Perhaps then Graham, you could explain to us how emitted CO2 before 1922 can give an overall cooling effect per ton on temperature, as Viv's first graph seems to imply?

I know you love Cox, a lot of dudes love Cox on this site, but even he has avoided explaining this to us.

Please explain.

Rhosty, you are consistently wrong in your on line assertions, but you have interrupted your record with this: “Co2 per se, does not cause climate change”.

You are at odds with the supporters of the AGW fraud , who assert that it does, particularly when topped up by human emissions. Possibly more by accident than design, you have said something sensible. In effect your statement means that you do not consider AGW backers to be rational people. Great insight.

Thanks for replying Jeremy.

The 30C “greenhouse” temperature due to CO2 is incorrect. The global average temperature, GAT, is made up of 2 components.

One is the so-called effective temperature, determined by the available incoming energy (depending on the solar constant, planetary albedo [reflectivity] and internal heat sources as ocean-atmosphere heat exchange, industrial heat generation etc), now about 255 Kelvin or minus 18 C.


The other is the greenhouse temperature, coming from the presence of infrared-active gases (H2O, CO2, methane, ozone, etc.) and clouds in the atmosphere, generally accepted as about 33 C. These two make up the known 288 K (+15 C) GAT

Now the second has some controversy about it because of the failure of the AGW science to model clouds and consequently albedo; if clouds have a negative effect on temperature as suggested by Spencer and Braswell, rather than a positive effect as AGW shows than the proportions within the 33C will change.

As it is the amount of that 33C due to CO2 has been clearly shown by Ramanathan; this measure of OLR is from Ramanathan and Coakley:

http://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/ramanathan-coakley-1978-role-of-co2.png

It is discussed at the Science of Doom site:

http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/02/10/co2-%e2%80%93-an-insignificant-trace-gas-part-five/

What can be taken from this is that “water vapor has about 2.5 times the effect of CO2.” Applying that to the Greenhouse temperature of 33C would mean that CO2 is responsible for about 25% of the 33C and H2O about 60% with the other trace GHGs the rest.

I might add Lindzen thinks the contribution of CO2 is about 2% which puts him in Spencer and Braswell’s camp:

http://eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/153_Regulation.pdf

This still leaves us with the log decline. What the author’s graph shows, and the ones I linked to earlier, is that the contribution of CO2 to the Greenhouse effect is maximised at low levels below 100 PPM. After that the effect is trivial.

Bugsy’s comment misses the point; the decline is not a cooling but a decline in the relative effect of further CO2 which still warms but at a declining rate.

So Bugsy, why don’t you stop whingeing and have a go?

Actually you are missing the point cohenite. I am not interested in teh 'decline' after the 1940s that you are discussing.

How can the relative contribution of warming before 1922 be negative?
Please explain.

The figure purports to show a decline from a maximum contribution in the 1940s, however it also appears to show a negative contribution per ton of emitted CO2 before the 1920s (i.e. a cooling effect). Now I would have thought that would be physically impossible, and if it is then the entire graph is BS.

Now if you can please explain why the there are negative values on that graph, then you will get a lollipop.

The source explains Bugs:

http://www.c3headlines.com/2014/02/noaa-climate-impact-cumulative-co2-emissions-since-1880-nil-those-stubborn-facts.html

"More on the above 'C3' chart. Specifically, it plots a ratio of 30-year NOAA temperature changes to the cumulative amount of CO2 tonnes emitted up to that point. For example, the 1941 ratio has a numerator of +0.59°C (30-year annual temperature change) and a denominator of 165 billion CO2 tonnes (the cumulative amount emitted from 1880 through 1941)."

The ratio depends on the concentration of CO2 and the temperature at any one time.

I don't want a lollipop, I want a bottle of 1992 vintage Semillon from Peterson House thank you.

I'm not sure what you're on about Bugsy. CO2 always has a warming effect, or rather an insulating effect. It doesn't warm per se, it just makes the period it takes to cool longer.

If it didn't get warm over a period that is because other forcings were stronger.

While it acts to warm the earth its effect is trivial compared to other factors. For example, without solar energy the earth would be close to 0 degrees Kelvin, no matter how much CO2 we had in the atmosphere.