I have a Bsc in Physics and a PhD in High Energy Physics and have worked as a research fellow at CERN for 3 years, Rutherford Lab for 2 years and the JET Nuclear Fusion experiment for 5 years. Thereafter I worked at the Joint Research Centre in Italy until April 2008 being seconded to the African Union in Addis Adaba Nov 2007 until March 2008. I originally started this blog to record my experiences in Ethiopia. It started out as a travel blog, but has now morphed mainly into a science blog on climate. All results, views, opinions and errors are entirely my own fault and in no way reflect any stance of any previous employer.

I became interested in understanding the physics behind climate change after getting fed up with being told that the debate is over. Science is never a closed book and has a habit of turning round and biting those who think so.  This  explains why the blog now focusses on climate science.

I am basically a scientific sceptic but with a deep interest in other opinions and cultures.

72 Responses to About

  1. Dina says:

    I am a stock footage researcher with Apartment 11 Productions – an educational children’s television production company based in Montreal, Canada.

    We’d like to use your photo of King Lalibela in one of our shows in exchange for a credit. Could you please email me to discuss further? My email is dina2@apartment11.tv.

  2. Pingback: IPCC Models predict the exact opposite of what actually happens. No surprise there then. « The Septic Sceptic

  3. Mike Haseler says:

    Hi clive,

    I liked your post on predicted and actual temperature. I also like that you work at CERN and did real science!

    I’m trying to do something vaguely related for SCEF (Scottish Climate & Energy Forum), so I’d be very pleased if you could email me as I’d like to ask whether you can help us.

    Mike Haseler

  4. I’m in the process of revising a novel I wrote a couple of years ago. Would I be able to use in the novel an image that appears at

    The novel attempts to present a plausible scenario of what could happen to some of the basic circumstances of our lives as an uncertain future unfolds. Climate change is included as one of those changing conditions.

    Alan Detwiler

    • Clive Best says:

      Yes – for me it’a fine to use the image as you wish.
      One other possible scenario for you to consider is the switching of the Earth’s magnetic field which happens every couple of million years. No-one knows how fast the flip occurs. However it would disrupt the weather, UV protection and in principal electronic communications. http://rense.com/general26/poles.htm New Scientist writes: “Studies of ocean sediments and lava flows show the Earth has undergone several hundred field reversals, with the most recent confirmed flip occurring about 780,000 years ago. But their timing appears random and physicists do not understand what causes them.”

  5. Franco Oliveri says:

    I’m Franco Oliveri and I met you while you were working at the JRC.
    I’d like to be in touch with you on issues related to climate change and migration: could you please contact me:

  6. Martin Lack says:

    Clive, I respect the extent of your qualifications and experience in Physics, so I hope you will respect mine in Geology and Hydrogeology; and not (as so many have done) question the implications of my now also having an MA in Environmental Politics.

    I agree that, in certain respects, the conclusions of science are always provisional. However, do you accept that the scientific conclusions about the theory of gravity and that the Earth is an oblate spheroid are not now generally disputed? Presuming that you do not; you must accept that some things in science are “settled”

    Since the Second World War – and in the last 20 years in particular – the level of uncertainty regarding the primacy of excess atmospheric CO2 as the driver of change we are witnessing has reduced almost to vanishing point. Therefore, to dispute this today, despite all the accumulating evidence of unprecedented frequency and intensity of extreme weather events of all kinds (as predicted by atmospheric physics and models), seems to me to be evidence of willful blindness; and/or indicative of belief in a scientific conspiracy (for which there is no evidence) to foist environmental alarmism upon a credulous World? Can you please tell me if there is an alternative explanation?

  7. Fred Voetsch says:

    Excellent site, Clive. It’s strange to me how some people seem bothered by skeptical thought but I, for one, appreciate what I have read so far and will make a point of returning.

  8. Cry Wolf says:

    Clive, great blog!

    I have been having a detailed look at climate records from 23 UK MET office stations and am particularly interested in sunshine and temperature co-variance (R2=0.8 on 5y means). I need the assistance of a physicist to convert observed sunshine variance to expected temperature variance at surface. I’m not even sure if this is possible to do. In essence, the UK got sunnier from 1985 to 2000 and it got warmer. I was wondering if you may be interested to help, if so please get in touch.

    The UK data are also interesting compared with variance in ISCCP global D2 cloud.

    • ann ceely says:

      Cry Wolf,

      I remember sunnier from 1974. I was having babies at that time, and remember April 1974 when 8 months pregnant as unbearably hot & sunny – followed by the rest of the summer. Whereas the summer of 1972 just before the baby was born beginning of Sept was comfortably cool, and her early months were horribly cold.

      I remember waking up my 5-year-old one evening in 1977/8 to see the first snow of her life – it hadn’t snowed for 5 years in Essex.

  9. Alex Henney says:

    may I suggest you make a submission to the Energy and Climate Change Committee which is considering the implications of AR5 for electric policies.Thus far I have encouraged Judith Curry,Bob Carter, John Christy and I hope Richard Lindzen to pitch in.If you would send me an e mail and telephone I can share my submission and material about the electric industry with you
    0207 284 4217

  10. Hello,
    Seeing that you’ve lived in Italy I wonder whether you’ve heard of Roberto Madrigali’s theory of the way climate is influenced by the moon. His book ‘The future of the earth is written on the moon’ was recently published, and I’m waiting to get a copy in English, but my girlfriend has just finished reading it in the Italian. http://www.meteoclima.net/it/index.php/item/29-il-futuro-della-terra-e-scritto-nella-luna-un-libro-rivoluzionario
    I found your site whilst doing a general search on that. I have no scientific background so all the technical stuff is way beyond me, but the few bits and bobs I’ve just read of yours are very interesting. Thanks,
    P.S. Madrigali is also predicting that a new ice age is just around the corner.

