Seminal 1967 Paper Introducing CO2 ‘Radiative Forcing’ Is Based On Assumptive Imaginary-World Modeling

A new study comprehensively eviscerates a 57-year-old modeling paper upon which nearly the entirety of the IPCC’s CO2-drives-climate paradigm is based.

Dr. Roy Clark has published a new 73-page study that rips apart the Manabe and Wetherald (1967) paper (MW67) that effectively hatched the IPCC-popularized concepts of CO2 climate sensitivity, radiative forcing, and positive/negative feedbacks so as to portray humans as predominantly responsible for climate changes.

The invalid, error-ridden conceptualization of a Earth land and ocean surface warmed by CO2 radiative forcing is one-dimensional and Flat Earth and assumes constant equilibrium, or perpetually steady states (that do not exist in the real world).

Even the most basic of assumptions in MW67 – that CO2 warms the Earth and ocean as its concentration is increased – is “largely a mathematical artifact produced by using a highly simplified one-dimensional radiative convective computer model.” CO2 climate sensitivity is but a calculation built on simplification errors.

The MW67 model (and the Hansen et al., 1981 paper that expanded it to its present-day form) neglects a host of real-world phenomena.

For example, evaporation (for the ocean) is ignored. Wind (which modulates evaporation) and waves are ignored. The ocean is assumed to be a flat, one-dimensional object that is predominantly heated by downward infrared radiation.

The effects of molecular collisions and turbulence in the troposphere are ignored. Diurnal temperature is ignored. Humidity is assumed to be perpetually constant rather than varying with the solar heating of the surface.

“The effects of advection, evaporation, subsurface thermal storage and ocean transport were ignored” in MW67.

The steady state assumption (that was first featured in 1896 by Arrhenius) is not real, as there is “no steady state air column in the real atmosphere and both turbulent and moist convection and subsurface thermal storage have to be included in the time dependent surface energy transfer analysis.”

The radiative “perturbation” from a CO2 increase from 280 to 560 ppm could only produce a 0.08 K temperature change over the course of a day using the MW67 radiative transfer model calculations. This variation is too small to detect, and it cannot accumulate over days or seasons.

Simply put, MW67 effectively constructs a set of assumptions about what may only occur in an imaginary-world. And this is the Nobel Prize-winning paper that underpins the modern-day version of climate science.

Image Source: Clark, 2024

9 responses to “Seminal 1967 Paper Introducing CO2 ‘Radiative Forcing’ Is Based On Assumptive Imaginary-World Modeling”

  1. David Hamilton Russell

    About a month ago I wrote my own paper, using the data from official climate sources and came up with that back radiation from CO2 to the surface could only be .09W/M2. That’s total from existing 400ppm air. Here’s the logic:

    1. There can be no heat transferred from the atmosphere to Earth’s surface without violating the 2nd Law, because with few exceptions (e.g., a temperature inversion), the air over land is always cooler than the land beneath and thus cannot warm it. Heat transfer is from the sun to Earth’s surface, then to the air. Let’s start with the Earth’s surface, where insolation heats the surface and drives the tropospheric temperature:
    2. [From the below, latest Global Energy Budget] The average solar energy absorbed by Earth’s surface is 163.3W/M2. But on average 86.4 W/M2 of that is removed by water evaporation (latent heat on the chart), which both cools the surface and has nothing to do with the GHE. Also, an average 18.4W/M2 is removed by conduction from the surface to the air and 99.9% of that goes into the non-GHGs in the air, because they make up 99.9% of the air (conduction impacts all air molecules proportionally). Thus, only 163.3 – 86.4 -18.4 = 58.5 W/M2 of earth absorbed solar energy might result in IR and interact with the air’s CO2 when emitted by Earth.
    However,….
    3. According to MSFT’s A.I., Copilot CO2 blocks(absorbs) only 8% of Earth’s IR. Let’s use 10% to be on the safe side. This leaves 10% of 58.5 = 5.85W/M2.
    4. But close to Earth surface, 94% of CO2 absorbed IR is conducted away by collisions with other nearby [99%+ non-radiating, non-GHGs] before the IR energized CO2 molecules can radiate [See F K Reinhart (2017), bottom of page 4]. This leaves 6% of 5.85W/M2 of near surface CO2 absorbed energy that will radiate on average, or 0.35W/M2.
    5. Only 50% of said radiation will be downward or 0.18W/M2 back to Earth.
    6. However, there is a considerable overlap in the absorption frequencies of water vapor with CO2. From visual inspection of the 2nd below chart, I estimate a 50% overlap. So, 0.18 becomes only 0.09 W/M2 of surface back radiation (BR) due to due to CO2 capturing and returning surface IR emissions.

    1. Kiraly Jozsef

      Mr. Russel,
      Very interesting. Could you please link to your work?

  2. KlimaSkeptic

    Just on a side, meter in metric system is ALWAYS expressed as “m” i.e. lower case. And the “square” symbol can be typed by using the ALT character set. Just hold down the ALT key, while typing 0178 on numeric keypad. Alternatively, the cubed symbol is Alt 0179.

  3. John Hultquist

    The ocean is assumed to be a flat, one-dimensional object that is predominantly heated by downward infrared radiation.”
    The above is wrong, as far as I know.
    Open-ocean water allows sunlight in the visible spectrum to go to a depth of several hundred feet (some to about 200 m.). This allows divers with cameras to photograph colorful fish, corals, and the less colorful bottom in shallow depths. The light is energy. The penetration depth of IR radiation is submillimeter. IR can’t have much effect on the large volume it doesn’t reach.

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  5. Stephen Richards

    Yong Khou has also dismantled Manabe.
    See Yong Tuition

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