another skeptical professor.
Another important researcher on CO2 resident time is Prof. Murry Salby.
Trying again to post the links, which Disqus somehow managed to
mess up:
tech-know-group.com/papers/Role_of_GHE-EaE.pdf
tech-know-group.com/papers/Role_of_CO2-EaE.pdf
Thanks. OH! I already know of those papers. You did a fantastic job!
Recall that Al Gore is a master debater. He led the charge for NAFTA under the Clinton administration and famously debated H. Ross Perot on Larry King Live! in the early 90s on the subject. Gore is a world class debater.
Curious, then, why Gore has not debated — as far as I know — anyone on climate change, especially considering that he is one of the prime movers on the alarmist side.
Can you imagine a debate between, say, a Richard Lindzen and Al Gore on the subject? This is one match I’d like to see.
I would love to debate Gore. Lindzen is a great scientist but I am not sure how great a debater he is. He tends to get both technical and excited.
Just a few comments.
1. It was demonstrated that the radiation from a cold object DOES NOT induce any temperature increase in an already warmer object. In an experiment conducted two centuries ago placing a beaker of ice and snow at the focus of a parabolic mirror induced an immediate drop in the temperature of an “air thermometer” placed at the focus of another parabolic mirror 16 feet distant. As the thermometer remained in thermal contact with the air of the laboratory at all times and the beaker was small and 16 feet away no conductive effects apply this establishes the well known truism that heat only transfers from hot to cold – this time the thermometer is the hot !
The person who conducted this experiment understood this and had previously demonstrated heat transfer from a hot object to the thermometer by using heated metal objects.
The radiation from a cold object DOES NOT induce any temperature increase in an already warmer object.
2. The simple model of the “greenhouse effect”, the only model I have ever seen, results in an equation where the solar radiation of 239.7 W/m2 (Washington University) or 240 W/m2 (Richard Lindzen) adds to the “atmospheric back radiation” of similar magnitude to provoke surface radiation of the order of 479.4 (480) W/m2 at ~303 Kelvin.
The University model explicitly states that “sans atmosphere” the Earth’s surfaces would radiated 239.7 at ~255 Kelvin.
To test this claim that 239.7 emitted by a surface at 255 Kelvin can be forced to emit 479.4 W/m2 at a resulting temperature of 303 Kelvin I used the following procedure :-
(a) The solar radiation and the Earth’s infra=-red occupy completely different spectr and addition of these by simple algebra is ridiculous.
(b) Using “the idea of an energy balance: What comes in = what goes out” then 239.7 solar MUST be balanced by 239.7 IR – the University says so.
(c) The University says the 239.7 W/m2 atmospheric back radiation from the atmospheric “radiating layer” at a temperature of 255 Kelvin causes the surface to emit an extra 239.7 above the “no atmosphere” radiation temperature.
(d) As both radiative fluxes are now in the IR part of the spectrum it is possible to sum them using algebra AND the explicit relationship between Planck curves.
(e) Plot a Planck curve for 255 Kelvin and one for 303 Kelvin and a third which is the sum of each value of spectral radiance for each value of wavelength (or frequency or wavenumber etc.).
(f) The curve represents 239.7 W/m2 + 239.7 W/m2 as the Stefan-Boltzmann equation values are the area under the Planck curves time pi.
(g) However, the 239.7 + 239.7 curve sum does NOT equal the 303 Kelvin curve and therefore the simple model of the “greenhouse effect” is completely wrong !
If simple algebraic sums using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation CAN BE SO EASILY shown to be wrong then the whole of the calculations used in the “models” are highly suspect at the least !
In all likelihood that is exactly what education looks like at Colorado State and many other universities around the country: take what we tell you about climate change on faith. And, by the way, our facts are wrong or incomplete.
What happened to the post I submitted a few hours ago ?
Censorship ?
It’s not difficult to show that the MWP was global and at least as warm as it is now. This destroys the credibility of those “scientists” who DENY that the MWP was global. Why do they deny it? Perhaps because their computer models do not compute unless co2 level is rising, and according to the alarmists own claims, co2 did not begin rising until the 1800s, so long after the MWP. Many alarmists go further, claiming that the MWP was only experienced in Europe. (They have to admit that because it is too well documented.)
There is temperature data from 6,000 boreholes scattered about the globe. The boreholes conclusively show the MWP trend to have been global. Boreholes, unlike ice core data are not constrained to regions near the poles. There is a good (and educational) discussion of borehole data at Joanne Nova’s website.
But, there’s more. The Alaskan receding Mendenhall glacier has recently exposed a shattered 1,000 year-old forest still in its original position. No trees have grown at that latitude anywhere near that site since then. Google the Greenland Temperature data study (gisp2) which shows, among other things, that Greenland was warmer than it is now. Both Alaska and Greenland are distant from Europe, and from each other. Alarmists also ignore the ancient vineyards found at latitudes where grapes cannot be grown today. There also appear to have been old burial sites found below the perma-frost.
There are hundreds of peer-reviewed MWP studies. Practically all have been cataloged by co2science.org so are easily accessible. A subset of those studies directly address temperature. Readers should choose a half dozen regions, all distinct from Europe, Greenland, and Alaska, and then select one temperature study (if any are available) from each region. You will find that site was warmer during the MWP than it is now. This, in aggregate, constitutes a multi-case study, with numerous parts, and varying kinds of data and studies.
This does not prove that our current warming is also natural, but it contributes significantly to the doubts about the credibility of alarmist “scientists” who continue to insist that the MWP was not global, nor as warm as it is today. It also debunks those alarmists who have claimed that “there is no other explanation for our current warming ” (such as it is).