    • Clive Best says:

      Hi Simon,

      I had a quick look at Madrigali’s book description. His theory is that the moon changes the position of the Jet streams presumably through tidal effects on the atmosphere. There are indeed lunar tides near the poles at high altitude in winter. I don’t quite know how explains the ice ages though !

      I also looked at the moon’s effect on climate

      see this post

  11. Bob Peckham says:

    Hi Clive/Simon
    Also related to this, Piers Corbyn of Weather Action seems to have a very high rate of success in forecasting extreme weather events up to six weeks in advance using a technique which involves solar/lunar influence on the jet stream. However his technique seems to focus more on electromagnetic effects than tidal. I don’t think he publishes the full details of his method, probably because it is the basis of his livelihood, but some of the ideas can be gleaned from the website http://www.weatheraction.com
    He calls his method SLAT – Solar Lunar Action Technique – and it is based on solar activity (which is to some extent predictable) modulated by the moon (which is predictable).
    To quote directly from a very recent post on the Weather Action website:
    “ The R periods and wild behavior of the Jet Stream are driven from above and are associated with extra and extreme changes in electrical and magnetic activity above the stratosphere and in the ionosphere and the solar wind of charged particles coming from the sun and events on the sun itself**
    [**Note Ideas such as ‘temperature contrasts drive the Jet Stream’ are totally inadequate to explain or predict events. Such a picture cannot explain the relationship between Earth weather and events in the ionosphere, magnetosphere, the solar wind and on the sun and the simultaneity of extreme storm events across earth and their ~coincidence with (radio) storms on other planets. Indeed such a low-level Earth atmosphere centred view, notwithstanding certain feedbacks, is akin to suggesting the movement of tree branches causes winds.] “ (end of copy/paste)

    In view of the apparent success of this technique in forecasting extreme weather events I am inclined to think there must be some valid ideas behind it. Maybe worth taking a look at: http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=613&c=5
    If you scroll down you can see images of sunspots coming around to face the earth, and of the current “wild” jet stream.
    Bob P

  12. Rudy says:

    Thanks for your blogs and data and analysis of data Clive!

    I find this debate on AGW motivating and it inspires me to find a current model that can explain all the questions that everyone on both sides of the debate are asking. I am simply a high school physics and chemistry teacher. I stand on the shoulders of giants when I am having my best lesson or lab for my students.

    Great thinkers can solve this issue before it ends up creating a slew of bad scenarios. If AGW is as bad as some say it is, then we may have already done the damage to the globe and trying to reverse it now will be too late. But if it is not a significant factor in the climate variations the earth experiences, in response to things such as sun activity, tidal shifts influenced by the alignment of the sun, moon and earth in 100,000 year cycles or increased volcanic and geologic activity, dust particles in the atmosphere, and hot vents in the ocean that heat up ocean water, then from the regulations our government is placing on our energy and industry, we are likely to be creating a sociological crisis that will be spawned by a net decline in food production. Carl Sagan hit the nail on the head almost 2 decades ago.

    I know some scientific debates like evolution and the Big Bang are still unresolved and this debate on AGW is definitely unresolved. A more complete model, and a model that can predict climate response by variables such as geologic activity, solar activity, tidal activity, and particulates in the atmosphere. I have thought about it enough to come up with an equation that is not in the books and one I never really thought about before. It is a combined gas law version of the Ideal Gas Law, not the one we see in books. But it seems gravity will keep the container of earths atmosphere at a near constant volume. So it makes sense that with more gas molecules in the air, and an increased temp. of 1.5 K in the past 100 or so years, that the pressure would also have to go up. The equation becomes P1/n1T1 = P2/n2T2. It is intuitive from the gas law equation that the pressure today must be higher than it was before AGW. If you do the math it comes out to be about 5mmHg higher today than yestercentury. To solve it I needed to find the volume of the earth’s atmosphere and the number of moles of air in it both 100 years ago and today. I solved a bunch of back of the envelope calculations to obtain a number of moles of molecules in the atmosphere 100 years ago. Ironically I was looking up the answer to my question and got the same question that was not accurately answered on Yahoo Answers. So I answered it. I took this approach to solve. I assumed that CO2 acts like an ideal gas. The temperature of the atmosphere today is 1.5 K higher than it was 150 years ago. So Today if the temp. is 288 K then 150 years ago it was 286.5 K. The Atmospheric pressure I will use is 1 Atm, although the pressure goes down as we increase altitude. To k.i.s.s. I did not adjust for a changing pressure with altitude. I calculated the spherical volume of the solid earth with a mean volumetric radius of 6371 km and then the volume of the sphere using that same radius + 8.5 km of atmosphere we are focused on (higher altitudes have an insignificant amount of CO2). I took the difference of the larger volume with the atmosphere and the smaller volume of just the solid earth, for a volume of 4.34 x 10^9 km^3 of air in the atmosphere we are going to focus on. Convert that to liters for use in our gas law equation; you should get 4.34 x 10^21 L. Using Pv=nRT, where Pressure is 1 atm. and Volume for the 2 different scenarios of today’s concentration of CO2 and the concentration of CO2 150 years ago, would be (.000400 x 4.34 x 10^21 L ) and(.000250 x 4.34 x 10^21 L), if today there are 400ppm of CO2 and 100 years ago there were 250 ppm. Now the volume is 1.74 x 10^18L for the current atmosphere and 1.09 x 10^18 L for the atmosphere 150 years ago. Plug the correct values in the Ideal Gas Law equation for each scenario: 1 Atm (1.74 x 10^18L) = n (.0821 L.atm/mol.K)(288K) = 7.34 x 10^16 moles of CO2 1 Atm (1.09 x 10^18L) = n (.0821 L.atm/mol.K)(286.5K) = 4.61 x 10^16 moles of CO2
    Multiply each mole calculation by Avogadro’s number: you get 4.42 x 10^40 molecules of CO2 today and
    2.78 x 10^40 molecules of CO2 150 years ago. The difference is a scant (jk) 1.64 x 10^40 more CO2 molecules today in the atmosphere than there was 150 years ago. Any change in vegetation consumption of CO2 and rate of ocean limestone uptake of CO2 may actually change the value a bit, Yes if you check this on Yahoo Answers, I am Chem is Try. I answered it a few days ago, not finding someone’s answer on the internet, but stumbling on one of the same questions I have. I wanted to know this just so I could find the pressure difference. My next hunt is for the heat exchange rate between water and the atmosphere when the conditions exist that heat can travel according the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

