Why It Matters That Climatologists Forgot the Sun Was Shining
12 hours ago Guest Blogger 112 Comments
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
It is now almost two years since we submitted our paper on the central error perpetrated by climatologists in their attempts to derive climate sensitivity to anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcings – namely, their failure to appreciate that such feedback processes as subsist in the climate system at any given moment must, at that moment, necessarily respond equally to each Kelvin of the entire reference temperature. Feedbacks do not, repeat not, respond solely to perturbation signals, the reference sensitivities. They also respond to the base signal, the emission temperature that would prevail even if there were no greenhouse gases in the air, because the Sun is shining. Yet one of the world’s most eminent climatologists reflected the error that is near-universal throughout his trade when after several days’ fencing, he answered a direct question from me by admitting he did not consider there was any feedback response to emission temperature.
The diagram below shows the two competing methods, as they apply to 1850. Method (a), in red, is the incomplete method that led climatologists into error. Method (b), in green, is the complete and correct method, which takes due account of the fact that the Sun is shining.
It is necessary to follow the latter method because the base signal, the 260 K emission temperature R0 (shown in sunshine yellow in the corrected diagram but omitted from the defective diagram), is about 30 times the 8 K reference sensitivity ΔR0 to (or direct warming by) the naturally-occurring, noncondensing greenhouse gases that were present in the preindustrial atmosphere of 1850. Then R1, the sum of R0 and ΔR0, is the entire input or reference signal as it stood in 1850. That year is of interest because there was then a temperature equilibrium: there would be no temperature trend for 80 years thereafter.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/10/03/why-it-matters-that-climatologists-forgot-the-sun-was-shining/
