Dr. Happer: Why More Atmospheric CO2 Will Barely Raise Earth's Temperatures

Make no mistake about it, but William Happer is serious scientist who really understands the physics of the Earth’s ‘energy balance’ including the incoming radiation from the sun and the re-radiation of energy from the earth during the night. From that link: Happer is “a specialist in modern optics, optical and radiofrequency spectroscopy of atoms and molecules, radiation propagation in the atmosphere, and spin-polarized atoms and nuclei.” Is that serious enough?

I’m going to borrow from his article “How to Think about Climate Change” , from Watts Up With That that explains the basic physics of the Earth’s thermal radiation process and ultimately shows why global temperatures will not rise much even if atmospheric CO2 doubles from the current 400 ppm to 800 ppm or even 1600 ppm. I posted the article Trump Will End the EPA's and Gov't Climate Initiatives and Spending, on Jan.25th, talking about this and more. I think it’s also worth a look.

Let’s get started:

The Earth’s daily energy flows are incredibly large. Just think about a typical summer day. The sun warms (through solar radiation heating) the atmosphere and the land during the day and temperatures might rise to something like 90 deg F. Then during the evening and night everything cools to something like 70 deg F—especially if it’s a clear sky. 

The Earth’s DAILY Energy Flows

 

We all know that the daytime heating and night-time cooling in deserts is more extreme than humid, forested areas. Either way, it’s a gargantuan transfer of energy every day. Of course we take all this for granted (as we should). Virtually nobody, including climate “scientists” know enough about the basic physics that govern this daily cycle. If they did, nearly all of the climate models wouldn’t be so wrong and overstate warming currently AND going forward compared to the real and accurate measurements. They literally are all wrong—except Dr. Happer. 

Figure 1 Shocking that all the climate modelers are wrong, especially since 1995. They are being paid by governments/NGOs/Universities and if they show “no big deal” they don’t get funded! It literally pays to predict crisis

There’s science and quantum physics involved in ALL of those temperature swings which are the result of incoming radiation from the sun by day and the re-radiation of energy back into space during the night; albeit at a difference wavelengths (or frequencies). The entire article is great at explaining the physics of visible and near visible radiation, but for brevity, I’ll most skip to the most important points of the article; hopefully in a way that is more easily understood.

First is the chart showing both incoming thermal radiation from the sun in red and the ‘outgoing’ thermal re-radiation of the earth back into the night sky in blue. The panels beneath the top show the “blocking” effect of various components of the atmosphere and then a panel with all the blocking added together:

Figure 2

The incoming sunlight (in red) is higher energy (X-axis), ie., shorter wavelength and mostly visible light. Nearly 75% of incoming solar radiation is either absorbed by the earth’s surface or by the atmosphere. The outgoing radiation (re-radiation to space) is lower energy, ie., lower frequency and is mostly blocked by water vapor, CO2 in the atmosphere. Therefore only 25% of the day’s heat energy is re-radiated into space. Why? Because BOTH water vapor AND CO2 are greenhouse gases (Ozone too, but we’ll get to that later) and they block much of the lower energy infrared re-radiation at night. They don’t affect the daytime sunlight and it’s heating (as much).

From the article (refering to Fig 2):

Radiation cooling of the surface is less efficient because various greenhouse gases (most importantly water vapor, which is shown as the third panel down, and CO2, which is the fourth panel down) intercept a lot of that radiation and keep it from freely escaping to space. This keeps Earth’s surface temperature warmer than it would be (by about 20 or 30 degrees).

The Earth would be an ice cube if it were not for water vapor and CO2; and when I say water vapor, you should understand that I really mean water vapor and clouds. Clouds are at least as important as greenhouse gases and they are very poorly understood to this day.

Oh wow, so thank God for greenhouse gases or the Earth would one big snowball if it weren’t for greenhouse gases: water vapor, clouds and the small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere—20 to 30 deg COLDER is huge and civilization-ending. Cold is the big killer of humans and mammals—not warmth. It also explains why deserts can be so cold at night thanks to low humidity, few clouds

Actually the Earth HAS been an icy “snowball” in geologic history, but it’s nice and cozy now! It doesn’t take much cooling of the earth to permanently expand polar ice sheets—which causes even more cooling as ice/snow do not absorb solar radiation and reflect it back to space. This is what happens in “Ice Ages” by the way. Ice Ages and Mini-Ice Ages are caused by “Milankovtich” cycles of the Earth due to wobbles of the Earth’s axis and eccentricities of Earth’s orbit around the sun, typically with 100s of thousands of years of cycle length. (See my post What Causes Ice Ages? to see some good graphics—from 2013.) I’ve been writing this blog for quite some time. I’m still no good at it, but I’m a “hell of an engineer.” Bonus points if you get my little joke. I’ll be waiting for ur response—tick, tock!)