    • Rudy says:

      whoops, I needed to mention that the number of total moles of all air molecules in the atmosphere today are 1.8355 e20 and the number of moles of air molecules in the atmosphere 100 years ago were 150 ppm less concentrated in CO2; giving a figure of 1.8342 e20 moles. Using 760 mmHg today for the pressure, I got 755.5 mmHg a century or so ago. What kind of effect will this pressure rise have? A higher pressure on water’s phase change diagram makes it more difficult to stay a vapor, but the effects of a higher temperature will also play a role in its ability to keep in its vapor state. I forgot to mention one other statement recently published in Scientific American. The editor wrote an article in which he state something to the effect that the more and more the sea ice in the arctic ocean melts, the warmer and warmer the sea gets. I contested this statement on 2 fronts. First of all the sea will have to lose heat to melt ice, and secondly, the Arctic Ocean is a very closed ocean with a limited area of which to freeze. If it is completely frozen in it 14,056,000 km^3 area, then when it does melt, and it never melts all the way, the highest its temperatures according to http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/ocean_temperature_salinity.html could go would be 0 deg. C to 4 degC. I kind of find that 4 deg C figure a bit hard to swallow, that would not be a surface temperature due to the fact water is its most dense at 4 deg. C, unless ocean water deviates from this. The lowest its temperature gets is -2 deg. C due to its salinity. So the range in temp is not more than 2 deg. C. This is a far cry from warmer and warmer. I posted a blog about that on FB and a career long Biology Teacher colleague and friend of mine proceeded to tell me where my confusion was; he said that the Albedo of open lower than Ice. And so the more Ice that melts the more heat is absorbed from the sunlight by the ocean. Although this is true, it still cannot heat the ocean above freezing until all the ice melts. I think this last fall over 3 million Km^3 of ice remained. Now in January over 89 % has returned. I just don’t accept the statement from a major Scientific magazine, from its own editor, that the more ice that melts, the more that ocean increases in temp. It is not thermodynamically feasible. People reading the magazine should be scientifically literate enough to analyze the statement. I think the conclusion is logical that the ocean does not heat up in conjunction with the more and more ice that melts, mainly due to the fact it takes heat to melt ice and that heat comes from the ocean water, so the water must lose a lot of heat to melt all that ice. I guess the water can only absorb so many kilojoules a day by the sun. I already did a back of the envelope calculation on that one as well,

    • Clive Best says:


      Thanks for your contribution. I also think it is very important that young students are taught that there is as yet no agreed science regarding climate change. The challenge is still open to them to resolve the science behind it. I fear that instead some school curriculum (including here in the UK) are more influenced by green propaganda than hard science. It is wrong to teach them that global warming will bring disaster.

      Your ideas on gravity effects and the prefect gas laws are similar to those of Stephen Wilde. See for example this post

      My position is more that of a luke warmer. The physics of radiative transfer is well established. What is not so clear is the complex feedbacks of the water cycle to any change in CO2 forcing. I suspect that this will make climate change a minor threat to mankind.

  13. TRG says:

    Just read your essay on “super tides and interglacials” over at WUWT. Very interesting discussion. Thanks very much.

  14. Colin Smith says:

    Hi, I am doing a research paper for university on temperature change and emissions per capita for several countries. I really like your temperature anomaly graphs however is there any way I would be able to access the raw data as I need to perform statistical tests on it. Any data would obviously be fully referenced.

  15. Clive Best,

    I tried to locate a direct email address for you to send you something I just received that is germane to your theory about atmospheric saturation/evaporation/humidity as THE driver of atmospheric warming.

    The premise is: reduced evaporation rate due to a change in solar gamma radiation resulting in drier air (with less heat transfer) as well as reduced IR transmission/radiance into space.

    I could not find your email, and so I am including a portion of the document in this comment block.


