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December 17, 2023 2:26 am
Fear of cheap Chinese EVs spurs automaker dash for affordable cars
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/fear-cheap-chinese-evs-spurs-automaker-dash-affordable-cars-2023-12-08/
They thought they could sit it out without innovating, and now they are in danger of a new Detroit.
That Reuters article seems like a press release paid for by the US auto industry. A lot of green dreaming
The Big Three are doomed by the 2026 model 49mpg CAFE requirement. And the cost of EVs is far from the only disadvantages of EVs.
Tesla, with the second highest profit margin the auto industry in 2022 (only Ferrari was higher) can cut prices much more than the Big Three and stay profitable and they have already started doing that. Tesla’s lowest priced Model Y will be the biggest car sales in 2023 and second behind the Ford F150 ICE pickup trick Model Y is $39,000 less a $7500 tax credit, which is still expensive versus a Toyota Corolla for only $22,000
US EV sales in 2023 will be up over +50% from 2022. Many conservatives claim EV sales are failing. They are either clueless or liars. I have nothing good to say about EVs, but their sales growth has been surprising.
Tesla HAVE to slash their prices, they’ve been overproducing for the last few years – it’s either cut prices or cut jobs. The mandatory 35%EV sales in California is doing a great deal to boost EV sales as many buyers have no other choice – more than half of those EV sales are from California alone. These are points I’ve mentioned before but you still persist with that same old routine.
Tesla in 2022 had the highest profit margin except for Ferrai.
They wanted to sell more EVs in 2023 so they had to reduce prices to levels that more people could afford. There are still 40% of households today that could not afford a Tesla and could not use the tax credit.
Tesla has crushed the market this year, even though its earnings have declined. The electric vehicle (EV) leader saw its shares rise 106% so far this year,
A big theme for Tesla in 2023 was cutting prices for its EV product suite, most importantly the Model 3 and Model Y. You can see this show up in the average price of a used Tesla, which has collapsed in value this year.
To start 2023, the average used Tesla went for around $55k in the United States, and that has fallen to below $40k as of this writing. This is a 27% decrease YTD compared to just 2.3% for the average used car in its home market.
Financially, this has shown up in Tesla’s profit margins. Over the last 12 months, the company has posted an operating margin of 11.2%, down from a peak well above 15% a few quarters ago.
In its latest quarter, operating margins slipped to a measly 7.6%. All this is a result of the company’s decision to drastically cut the selling prices for new vehicles.
Richard, question:
“To start 2023, the average used Tesla went for around $55k in the United States, and that has fallen to below $40k as of this writing. This is a 27% decrease YTD compared to just 2.3% for the average used car in its home market.”
Does the above mentioned “2.3% for the average car” INCLUDE the massive drop in Tesla resale values? If so, even though Tesla resales is a small portion of the second hand market, the 2.3% is skewed.
Do you have numbers for comparison of EV resale vs ICE resale? That would be a more reasonable comparison, and might show NO drop in ICE used car value.
I project that ICE resale values will rise as EV mandates restrict ICE new car sales, just as happened during the Obama cash for clunkers scam.
In the UK sales of BEVs are up 27.5% in the 11 months to the end of November 2023. However they still only account for 16.3% of the market in 2023 compared to petrol’s 40.9% and in November itself sales of BEVs were 17.1% lower than in November 2022. (Info from SMMT -Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders)
Kelley Blue Book has U.S. EV sales at 49% higher in 2023 compared to 2022 through November.
Other than Tesla, pretty much all manufactures have pathetic EV sales. It seems like the market will run out of early adopters. Further, it seems that around 50% of buyers that purchased an EV for the first time are going back to internal combustion vehicles. There are other headwinds for EVs, e.g., lower fuel prices of late.
The niche EV market certainly has more room to grow from its low market penetration to date, but eventually, pitchforks should cause politicians to reconsider their mandates.
Your 49% is close to my 50% EV sales growth for 2023 which I believe will be above 50% because there is a rising trend
The S&P 50% of buyers switching from an EV to an ICE is total BS because it completely ignores Tesla with about 60% of the EV market and perhaps 2.5 million EVs on the road in the US.
Early 2023 data before Tesla price cuts:
While Tesla’s high share of first-time owners (83%) isn’t too surprising, their ability to keep those new customers is extraordinary. Tesla’s ‘One and Done’ rate is just 39% compared to 58% for the industry’s highest owner retention rate (bought same brand with next purchase) in the US auto industry.
No matter how many people switch from EVs to ICEs, the over 50% growth rate of EV sales in the US in 2023 is extraordinary.
Alternate data from Experian
based on new vehicle registrations
through 3Q 2023 versus t
he same period in 2022
In 2023 through Q3, new registrations of pure EVs soared by 56.7% year-over-year, to nearly 900,000 (no hybrids included). The full year 2023 will the first year when EV sales will exceed 1 million (likely somewhere north of 1.1 million).
New registrations,
% change, year-over-year:
EVs: +56.7%
Vehicles with gasoline engines: +1.4%
Vehicles with diesel engines: -3.5%
Hybrids (plug-in and non-plugin): +43.1%.
Prior to introduction of its Cybertruck, Telsa’s EV market share had declined by about 10% in Q3 even after lowering prices, but yes, Tesla is one of the few EV makers with brand loyalty over 50%. Brand loyalty to EVs seems to be associated with luxury brands. Those below 50% over the long term are in for hurt.
Stories like the following paint a bad picture for consumers.
Big Three EV sales are counted when a dealer buys the vehicle even if it sits on his lot for a year after that purchase. Bif Three dealers have been ordering more EVs than their customers want.
Tesla (60% of the EV market sales) are counted as a sale when the final owner buys it via the internet.
There are some showrooms for demo drives but they do not sell cars there.
There are no Tesla salesmen earning commissions.
- New-vehicle inventory opened December with the highest level since spring 2021.
- Total supply hit 2.56 million units for a 71 days’ supply.
- Electric-vehicle inventory remains well above the industry average at 114 days’ supply. This figure does not include Tesla which has no inventory.
PS: I am not a Tesla fan or an EV fan.
Hybrids are okay unless you do very little driving and can’t recover their extra cost.
Even with subsidies a compact EV costs way more than a compact ICE. There must be some virtue signaling involved. Like people buying the latest Apple phone even though their current Apple phone is just fine.
To impress my leftist neighbors I placed an emblem in the re trunk lid of my Toyota Camry ICE car.
It says ELECTRIC in large, bold letters
over radio in tiny hard to read letters.
ELECTRIC
radio
December 17, 2023 2:27 am
A day ago, here at WATTS, Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, presented a report titled: Climate Advocacy: Incompetence or Intentional Fraud?, which caused some back-and-forth comments. The issue for me was the CAGW side feeling Justifiable Intentional Fraud, and the ability therein to convince the masses that this is an Existential Issue. The situation of the historic advance of the CAGW theory is one of failed predictions, normally resulting in activation of the Null Hypothesis. Instead, the CAGW crowd simply doubles-down, increasing the intensity of the doomsday rhetoric. OK, a group of idiots off on a tangent normally is their problem, but here’s the issue; a tremendous amount of (taxpayer) money is spent on the issue. Not just in Mitigation (without considering Adaption), but in studying, congregating (COP’s), legislating, etc, until Billions of Dollars, or Euros if you prefer, are wasted on nonsense. This money could be utilized in advancing the human culture and condition, but no. Doubt? Watch the clueless memo readers on CNN (or others) run through the gamut of things known here at WATTS to be not true, with such great conviction and sincerity that the low-information crowd is convinced, it’s doomsday unless we go back to living in caves. What a mess. Kudos to WATTS for Soldiering on.