But the GHG theory, when applied to the open atmosphere, brings with it a NECESSARY condition. There MUST be a warmer region about 10k above the tropics. Alarmists have been totally quiet about this – but occasionally one of their cult claims that “hot spot” has been found. But there are two decades of radiosondes showing that it has NOT been found. Replacing existing temperature data with modeled data, or “wind” is evidence of pure desperation rather than scientific method.
The widening difference between computer model projected temperatures and actual temperatures merely shows, if anything, that co2 has already reached a level where its contribution to temperature increase is insignificant, and that water vapor feedback assumptions are invalid.. The assumption in the computer models that water vapor is the actual culprit, contributing 2 to 3 times the temperature increase as brought on by co2 increase is faulty because the GHG theory itself is in question, and nobody really knows whether water vapor feedback is actually even positive.
… and let’s add the fact that the only people impacted by that 15µm absorption band are astronomers. Somehow I can’t seem to find any valid experimental proof that “trapping” the peak radiation of an ideal black body at a temperature of -80°C [-112°F] is going to increase ANY surface temperature on this planet or its troposphere. With the possible exception of the middle of Antarctica in July.
Atmospheres smear out heating / cooling cycles. Otherwise we’d see 120°C surface temperatures during the day.
Any conversation containing CO2 is a complete waste of time. It was chosen by an interest group as something to tax. Nothing more. They just weaved it into the “science” argument. Don’t be fooled. You’re off into the weeds if your bother discussing CO2.
Very true! I’m sick of hearing CO2 is the problem. Politics
and pseudo-science has made it the villain of villains –regardless of where
it’s generated CO2 is not a pollutant. Neither is each molecule a miniature
furnace heating the atmosphere. Knowing no hydrocarbon can be oxidized without producing it– government fabricates a problem, for which CO2 is the cause, generates endless hype, so we citizens will clamor for a solution. It is one of the most insidious lies ever told.
CO2 has one inherent benefit for the warmist: It WILL continue to rise and can therefor be milked as a taxable threat into the foreseeable future. Please ignore what the climate is actually doing and instead worry about what the CO2 level is coz eventually (sometime in the future after your tax dollars have been collected and spent) the predicted disaster will come to pass.
The earth is said to receive 164W/M2 of surface insolation and all but 59W/M2 goes to evaporate water or heat the air by conduction. So the 59 is outgoing IR. Now only 4% or so of the Earths’ IR spectrum is in the CO2 absorbing range around 15 microns. So of the 59 W/M2, only 2.4W/m2 is from a range that CO2 putatively warms by absorbing and ‘back-radiating’ to the surface. But almost all — 94% — of CO2 absorbed IR is thermalized (transferred via collision with nearby [99.9% nonGHG] molecules as heat according to F.K Reinhart (2017, page 4, bottom). That leaves 6% of CO2 aborbed energy which is radiated — half ‘up-radiated’ and half ‘back radiated’ to the surface. 3% of 2.4W/M2 is .0072W/M2 and you don’t have to go more than 2 or 3 repetitions of this before the amount of back radiation becomes zilch (and all back-radtation after the first has to go back down through lower layers where the 3% haircut is repeated).
Net/net ‘back-radiation’ from CO2 doesn’t amount to even 1W/M2…. for sure lot less.
Therefore, climate science (human CO2 induced global warming) is pseudo science.
CO2 is a very weak GHG with little impact on earth’s temperature. The earth is warming, but not from the added CO2, which can’t do the trick.
There’s no doubt that the climate change skeptics are the ones who are most informed about the evidence.
I wonder why and how the CO2 amount went up and down in past centuries?
If CO2 is so horrible, why are beer, soft drinks and flash frozen food even allowed to exist?
Sorry I didn’t know this was taking place . I would have gotten down there .
Cork Hayden is the best wit in “climate science” . One of his aphorisms I find most frequently à propos is : Alarmists are willing to do anything for their cause — except take a physics class .
I’ve found that needs to be extended to : .. do anything but commit to a testable quantitative equation .
As is finally starting to be understood , GHGs thru their absorptivity=emissivity spectra can change the lumped spectrum of a planet and thus it’s radiative equilibrium temperature . And , by Beer’s law ( I like the notion of a Beer’s law and Lambert has plenty to his name anyway ) more CO2 at even these levels makes very little additional change . All of these relationships are precisely computable and experimentally testable .
However that does nothing to explain the difference between bottom of atmosphere temperatures and that spectral radiative balance . Thus Trenberth’s energy accountings are essentially made up with NO quantitative testable theoretical foundation . Thus an industry forever emending the CO2 “forcing factor” to try to fit curves that refuse to be fit .
In the case of Venus , whose surface thermal energy density is 25 times that supplied to its orbit by the Sun , there’s simply word waving and a cry of “tipping points” .
I came into this simply as an APL programmer wanting to implement the “audit chain” from the Sun to our surface temperature and quickly saw that Venus’s was impossible to explain as a spectral filtering effect .
It was only later that it was gotten thru to me that “other macroscopic force” which can and does make the total energy equations balance , gravity , is inexcusably , even forcefully and derisively , excluded from the paradigm .
Nothing about methane.
Nothing about projections for sea level rise.
Nothing about polar bear populations.
Nothing about CO2 and photosynthesis.
I have looked at several science article about the GHG effect. Not there. Instead the warming is mostly a specific heat effect, like a pot of water on a stove, a room heater, a heat pipe effect.
http://l4patterns.com/uploads/virtual_vs_reality_report.pdf
Why CO2 Has Nothing to Do with Temperatures
Dr Darko Butina
http://jvarekamp.web.wesleyan.edu/CO2/FP-1.pdf
Carbon Dioxide Absorption in the Near Infrared
http://www.calqlata.com/Maths/Formulas_Atmosphere.html
Earth’s Atmospheric Gases (the theory)