About this episode

Erich Schaffer critiques the super greenhouse effect and discusses water vapor feedback in climate science.

Erich Schaffer critiques the “super greenhouse effect” and argues that tropical outgoing longwave radiation stays flat mainly because tropospheric temperature is sluggish relative to surface temperature, not because water vapor amplifies greenhouse trapping. He says regional and seasonal proxies for water vapor feedback are invalid (citing admissions by Ramanathan/Inamdar and Dessler et al.) and claims interannual proxy results are distorted by aspect-ratio choices and improper OLS regression, advocating TLS or rotated-benchmark methods. Reanalyzing published plots (Spencer, Lindzen-Choi, Chung, Andy May), he concludes water vapor plus lapse rate implies strong negative feedback and low ECS (~1 K). He also alleges data “fudging” and broader scientific incompetence. 00:00 Super Greenhouse Effect 02:20 OLR Calculations Explained 03:28 Troposphere Sluggishness 05:32 Ramanathan Admission 10:23 Feedback Breakdown Math 12:37 Two Proxies Debunked 14:05 Revisiting Interannual Proxy 16:02 Bad Regression Plotting 17:16 Aspect Ratio Distortion 23:45 OLS vs TLS Regression 30:53 Negative Feedback Emerges 33:22 Spencer Regression Mystery 37:45 Lindzen Choi Critique 41:03 Fixing Lindzen Plot…

People in this episode

Host: Thomas Nelson

Guest: Erich Schaffer

Topics covered

• water vapor feedback
• greenhouse effect
• climate science
• temperature dynamics
• regression analysis
• scientific critique

Keywords

• water vapor
• greenhouse effect
• feedback
• temperature
• regression
• climate
• ECS
• tropical
• proxy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: AR6, MODTRAN

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