Self-imposed by some very delusional people. Politically delusional (thinking socialism/markism/authortarianism is the way to go), or scientifically delusional (not capable of separating climate fact from speculation, and unsubstantiated assumptions), or just plain delusional because they are easily misled and don’t have a clue about the climate and believe the climate fearmongers.
December 17, 2023 3:28 am
As it is an Open Thread and nearly Christmas and the season of goodwill I’d like to share the following totally true story of an experiment I ran in my garden a couple of days ago about the food preferences of seagulls:
My wife decided to clear out our freezer and discovered two packs of out of sell by date sausages, one pork and one vegetarian. She thawed them out but decided to put them out in the food waste collection bin. However, seizing the opportunity I decided to run an experiment and when they were thawed, chopped them up and put them out in two close together groups for the seagulls to eat – it is the season of goodwill after all.
We live by the sea and normally any food we put in the garden is seized on by the very efficient seagull patrols that fly over the houses maintaining a constant morning vigil. We often put things like bacon rind and bread out for the birds in winter, but the gulls usually get most of it often before you can make the back door.
Imagine my surprise then when the gulls swooped down and then flew off without grabbing the chunks. I thought maybe I was showing too much interest and they were just particularly skittish, so went off indoors to read. Four hours later all the sausage chunks were there still untouched, but gulls were still circling the area.
Puzzled, I decided not to encourage rats and put the bits in the food waste. I told my wife later when she returned to the house and expressed particular surprise that the gulls had even refused to touch the pork sausages. Her response was “Oh no, those lighter coloured sausages weren’t pork, they were just a different brand of vegetarian sausages”.
Well, I suppose that makes it a bit of a double blind experiment! What a surprise, seagulls wouldn’t touch veggie sausages – even though we all know they eat like, well, gannets! What do they know that we don’t?
I expect a few militant vegan heads will explode at this trivial experiment, but take a deep breath it is essentially a bit of daft fun.
Happy Christmas WUWT
A few yeas ago I saw a program on sharks. They were testing what great whites would eat. They threw in a turkey, the shark showed interest bit it and spit it out. Next they threw in a ham, the shark didn’t even bite it. Then a large side of beef, the shark grabbed it and swam off. I haven’t eaten ham since.
Seagulls are fussy eaters and have been known to go shoplifting for junk food selectively:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqwiP8yiVcY
Veggie sausages are obviously not as nutritious as additive-laced potato snacks.
Your experiment reminds me of when I cleaned out my pantry a few years ago and found a couple of old boxes of Cheerios cereal. Not sure why they were there, as I don’t eat cereal. Maybe my husband had bought them to make something. But they were old and stale, and so I decided to sprinkle them out in my yard and at a table scrap dump in the woods.
They were out there until they eventually dissolved in the rain…..no animal or bird ever touched them! I still have a small container of them in my garage that’s been sitting there open for over two years. I could have thrown them out, but I decided to leave them there to see what would happen.
Well, nothing has happened – no mouse or insect infestation, no mold, no nothing! And people eat that stuff…..AND – it is marketed as “heart healthy” and is said to lower cholesterol.
Makes you wonder….
December 17, 2023 3:50 am
The core issue in the climate debate is, or ought to be, the validity of the attribution of reported warming to incremental non-condensing “greenhouse gases” such as CO2, CH4, N2O.
I recently put this video on Youtube to make the point that ANY such attribution of past warming, or expectation of future warming, due to incremental GHGs is not consistent with what has long been well understood about the energy aspects of atmospheric circulation. There is a full explanation in the “description” box for the video. The video itself is just a time-lapse sequence of plots of the computed ERA5 “vertical integral of energy conversion.”
Glad to respond to questions here.
“The core issue in the climate debate is, or ought to be, the validity of the attribution of reported warming to incremental non-condensing “greenhouse gases” such as CO2, CH4, N2O.”
____________________________________________________________
Climate science NEVER says how much warming CH4 and N2O will cause. You won’t find anywhere on the internet where they do. Probably because warming due to increases in CH4 and N2O is virtually un-measurable. Climate science would rather we not find that out. However, climate science does say how much warming CO2 will cause, for example:
Dr. James Hansen says, “…the climate response to a doubling
of atmospheric CO2…with no feedbacks…the global warming
…would be around 1.2°C…”
IPCC AR4 Chapter 8 page 631 [43 pdf]
Similar citations can probably be found elsewhere on the net.
That CO2 is a greenhouse gas and increases should cause some warming really shouldn’t be an issue. How much warming is an issue, and most importantly is that warming a problem? Is it really the existential crisis of our time? Obviously for a lot of reasons that you can find here on WUWT it is not.
hmmm… so Hansen said the ECS is 1.2, way back in ’84. I wonder what he thinks now about it?
Something I’ve concluded is that at least 99% of people on this planet don’t know about the ECS. I bet almost that % of people in America and Europe and Australia don’t know about it. They think the relationship between CO2 and the temperature is linear, not logarithmic. Most people I know have at least one graduate degree- most in science, one is an environmental attorney. None ever heard of the ECS. I never heard of it until a few years ago. I think if more people understood that the relationship is logarithmic, fewer people would have climate panic. You’d think it should be explained in any high school science course- given how important this issue is, politically. Yet, I bet 99.9% of recent high school grads don’t know it- and 95% of recent college grads don’t know it. We definitely need to focus on this more- and get the word out.
I suspect Hansen now thinks the ECS is much higher. What’s the latest IPCC opinion? Something like 2.5-4?
Whatever- to say that “the science is settled” when they can’t narrow down the ECS is proof that it’s barely a science. What other real science would give such a huge range of potential value for a value so critical to that science?
The Hansen quote is the effect of doubling CO2 with no feedbacks. The usual ECS projections include feedbacks. You know, CO2 warming causes more evaporation and water vapor is a greenhouse gas so it’s a feedback loop. How much warming that claimed feedback loop causes has changed over the years.
What ever it is, global temperature is said to have increased by about a degree since 1850. And exactly how much has the climate changed in those nearly 175 years, and is it a problem?
I just ran Modtran, default tropical case 400 ppm CO2, and then again at 800 ppm. Using fixed relative humidity, and 1.21 degrees of surface temperature “offset”, results in the same W/m^2 as the 400 ppm case. Other “localities” in Modtran would need less “offset”. 1.2 degrees warmer is going to put about 8% more water molecules into the atmosphere.
Therefore it is evident that Hansen DID include water vapour feedback in his 1.2 degrees estimate of ECS.
Thus the usual statements that water vapour is going to triple the warming…are scaremongering bu11sh1t.
OK- so Hansen doesn’t really know if the 1.5 is correct- then we have feedbacks and we don’t really know those numbers either- just guesses.
The state of Wokeachusetts claims the temperature has gone up- I think something like 3.5 degrees since 1850. Seems like too much. Of course different places on the planet will have a different number. If it is that much here, that’s great- it’s usually too dam cold and damp. Summers are NOT too hot- spring and fall seems very nice, winters warmer. Perfect- though even warmer in the winter would be better.
“OK- so Hansen doesn’t really know if the 1.5 is correct- then we have feedbacks and we don’t really know those numbers either- just guesses.”