    Climate Change is the result of solar bi-flex. The term bi flex refers to the terminal
    exposure of the internal parts of the sun’s core itself to chemical and solar elements not
    usually associated with a star of this magnitude. Solar-Bi-flex occurs when elements of
    cesium and nitrogen combine to form dipoles of magnetic disruptions that retain enough
    heat to erupt as gamma rays and thereby expose (the Earths atmosphere) to excess gamma ray radiation.
    Gamma ray radiation, when absorbed by (the Earths atmosphere) causes water in
    (the Earths atmosphere) to fail to evaporate as it should. Consequently the water in (the
    Earths atmosphere) is losing its ability to become useable where it once could go as a gas
    that allowed cooling by evaporation processes mostly unknown to science.


    I Googled “graph humidity over time” to do a spot-check on the premise, and found a graph of yours, which lead me to your site, and I read your post about your theory, which sounds……sound…..to me, and so I thought you might like the info above.


    Seattle, WA – US

  16. Hello,
    I recently checked Roberto Madrigali’s meteoclima.net site and see that you’re now well represented there! All the best, Simon

  17. Ron Graf says:


    I just subscribed. If you have access to that email address now you can reply if you would allow me to send you some research coordinating information.

  18. Pingback: Untangling UK Wind power production | Energy Matters

  19. Pingback: L’ossigeno, la vita e un sistema che sì e no si accorge di noi | Climatemonitor

  20. ralfellis says:






    Ralph Ellis

    • Clive Best says:

      That looks very interesting. I think you may be right as the one missing link was the dust signal in the ice cores. Die off of vegetation in the NH due to low CO2 makes sense as the trigger for dust storms. Dust over ice sheets decreases albedo. Nice !

  21. Bob Peckham says:

    I would like to thank Ralph Ellis for pointing out this paper which for me has been the most interesting and intriguing article I have read so far this year!
    Naturally it raises quite a few questions. My first one stems from the final sentence which suggests that “the most effective way of controlling global temperature is through the modulation of soot particulates on ice sheets”.
    As it happens I have just finished reading “Travels through the Alps” by J. Forbes who travelled through the Alps in the mid 1800s, crossing passes and measuring the flows of glaciers. In this work it is very clearly and reliably reported that the maximum (recent) extension of Alpine glaciers occurred in about 1820. And we know they have been shrinking since then. So is it possible that the shrinking of Alpine glaciers was already being influenced by man’s activities in 1820 ? If so is it possible to quantify by how much ?

    • Clive Best says:


      I agree. This is the best new idea to explain the termination of ice ages that I have seen !
      The maximum extension of Alpine glaciers coincides reasonably well with a dip in UK temperatures where winters averaged only 3.5C. If the retreat in glaciers coincided with say rising soot pollution from coal fires, then I guess it should be possible to see this in the ice. I have no idea whether this has been looked at.



  22. bob Peckham says:

    Good point Clive. I just googled ” soot in Alpine ice ” and top of the list comes “How soot killed off the Little Ice Age” – and plenty of references to a paper in Nature from 2013.

    Seems we are the ones playing catch-up this time….

    Bob P.

  23. Pingback: No, stabilising emissions will not stabilise concentrations! | …and Then There's Physics

  24. daveburton says:

    You do a lot of very nice work, Dr. Best!

    I’ve linked to your blog on my site, and also borrowed a quote from you.

  25. daveburton says:

    I attempted to post a comment on your 2012 article about Effective Emission Height, but I get an error: “Invalid security token.”

    • Nick Stokes says:

      I’ve benn getting that too. I believe it is caused by a JetPack… anti-spam program

    • Clive Best says:

      If you include any tags in a comment such as HTML then Jetpack simply deletes them. Any URLs should be pasted without tags.

      • daveburton says:

        Thank you, Nick & Clive.

        I deleted all HTML tags and still got the error.

        So then I deleted a couple of ndash HTML special-character entities, and that solved it.

        I don’t know whether deleting all of the HTML tags was actually necessary. I had used three HTML tags: a, b, i

        JetPack seems pretty awful!

        • daveburton says:

          I just sent a message to JetPack, reporting this problem.

          • daveburton says:

            I got the following reply from JetPack:

            From our testing, it seems to be specifically the ampersand character.

            We’re tracking the bug here:

            Unfortunately it rarely comes up, so it hasn’t been prioritized for a fix yet. I’ll make a note of your ticket number there so we can let you know when its been fixed, but also to show it has affected your Jetpack use.



            (Hmmm… it looks like blockquote works okay.)

  26. Dear Clive,

    I was wondering if you could help me work out the solution to the following lunar puzzle:

    [please remove quotes]

    Thanks in advance for any suggestions or help on this topic.


    Ian Wilson

  27. Longtooth says:

    Clive, I’m quite impressed by your resilience and depth of answering the comments, questions, and issues raised on your blog. I think we would agree:

    1. Skepticism is a necessary part of almost all things considered sound or “commonly known”, or in this case “settled” .. from social relationships to economics to the sciences.
    2. Skepticism serves science (as in other fields) to modify, adjust, or refine hypothesis (or beliefs).

    So in that context, you say science is never “settled”, but you don’t define what “settled” actually means to you… and since, being a scientist yourself, having been trained or having natural tendencies to be analytic, and since the term “settled” is a subjective with infinite extent, I’m quite surprised, taken aback even, that you have not been at all objective by defining “settled in objective measurable or relative (to objective) terms.

    Since climate science relies in vey large part, in nearly all aspects in fact, upon what I would say every scientist ever trained would agree is settled science and their foundations, then there exists only some parts of climate science which you could consider to be not “settled”.

