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Chris Rentsch

6 Oct, 7 tweets, 3 min read

100% consensus light travels 186,000 mph
⤷ because we can measure it

100% consensus that 𝑔 = 6.67...x10⁻¹¹ Nm²/kg²
⤷ because we can measure it

97% consensus that ↑CO₂ changes climate
...because CO₂ radiative forcing isn't measured

Measurement supersedes a consensus.

I'm ~not~ saying the climate consensus is wrong. I'm explaining why we even ~talk~ about a consensus.

With no direct CO₂ forcing measurement, climatologists study indirect effects like 🌡️ ocean heat content or 📉 stratosphere instead.

The effect of aerosols, ozone, ⛅️ & 🌋 are all accounted for, then what's left over is then attributed to increased CO₂, even though CO₂ radiative forcing wasn't directly measured (it was modeled w/computers).

When an effect is attributed to something that wasn't measured, probabilities show up. For example, atmospheric scientist Ben Santer estimates the probability of these collective indirect effects being of natural causes instead of CO₂ is "infinitesimally small."

Ben's judgement is then compared to everyone else's judgement. Most agree, so there's consensus.

But once a measurement is made, the entire need for consensus vanishes. So is anyone empirically measuring CO₂ radiative forcing? Glad you asked.

This project has taken far too much of my time, but here is: nearly two decades of satellite measurements, filtered for clear-sky observations, trended & integrated to give the longwave forcing of +37 ppm CO₂ compared to the IPCC F=5.35*ln(C/C₀) equation.

Yes, it will be published someday.
No, I don't know when.
Yes, I've heard of Feldman-2015. Surface measurements don't help here; to affect the temperature of a planet, you have to change the energy balance at top of atmosphere (TOA) which is where IPCC defines radiative forcing:

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More from @crentsch

Chris Rentsch

@crentsch

30 Nov 20

Over the last 14 months I have been refining the briefest possible explanation of CO₂ #climatechange physics:

(1/15) Any warm object radiates energy at wavelengths depending on its temperature. The distribution of wavelengths is described by Planck's Law:

2. Planck's Law predicts that the Sun, having a surface temperature of 5,800 degrees, will radiate mostly at visible light wavelengths.

3. The sun-facing side of Earth receives 1,362 W/m² in a combination of visible and infrared radiation.
Source: Kopp & Lean doi.org/10.1029/2010GL…

Read 16 tweets

Chris Rentsch

@crentsch

28 Jul 20

I went through the technical guide for a modern climate model and counted the user-specified parameters:

1,737 (and I know I missed some).

If you've ever wondered what dials must be set to run a GCM, here they are...🧵

I have been told 'these just physics simulators' suggesting that after entering π, σ, 𝑔, etc and some earth-specific information, the rest is simply the consequence of laws of nature. I would observe this is not entirely the case.

First, the model needs 207 plant optical properties specifying the IR/vis reflectance and absorbance of leaves and stems

Read 54 tweets

Chris Rentsch

@crentsch

22 Mar 20

Stuck indoors, lots of time to read, currently finishing Brandt's book on Dow Chemical's first 100 years.

The strangest/craziest stories inside👇

1. Herbert Dow visited the bromine plant and "I found it shut down with most of the men on the roof. The coke tower was plugged with iron hydrate and needed to be scraped out. But, there was considerable odor of bromine and the men claimed they were waiting for it to clear up...

I was satisfied that the amount of bromine was not more than it had been customary for me to soak up on many occasions and I presumed the foreman was equally familiar with the amount of bromine the men could absorb without injury. So I told him to set the example by going down...

Read 17 tweets

Chris Rentsch

@crentsch

19 Jan 20

@waitbutwhy

People don't use data to decide what to think 🧐

At best they may use data to update existing beliefs

Have you ever discussed climate data with someone, only to arrive at opposite conclusions?

There is interesting math behind why. [1/11]
img: @waitbutwhy

In the Bayesian framework, how much you believe something after you see the evidence depends not just on what the evidence shows, but on how much you believed it to begin with. The posterior is affected not only by the evidence you encounter, but also by your prior. [2/11]

Here are 5,498 temperature anomalies from Berkeley Earth's 2019 dataset. Natural variable weather ensures that any individual station reports higher or lower temperatures in a somewhat random fashion. [3/11]

Read 12 tweets

Chris Rentsch

@crentsch

15 Dec 19

How does mainstream climate change science arrive at CO₂ = catastrophic warming?

Nobody is reading thousand-page IPCC reports. People just trust headlines, actors, etc.

I'm not that trusting For myself I had to create this primer to connect it all together. [0/n]

Any warm object radiates energy at wavelengths depending on its temperature. The distribution of wavelengths is described by Planck's Law. [1/n]

Planck's Law predicts that the Sun, having a surface temperature of 5,800 degrees, will radiate mostly at visible light wavelengths. [2/n]

Read 15 tweets

Chris Rentsch

@crentsch

7 Dec 18

1/ I asked for a Geiger counter for Christmas last year and got my wish. I took it on a westbound flight across the US and this .gif records the readings during take-off and climb to 30,000 feet where it recorded 25x as much radiation as at ground level.

2/ Total radiation dose measured was 8.5 microsievarts on the four hour flight. xkcd’s radiation dose chart expected even higher levels than that: xkcd.com/radiation/

3/ The part I find notable on the chart is nuclear power plant neighbors should expect to receive an additional 0.09 μSv/yr while coal power plant neighbors should expect to receive +0.30 μSv/yr. The non-nuclear power plant delivers more radiation!

Read 8 tweets

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