Yes sir, that’s the state of climate science today. It is made up exclusively of speculation, assumptions and unsubstantiated assertions about CO2 and its interaction with the Earth’s atmosphere.
They are all guessing.
You can even find people who question whether ECS is a thing.
‘The usual ECS projections include feedbacks.’
Which is how the alarmists get to their ‘scary’ projections. The problem with this, however, is that their presumed positive feedbacks should be applicable to any initial warming, not just that supposedly caused by human CO2 emissions.
The fact that we haven’t careened off into a hot house situation should suggest that these feedbacks are way, way overblown.
“The fact that we haven’t careened off into a hot house situation should suggest that these feedbacks are way, way overblown.”
I would say that pretty much destoys the CO2-is-dangerous narrative.
There has never been a runaway greenhouse effect on Earth even though CO2 levels have been much, much higher than today, something like 7,000ppm in the past to about 425ppm today.
If a runaway greenhouse effect doesn’t happen at 7,000ppm, then why should we expect one to happen if we reach the theorectical 800ppm by 2100?.
“The Hansen quote is the effect of doubling CO2 with no feedbacks. The usual ECS projections include feedbacks.”
Yes, Hansen was figuring there would be positive water vapor feedbacks from increased CO2, and the water vapor, not the CO2 would be the factor that causes the temperatures to go “dangerously” higher.
Other scientists figure there would be a negative feedback to increased CO2 based on cloud formation and their ECS calculations come down around zero.
And, as of this moment, we don’t know which ones to believe. There is no enough evidence either way.
The only “evidence” the climate alarmists can point to is the coincidence of the rise in temperatures with the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere since 1980, but this rise after 1980, could be the result of a cyclical upswing in temperatures caused by Mother Nature.
One argument against CO2 being the control knob of the Earth’s temperatures is that CO2 was increasing from the 1930’s to the 1980’s, yet temperatures cooled during that time by about 2.0C, caused by a cyclical cooling of the climate (Mother Nature).
Mother Nature is in charge until proven differently, and it has never been proven differently.
100% of people do not know what the ECS of CO2 number is, with guesses ranging from +0.5 degrees C. to 5.0 degrees C., that I have read in the past 26 years. There were a few zeroes but I consider them to be crackpots.
One thing I know about the correct EPS is that it must have at least five decimal places and 105% confidence. That’s real science.
Actually, the guys who guessed zero may very well be right. Take note of the fact that the sun’s luminosity variation changes the downwelling radiation by about the same amount as 15 years of CO2 emissions would (0.3 W/m2, ~30 ppm CO2). It takes 5-6 years to reach peak intensity. Since this luminosity variation is periodic, it’s a relatively straightforward manner to run a Fourier transform on the earth’s energy imbalance. What we would look for is the amplitude of the frequency bin that corresponds to the 11 year solar cycle. This tells us how much the energy imbalance, or equilibrium temperature, changes with a change in CO2. And so far, the data is saying the answer is zero. This is the indication of a well controlled system.
The 11 year sunspot cycle is completely invisible in the global average temperature.
You might find this to be of interest:
Thank you for your reply.
“That CO2 is a greenhouse gas and increases should cause some warming really shouldn’t be an issue.”
I would agree with this statement, except for the obvious problem that the video and explanation point out. The “warming” effect, even of 2XCO2, is a needle in a haystack, and the haystack itself won’t stay put to ever find it.
I realize perfectly well that the “should cause some warming” position is widely held among WUWT authors, contributors, and commenters. I aim to influence this position toward the view that the static radiative effect does not determine the dynamic result.
all I know for sure is that there is no need to panic- there is no emergency- but here in Wokeachusetts, it’s official, they say there is an emergency- they use that word along with “crisis” in all official documents regarding the climate- of course I don’t believe a word they say- not just on this topic but any and all topics- as a working, private sector, field forester for 50 years, I’ve read everything the state has every published on forestry- and it was all lies- they can fool the burro-crats and academics and environmentalists and the public, but not somebody who has been out their beating the bushes for half a century
The warming effect of methane and other greenhouse gases is known from lab spectroscopy. The effect in the atmosphere is far less because water vapor absorption wavelengths overlap methane absorption wavelengths so the warming effect of methane in the atmosphere may be too small to mesure.
The warming effect of CO2 from lab spectroscopy starting at 400Hz., and rounded up a little for a small water vapor positive feedback is around +1.5 degrees C. per CO2x2
Doubling CO2 at the current CO2 rise rate of +2/5pp, a year would take 158 years/ Sp with no changes to other climate change variables. the average temperature would be up +1.5 degrees C. in 168 years/
But no one lives in the average temperature. the waring since 1975 was mainly at night, manly in the colder N.H. nations and mainly in the six coldest months of the year. And Antartica ice has barely melted in the past 50 years.
Global warming by latitude chart
The Honest Climate Science and Energy Blog: Global warming by latitude — 1979 to 2019
Warming day versus night:
“And Antarctica ice has barely melted in the past 50 years.”
_______________________________________________
It is way below freezing nearly everywhere nearly all of the time in Antarctica so it can’t melt. Antarctica might be losing ice or gaining ice but in either case, temperature has nothing to do with it.
________________________________________________
“…the warming effect of methane in the atmosphere may be too small to measure.”
___________________________________________________
And the warming effect of nitrous oxide is less than that.
Richard,
There are 2 types of lab experiment for this topic
1. You shine radiation of various wavelengths through gas mixtures and measure temperature changes.
2. You shine radiation through a dispersing device, create a spectrum through the wavelengths then use Planck, Wein etc statistics to convert wavelength to equivalent energy using physics theory.
There is a deafening silence about type 1.
Type 2 leads to competition that Happen and others describe for CO2 being almost maxed out and water drowning out methane.
It is long past time for a definitive position to be stated, to replace present interminable argument. There are correct physics answers to the arguments, so please let us hear them and agree. The outcome is too important for treatment like a game of poker.
Geoff S
That CO2 is a greenhouse gas and increases should cause some warming really shouldn’t be an issue.
Except it ignores the other CO2 forcing …. increased evapotranspiration from DWIR. When both effects are considered in total I doubt we see any warming.
It’s clear that evaporation is a cooling effect at the surface. Climate science tells us the water vapor will eventually act as a warming effect and condensation will return the energy lost during evaporation and so no net cooling occurs. Atmospheric physics begs to differ.
Turns out the increase in water vapor at the surface produces no increase in greenhouse warming because of absorption band saturation. All the available energy is already being absorbed low in the atmosphere.
Since the added water vapor makes the air less dense, we will get enhanced convection up into the upper atmosphere. This is what David sees in his graphics. Lots of instability.
The key is more CO2 increases this effect which drives more energy higher into the cold upper troposphere. The colder air causes increased condensation which does release the energy collected during evaporation, but the left over air ends up dryer.
The greenhouse effect for water water vapor is not saturated at this altitude. Energy was being “trapped”, but now there’s less energy being trapped. In addition, the extra condensation will produce thicker clouds with an associated increase in albedo. Both of these are cooling effects which compensate for the added energy released during condensation.
At the surface the evaporative cooling is compensated by the added energy absorption Steve Case mentioned.
The net effect is simply more precipitation. No warming. No cooling. Just a little wetter climate to go with the increase in CO2. Exactly what is needed to maximize plant growth.
Write a book
You may sell one or two copies of your alt science to relatives
If you are claiming CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, then you are a science denier, claiming you know more than 99.9% of real scientists who live on our planet. VERY UNLIKELY. Scientists discovered greenhouse the effects of CO2 over a century ago, You must have been sleeping.