Now, we’re getting to the final Big Point(s) of this post. Take a look at the Figure 3 below. It’s a detailed picture of the outgoing (or upgoing) re-radiation of heat from the Earth (shown in blue in Fig 2). It’s just more detailed.

Fig 3: The Effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that block re-radiation of Earth’s heat at night. We’re re-radiating 277 W/m2 today —with CO2 at 400 ppm, and 274 W/m2 with CO2 at 800 ppm. It’s virtually the same.

I’m borrowing and slightly editing Dr. Happer’s explanations of the graph above in his referenced document How to Think About Climate Change:

“Max Planck is the great German physicist who discovered quantum mechanics and was the first to show why the theoretical spectrum of radiation from warm bodies [like our planet Earth] has the shape shown on this graph (the smooth blue line) representing a theoretical transparent atmosphere. The horizontal scale, left to right is the “spatial frequency” (wave peaks per cm) of thermal radiation. The vertical scale is the thermal power that is going out, ie., radiating, to space. If there were no greenhouse gases, the radiation going to space would be the area under the blue Planck curve. Using this curve, the heating of Earth by sunlight which corresponds to 394 Watts per square meter. But this was all based on theory, no accounting for greenhouse gases, but he was theoretically correct.

It was theorist Schwarzschild who first figured out how the “real” Earth, including the greenhouse gases in its atmosphere, actually is heated. The various greenhouse gases block certain spectra of radiation/light—both incoming and outgoing. The real “curve” is now described instead by a jagged black line. It’s significantly different than Plank’s modeling.

The first big gap (block) is caused by CO2 absorbing radiation that would otherwise cool the Earth. The second big gap is absorption due to Ozone or O3—which is another greenhouse gas (along with water vapor and CO2).

The important point here is the red line. This is what Earth would radiate to space if you were to double the CO2 concentration from today’s value. Right in the middle of these curves, you can see a gap in spectrum. If you double the amount of CO2, you don’t double the size of that gap. You just go from the black curve to the red curve, and you can barely see a difference. The gap hardly changes.

[Doug here: Plank’s theoretical blue curve was close but not exact; because it was pure theory and didn’t account for any greenhouse gases. The first gap is due to the absorption of CO2 which helps keep us warm and cozy on average. The second gap is absorption due to Ozone or O3—which is another greenhouse gas (along with water vapor and CO2.) Finally, Schwarzchild’s jagged black curve is well below Plank’s theoretical blue curve on the right side due to the greenhouse gas of water vapor. All told, Schwartzchild discovered that the Earth radiates 277 Watts/m2 with our current level of CO2 or 400 ppm or 274 Watts/m2 with CO2 at 800 pppm. Hardly any difference. With 0 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, the re-radiated heat at night would be 307 Watts/m2 or significantly more cooling at night and a much cooler climate equilibrium. Doug Out].

Back to Dr. Happer:

“The message I want you to understand, which practically no one really understands, is that doubling CO2 makes almost no difference. Doubling would replace the black curve by the red curve. On the basis of this, we are supposed to give up our liberties? We are supposed to give up the gasoline engines of our automobiles. We are supposed to accept dictatorial power by Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, because of the difference between the red and the black curve.”

“The takeaway message is that policies that slow CO2 emissions are based on flawed computer models which exaggerate warming by factors of two or three, probably more. That is message number one. So, why do we give up our freedoms, why do we give up our automobiles, why do we give up a beefsteak because of this model that does not work?”

In his article, Dr. Happer also touts how quickly plants grow with more CO2 and the Earth is actually “greening” due to the boost of CO2 in the atmosphere! 

Fig 4: The net “greening” of areas (vs. less green areas) of the planet. Carbon Dioxide is plant food

And he doesn’t mention that the age of coal in the 1800s and our subsequent ages of petroleum/diesel and nuclear energy have magically lifted BILLIONS of persons out of poverty and lifted BILLIONS into a life of more comfort, happiness and advancement. How come no one mentions the incredible advantages of our fossil fuel age? Also, once fossil fuels become scarce, there will no doubt be other sources or energy that will probably be non-hydrocarbon; like Thorium Reactors or SMRs (small Modular uranium Reactors), or the holy grail of energy: Fusion reactors.