    So I have three serious questions I’m forced to ask you:

    a. What degree of the term “settled” is it, in your opinion, when something in science is actually “settled”? a response which is objective or relative to objective is requested.

    b. Which specific aspects of climate sciences basis for it’s present level of scientific consensus projections of temperature v. atmospheric CO2 concentrations do you not consider to be “settled” and specifically what is it about those aspects you don’t consider being yet “settled”?. I must assume you aren’t referring to the confidence intervals of uncertainties.

    c. For those aspects you don’t consider yet settled (and why) what remains in your opinion to put these items in your “settled” column? This is an especially critical part of my questions because in fact there may be aspects which you believe are not possible to be “settled” until sufficient time passes to show a definitive result. If that is indeed the case then your skepticism isn’t with the science, but with the result of science’s findings. There’s as huge difference as you are well aware.

  28. paulclim says:


    I like your blog because your scepticism has no agenda but is purely driven by curiosity. I also admire the unconventional way you approach tricky problems like the path you followed during calculating the CO2 forcing on your own.

    Recently, I found another study of a forcing calculation which seems quite convincing to me. But unfortunately my background as mech. engineer is far away from scientifically judging the validity of the claims made in the study.

    In fact the study challenges the 3.7 W/m2 that you verified. The main fault of the 3.7 W claim is, according to the author, Dr. F. K. Reinhart, that the probability of the energy states of CO2 in the atmosphere was not considered.

    I would be very thankful if you could have a look on this paper and maybe judge the validity of the claims.

    Link: http://www.entrelemanetjura.ch/BLOG_WP_351/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2017.01-20-FKR-sur-CO2.pdf

    Thanks for all the work you are doing.


    • Bob Peckham says:

      While waiting for Clive’s reply I would like to thank Paul for drawing attention to this paper which seems to be potentially very important.
      Like Paul I find the paper seems convincing, but I am not competent to comment on the detailed calculations of probabilities of energy states.
      But I do feel compelled to ask – has this paper been published anywhere else where it might get the greater exposure that it deserves?
      As far as I can see it has been rather modestly placed on a (French language) blog. It was posted in January ‘17, and it seems it has not received much attention since then. I looked through the Research News section of the host university ( EPFL ) website and could find no mention of it. One has to ask why does the EPFL not mention such a potentially important paper ? And how long is it going to be before the results in this paper are either verified or refuted ?

      • paulclim says:


        this paper left me undecided but interested. What I could easily verify is that there are probabilities of energy states that allow absorption or don’t. The tricky things are 1) Reinhart’s claim that the science did not consider these probabilities so far when calculating the forcing and 2) whether these probabilities and his other assumptions apply in the atmosphere in the same way as in the lab or in a CO2 laser.

        The latter is where Reinhart comes from and it is basically why I consider his calculation to be serious. If a physicist who builds an according to calcualtions working machine based on a certain radiation effect does not know about the effect in reality who else?

      • paulclim says:

        On the other hand: the claim that hundreds of climate scientists simply forgot to consider a well known physical effect and the angle between earth and emitter is unbelievable. It would be a sensation …

        In terms of publishing: Reinhart seems to have published the first version in 2014 and, according to him, nobody serious has refuted it so far (http://www.entrelemanetjura.ch/BLOG_WP_351/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2014.07-25-Leuthard.pdf) This is a letter, dated July 2014, to a swiss politician (unfort. only in german) where he mentions his paper and the non refutation. But he does not mention where it was published. I also could not find anything in the internet except this link which also raises doubts …

        Hopefully Clive finds the post and some time to evaluate


        • Bob Peckham says:


          Thanks for your replies and the further info about the letter. I found the letter very interesting (with the help of Google Translate), and while it mostly discusses various aspects of Swiss energy policy, it also shows that Prof. Dr. Reinhart is confident that his calculations on CO2 absorption are sound.
          I note also that at the end of his paper Prof. Reinhart thanks 4 colleagues for stimulating discussions, and 4 other colleagues for critically reading the paper – all of which suggests there could be at least a few other competent scientists who agree with his conclusions (otherwise they would have persuaded him not to publish it wouldn’t they?). This leads me to think that this may be one of those areas of science which Longtooth above is asking about, i.e. is not yet properly “settled”.

          Bob P.

          • paulclim says:

            I am convinced that science is never settled in any area. A field with so much data lacking and part of the existing data contradicting the communicated consensus cannot be settled even more.

            The fact that other scientists reviewed the paper doesn’t prove that it is right, especially when they come from the same field or university or if they share common political ideas. If the paper was published in a respected journal and could not be refuted by scientists with opponent views (which is the majority in this case) it would change a lot.

    • Clive Best says:

      I have not had enough time to study it in depth but here goes.

      It looks like a convincing argument, but in the end no-one can really ‘calculate’ the greenhouse effect of increasing CO2 exactly. It is a balancing act. It seems to me that they have ignored convection, whereas the text books usually ignore H2O lapse rate feedbacks.

      The earth’s surface and to a lesser extent the atmosphere are warmed by the sun. The earth cools by IR radiation to space. Based on various assumptions of albedo the earth’s black body radiation, as measured from say Mars, is ~ 252K, whereas the surface is 288K. A lapse rate is generated by both the barometric drop in pressure and this difference in temperature through convection and evaporation. It is convection and latent heat that moves 90% of the heat up through the atmosphere to where the air is dry and thin enough to radiate directly to space. This is more of less the tropopause. The difference in temperature between the surface and the tropopause drive the heat engine that we call weather. However weather and convection would not exists without greenhouse gases. Otherwise the surface could radiate directly to space and in this case the surface temperature would be ~252K and there would be no lapse rate or weather, apart from small diurnal and seasonal effects.