What I “claimed” was increasing CO2 does not cause warming. However, no where did I claim the effects discovered “over a century ago” were fake. I hope I clearly stated they exist but are simply part of a more complex set of events.
I If you had some objection to any of the effects I mentioned, you could have at least tried to explain your views. Instead, all you could manage is name calling.
The core issue in the climate debate is, or ought to be, the validity of the attribution of reported warming to incremental “greenhouse gases” … such as CO2 whose greenhouse effects were discovered over a century ago that you apparently deny, because you are a science denier.
The core issue of the climate change debate is the use of data free, wild guess, worst case assumptions used, and wrong since 1979, predictions of global warming doom hundreds of years in the future. Done mainly to empower leftist governments and control people.
Those conservatives who claim humans can not influence the climate in any way are science deniers. Those leftists who claim humans will cause a climate catastrophe are also science deniers. This is not an us or them debate.
The “greenhouse effect” you cling to is the result of a laboratory experiment with the gas confined in a tube and has never been detected in open atmosphere. These 2 short videos might change your mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj6ORbRBZ2s
Only science frauds claim there is no greenhouse effect. And those stupid people I estimate include abut 0.1% of the climate scientists in the world. Sorry but I am on the 99.9% side of science Ph.D.’s such as Richard Lindzen, Wiilliam Happer, Roy Spencer and John Christy, who all believe there is a greenhouse effect, manmade CO2 is part of it and a doubling of CO2 will be harmless.
There has been a century for skeptical scientists to refute the greenhouse effect, which is back radiation, measured 365 days a year, and they have failed. A few crackpots such as Harde and Berry won’t even admit humans have added a lot of CO2 to the atmosphere since 1850.
There is only a small amount of science used to create the CAGW hoax. The leftists get that right as do 99.9% of conservative scientists.
But when it comes to junk science climate theories, the conservatives have the lead, by far.
Rea Climate science supports a small amount of AGW.
Harmless or pleasant warming depending on where you live.
No science supports data free predictions of CAGW
After 26 years of following climate science, I believe there are almost as many conservative climate nuts as there are leftist climate nuts.
A surprising number of conservatives deny
(1) The greenhouse effect
(2) Manmade CO2 emissions increase the greehouse effect
(3) The last +50% CO2 increase was manmade
(4) CO2 has a greenhouse effect above 400pp because it never reaches saturation.
(5) Climate change will kill your dog
.
If you look at the earth’s energy imbalance, you will see that it is unaffected by the solar luminosity variation. This luminosity variation changes the downwelling radiation by about the same amount as 15 years of CO2 emissions. The data shows that this has no effect on the energy imbalance. The EEI is being controlled, but there is clear indication that CO2 is not doing it.
We are not saying there is no greenhouse effect, what we are saying is that a- it has only really been observed in the absorption and emission spectra of individual gases in lab experiments, not in atmospheric observations. Therefore b- the greenhouse effect can’t work the way that climate enthusiasts (and you) seem to think it does. There is no denying that water vapour, in particular, as one of the most extensive ghg’s has an effect on the planet, but nobody has exactly worked out what it is. There is some work that seems to show that ghg’s have both a positive and negative effect, which would be extremely interesting. Your post seems to assume that ‘the science is settled’ while the rest of us, whom you unfairly label as ‘science deniers’ know full well that climate science knows very little about ghg’s and made up the rest – scientists are still accumulating data about it.
(1) THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT demonstrated with lab spectroscopy has never been shown to be completely different than the greenhouse effect in the outside atmosphere
(2) Downwelling (aka back) infrared long wave radiation is measured 365 days a year and is increasing.
(3) The expected symptoms of a greenhouse effect increasing are more night (TMIN) temperatures records and fewer TMAX temperature records
(4) And no warming of Antarctica because most of the continent has a permanent temperature inversion
(5) Arctic warming in the colder months of the year when sunshine increasing could not be the cause
(6) deserts will cool quickly at night because of the lwo humidity and few night clouds (causing a weak greenhouse effect)
(1) though (6) are all happening
If more solar energy is reaching the ground causing the global warming, then:
(1) There would be more TMAX records than TMIN records
(2) Arctic warming would be only in their warmer months when there is sunshine
(3) The tropics would have more warming than the higher latitudes
(4) N.H. snow extent would be falling (it has not declined in the past 35 years)
Rutgers University Climate Lab :: Global Snow Lab
(5) Antarctica would be melting in the summer:
Summer in Antarctica, especially the Antarctic Peninsula climate, can be surprisingly mild. Antarctic Peninsula temperature averages 33-36 degrees F in the summer. Antarctic Peninsula temperatures can reach into the 50s F during summer, the height of the travel season.
The alleged TINY ice mass loss of 150 gigatons a year would be higher (total ice mass is 24.4 MILLION gigatons, so the 150 gigatons claimed annual loss is a rounding error). The only melting m Antarctica is some ice shelves over underseas volcanoes
99.9% of scientists claim there is a greenhouse effect. Unlikely that the other 0.1% are right and the 99.9% are wrong. Greenhouse deniers are boozers and losers.
(A:1) IR absorption and emission in the atmosphere and in a lab are not different processes, but there is still the entirely legitimate question of what the system’s response is, especially clouds!
(A:2) This doesn’t establish cause and effect. After all, IR radiation also increases if the air temperature rises.
(A:6) What position is this counter evidence to?
(B:1-5) Where have you accounted for the possibility of the changes being a heat transport phenomenon? With respect, I suggest that you are axiomatically taking everything to be determined by radiative equilibrium (or near to it).
Greenhouse gases warm the climate system by reducing the energy loss to space through the greenhouse effect.
Thus, a common way to measure the strength of the greenhouse effect is by taking the difference between the surface longwave (LW) emission and the outgoing LW radiation.
Based on this definition, a paradoxical negative greenhouse effect is found over the Antarctic Plateau, which surprisingly indicates that greenhouse gases enhance energy loss to space.
In most of Antarctica, more greenhouse gases make the surface COLDER. Those areas are shown in link in the chart below:
Using 13 years of NASA satellite observations, we verify the existence of the negative greenhouse effect and find that the magnitude and sign of the greenhouse effect varies seasonally and spectrally.
A previous explanation attributes the negative greenhouse effect solely to stratospheric CO2 and warmer than surface stratospheric temperatures.
However, we surprisingly find that the negative greenhouse effect is predominantly caused by tropospheric water vapor.
A novel principle-based explanation provides the first complete account of the Antarctic Plateau’s negative greenhouse effect indicating that it is controlled by the vertical variation of temperature and greenhouse gas absorption strength.
Our findings indicate that the strong surface-based temperature inversion and scarcity of free tropospheric water vapor over the Antarctic Plateau cause the negative greenhouse effect.
These are climatological features uniquely found in the Antarctic Plateau region, explaining why the greenhouse effect is positive everywhere else.
Publication: American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2017, abstract #C21D-1139
Pub Date: December 2017
There is some Antarctica melting of Ice shelves caused by underseas volcanoes and of the peninsula caused by underseas volcanoes and ocean currents.
You appear to believe your views are god-like. Any folks who disagree with you are “ deniers” or “boozers and losers.”. You then cherry pick certain unproven claims and use them to assert your omnipotence.
LOL.
What you haven’t been doing is trying to understand the points of other people. They often provide very good logic and refer to data that supports their views.
