Climate Change

[Alan V]

"Now, you might be surprised to learn that the amount of warming directly caused by the extra CO2 is, by itself, relatively weak. It has been calculated theoretically that, if there are no other changes in the climate system, a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration would cause less than 1 deg C of surface warming (about 1 deg. F). This is NOT a controversial statement…it is well understood by climate scientists."
 
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/

That 1 degree C from CO2 is for every doubling of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and is really equal to about 1.8 degrees F.  And the additional (approximately) 2 degrees C to make up the total climate sensitivity (at equilibrium) comes from the various feedbacks we discussed above: the ice/albedo feedback, the water vapor feedback, cloud feedback, and the lapse rate feedback.  So the total warming from any doubling of CO2 still comes up to about 3 degrees C (5.4 degrees F), plus or minus, when we add in the unavoidable feedbacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity

In your linked article, the author Dr. Roy Spencer goes on to say as much, but then adds:

"Obviously, knowing the strength of feedbacks in the climate system is critical; this is the subject of most of my research. Here you can read about my latest work on the subject, in which I show that feedbacks previously estimated from satellite observations of natural climate variability have potentially large errors. A confusion between forcing and feedback (loosely speaking, cause and effect) when observing cloud behavior has led to the illusion of a sensitive climate system, when in fact our best satellite observations (when carefully and properly interpreted) suggest an IN-sensitive climate system."

The reason this is disingenuous is that it makes it sound like information about the feedbacks is derived from present observations alone, when in fact it is largely derived from paleoclimatology, observations about what previously happened on the earth at different temperatures. Further, we are already gaining first-hand information about how sensitive the earth's climate is even at just 1 degree C of warming above the preindustrial, by how quickly the ice sheets are melting, how extreme the weather is becoming, and so on. Those can't be just the result of natural variability of weather patterns, since those are not trends but short-term oscillations. His cited Pacific Decadal Oscillation is exactly such an oscillation.

This link makes Dr. Roy Spencer out as a deliberate liar because of his right-wing agenda, and explores his many inaccuracies:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic...pencer.htm