Climate Change

Here is a link to a website that presents the case against the degree of climate change you so often hear about.

A snippet.

Upper Bound for 21st Century Warming: The Right Climate Stuff Team (TRCS) is a group of retired and highly experienced engineers and scientists from the Apollo, Skylab, Space Shuttle and International Space Station eras. They have volunteered their time and effort to conduct an objective, independent assessment of the carbon dioxide (CO2)-caused global warming to assess the reality of the actual threat, and separate that from unnecessary alarm. They have applied the techniques they learned for space missions to this task. A rough engineering analogy is how can they be confident that an astronaut will not cook or freeze in a space station or a space suit.

To do this, the TRCS created an energy flow model (energy balance or energy conservation model) that accurately correlates with empirical global surface temperature data, using HadCRUT surface temperature data since 1850. HadCRUT is a dataset of monthly instrumental temperature records formed by combining the sea surface temperature records compiled by the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the land surface air temperature records compiled by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia. (Note: atmospheric temperature data from satellites only dates to 1979.)

The TRCS model even includes the heat flow from the molten core of the earth. It shows that global temperature is not significantly affected by increases in atmospheric CO2. An increase of CO2 to 570 parts per million (ppm) will result in a maximum increase in global temperatures of about 1.8K – far less than the general estimates by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its followers in the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), NOAA, EPA, etc. From ice cores, the estimated concentration of CO2 in 1850 was 285 ppm. So, the upper bound estimate in the TRCS model is at the low end of the 1979 estimate in the Charney Report of 1.5C with a doubling of CO2. The TRCS estimate is a maximum, and the actual result may be far less.

In a video, Harold Doiron, a principle modeler of the lunar lander, presents the TRCS team’s simple, rigorous earth surface model using principles established in Conservation of Energy. He shows how the model is validated using 165 years of atmospheric greenhouse gas data and HadCRUT surface temperature data.

As Doiron points out, at the last ice age maximum about 20,000 years ago, the CO2 concentration was about 180 ppm, near the 150ppm level that would result in the death of many green plants. Further, the safe limits for US submarines is 8,000ppm. (There are reports that concentrations in WW I & WW II submarines approached 40,000 ppm.)

Doiron discusses the widely accepted Kiehl – Trenberth general model stating that following it requires understanding of complex fluid dynamics and complex simulations of processes, which may or may not be correct. However, the estimates of the unknowns must be accurate within 2.5% to provide a useful result, an accuracy that is not attainable at this time. In his view as an Apollo engineer, Doiron states the approach is futile, and may never solve the problem. (As discussed in last week’s TWTW, there has been no progress made by this approach since 1979.)

Another problem with the IPCC approach is that it uses basically untestable concepts, such as equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), which may take hundreds of years to be tested, and demonstrated to be false. Another problem with the IPCC approach is the free use of aerosols, previously discussed in TWTW, where the values (usually a cooling effect) may be adjusted to produce an acceptable result in the climate models, tuning them to past observations.

To avoid these issues, Doiron introduces the concept of Transient Climate Sensitivity (TCS) which is an empirically verifiable measurement for all greenhouse gases, as well as CO2 alone. TCS can be defined as the sum of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, feedbacks (water vapor and other positive and negative feedbacks) and aerosols. Doiron recognizes that his TCS may be too high, but it sets an upper bound. This upper bound is not scary.

The Right Climate Stuff Team has written to President Trump, the EPA, and others stating that models need to be validated by data, and the entire issue of the influence of CO2 on temperatures needs independent, objective review. In the past, such as after the Challenger disaster, NASA conducted such reviews, called non-advocacy reviews. No doubt, many entrenched alarmist government entities will bitterly oppose such a review. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.