Maybe you should open your mind just a little bit. Your argument from authority is not going to cut it with most people. Until you make an attempt to refute other arguments with facts instead of name calling, you will be considered the “crackpot”.
I only outright deny number 5 (what the hell is that about anyway?)
There is no way to know about 3 for sure. Those that embrace it absolutely are just wrong as those that deny it.
Number 2&4, without adding the qualifier ‘significant’, only leads to miscommunication (some people intend it that way so they can get upset and get their emotional boost … those people should find a better outlet).
(And, why do you think 50% co2 ‘re-emmissions’ go to space, rather than 65%? Sometimes up is bigger than down.)
(1) If you are using the term ‘greenhouse effect’ to mean both IR absorption in the atmosphere and the claimed 33 K difference, I affirm the former, but deny the validity of the latter. So am I denying the greenhouse effect? Not clear.
(2) But to what extent is the effect noticeable? Similar for (4). If noticeable, is it still noticeable when clouds are involved?
(3) I don’t contest this.
(5) Climate change as a term is even worse than greenhouse effect. If it were possible, I almost wish we could banish every such blanket term because they make a careless type of reasoning far too easy. Additionally, I can see a change to ice age conditions killing my dog more easily than a change to warmer conditions.
“Only science frauds claim there is no greenhouse effect. And those stupid people I estimate include abut 0.1% of the climate scientists in the world. Sorry but I am on the 99.9% side of science Ph.D.’s such as Richard Lindzen, Wiilliam Happer, Roy Spencer and John Christy, who all believe there is a greenhouse effect, manmade CO2 is part of it and a doubling of CO2 will be harmless.”
I think the debate is not about the greenhouse effect but what happens as a result of the greenhouse effect.
In other words, after the greenhouse effect of CO2 takes effect, what positive or negative feedbacks are generated as a result and do these feedbacks result in net warming or net cooling or not much of either?
That is the question. And it has not been answered.
Attached is a specific heat table from a thermodynamics book. If you are correct and CO2 causes warming by absorbing the 15 micro IR from surface then these tables are wrong. There should be two columns showing with and without 15 micro IR.
The emissivity of CO2 at the temperature and pressure we live in is zero.
A century of spectroscopy is all wrong?
99.9% of scientists are wrong?
And you are a genus science legend … in your own mind? Did you study ThermoDumbnamics?
Carbon dioxide molecules absorb infrared photons and start vibrating. They then re-emit the photons back in all directions. They are almost opaque to some infrared rays.
As CO2 soaks up this infrared energy, it vibrates and re-emits the infrared energy back in all directions. About half of that energy goes out into space, and about half of it returns to Earth as heat, contributing to the ‘greenhouse effect. ‘
Emitted energy in the 14-16 micron band that is emitted to space comes from CO2 in the tropopause near the lower stratosphere. There are sufficient CO2 molecules in this layer to bring the emissivity to 1.0 and the temperature is about 220K. The TOA is the system boundary for the global energy balance. At most other wavelengths, CO2 has an emissivity of 0
Radiant energy is a type of kinetic energy transmitted through elementary particles called photons. When the electromagnetic waves hit an object, its interaction with these photons causes the molecules on the surface to speed up, thus modifying their properties and generating heat and other forms of energy.
You are an annoying nitpicker
Yes, it may very well be that some of the science you believe is wrong. Try digging deeper. CO2 can only absorb/emit IR if the molecule exists in the correct state. It appears temperature and pressure affect that state. I have yet to see anything which definitively addresses this issue in our atmosphere. What if continual collisions at higher pressures prevent a CO2 molecule from achieving a state where it can absorb/emit 15 micron IR?
This would mean CO2 cannot absorb/emit any IR until the pressure becomes lower? You could still see CO2 radiating IR at the tropopause but that doesn’t mean it is happening at the surface.
What does that do to AGW? The only DWIR reaching the surface would come from a much higher, lower density altitude. Much of that IR may get reabsorbed by water vapor or clouds. How much does this change your beloved greenhouse effect?
I don’t know the answers to any of the questions I put forth here. But I know the answers are likely to be important.
I can’t read the chart even at 5x magnification
If the table is in a thermodynamics textbook, I’ll assume it is correct and you are wrong.
I think I burned my thermodynamics textbook one minute after I got a passing grade in that college subject.’
The emissivity of CO2 is zero at many wavelengths but NOT at the wavelengths where CO2 is a strong absorber
Radiation can be absorbed by carbon dioxide, water vapor and other emission gases in different bands or ranges of wavelength. Absorption bands of carbon dioxide are centered at 15, 4.3, 2.7, and 2 μm.What frequencies does CO2 absorb?
All that was discovered “ages ago” is that CO2 is a radiatively active gas.
You seem to be making up the conjecture that this means it will cause warming in the atmosphere.
No “discovery” was ever made on its effect in the atmosphere.
That was always just conjecture based on radiative theory only, and disregards the many other aspect of energy movement in the atmosphere..
You are making up science that has never been proven.
Referring to others as “science deniers” is a pretty feeble and arrogant approach when it is you that is not even understanding what was actually “discovered”.
People who deny a greenhouse effect are science deniers.
They are claiming 100% of consensus climate scientists are wrong and 99.9% of “skeptic” scientists ON OUR SIDE are wrong, but they are right.
Just what is that downwelling long wave radiation at night, easily measured, if not a greenhouse effect?
Very unlikely for the 0/1% to be right and the 99/9% to be wrong on a discovery made over a century ago and still not refuted.
Richard,
It is possible for a sceptical scientist like me to agree with your propositions, but then to say that the final outcome is modulated by clouds in particular and for heat transport from movement of the 3 phases of water in general. That can allow me to say that ECS can be zero, without being called a science denier for the simple reason that you cannot prove me wrong.
No need to get all hot in the tube about it.
Geoff S
First, Richard, I would like to welcome you back as a WUWT commenter. I was wondering what had happened to you some months ago. But later I did see you were still active on your blog, so I was relieved to know you weren’t dead. And now very obviously not being dead yet by your replies here, I hold out hope that you will eventually be able to come around in your thinking.
Second, I will simply invite you to go back and read carefully in the description of the video I posted. It looks to me like you have not understood what I am saying and not saying. So please come back with sincere questions, if you wish. Otherwise I see no point in responding to your mistaken characterizations of me or of the points being made.
Finally, do you happen to have an account on X (fka Twitter)?
To the best of my knowledge I am not dead.
I took a vacation from here after rude Charles gave me a hard time after I complained that most of my posts concerning the Ukraine war and related energy prices were getting published, and later disappearing.
CR investigated and told me a computer rejected my use of the word genocide rather than a moderator.
Nevertheless, many of my posts, some quite long, did disappear after being published with a bad word (genocide … in the news a lot these days). I had never heard of a computer moderation program publishing a comment and hours later deleting it.
Charle later accused me of lying about my comments disappearing and Mr, Watts seconded him. I have several emails from CR explaining why my comments were disappearing and then he claimed I was lying HERE in the comment section. CR never blocked me from commenting here but accusing me of lying to all the comment readers is close enough.
From the home page of my blog where I publish a recommended climate and energy reading list every day:
There is no climate emergency.
Nut Zero is a waste of money.
Data free predictions of climate doom are not science.
Climate change will not kill your dog.
Editor: Richard Greene (BS, MBA)
Bingham Farms. Michigan
I want to say thank you to all who replied to me and to each other. I especially appreciate the few who seem to have understood the point of this post. I should have pasted the text description of the video when I first entered this post.
