All ye promoters of erratic sources of energy, come now, repent, and be forgiven.

All the diagrams below present data from a same archive, that can be found here.

In short, ‘decarbonization’ is unnecessary, economically harmful and socially destructive. It will do nothing for ‘the climate’ because the modes of variation in climate have nothing to do with carbon dioxide.

At issue is the question of what determines the surface temperature on planet Earth.

Understanding the waxing and waning of the mid latitude high pressure cells that traverse the southern hemisphere at 20-40° South latitude, is key to understanding the evolution of climate. These cells dominate the ocean. The ocean dominates the Southern Hemisphere. As the cells strengthen, cloud cover falls away and the surface of the sea warms. The relationship is loose in April but improves as the year goes on, being acceptably impressive between September and December as global cloud cover moves towards its annual peak in December. By February, although the relationship still holds in the long term its a bit irregular on a monthly basis. Anyone with the slightest gift for pattern recognition will see that this correlation between surface pressure and sea surface temperature is more impressive than the relationship between CO2 and temperature. CO2 is not the control knob. Let’s talk about the real control knobs. Let’s get the required understandings into the hands of teachers and students for the good of humanity. What is currently happening in schools and in the media is deplorable, nay ‘inhumane’.

Location 20-40° South Latitude globally. Left axis Sea Level Pressure in hPa. Right axis Sea surface Temperature °C

If you are a swimmer, you will be aware that in a quiet day, the water in the shallows and near the surface is always much warmer than the water out in the deep. Deep water that experiences the full force of the suns radiation warms almost imperceptibly. That’s because the benefit of the energy from the sun is absorbed throughout the zone that is illuminated. The ocean, unlike the land, is transparent.

The solar energy acquired by the ocean is retained for many months, perhaps years, whereas the land, being opaque loses the energy that it acquires within the twenty four hour cycle. There is little or no residual when the sun rises next morning.

The atmosphere, regardless of its composition is thin, radiative, convective and incapable of storing energy. If you think otherwise drill a hole in your vacuum flask and see how long it maintains the temperature of the fluid inside. Replace the air with carbon dioxide and see if it makes any difference. No gas is any better or worse and that’s why we use a vacuum and we call the device, a ‘vacuum flask’. And when the air gets in, the device is useless. A gas is actually the worst of possible choices if you want to keep the heat in, unless its kept completely immobile, as in a blanket. And no gas is any better than any other.

The agent of change in surface pressure at 20-40° South Latitude, is in the first instance the low pressure trough that surrounds the Antarctic Continent. Secondly there is the Aleutian Low and finally the Icelandic low, all located in high latitudes and all most energetic in winter. When the lows generate lower in barometric pressure, surface pressure rises elsewhere including at the equator. Pressure rises unequally because cool parts favour settlement while warm surfaces favour ascent. This changes the wind direction and the distribution of cloud and sunlight.

It is frequently asserted that the energy that drives the planetary winds is sourced in the tropics. That’s unphysical. Palpably, it’s the energy that drives the low pressure systems in high latitudes that is responsible for every twist and turn in weather and climate. A polar low has the same central pressure as a tropical cyclone but covers an area about ten times as large, develops in the interaction zone between the troposphere and the stratosphere, propagates to the surface like a vacuum cleaner and and convects air from the surface of the planet all the way to 50km in elevation.

8/7/2021 at the 10 hPa level directly over the Arctic Ocean, Aleutian Islands to the right. Small cells of warmer air emerge in a background of colder air directly over the Arctic Ocean. The 10 hPa pressure level is found at an elevation of 30 kilometers. At 10hPa, 99% of the atmosphere is below. At 100 hPa, or 15km 90% of the atmosphere is below. At 500 hPa or 5.5km, 50% of the atmosphere is below. A good walking pace is 6km per hour. The ascent is obviously relatively subdued in summer.

8/1/2021. Aleutian Low in full flood in winter is seen at 10hPa on the right. On the left is very cold mesospheric air descending over Siberia. Red is warm (-44C), Blue Cold (-64C). from :https://earth.nullschool.net/#2021/01/08/1000Z/wind/isobaric/10hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-269.32,86.42,661/loc=-4.884,66.336

In a high pressure cell, the air descends. It is warming under increasing compression, and is accordingly cloud free. The volume of air that is involved in the descent increases as the surface pressure increases, but more importantly, the area so affected increases, as the surface pressure increases. As afore mentioned, the volume of air that is descending depends on the activity of polar cyclones in the Antarctic trough, the Aleutian and the Icelandic lows. As atmospheric pressure falls in the lows, it increases in the highs.

Relating to Australia in particular, a high pressure cell that lodges in the Great Australian Bight in summer delivers dry, hot summer conditions because it prevents the inflow of cooler southerly air that occurs in the margin between high pressure cells as they move eastwards. When a large cell lodges in the Bight, or in the Tasman Sea the flow of air over the Australian continent is persistently east to west, hot and dry, with the possible exception of the north of Queensland. We must take cognizance of the everyday observation that the temperature of the air depends on where it comes from. Furthermore, because surface pressure changes over time so does the origin of the wind. The Earth is made up of warm to hot locations, generally favoured for human settlement, and inhospitably frigid locations like Antarctica and southern Chile, where, unlike Alaska and the Scandinavian countries, summer temperatures rise above freezing point for only a couple of months in the year.

