Following a rousing introduction by Dr. Peter Ridd, Dr. Will Happer (don’t call me a climate scientist) presented a dazzling speech, in which he explained in simple terms why CO2 world temperature increase claims don’t make sense.
Happer spoke about his work creating reference stars – he pioneered the concept. Light from stars crosses the universe to finally land in our telescopes, only to be mangled by the last few miles of its journey through our atmosphere.
Happer’s brilliant idea was to use lasers to create a reference light source at the top of our atmosphere, which can be used to untangle the damage the atmosphere does to the incoming light signal.
Happer is a scientist who understands atmospheric physics.
He was able to confidently predict, just from theory, that it would be possible to artificially create an entirely new atmospheric state, which would help Astronomers use adaptive optics to correct defects in their photos.
To appreciate Happer’s genius, it is important to note, the reference star is not the laser beam itself, Happer is not just randomly shining a laser into the sky.
The laser causes a small patch of a layer of the atmosphere to glow, just like a bright star.
Happer figured out how to make that happen, by delivering the right laser frequency and intensity to trigger a predictable glow.
You can reasonably conclude, Happer is someone who understands the atmosphere and radiation physics at a level few others can approach – key concepts for analyzing the Greenhouse Effect.
One of Happer’s most powerful slides was this one, which shows the insignificant impact of doubling CO2 on the level of outgoing radiation.
Take your time looking at the image above, because it took me a few seconds to get it the first time I saw this type of diagram.
The slide is shows how atmospheric gasses affect thermal radiation escaping the Earth.
The blue line is what radiation would be emitted by the Earth, at its current temperature, if Earth had no atmosphere.
The Jagged line underneath the blue line shows the effect of atmospheric gasses partially blocking outgoing radiation at specific frequencies – this partial blocking is called "the greenhouse effect".
The area under the curves shows the total amount of energy escaping into space.
If you look carefully, you’ll see two lines almost on top of each other, a dark brown line and a red line.
You can’t really see most of the red line, because the red and dark brown lines are intermingled, they almost sit on top of each other.
The brown line is how much radiation is trapped by current CO2 levels (around 400ppm).
The almost identical red line is how much radiation would be trapped, if CO2 levels were increased to 800 ppm.
Attaining 800 ppm is not possible, because there are not enough fossil fuels on Earth.
So what is the impact of increasing CO2 to 800 ppm, from today’s value of about 400 ppm?
The impact of doubling CO2 from 400 ppm to 800 ppm, according to basic physics, is 0.71 C of warming.
How can anyone possibly still think the CO2 greenhouse effect is a problem, after seeing this diagram and calculation?
The reality is almost all the radiation which CO2 can trap, is already being trapped.
Adding more CO2 has almost no impact on outgoing atmospheric radiation.
So how do alarmist climate scientists turn this trivial nothing into a global climate panic?
How do they turn 0.7 C of warming into 3 C, 4 C, 12 C, whatever the latest panic figure is?
According to Happer, they achieve this by adding unphysical, hypothetical positive feedbacks, which amplify the almost non-existent impact of adding additional CO2 to the atmosphere.
But there is no proof significant positive feedbacks which amplify the minuscule CO2 effect actually exist.
The rest of Dr. Will Happer’s presentation was just as powerful.
If only we could photocopy this guy, and get him into all the classrooms of the world, the climate panic would disappear overnight.
Which is probably why the left worked so hard to cancel him, when Happer was given a climate science oversight position under President Trump, and served a year on the America First team.
We’d all love to know what Happer could have achieved, had he received a little extra time.
Let’s hope, Happer finds a letter from the White House in his mailbox in early 2024.
A huge thank you to the Institute of Public Affairs for making the Happer speeches happen.
And a big shoutout to Raj and Vijay, who over a few beers before the event entertained me with some interesting insights into the murky political games being played in the Aussie state of Victoria and elsewhere, details of which have somehow slipped beneath the radar of Australia’s mainstream media.
There is no proof significant positive feedbacks which amplify the minuscule CO2 effect actually exist.
But Will Happer went further than this, he spent a bit of time discussing why there is significant evidence such feedbacks don’t exist – namely the observed stability of the global climate over geological timescales.
Large feedbacks are not compatible with stability.
For more background read Explaining The Physics Of Carbon Dioxide – Will Happer’s Tour Down ...written by Jennifer Marohasy.
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