Please actually watch the video if you have not done so. You can get the sense of it after a very few seconds of watching the plots. Here is the description text from YouTube.
******************************
Are CO2 emissions a risk to the climate? No. The static “warming” effect of incremental CO2 (~4 W/m^2 for 2XCO2) disappears as kinetic energy (wind) is converted to/from internal energy (including temperature) + potential energy (altitude).
This time lapse video shows the daily minimum, median, and maximum values of the computed “vertical integral of energy conversion” hourly parameter from the ERA5 reanalysis for 2022. Values for each 1/4 degree longitude gridpoint at 45N latitude are given. The vertical scale is from -10,000 to +10,000 W/m^2. The minor incremental radiative absorbing power of non-condensing GHGs such as CO2, CH4, and N2O vanishes on the vertical scale as the rapidly changing energy conversion in both directions is tens to thousands of times greater.
So what? The assumed GHG “forcings” cannot be isolated for reliable attribution of reported surface warming. And with all the circulation and energy conversion throughout the depth of the troposphere, heat energy need not be expected to accumulate on land and in the oceans to harmful effect from incremental non-condensing GHGs. The GHGs add no energy to the land + ocean + atmosphere system. Therefore the radiative properties of CO2, CH4, and N2O, and other molecules of similar nature, should not be assumed to produce a perturbing climate “forcing.” The concept of energy conversion helps us understand the self-regulating delivery of energy to high altitude for just enough longwave radiation to be emitted to space.
References:
The ERA5 reanalysis model is a product of ECMWF, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. The computed parameters “vertical integral of potential + internal energy” and “vertical integral of energy conversion” are described at these links.
https://codes.ecmwf.int/grib/param-db…
https://codes.ecmwf.int/grib/param-db…
Further comment:
This is for just one latitude band at 45N. Similar results were observed for 45S, 10N/S, 23.5N/S, and 66N/S.
More Background:
From Edward N. Lorenz (1960) “Energy and Numerical Weather Prediction”
https://doi.org/10.3402/tellusa.v12i4…
“2. Energy, available potential energy, and
gross static stability
Of the various forms of energy present in
the atmosphere, kinetic energy has often
received the most attention. Often the total
kinetic energy of a weather system is regarded
as a measure of its intensity. The only other
forms of atmospheric energy which appear
to play a major role in the kinetic energy
budget of the troposphere and lower stratosphere
are potential energy, internal energy, and the
latent energy of water vapor. Potential and
internal energy may be transformed directly
into kinetic energy, while latent energy may
be transformed directly into internal energy,
which is then transformed into kinetic energy.
It is easily shown by means of the hydrostatic
approximation that the changes of the
potential energy P and the internal energy l of
the whole atmosphere are approximately proportional,
so that it is convenient to regard
potential and internal energy as constituting
a single form of energy. This form has been
called total potential energy by Margules (1903).
…
In the long run, there must be a net depletion
of kinetic energy by dissipative processes. It
follows that there must be an equal net
generation of kinetic energy by reversible
adiabatic processes; this generation must occur
at the expense of total potential energy. It
follows in turn that there must be an equal net
generation of total potential energy by heating
of all kinds. These three steps comprise the
basic energy cycle of the atmosphere. The
rate at which these steps proceed is a fundamental
characteristic of the general circulation.”
December 17, 2023 3:56 am
Look at what is going on in the us of a in de automotive industry.
look at Ford Gen.motors and look at Germany automotive industry Vw BMW and Mercedes. In America there are no consumer for Evs because for the same care Ford pickup 150 they pay between 10k and 15k more what do you think. Look at Oslo pub.transport its faling apart cause is a bit colder than ipcc predicted.
why is Biden pushing the us customer into something they do not want.
we are talking about North Korean politics laying upon the population.
I worked in product development at Ford for 27 years. Their EVs have been a sad flop. Some Ford engineers working on 2026 model EVs in late 2022 (now retired) did not like the EVs they were working on. In my experience, engineers always like the vehicles they are designing. The Edsel engineers probably loved the Edsel,
At first the engineers loved the fast acceleration. When they started taking longer test drives they start hating EVs. A 20 to 30 minute “fast charge” stop, in the middle of nowhere, with no bathrooms, and no snacks or cold drinks to buy. What a waste of time.
In late 2022 cold weather testing in Northern Minnesota revealed a 40% to 60% range reduction at 0 degrees F.
The Ford engineers thought EVs were worth $10,000 less than ICEs but Ford was planning to charge $10,000 more That was a business plan for failure, they thought.
Batteries are best for tiny, lightweight second cars used for short trips in moderate weather. best if high cost is not a problem and you can use the tax credits. Batteries are not good for pickup trucks.
The Mustang EV looks like a generic small SUV. Many were on the road here in SE Michigan for six months before I realized they were allegedly Mustangs.
The Ford advanced engineering experiment to design an EV to sell for $30,000 (in 2022 dollars( was a complete failure, as of year end 2022.
The TESLA CYBERTRUCK LOOKS AWFUL TO ME, but I can’t figure out Tesla fans.
December 17, 2023 4:31 am
New NERC report says blackouts loom large
Here is a summary article:
“Rising peak demand, 83 GW of planned retirements create blackout risks for most of US: NERC”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/generator-retirements-threaten-grid-reliability-NERC/702504/
Here is the “Long Term Reliability Assessment” report:
https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/ra/Reliability%20Assessments%20DL/NERC_LTRA_2023.pdf
December 17, 2023 5:11 am
In today’s Bah-stin Globe
A victim of early success on solar, Mass. now lags behind
Solar developers and clean energy advocates say projects are locked up in years-long planning processes, putting the state’s clean energy goals at risk
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/12/16/science/mass-falls-behind-on-solar/
Wokeachusetts just loves regulation. For me to manage a simple timber sale requires several “burros” to evaluate it and pass judgement- often it’s new burros right out of college with little or no experience- but who met all the woke requirements to get their jobs. Yet, when a solar “farm” was built behind my ‘hood, it broke all the rules regarding rare species, wetlands, soil restoration, etc. I bitc*ed about it but was ignored- not just by the state but by all the enviro groups.
December 17, 2023 6:30 am
In 2020 when COVID spread worldwide, human emissions of CO2 dropped by 6% according to the International Energy Agency, yet the rate of increase of CO2 didn’t change.
That is a natural experiment that shows human emissions of CO2 aren’t causing the continuing rise in CO2.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2020/global-energy-and-co2-emissions-in-2020
https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
During 2020, the world’s collective gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 3.4 percent.
CO2 emissions correlate strongly with global GDP/
Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases plunged 4.6 percent in 2020,
CO2 is one of many climate change variables. The global average temperature cab go up, down or sideways while CO2 rises, because CO2 emissions alone do not control the climate.
Your data and conclusions are wrong.
You can argue with until your blue in the face. You tell them they shouldn’t drink and drive and still they do.
Just a few days ago, a drunk man with no drivers license was speeding next to the local high school and he ran into a vehicle carrying a mother and her teenage son, killing both.
I presume he was an illegal immigrant based on the way the news stories are written.
And yet, despite all the hoo-ha about CO2 emissions falling during lockdown inactivity, how much did the measured CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere fall by? Was it a similar amount?
Nope – not one single solitary flicker or minutest shift – CO2 continued to rise at exactly the same rate as it had before and it did since.
