Wood Romances

Accounting for Climate Forcings Puts ECS Near 3 °C From ClimateBrink The so-called "Climate Working Group," hired by the Department of Energy to write what Roger Pielke Jr termed a "red team" response to climate science  (my initial response is here ) is predictably critical of the central scientific estimate for ECS. The first ECS estimate I know of was calculated by Arrhenius, who concluded that 2xCO2 would cause between 4-6°C warming. This value was revised downward by Gilbert Plass in the 1950s to ~3°C, and since the 1970s this has become the standard estimate. The IPCC currently says the likely range is 2.5-4.0°C, largely as a result of Sherwood et al 2020 (S22),[1] which is still to date the most comprehensive assessment of ECS (Sherwood's likely range was 2.6-3.9°C). There is a growing body of scientific literature arguing that recent observational evidence is more consistent with an ECS closer to 4°C, suggesting that the IPCC may be a bit conservative on...

A paper was published this week that argues that low-sensitivity models do a poor job of reproducing CERES-derived EEI trends. In the words of the paper, the authors used CMIP6 models "to illustrate that low climate sensitivity models have an EEI trend behavior that is inconsistent with the satellite-derived EEI trend." Even though models with an ECS near 3°C do a good job of reproducing current warming, CMIP6 models often differ in the in EEI trends. For instance, The CERES data show a stronger trend in EEI than the multi-model CMIP6 mean and higher EEI in 2023 than any of the CMIP6 models. However, for individual CMIP6 models and ensembles, EEI is comparable to or higher at other periods than the CERES value in 2023. The difference in trends can be seen by comparing the red CERES line to the black CMIP6 model mean. Even though the interannual variability in the CMIP6 models is consistent CERES observations, the observed trend in EEI, especially since about 2010, is higher t...

In a recent talk  (relevant excerpt from John Shewchuk  here ) given to an Australian political group called the Institute for Public Affairs (IPA), William Happer argued that doubling CO2 causes only 0.71 K warming, and that amount of warming for 2xCO2 is too small to matter. He then suggests that in order to make CO2 a problem, scientists had to invent giant feedbacks to amplify warming by as much as 10x the amount caused by CO2 alone. I've seen this claim repeated by others on X and other social media platforms, but as best I can tell Happer originates this particular argument. So I'd like to consider, is this plausible at all? I think it's pretty easy to investigate this and show conclusively that it is not. In fact, even Happer disagreed with this claim as recently as 2020. Ranges for ECS/TCR in IPCC Reports Happer's Argument At about the 1 minute mark of the above linked excerpt, Happer explains his math on how he arrives at 0.71 K for equilibrium climate sensitiv...

A recent paper[1] published in the MDPI journal Climate by Frank Stefani provides a wonderful illustration of why we should never treat papers from MDPI journals as having any competent, let alone robust peer review. This paper argues that TCR = 1.1°C (0.6°C - 1.6°C) for doubling CO2. I'm not going to evaluate the entire paper here, since that would take too much time. The paper does make some counterfactual claims, like there's a "nearly perfect correlation of solar activity with temperatures over about 150 years." That's objectively false, but the correlation between CO2 forcings and GMST has an r^2 = 0.88. There's also some comical contrarian alarmism in this paper: "we fear that the huge Milankovitch drivers will—perhaps much too soon—massively interfere with the solar and anthropogenic factors that were considered in this paper." There's a lot we could say about this paper, but I want to focus here on some elementary math errors that would ...

A few days ago, Dr. Roy Spencer wrote a piece for the Heritage Foundation called, " Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models " ( PDF ) essentially arguing that models show too much warming compared to observations, and if we stick to observations, "global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation." He claims to frame his argument in terms of answering three questions: Is recent warming of the climate system materially attributable to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, as is usually claimed? Is the rate of observed warming close to what computer climate models—used to guide public policy—show? Has the observed rate of warming been sufficient to justify alarm and extensive regulation of CO2 emissions? We should keep in mind that this is a political document intended to support the political aims of the Heritage Foundation, and Spencer has carefully selected what he says and doesn't say to fit the political agenda of the Heritage Found...