      If we increase CO2 so the height of the tropopause increases. So the 252K layer increases in height, whose effect is to drag up the surface temperature slightly. If nothing else changes a doubling of CO2 produces a 1.1C increase, but of course things do change. Hence no-one really knows.

      This paper IMHO makes one false assumption early on.

      “Firstly, we consider an isothermal atmosphere of T = 288 K with an exponential barometric pressure dependence.”

      If the atmosphere was isothermal then the temperature would be 252K – not 288K.

      • paulclim says:

        Thank you very much for reviewing and explaining your view, Clive.

        I think I kind of understand your smart approach and your explanation with the change in height of the tropopause. An assumption of an isothermal atmosphere would probably not be compatible with such a model. Calculating the forcing without convection is something I also do not really understand but maybe it comes from their approach of wanting an easy worst case calculation without convection and with unrealistic, isothermal atmosphere.

        Nevertheless, I still do not understand why this admittedly wrong assumption could falsify their claim that the forcing is significantly lowered when considering the probabilities of the energy states of Co2 and the angle between emitter and earth (height). That means: In your calculations, Did you consider the energy states? And if not would that consideration affect the resulting height of the tropopause, the 3.7/4.7 Watts or the 1.1 degrees?

      • paulclim says:

        Basically, it comes back to the question, whether everybody so far used a 100% absorption rate of Co2 and whether it is right to reduce that rate according to the probabilities of the energy states of co2?

      • Clive Best says:

        I also tried to write this up in simple words. http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=6800
        Basically there is an assumption of a fixed lapse rate which does not depend on CO2 and that each level in the atmosphere is in ‘Local Thermal Equilibrium (LTE)’. CO2 molecules collide with N2,O2 to thermalise. Some of that thermal energy excites vibrational quantum states. These decay and emit photons which are absorbed by other CO2 molecules. However the net effect is simply to thermalise that radiative energy in the same way as N2, O2 collisions. It is only as the air thins due to barometric pressure that this breaks down and some of the photons can escape to space, thereby allowing the atmosphere to directly radiate heat to space. Only a small percentage of that net radiative heat loss is due to CO2, but it is still significant. The rest is from cloud tops, H2O, O3 and directly from the surface.

        The cross-section for absorption of photons by CO2 molecules is wavelength dependent which translates to different effective heights, each with a different temperature for radiation to space. The radiative heat loss flux depends on T^4 following Stefan-Boltzmann (LTE) and therefore slightly less energy is radiated to space if the concentration of CO2 suddenly increases. This energy imbalance means that the sun heats the surface slightly more than that which it looses by ‘radiative transfer’, mainly at night. So the surface warms a bit to re-establish energy balance. It is the sun that heats the surface, not some magic back radiation or other nonsense!

        • On the surface, evaporation cools the surface and warms the atmosphere. The warm moist air is carried by convection, up to the top of the clouds that are formed by this warm moist air. The clouds are formed by water vapor changing into water drops and ice, releasing the huge energy picked up from evaporation down below. The energy that is released is sent out with IR from the tops of clouds, way above most of the “so called heat trapping greenhouse gas layers”

          You never acknowledge that there is energy carried by convection up through the greenhouse layers. Since it is not even acknowledged, no one has even tried to figure out how much. Most cooling on the surface is by evaporation, most IR out at the top is from this energy that is carried up, totally not even considered!

    • Clive Best says:

      If you were measuring the black body temperature of the earth from the moon with an IR bolometer over the last few million years, the only change would be astronomic orbital effects. Everything else is about how heat flows from the surface through the atmosphere

      • paulclim says:

        I agree and this is why the thermalization process of the radiation captured by Co2 in the troposphere is so important. By how much is the radiation absorbed and thermalized? How much of the earth’s radiation measured at the moon comes from GHGes and how much is surface radiation?

  29. brianrlcatt says:

    I am writing a paper that may come as surprise, so I am checking it very carefully and minimising obvious errors before launching on the wide world of global change beliefs and pseudo science. I plan to use your valuable composite of all the major cycles over the Vostok et al interglacial cycles, but would like to refer to a published source in my refernces. Is there one I can use?

    The one I have is the anti-christ rationalist and pseudo science denier Euan Mearns, who is also fond of pointing out the absolute science denial that is UK energy policy, including regarding its inability to usefully reduce CO2 from fossil, or replace fossil when its gone, etc, on the hard facts of enrgy physics, or inded any of the objectives of energy policy – adeqaute, sustainable, affordable, decarbonising, etc..

    My main subject area is the legalised protection racket that is renewable energy. Planet’s can catch fire, so pay up – it’s the law.

