From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Can the Climate Heal Itself?   
   By Andy Kessler, June 4, 2023, WSJ   
   Stop with all the existential-crisis talk. Biden said, “Climate change is   
   literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world.” Defense   
   Secretary Lloyd Austin also talks about the “existential threat” of   
   climate change. National    
   security adviser Jake Sullivan identifies an “accelerating climate crisis”   
   as one reason for a “new consensus” for government picking winners and   
   losers in the economy. Be wary of those touting consensus.   
      
   But what if the entire premise is wrong? What if the Earth is self-healing?   
   Before you hurl the “climate denier” invective at me, let’s think this   
   through. Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years—living organisms for   
   3.7 billion. Surely, an    
   enlightened engineer might think, the planet’s creator built in a mechanism   
   to regulate heat, or we wouldn’t still be here to worry about it.   
      
   The theory of climate change is that excess CO2 and methane trap the sun’s   
   radiation in the atmosphere, and these man-made greenhouse gases reflect more   
   of that heat back to Earth, warming the planet. Pretty simple. Eventually, we   
   reach a tipping point    
   when positive feedback loops form—less ice to reflect sunlight, warm oceans   
   that can no longer absorb carbon dioxide—and then we fry, existentially. So   
   lose those gas stoves and carbon-spewing Suburbans.   
      
   But nothing is simple. What about negative feedback loops? Examples: human   
   sweat and its cooling condensation or our irises dilating or constricting   
   based on the amount of light coming in. Clouds, which can block the sun or   
   trap its radiation, are rarely    
   mentioned in climate talk.   
      
   Why? Because clouds are notoriously difficult to model in climate simulations.   
   Steven Koonin, a New York University professor and author of “Unsettled,”   
   tells me that today’s computing power can typically model the Earth’s   
   atmosphere in grids 60    
   miles on a side. Pretty coarse. So, Mr. Koonin says, “the properties of   
   clouds in climate models are often adjusted or ‘tuned’ to match   
   observations.” Tuned!   
      
   Last month the coddling modelers at the United Nations’ World Meteorological   
   Organization stated that “warming El Niño” and “human-induced climate   
   change” mean there is a “66% likelihood that annual average global   
   temperatures will exceed    
   the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2027.”   
   Notice that El Niño is mentioned first.   
      
   Richard Lindzen, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and   
   lead author of an early Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, told   
   me, “Temperatures in the tropics remain relatively constant compared with   
   changes in the    
   tropics-to-pole temps. The tropics-polar difference is about 40 degrees   
   Celsius today but was 20 degrees during the warm Eocene Epoch and 60 degrees   
   during Ice Ages.” This difference has more to do with changes in the   
   Earth’s rotation, like wobbling,    
   than anything else. According to Mr. Lindzen, this effect is some 70 times as   
   great as human-made greenhouse gases.   
      
   OK, back to clouds. Cumulus clouds, the puffy ones often called thunderclouds,   
   are an important convection element, carrying heat from the Earth’s surface   
   to the upper atmosphere. Above them are high-altitude cirrus clouds, which can   
   reflect heat back    
   toward the surface. A 2001 Lindzen paper, however, suggests that high-level   
   cirrus clouds in the tropics dissipate as temperatures rise. These thinning   
   cirrus clouds allow more heat to escape. It’s called the Iris Effect, like a   
   temperature-controlled    
   vent opener for an actual greenhouse so you don’t (existentially) fry your   
   plants. Yes, Earth has a safety valve.   
      
   Mr. Lindzen says, “This more than offsets the effect of greenhouse gases.”   
   As you can imagine, theories debunking the climate consensus are met with   
   rebuttals and more papers. Often, Mr. Lindzen points out, critics, “to   
   maintain the warming    
   narrative, adjust their models, especially coverage and reflection or albedo   
   of clouds in the tropics.” More tuning.   
      
   A 2021 paper co-authored by Mr. Lindzen shows strong support for an Iris   
   Effect. Maybe Earth really was built by an engineer. Proof? None other than   
   astronomer Carl Sagan described the Faint Young Sun Paradox that, 2.5 billion   
   years ago, the sun’s    
   energy was 30% less, but Earth’s climate was basically the same as today.   
   Cirrus clouds likely formed to trap heat—a closed Iris and a negative   
   feedback loop at work.   
      
   In a 2015 Nature Geoscience paper, Thorsten Mauritsen and Bjorn Stephen at the   
   Max Planck Institute for Meteorology reran climate models using the Iris   
   Effect and found them better at modeling historic observations. No need for   
   tuning. Wouldn’t it be    
   nice if the U.N. used realistic cloud and climate models?   
      
   Earth has warmed, but I’m convinced negative feedback loops will save us.   
   Dismissing the Iris Effect or detuning it isn’t science. Sadly, climate   
   science has morphed into climate rhetoric. And note, Treasury Secretary Janet   
   Yellen explained in April    
   that green spending “is, at its core, about turning the climate crisis into   
   an economic opportunity.” Hmmm. “Catastrophic,” “existential” and   
   “crisis” are cloudy thinking. Negative feedback is welcome.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-the-climate-heal-itself-cumulus   
   cirrus-clouds-negative-feedback-un-30bbbef0   
      
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