But if there is a high pressure cell overhead the days will be sunny. You can rely in it.

PC, Polar Cyclone, AT Antarctic Trough, HIB High in Bight, AL Aleutian Low, IL Icelandic Low, AH Azores High, NPH North Pacific High, CH Chilean High, IOH Indian Ocean High, SH, Siberian and Tibetan High

So called greenhouse gases, and supposed back radiation, can not account for the patterns of change in climate that are observed by the month, by the region, from decade to decade and over centennial time scales. Those who assert that proposition disrespect the data. Their point of view is based on ignorance, superstition, hearsay and an unfortunate personal predilection to think the worst of their fellow man and read into every sort of change, confirmation that their dystopian diagnosis is correct. This is not a new problem. It’s just got way out of hand. Actually, it’s now being used as a means of social control, a distraction from concerns that could be embarrassing . It’s the old story, ‘give me your money’. Or, focus on the enemy without….. following up with ‘Hey, the problem is actually YOU’. Wow, your conscience cuts in. Give me your money and I’ll fix it for you.

Weather and climate have particular, distinctive modes of variation. It is these modes of variation that must be apprehended and secondly explained and understood. One can’t do that without examining the data. Theory and speculation will never suffice. A true scientist respects the data. The pretending type just run away. Most of those that I observe, including the bulk of academia, have their heads in a cloud of speculative theory. Radiative theory has been stretched to a conclusion that it is incapable of supporting. It’s part of the story but not the important part. No-where is it determinative.

See above. The relationship between surface pressure in the Antarctic trough and surface pressure in the mid latitudes is indicative of the relationship between lows and highs. We must understand the consequences of this to understand weather and climate.

When there there is a shift of atmospheric mass from high southern latitudes, about a third of the surface area of the globe, gives, yields, transfers, pushes, atmospheric mass to the other two thirds. The part that loses atmospheric mass in the Southern Hemisphere is located from about thirty five degrees of latitude to the Antarctic pole. The area affected is massive and the volume of air involved more than significant. Furthermore, because the shifting process involves convection to the upper limits of the atmosphere, the balancing settlement involves the stratosphere and troposphere, in favour of high pressure cells everywhere.

In Southern Summer, the Aleutian Low of the northern Hemisphere is a powerful shifter of atmospheric mass to the highs of the Southern Hemisphere and to the High over Siberia and Tibet, accentuating the outflow of the East and South Asian winter monsoon. Paradoxically, if the Aleutian Low is not available as a ‘sink’, a cold flow from the Arctic can bring a chill to Florida and New Orleans. But so far as the Earths energy budget is concerned, the shift that matters most is to the high pressure cells that lie over the Ocean in the Southern Hemisphere. That is the shift that is critical to cloud cover and the Earths energy budget.

Indian culture dictates that the birthday person gives presents to friends and acquaintances on his/her birthday. What a lovely way to celebrate the fortunate accident of life. This is a similar situation. The Lows give to the Highs and the benefit is an increase in sunshine at the surface. The Antarctic is dominant in setting the pattern of centennial change. The Aleutian is dominant in the Northern Hemisphere but lets the Icelandic trough run a sideshow in the Atlantic Ocean where it gives to the Azores High. These systems ‘have a go’ in winter, and work with one hand tied behind their back in summer. They shift atmospheric mass to seasonally weakened lows in the summer hemisphere, impairing their function (one hand already tied behind the back). This is all part of the rich texture that determines where the wind comes from and how much cloud there will be. Ninety percent of the mass of the atmosphere lies within 15 km of the surface. The thickness of the atmosphere should be compared to the cover that a person has were they to emerge from their bedroom wearing just a skin of paint. Just one coat please, and make it thin. That should keep me warm enough!

One needs to be aware that the Earth system is not a closed system. We know this because all these lows can lose atmospheric mass at the same time. They can improve their performance progressively over a period of one hundred years.

The change that is documented in the figure immediately above, is oscillatory in the short term, a matter of four or five years, in tune with ENSO, but oscillatory too on centennial and longer time scales. The figure documents the change over just 74.5 years. That’s all the data that we have. But, we know this process is reversible because the change directly affects the the strength of the North Westerly winds of the Southern Hemisphere.

Co-lead author, palaeo-climate scientist Dr. Krystyna Saunders from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the University of Bern says:

“This is an important discovery. Our new records of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds suggest there have been large changes in wind intensity over the past 12,000 years. This is in marked contrast to climate model simulations that show only relatively small wind speed changes over the same period.”

Co-lead author, palaeo-climate scientist Dr. Steve Roberts from British Antarctic Survey says:

“We have now developed a new method for measuring winds from lake sediments on remote sub-Antarctic islands. These are the only land masses, except for South America where you can collect these data.”

from: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-westerly-weaken-southern-ocean-carbon.html

‘Climate model simulations show only relatively small wind speed changes‘

There you have it. Useless, Out of touch with reality. Worthless. Disrespecting the data.

The diagram above shows climate model forecasts for the evolution of temperature in the Pacific Ocean as of June 2021. Take your pick. Back your horse. When it comes to the nitty gritty of forecasting what is to happen in the last half of this year, despite all the courses, all the training, all the seminars and correspondence, all the government funding of millions of experts in all the dedicated institutions, despite decades of effort, all over the world, and the technology at our command, there is no agreement.

Plainly, pretend as they may, these experts can’t agree. Are any of them right? Are all of them wrong?