Paris Accord rests on quicksand

Vincent J. Curtis

24 Oct 22

Most people think that the Paris Climate Accord is firmly based on science.  They would wrong.  It is based on elaborate hand-waving that looks like science, but hides the scientific chicanery going on.  Let me explain.

We are told that we have to keep the global average temperature increase below 1.5℃.  However, it is impossible to find a definite number for that global average temperature; it is referred to as the “pre-industrial” temperature and has no assigned number.  In fact, what constitutes “pre-industrial” is left up for grabs.  The latest period for which atmospheric CO2 level was 280 ppm was prior to the year 1800, and it’s impossible to get a measured global average temperature of any kind for that era.

It gets worse.  Nobody knows what the CO2 concentration will be in the year 2100.  I’ll test a couple scenarios to illustrate the nonsense.  The RCP8.5 model (Representative Concentration Pathway) forecasts 1000 ppm CO2 in 2100, producing a temperature rise of 4.3℃ and a “radiative forcing” (i.e. the greenhouse effect of that CO2) of 8.5 W/m².  But for 8.5 W/m² of additional forcing to increase temperature by 4.3℃, it requires the “global average temperature” to be 204K, by the Stefan-Boltzmann law.  That’s -69℃!

Another scenario is the RCP2.6 model, based on 480 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere.  It forecasts a rise of 1.8℃ with radiative forcing of 2.6 W/m².  For that much radiative forcing to produce a temperature rise of 1.8℃, it requires the global average temperature, by the Stefan-Boltzmann law, to be 180K roughly, a cold day in Antarctica.  These two models don’t even use the same ridiculously cold temperature as their base “global average temperature!”

If you take the global average temperature to be a reasonable 16℃, then radiative forcing of 8.5 W/m² produces a temperature rise of 1.5℃ by Stefan-Boltzmann - and that’s for 1000 ppm CO2.  The RPC2.6 model using a base temperature of 16℃ results in a temperature rise of less than half a degree Celsius.

Even the worse-case model, of unrestricted CO2 increase forecasting 1000 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere - RPC8.5 - only forecasts a rise of 1.5℃ by 2100 when you use a reasonable base temperature.

This in turn raises another question unanswered by the “climate science” and that is, what is magical about 17.5℃, or 20℃ or 22℃?  What happens at that temperature to cause the earth’s climate to collapse, or otherwise go crazy?  The climate scientists need to answer this question, but don’t expect an answer any time soon.

The science behind the Paris Climate Accord amounts to elaborate, inconsistent hand-waving that doesn’t seem to understand the significance of the Stefan-Boltzmann law.

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Let me again tip my hat to Howard Hayden, Ph.D. whose presentation at the ICCC conference on 28 Oct 21 made me aware of these issues involving the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.