When the Sun comes up on a cloudless day, everything is so clearly illuminated. I know this to be a consequence of incoming solar radiation. And when I sit in this sunlight, I know that it will warm me.
Physicists who study heat transfer can explain how the incoming radiation in the visible spectrum becomes long wave radiation in the infrared spectrum, and how increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide can potentially trap this energy increasing the average temperature of the Earth.
There are two issues that technocrats, convinced of a climate catastrophe, obsess over:
1. Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity – how much temperatures will increase assuming a doubling of atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, and
2. Net Zero – how reducing emissions can keep climate change to within 1.5 degrees Celsius.
As an emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University and an expert on radiative transfer that concerns, amongst other things, the absorption of infrared radiation by carbon dioxide, Will Happer has the competency to calculate Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity from first principles.
Indeed, Professor Happer is perhaps more qualified, better credentialed, than anyone I have ever meet, and ever likely to meet, when it comes to calculating the likely effect of a doubling of atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide on the Earth’s temperature.
Not that we have a doubling yet, but that this is something the technocrats obsess over.
In a submission he made last year with Richard Lindzen concerning proposed changes to legislation enabling the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to force companies to disclose information on their supposed climate-related business risks he wrote:
‘Our informed scientific opinion is that doubling CO2 concentrations will cause about 1 C or less of warming.’
Last night in Perth, the professor explained the physics that results in the more precise value of a 0.75 C increase, should there be a doubling of carbon dioxide and that after that, the effect of a doubling again would be miniscule because of saturation.
According to Professor Happer there will be NO climate catastrophe from increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide because of the structure of the atmosphere and laws of physics.
If you would like to attend one of his Australian lectures, Prof. Happer will be speaking in:
Melbourne at the Ritz-Carlton on 15 September,
Sydney at the Four Seasons on 18 September, and in
Brisbane at the Sofitel, on 20 September.
Each event will start at 5:30 pm and there will be a Q&A session following.
Tickets to any of the IPA lectures may be purchased from www.ipa.org.au/events.
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The photograph featured at the top of this blog post was taken in King’s park Perth, just yesterday when I had the privilege of discussing the work Professor Happer did on spectroscopy for the US military going back many years now and how it informed his more practical approach to measuring the contribution of carbon dioxide to equilibrium climate sensitivity.