A recent publication in Nature purported it had finally detected the radiative forcing of increasing atmospheric CO 2.

German physical chemist Dr. Siegfried Dittrich slams the media’s assertions of proof that CO2 was guilty of the warming, claiming they are faulty and that they were passed on uncritically by German news weekly FOCUS ONLINE. Here’s the translation:

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Climate Warming From Carbon Dioxide?

By Dr. Siegfried Dittrich, on the DPA German News Agency release appearing at Focus-Online 27 February 2015: “Climate warming through carbon dioxide: The proof: CO2 is indeed guilty of the greenhouse effect“.

‘The real guilt by CO2 for the greenhouse gas effect is finally proven.’ This was the subheading of a DPA release appearing at FOCUS Online on 27 February.

Later in the text it is written: ‘For the first time we are seeing the enhancement of the greenhouse effect in nature’, and at the Hamburg-based Max Planck Institute for Meteorology it was gleefully added that finally also the magnitude of the anthropogenic impact has become visible.

It all goes back to the latest surface radiation measurements recently published in an essay in Nature (details here and here). However no one seems to have noticed that the measurements actually showed the exact opposite of what is claimed to have been proven above, namely nothing other than what serious climate critics have always been saying about anthropogenic greenhouse effect.

The number for the increase in CO2-dependent back radiation given by Nature of 0.2 watt/m2 per decade is indeed in reality nothing more than trifle. Why would the earth be shocked when 1367 watts per square meter strikes the surface at noon along the equator? The ever-changing deviations from this so-called solar constant mean value are in fact considerably greater than the above given 0.2 watts/m2.

According to the IPCC, the surface radiative forcing increase in the event of a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration is exactly 3.7 Watt/m2, a figure that has been independently confirmed on multiple occasions. Over the last decade the atmospheric CO2 concentration increased some 20 parts per million. Currently it stands at about 400 ppm. Here any undergraduate student is able to compute that the resulting surface radiative forcing increase is approximately 0.2 watt/m2, which has been confirmed by the above mentioned measurements.

Also the resulting global temperature increase can be computed using one of the IPCC equations, which also can be derived from the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law.

In Nature it is expressly remarked that the measured difference in surface radiative forcing of 0.2 watt/m2 is solely for cloud-free zones on earth. With an average 40% cloud cover and a 30% overlap between the present water vapor and CO2 absorption spectrum, the above calculated temperature value gets reduced from 0.06°C to 0.03°C. Here in reality we are talking about an effect that is barely measureable, and one that has no dramatic impact when combined with the fictional water vapor amplification, which incidentally the superfluous ‘Energiewende’ is based on ad absurdum. It is more than regrettable that FOCUS uncritically passed on these misinterpretations. A correction should be made immediately.

Dr. rer.nat. Siegfried Dittrich