The fall in human caused CO2 emissions had not the slightest effect of atmospheric CO2 – no effect whatsoever. NONE.
Sir, your assumptions are wrong.
While carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 5.4% in 2020, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere continued to grow at about the same rate as in preceding years.
While the 5.4% drop in emissions was significant, the growth in atmospheric concentrations was within the normal range of year-to-year variation caused by natural processes.
1973 to 1974 CO2 increased +0.5ppm due to a global recession
2007 to 2008 CO2 increased +1.8ppm with a global recession
If you are claiming the +50% increase of atmospheric CO2 since 1850 was all natural, rather than +100% manmade, then you are a science denier.
Hi there, scvblwxq.
Actually there was a slight reduction in CO2 growth in 2020 from 2019 and a slight increase in CO2 growth in 2021 from 2020.
However if you plot “Change in Emissions” against “Change in CO2 growth”, there is no meaningful relationship. Hopefully I have attached the correct image. Notice that the units for “Change in CO2 growth” is in gigatonnes of carbon (Gt C)
…if you plot “Change in Emissions” against “Change in CO2 growth”, there is no meaningful relationship.
Which is undoubtedly due to the fact that there is natural variation in every source and sink as well as inaccuracy in the estimates of emissions. The natural sources and sinks are an order of magnitude larger than our emissions, so small variations can easily overwhelm any variation in our emissions.
What is not in doubt – in the least – is that we emit roughly twice as much CO2 as the atmosphere is accumulating it. That means that the natural sinks soak up about half of what we put out. Nature cannot be the source of rising CO2 when it is absorbing half of what we put in. If natural sources were the primary cause of rising CO2 concentration then logically our emissions would have to be on top of what comes from nature. The rise would have to exceed the amount we emit. Isn’t that just basic math? Not even algebra.
We can’t easily determine the exact amount of manmade emissions but we can certainly estimate it within 50%. For natural sources to be responsible for even half of the rise in CO2 concentration, our estimates of manmade emissions would need to be overestimated by at least 75% which is absurd. Among many reasons to be certain that is incorrect would be that it requires all fossil fuel producers to overpay their taxes by 75% reporting phantom sales.
This whole line of argument is INSANE. Why do people try to deny obvious facts? You’re convinced that CO2 is bad so you have to dream up ways to deny that our emissions are increasing it? It just totally discredits sane climate realists to have allies who believe such nonsense.
There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY. CO2 doesn’t do much of anything but to improve agricultural output and if anything with respect to temperature, it is a mild BENEFICIAL warming.
Hi there Rich.
You said
“You’re convinced that CO2 is bad so you have to dream up ways to deny that our emissions are increasing it?”
I think you are misunderstanding me. I think CO2 is a good thing and I want more of it.
However, I have a problem with the orthodox explanation as to why CO2 is increasing. It does not properly take into account the equilibrium relationship between CO2 in the oceans and in the atmosphere.
We know from the ice core data that changes in temperature precede changes in CO2 and also that it can be hundreds of years after temperature stops changing that CO2 stops changing. This suggests that it takes the system a long time to equilibrate after the temperature stops changing.
There is a good correlation between change in temperature and change in CO2 growth. That is between change in temperature and the change in the rate of change in atmospheric CO2.
When there is a large or prolonged increase in temperature, there is an increase in the rate of change of atmospheric CO2. (CO2 growth.) I have attached a graph that shows this.
I don’t have references for this. I just downloaded the temp and CO2 growth data and made some graphs. I have checked this with 4 temperature databases. UAH, NCEI, GISS and HadcruT5. They all show the same effect.
When there is a large or prolonged decrease in temperature, there is a decrease in CO2 growth.
Now this is interesting because a decrease in CO2 growth is still an increase in CO2. But an increase in CO2 is supposed to be correlated with an increase in temperature. ( According to the Global Warming paradigm.)
This means it has to be the other way around. It has to be temp changing CO2 and not CO2 changing temp.
Something I think is important.
When I calculated the annual average temperature I did what anyone would have done. I added up the values from January to December and divided by 12.
So what, you might ask? This puts the average temp in the middle of the year.
When NOAA calculate the value for the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, they do it in March. They add up the values for November, December, January and February and then divide by 4. They then use this to calculate the CO2 growth value for the year.
This means the average temperature value is six months before the CO2 growth value.
I think the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is controlled by the equilibrium relationship between CO2 in the oceans and in the atmosphere.
The concentration of CO2 in the oceans is balanced by the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere. And the amount of CO2 in the oceans is temperature dependent because of Henry’s law. This will necessarily result in a change in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
If we humans were not putting CO2 into the atmosphere, CO2 would have moved from the oceans to the atmosphere.
However, we are putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than is required for the equilibration process and so the net movement is from the atmosphere to the oceans.
If we reduce our emissions until we are putting less into the atmosphere than is needed for the equilibration process, then the net movement CO2 will be from the oceans to the atmosphere.
John,
You said:
I think the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is controlled by the equilibrium relationship between CO2 in the oceans and in the atmosphere.
Reasonable, with the caveat that the biosphere also has a significant role that varies a great deal through the seasons. (Varies from net source to net sink over the course of a year, resulting in the sawtooth pattern of the Keeling curve).
The concentration of CO2 in the oceans is balanced by the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere. And the amount of CO2 in the oceans is temperature dependent because of Henry’s law. This will necessarily result in a change in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Yes
If we humans were not putting CO2 into the atmosphere, CO2 would have moved from the oceans to the atmosphere.
Yes, since average sea surface temperatures have risen since the end of the Little Ice Age, equilibrium CO2 concentration is higher than 280ppm. If memory serves me, it’s estimated at 295ppm at this point.
However, we are putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than is required for the equilibration process and so the net movement is from the atmosphere to the oceans.
Yes, as observed by slightly less alkaline seawater. (Infamously and dishonestly called ocean acidification).
If we reduce our emissions until we are putting less into the atmosphere than is needed for the equilibration process, then the net movement CO2 will be from the oceans to the atmosphere.
Yes, but if we reduce our emissions to zero while there is a 425-295=130ppm driving force still in place, the oceans and biosphere will initially continue acting as a net sink to the same degree as they have been. Since they currently absorb about 2.5ppm’s worth of our emissions annually, they will also do essentially that in the year after stopping all emissions. (Of course barring some extinction event, a sudden stop is impossible).
So, for a while, CO2 would decrease at 2.5ppm/year. Just as the biosphere sinks grew larger as CO2 concentration increased, so it is reasonable to assume that the sinks will ‘atrophy’ as CO2 concentration drops. I suppose that the sink rate will approach zero asymptotically. Consequently, rather than taking 130/2.5 = 52 years to return to 295ppm, it will take very much longer than that. (Unless ocean temperatures drop substantially). For that matter, sst might rise further and reduce the driving force, slowing the return to near-equilibrium.
We can’t predict this, it’s dynamic and chaotic. In any case, barring some event that reduces insolation reaching the sea surface, it’s likely to take centuries to return to near-equilibrium.
Now are we in total agreement? I am not sure, because your original comment was in reply to scvblwxq who is constantly spamming these threads with a cut-and-paste comment claiming that our emissions have nothing to do with the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration, as supposedly proven by covid reductions. We can’t be in agreement if you don’t utterly reject that nonsense.
By this analysis we are responsible for 130/145 = 90% of the additional CO2 in the atmosphere since 1850.
Hi Rich.
Thanks for your follow up comment.
