Thaddeus Alper

I actually understand the science. And apparently, you need another curb stomp. And that's fine by me because I love to abuse my critics. First, I do not deny the fact that the Earth has warmed up by ~1.2°C since 1850. Nobody really does. And you are putting words in my mouth I never said. What does that make you, son? A liar. A fraud. A con artist. That's what you are. Second, I have no doubt that some of that warming might be due to mankind's carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Again, this is trivial. Most people agree on that part. So do I. And so what? That says nothing about the level of danger, if any, it poses. And even if we do have an effect, that's not enough justification to demand for rapid economic decarbonization. Third, contrary to what the online army of alarmist foot soldiers like your dumbass has been misled to believe, there are not really any so-called “fingerprints” that distinguish human-caused global warming from natural. Numerous peer-reviewed papers claim to have found such “fingerprints,” but the only evidence they have presented is that the anomaly of interest is consistent with anthropogenic warming. But these scientists, if you can even call them that, fail to mention that said anomaly is also consistent with natural warming. For instance, a reduction in low- and mid-altitude stratiform cloud cover would allow more sunlight into the climate system, which would warm the oceans. A warmer ocean—all else being equal—increases the rate of evaporation, which raises the troposphere's vapor pressure (humidity) and contributes to polar amplification and faster land warming than the ocean (e.g., Compo & Sardeshmukh, 2008). 🔗psl.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.… All global warming, natural or man-made, results in: 1⃣ Higher latitude regions warming faster than mid-latitudes and tropics. 2⃣ Land heating up faster than oceans. That's just basic physics. An increase in, say, solar forcing would also have the same material effect. And although climastrologists in academia only look at sunspot count and total solar irradiance (TSI), the sun affects our climate in many different ways (e.g., solar wind and solar energetic particles that alter the Earth's magnetic field) that are not actively researched at most universities because little funding has been apportioned to study it. In any case, the best empirical evidence I have seen to suggest that there's probably some anthropogenic “fingerprint” on the recent global average surface air temperature rise is stratospheric cooling. Before I go further, you need to understand that in atmospheric physics, heat flux is measured as power—measured in Watts (that is, Joules per second)—standardized per square meter of surface area. This is written as W/m². According to Stephens et al. (2012), the annual global-mean absorbed solar radiation (ASR) is approximately 239 ± 3.3 W/m² (specifically, incoming solar of 340.2 ± 0.1 W/m² minus reflected solar of 100.0 ± 2 W/m²). For the Earth system to remain in approximate energy balance (aside from the small observed planetary energy imbalance of ~0.6 W/m²), it must emit a nearly equal amount of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) of 239.7 ± 3.3 W/m² back to space at the top of the atmosphere. 🔗researchgate.net/publication… Global warming theory maintains the direct radiative forcing from doubling atmospheric CO₂ levels (often noted as RF 2×CO₂) is 3.7 ± 0.4 W/m² (e.g., IPCC TAR, 2007). That means that the net outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) to outer space is reduced by 3.7 W/m², which creates an Earth energy imbalance (EEI), which leads to a slight warming tendency in the troposphere (surface to ~13 km altitude). 🔗ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/… (p. 357) In the stratosphere (~13-50 km altitude), this causes a cooling tendency because less infrared radiation (IR) is moving upward from below. These relationships were first demonstrated by Manabe & Strickler (1964). 🔗journals.ametsoc.org/view/jo… NASA satellite measurements indicate that cooling in the stratosphere has been observed since the 1970s, although there has been little cooling over the last 25 years, all the while the troposphere has continued to warm. 🔗nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.1/… That means that most of the warming observed since 2000 is likely natural OR perhaps partly caused by a reduction in stratospheric sulfate aerosol concentrations, which is an artifact of the particulate aerosol pollution regulations implemented in recent years, especially in Europe. But yes, I agree with most scientists that the cooling observed in the stratosphere, at least that from the 1970s to 2000, is most likely a result of CO₂. SO WHAT? What happens down here in the lower atmosphere (where we live) in response to CO₂ input is a lot more complicated because there are feedbacks (largely cloud-related) and precipitation processes that affect the atmospheric radiation budget far more than CO₂ does. And how exactly clouds respond to warming in the troposphere, if at all, is not well understood, and by extension, not well-modeled. What we do know, theoretically speaking, is that the direct warming effect of RF 2×CO₂ is very small. More specifically, it's on the order of ~1°C (Wijngaarden & Happer, 2020). 