    PS So the answer to everything is not 42……. but “Follow the money”, that answers every dichotomy in so called climate and renewable energy “science”. You may enjoy Deep Thought’s advice on such unprovable debates, 6min 30secs in…… “MIGHT I MAKE AN OBSERVATION AT THIS POINT?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2rS-ha8DbE

    • Clive Best says:

      Yes, Euan Mearns brings some common sense to discussions about Energy

      The data references to the Vostok composite’s are

      1. Benthic Fora (Ice Volume in plot): Lisiecki, L. E., & Raymo, M. E. (2005). A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic d18O records, Paleoceanography, 20, PA1003

      2. Epica (temperature, CO2, DUST) . e.g.
      Monnin, E., E.J. Steig, U. Siegenthaler, K. Kawamura, J. Schwander, B. Stauffer,
      T.F. Stocker, D.L. Morse, J.-M. Barnola, B. Bellier, D. Raynaud, and H. Fischer. 2004.
      Evidence for substantial accumulation rate variability in Antarctica during the Holocene,
      Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 224, 45-54

      EPICA community members. 2004.
      Eight glacial cycles from an Antarctic ice core.

      3. Orbital effects on graphs (Insolation 65N, Eccenricity) : Laskar Calculations.
      A long-term numerical solution for the insolation quantities of the Earth, J. Laskar1, P. Robutel1, F. Joutel1, M. Gastineau1, A. C. M. Correia and B. Levrard, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 428, Number 1, December II 2004

  30. Hello!
    Nice blog of yours indeed!
    What is your copyright policy? Just now I am interested to use your pictures about ice age in my own blog
    if it is possible.
    I mean specifically this:
    but general princible is welcome.

  31. Brendan says:

    Clive, I’ve just read your blog on “Global Temperatures Rose As Cloud Cover Fell In the 1980s and 90s”. I read this as a filler for a number of other papers I’ve read on this. Namely that as the Sun goes into a Grand Minima, it’s magnetic fields weaken and that allows more Cosmic rays to penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. These then seed clouds and we get more clouds during Grand Minima.

    I was interested in your graph “Global average cloud cover and Temperature”. You had Hadcrut4 global temperature chart. This chart appeared to use raw un-adjusted data. I’ve been searching for a source for a global un-adjusted Hadcrut temp chart for the past 100 to 150 years. The adjusted charts look ridiculous. Are you able to provide a link to a chart source?

  32. iskanderaka says:

    I invite all scientists to answer my next questions for the site CLIMADROM (https://climadrom.ucoz.net/load/):

    1. What is indisputable, what is controversal or not true at all in your opinion in climate science regarding climate change?

    2. What comes first: an increase in carbon dioxide emissions predetermines climate change or, on the contrary, climate change cause rising carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere?

    3. How the modern possibilities of mankind are great in order to have a noticeable and even decisive impact on such global aspects of the biosphere’s existence as climate?

    4. What should be the focus of humankind’s efforts at this time — to containing global warming, to adapt to it or to explain that AGW is a myth, as eminent Russian geophisicist Kirill Kondratiev stated many times two decades ago?

    5. How an ordinary person should treat the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — as a potential danger, as an obvious benefit or in some other way — and why?

    6. Do you consider it necessary to start now a broad planetary discussion of the climate change problem so that all points of view are heard equally attentively and impartially, since a great distrust of the IPCC reports has arisen?

    I would be very grateful if you not only send me (zhabskiy@mail.ru) your answers, but also send the questions to your colleagues who competent in this field of science.

    Thanks beforehand to everybody!

    Alexander Zhabskiy, editor of the International Network Resource for EnvironmentaL Education ECO.KNOW (http://ecoznay.ru/) and its thematic supplement CLIMADROM (https://climadrom.ucoz.net/load/)

    St.Petersburg, Russia.

    +7 904 632 21 32

  33. Jim says:

    Clive, I was following a lead I thought of about energy or displacement waves powered by orbiting and daily planetary rotations. I am interested in such things since I have a proposal for a new VTOL – Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft which will fly faster than conventional helicopters. I started a dialog with Paul Pukite – http://clivebest.com/?p=5937#comment-19659

    Your intro on this page suggested to me that what I discussed with Paul would be of interest to you. I believe that shock waves are a special case of displacement waves. They are puffs, curls, wind, and other air movement resulting from some mechanical or external force. The moon drags a bump of air around the planet. Some of this is supersonic and complicated by heating, Coriolis, ground terrain, not to mention geometry and inclined poles. My thought is that these waves moving or oscillating around the world are energy waves. Sound waves transmit energy without air being moved. These waves moving around the world move air as well. The speed of the air movement depends on the agent driving the air and not necessarily sonic properties of the air. Shock waves also travel with the object at sonic speeds. Shock waves must drag some air along as they move with the air. Subsonic displacement forms a wave on either side of an airfoil or wing. The difference in the “strength” of the “wave above” and the “wave below” provides a lift force. Since these are waves, there are trailing waves with opposite signs. They are also asymmetrical and are seen as circulation when passing clouds and so on. Since lift force is a result of asymmetric wave formation, one can look to another way of making an asymmetric wave. Lift is only the net pressure around the foil as it moves at velocity. The angle of attack and foil shape make an asymmetrical pressure distribution to provide a lift force.

    My thoughts are explained briefly as replies to Paul Pukite’s response to my initial question about applying Fourier Analysis to confirm wave cycles in atmospheric data. I assume that Fourier would show clear cycles from Lunar and Solar cycles as seasons and lunar cycles propagate against each other. The moon and sun have precise effects while the data is combined with ground effect and lingering systems. Clear frequencies – 24 hour – should come through the atmospheric data. Waves that move the air are different than sound or pressure waves. I assume Fourier analysis will only work if waves are present.