You said “Reasonable, with the caveat that the biosphere also has a significant role that varies a great deal through the seasons. (Varies from net source to net sink over the course of a year, resulting in the sawtooth pattern of the Keeling curve).”
I have a thought about the sawtooth pattern of the Keeling curve.
The explanation that it is the result of increased photosynthesis in spring/summer causing the reduction in CO2 and the increase in decomposition in autumn/winter is a perfectly good explanation but there is something else going on that I think is interesting.
I wonder how much effect the seasonal changing of sea ice extent has on the sawtooth. The cold water of the polar regions absorb large amounts of CO2 while the warm waters of the tropics are constantly outgassing CO2. There is therefore a constant flow of atmospheric CO2 from the tropics to the polar regions. The surface area of polar sea that can absorb CO2 changes with the sea ice extent. In Summer, when there is little sea ice, there is more surface area of ocean to absorb CO2, so there is a drop in atmospheric CO2. In winter, the expansion of the sea ice extent means there is less surface area to absorb CO2 while the tropical outgassing remains about the same. This should result in an increase in atmospheric CO2.
My hypothesis is that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is primarily controlled by the equilibrium relationship between CO2 in the oceans and atmosphere.
I think it your “caveat that the biosphere also has a significant role that varies a great deal through the seasons” is not necessarily true and worth questioning. There is a very real possibility that the equilibrium relationship responds to changes in the sources and sinks of the terrestrial biosphere.
For any given observed concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere there is a theoretical “equilibrium temperature” at which the system will be in balance and atmospheric CO2 will neither be increasing nor decreasing.
This equilibrium temperature can be estimated by plotting the trend line for temperature against growth. The equilibrium temperature is the temperature when CO2 growth is zero. (see graph below)
Using the UAH lower troposphere temperature anomaly database gives an equilibrium temperature of about negative 1. Currently (November 2023) actual observed temp is about positive 0.91 deg C.
This means temperatures will need to drop by about 1.4 deg C for the CO2 growth to be zero.
The following is a falsifiable hypothesis.
For any given observed temperature, there is a theoretical “equilibrium atmospheric CO2 concentration” at which the system will be in balance and CO2 will neither be increasing nor decreasing.
At the moment the actual concentration is below the equilibrium concentration and the atmospheric CO2 is increasing.
Currently, the actual temperature is above the equilibrium temperature and the actual CO2 concentration is below the equilibrium concentration.
We can therefore expect if the actual temperature were to remain ( approximately) the same, the concentration of CO2 will rise until the actual concentration equals the equilibrium concentration.
The rate at which the CO2 concentration rises (aka CO2 growth) is the equilibration rate. This is dependent on the difference between the actual temperature and the equilibrium temperature.
Since the equilibrium temperature is dependant on the actual concentration and the actual concentration is rising, then we can expect, if the temperature remained constant, the equilibration rate to slowly reduce as the difference between the actual and equilibrium temperatures gets less.
In reality, this will be difficult to observe since there is quite a lot of inter-annual temperature variation. This year there has been quite a bit of warming, perhaps because of the reasonably strong El Nino which some have suggested is being enhanced by the elevated stratospheric water content,caused by the January 2022 Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption. This warming should result in an increase in CO2 growth. The problem is that I also expect emissions to rise this year, so this is not much of a test.
As I said, this hypothesis is falsifiable. If there is a significant and prolonged (for a few years) drop in temperature and there is not a corresponding drop in CO2 growth, then the hypothesis is false. Or if we dramatically reduce our emissions while warming continues and the CO2 growth is not reduced, again, the hypothesis is falsified.
Anyhow, If you have read this far, thank you.
I have read about 200 CO2 enrichment plant growth studies since 1997 — almost all for C3 plants. It is obvious that all plants benefit from more CO2 usually tested in the 600 to 800ppm range.
If there is more plant growth, our planet wil support more human and animal life.
If there is more CO2, Soberia will have warmer winter nights.
SE Michigan where I live has had significantly warmer winters with a lot less snow than in the 1970s. Snow shoveling the driveway once a month in the past two winter rather than once a week in the late 1970s.
Based on the experience of greenhouse owners, a double or tripling of atmospheric CO2 would be very good news for our planet.
December 17, 2023 8:20 am
The usually right wing site The Gateway Pundit went off the rails here.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/what-world-can-learn-cop28-cop29/
” By appointing one of the world’s foremost oil exporters COP28 president, the global climate change conference diminished its own credibility and the pragmatic actions they could have advocated to reduce and eventually phase out fossil fuels.
“This is a pity because the annual climate gathering is a credible global summit where meaningful work should be undertaken.”
Huh?
No wonder Prof. Ivan Sascha Sheehan is the associate dean of the College of Public Affairs and past executive director of the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore. Opinions expressed are his own. Follow him on X@ProfSheehan
I read Gateway every morning and this was
strange conclusion for a Gateway article.
This was the most important COP so far\
Nuclear power got the green light
A high level person admitted there was no science behind CAGW predictions, which is absolutely true.
Next year another Climate Outrage Party
Maybe 125,000 partiers next year.
December 17, 2023 9:46 am
Peter Ballerstedt is an expert in feeding livestock. Recently he has talked at Low Carb do’s about world protein requirements, the characteristics of “plant based” diets and a bit on methane.
35 min information dense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsEqV0Bjcs&pp=ygURcGV0ZXIgYmFsbGVyc3RlZHQ%3D
Longer with more details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VY8YNhEpXw&pp=ygURcGV0ZXIgYmFsbGVyc3RlZHQ%3D
December 17, 2023 11:58 am
Today (December 17) is the 120th anniversary of the Wright Brothers four flights near Kitty Hawk recognized as a milestone in aviation. I was doing a bit of research on both the Wrights and Glenn Curtiss, and came across this interesting quotation by Wilbur Wright in the Wikipedia entry
“Wilbur spent the next year before his death traveling, where he spent a full six months in Europe attending to various business and legal matters. Wilbur urged American cities to emulate the European – particularly Parisian – philosophy of apportioning generous public space near every important public building…”
Now I realize that so much openspace in cities would cause them to expand substantially, but also imagine that with enough open area the interiors of cities might not be cut off from country breezes and perhaps would not reach the very high local temperatures they do — cutting short a major tool of the catastrophic climate change narrative.
In a interview for the Cowboy State Daily this past year I pointed out that climate change is not what causes these metropolitan heat waves. Rather, it’s the way we construct cities.
And though I failed to mention this, open areas filled with greenery help modulate temperature by evaporation; recognizing, of course, that additional humidity makes for uncomfortable conditions also. Nevertheless, we cut cities off from nature and are surprised that they become uncomfortable, then blame it all on the current scapegoat — fossil fuels.
Imagine cities without fossil fuels…
December 17, 2023 12:40 pm
This is a thing now…
How Earth’s first global heat officer is tackling climate change.
She is the first United Nations chief heat officer — and has a remit to keep people cool as the planet boils.
She advises women to wear fewer clothes to beat the heat — another benefit of global warming
December 17, 2023 8:30 pm
We drove from Sacramento CA to Ventura CA today, Sun Dec 17th. 410 miles. 6-1/2hrs. In an EV the travel time would have been the same or bit slower. Slower because good traffic was ~80mph and at 80mph EVs burn electrons too quickly. At the halfway point we switched drivers at Harris Ranch with their 108 superchargers. Our ICE vehicle turnaround time was ca. 8 minutes. Thinking the EV crowd was not nearly that fast.