🔗arxiv.org/abs/2006.03098 However, amplifying (or dampening) feedbacks that kick in as a response to radiative forcing mean that the real-world value—that is, the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS)—will be higher (lower) than the 1°C figure derived from radiative transfer calculations. So, three critical pieces information are unknown: 1⃣ Exactly how much warming has been man-made (since, let's say, 1950). We still don't know the answer to this question because the coefficients used to ascribe anthropogenic versus natural forcings are all estimated from computer modeling, not real physical in-situ measurements. 2⃣ The exact value of ECS. 3⃣ Even if global warming is entirely man-made, is it really a net negative to civilization? Is it a crisis? Is it a problem even in the slightest? To break it down: • If ECS is <3°C, the climate is insensitive to GHGs, and impacts are exaggerated. • If ECS is ≥3°C, the climate is sensitive to GHGs, and warming could be a concern. The IPCC’s “best estimate” of ECS is 3°C with a range of 2-5°C. 🔗ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downl… (pp. 44-45) In 1994, using NASA's real-world bulk atmospheric temperature data, one of my mentors, Dr. John Christy and his co-worker, Dr. Richard McNider from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), calculated climate sensitivity by removing the effects of El Niño / La Niña and volcanic stratospheric aerosol injection (e.g., El Chichón, 1982; Mt. Pinatubo, 1991). Christy and McNider found that the human-induced warming rate is about 0.09°C / decade (lower than observations of the actual global mean temperature increase). This, by the way, came with the stipulation that unknown mechanisms of internal variability or external forcing are assumed to be zero. 🔗nature.com/articles/367325a0 They then validated their 1994 findings in McNider & Christy (2017). They found a near-identical anthropogenic warming rate of only 0.096°C / decade and a transient climate response (TCR) of 1.10 ± 0.26°K. 🔗sealevel.info/christymcnider… Many other recent studies (e.g., Lewis & Curry, 2018; Scafetta, 2021; Spencer & Christy, 2023; Lewis, 2025) have all estimated ECS to be far lower than the IPCC AR6's “best estimate.” 🔗journals.ametsoc.org/view/jo… 🔗mdpi.com/2225-1154/9/11/161 🔗link.springer.com/article/10… 🔗acp.copernicus.org/articles/… What's more, in order to reliably detect anthropogenic influence on the climate system, the EEI must be known to the nearest 0.1 W/m² (Von Schuckmann et al., 2016; Gebbie, 2021). 🔗nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/51… 🔗annualreviews.org/content/jo… However, the aforementioned Stephens et al. (2012) paper estimates the EEI to be 0.6 ± 0.4 W/m², which is eight times larger than the anthropogenic detection limits. And the natural top-of-atmosphere (TOA) flux has a 6.6 W/m² margin of error, which is 66 times larger than detection limits. This range of uncertainty remains in more recent EEI estimates, such as Loeb et al. (2021), which estimates it to be 1.12 ± 0.48 W/m². 🔗agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.… This means most global warming since 1950 could be natural and we would never know for certain. But it could just as easily be mostly anthropogenic. And as I have said before, SO WHAT? That does not mean it is an existential crisis or urgent problem. The big unknown are CLOUDS. Why? Because (a) cloud albedo has a far greater impact on the atmospheric radiation budget than does CO₂, and (b) how clouds change in response, if at all, to CO₂ is unknown. What's more, cloud cover can (and does) change naturally without mankind's assistance for any number of reasons (e.g., El Niño / La Niña activity; ocean circulation changes; cosmic ray flux; etc.). Even a small decrease in global cloud area fraction (CAF) can more than offset any temperature rise from CO₂. Song et al. (2016), for instance, concluded that, 🗨️ “[𝐴]𝑙𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑛ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑒𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑏𝑒 𝑒𝑛ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐺𝐻𝐺𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑣𝑎𝑝𝑜𝑟 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑡𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑝ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒, 𝑖𝑡 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑏𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑢𝑑𝑠. 𝐼𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑡𝑤𝑜 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓𝑓𝑠𝑒𝑡 𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟, 𝑎 ℎ𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑙𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑙 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑛ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑒𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑙𝑡.” 🔗nature.com/articles/srep3331… I don't deny that global warming is occurring. I never have. I don't even deny that there has been some anthropogenic influence either. I never have. What I do reject, however, is the fear mongering about it because, as far as I can tell, it is not an urgent issue that requires drastic changes to energy policies. Again, I'll ask for a legitimate counter argument to my posts point-by-point in detail. Use my exact words if you are going to challenge me. If you cannot avoid the use of logical fallacies and have nothing substantive to contribute, you'll be blocked permanently from my page. I'm done entertaining your BS.