    Normal surface waves in water show minimal horizontal movement with strong vertical oscillations. A speeding boat produces a wake that has some horizontal movement since there is a drag force on the hull. Therefore some displacement is in the wave. The same boat traveling in a slight curve has an asymmetrical wake since there is a force required to make the curved trajectory. An airfoil does the same thing as gravity is countered by an asymmetrical wave traveling with the foil. It is a wave, but it has the same velocity as the foil. The asymmetric wave gets quite pronounced at sonic velocity. I believe that this is an energy or displacement wave and that it has the same units as torque. Torque gives circular patterns in the wake which one can see as a plane passes through a cloud. Torque also means “negative roots” and that is why there are wave mechanisms at work making the plane fly. Birds wave back and forth prying motions against the air as they push themselves into the air. Waves and circulation have connections to the imaginary plane. I have a proposal to elegantly make these “displacement” or “pressure” waves directly in still air to make an asymmetrical pressure distribution around the system. An inverted version could propagate a stationary pressure wave vertically which would interfere with the prevailing winds – perhaps causing rain if size and conditions are favorable. Ethiopia and other dry regions could benefit. Perhaps hurricane trajectory could be changed.

    My interest is in making a better aircraft – small ones for a single person and larger versions for commercial aviation. I would prefer not writing in this public forum even though nobody seems to think there is potential for what I am proposing. Thank you for you Blog and Post.

    If you are interested – Jim Campbell


    • Clive Best says:

      The moon & sun combined exert a tidal forces on the earth’s atmosphere and ocean. The moon completes one orbit of the earth roughly every 28 days. When the moon and sun align we get spring tides and when they are at roughly 90 degrees we get neap tides.

      The tidal wave is caused mostly by the rotation of the earth. In the ocean the movement is mostly vertical but there is a tractional component which causes a lateral movement of water. There are two tidal bulges each of which travels about 40,000km each day so that represents a speed of roughly 1600 miles per hour near the equator. A similar effect exists in the atmosphere but this is normally drowned out by weather and diurnal heating and convection. Tidal induced winds have been observed in the upper atmosphere but their bulk velocity is small ~10 m/sec.

      So yes tides move at large velocities affecting all areas of the earth. So these are really pressure waves in the atmosphere which get drowned out by everyday solar induced weather.

      If you are proposing to generate similar pressure waves, I don’t quite understand how you could do it on a small scale.



      • Jim says:

        Essentially I propose rolling a pair of cylinders in contact at sonic surface velocity creating a vacuum above the contact line and twice the ambient pressure below the contact line. I assume adiabatic with no seepage through the contact line. The air struggles to get to the contact line above since the surfaces are separating at sonic speed. Similarly, air struggles to get away below the contact line as the air is pinched. This will provide lift for an aircraft in still air. Inverting the apparatus will make a standing high pressure wave that could add to prevailing winds causing rain if scale and conditions are right. My email is more secure.


        It was truncated to may name by wordpress yesterday. I will send you my proposal if you are interested in this concept.

        Thanks for your reply.

  34. Jim says:

    Just so you know, your email notice that you answered me had two links “Reply” & “Comments” which were “error 404” so I had to go back to your “About” page to answer you this morning.
    I was a little hasty since I was on my way to work I hope you got my short response. The comments and replies on Paul’s post are more detailed, but my proposal with pictures would be helpful.

    Paul Pukite (@WHUT)

    The weather and climate aspect of my proposal are fairly new to my train of thought lasting several years. Dragging air from two directions so they collide at a “mirror” line will cause a maximum pressure at the roller contact line. A gradient will form above along a vertical mirror line. How far and how intense this “pressure field” will depend on ambient conditions and roller surface speed. This should form a “stationary pressure” wave extending vertically above the mirror line. The negative – low pressure – part of the wave would be near the ground and make an overall force down through supporting infrastructure. The force down would be matched by the force upward – exerted on the atmosphere. Since this is a “pressure wave” it will be more focused than using a fan with a vertical axis. The plane that the rolling cylinders axis are on could be inclined into the wind or with the wind. Therefore this wave could add or subtract from ambient wind velocity. For maximum vertical “bending” of the prevailing wind, I would guess that you would incline the wave artificially made slightly to add to the prevailing wind to prevent slowing the prevailing wind. I would think that we wouldn’t want to slow the wind but want to make it rise. The wind wouldn’t flow over the wave but it would flow with the wave. Perhaps it might be similar to a hydraulic hump. The rolling cylinders would form a pressure gradient in the flow. Since I am suggesting waves superposition, coastal setups could be tailor-made for specific locations. Low mountain ridges could be “artificially raised” with a flip of a switch. Forcing humid air up an extra 1000 feet/300 m could produce condensation and cloud formation in some conditions. That might cause more heating and elevation developing rainfall downwind.

    Empirical data or more accurate calculations of the pressures produced around rolling cylinders will give an estimation of the value of what I am proposing. As I said, I got an overall pressure per roller of twice the ambient pressure when considering a linear pressure distribution from 0 to twice the ambient. No seepage and adiabatic conditions are hard to achieve since the contrast of pressure across the contact line is like the pressure inflating a car tire.

    That is the potential – or maximum condition at M=1, but since everything is linear – the results change linearly as well. For M>1, the supply of air could be a problem. So you would aim the rollers forward so the airspeed ads to the airflow around the underside of the rollers. The roller axis would be aimed forward and airflow would “augur” from above to below the rollers. This all came from the study of the Magnus effect! I just added a mirror line where imaginary external flow met!

    Your comments would be appreciated,

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