Author : D J C URL :Comment:
Just remember there's going to be a genuine $5,000 reward for the first to come up with proof I'm wrong and proof IPCC are right about water vapour - see last paragraph..
In a horizontal plane you can observe diffusion of kinetic energy in your home. Just run a heater on one side of a room, turn it off or even remove it quickly from the room, and you will temporarily have measureably warmer air on one side of the room. Molecules then keep on colliding and as they do, kinetic energy is shared. Statistical mechanics tells us that temperature (that is, mean kinetic energy per molecule) will even out across the room assuming it's well insulated.
Suppose now that the room has double glazed windows and it's cooler outside. Which is more effective at insulating the room?
(a) A window with dry air or even argon
(b) A window with moist air - say 4% water vapour or water gas
(c) A window full of carbon dioxide only, like the Venus atmosphere?
The answer is the dry air or argon, as is well known in the construction industry. Why? Because radiating "pollutants" like water gas and carbon dioxide send the energy across the gap (and up through the troposphere) with inter-molecular radiation. Such radiation only ever transfers thermal energy from warmer to cooler regions. Otherwise what happens is as described in "Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics."
Why then does the thermal gradient reduce in magnitude because of the inter-molecular radiation between carbon dioxide molecules in the Venus atmosphere, or between a few methane molecules in the Uranus troposphere or between water vapour molecules in Earth's troposphere and Earth's outer 9Km of its crust?
All these thermal gradients (aka lapse rates) are less steep than they would have been in dry air or (nearly) non-radiating gases. Gravity would have induced a steeper -g/Cp gradient.
The thermal gradient in the Uranus troposphere does not level out (despite no solar radiation or any surface) because to do so would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It seems most of you don't understand why, but the reason is that entropy would decrease. If somehow a state were to evolve with more gravitational potential energy per molecule at the top, but no compensating reduction in kinetic energy per molecule (ie temperature) then there would be unbalanced energy potentials at the top, so work could be done and thus entropy would not have been at a maximum. The four molecule experiment demonstrates this and how it happens at the molecular level.
The vortex tube demonstrates it, and kinetic energy is re-distributed such that the inner tube gets far colder than the air that was pumped in. So you can't blame friction for heating the outer tube. Nor does pressure alter temperature, because pressure is proportional to the product of temperature and density: temperature is an independent variable and only varies when mean kinetic energy per molecule varies.
Finally, none of you can explain how the Venus surface actually rises in temperature from 732K to 737K during its four-month-long day, unless you start by understanding that the thermal gradient is the state of thermodynamic equilibrium. Then you need to understand the mechanism of "heat creep" explained in the second part of the four molecule experiment.
There will be a $5,000 reward for the first to prove me wrong with conditions explained in public advertisements and on all of a dozen or so of my websites. To win the award you will also have to show empirical evidence of the IPCC postulate that the sensitivity to water vapour is of the order of 10 degrees of warming for every 1% increase in the Earth's troposphere.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is not a simplistic rule that heat always transfers from warmer to cooler regions if there is a temperature difference.
ReplyDeleteIn the early pre-dawn hours the lower troposphere still exhibits the expected thermal gradient, but meteorologists know that convection stops. Yes energy flow stops even though there is warmer air at lower altitudes. That is because there is thermodynamic equilibrium, and when we have thermodynamic equilibrium - well, you can look up in Wikipedia all the conditions and things that happen.
The real Second Law of Thermodynamics takes quite a bit of understanding and many hours, maybe years of study. You guys have absolutely no understanding of it, as I can detect from my decades of helping students understand physics.
To understand it you have to really understand entropy for starters. Then you have to really understand thermodynamic equilibrium and all the other states, such as mechanical equilibrium, thermal equilibrium etc which the Second Law embraces. That is why, for example, you cannot disregard gravity and gravitational potential energy when determining the state of maximum entropy attainable by an isolated system.
If you want to stay in the mid-19th century when much of this physics was not widely understood, and if you want to imagine, for example, that radiative heat transfer does not obey the Second Law, then all I can say is that you must live in a strange and isolated planet, because you sure can't answer my questions about other planets with your climatology paradigm.
When you truly understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics then, and only then, will you start to understand how it explains the so-called lapse rate and how the pre-determined thermal profile supports surface temperatures everywhere, not back radiation from a cooler atmosphere. Thus you will understand why it's not carbon dioxide after all.
Because the Second Law has to (and does) apply to thermal energy apparently transferred by radiation, back radiation from a cooler atmosphere does not penetrate water surfaces, even though such surfaces are almost completely transparent to the infra-red radiation that makes up about 48% of the incident solar spectrum. If back radiation were to penetrate and warm the water beneath the surface, this would be a violation of the Second Law, despite what climatologists teach climatologists about so-called net effects.
ReplyDeleteRadiation one way is a completed independent process, and cannot be combined with any other process in order to derive a "net" result. You cannot have entropy decreasing in any such natural (spontaneous) process. You cannot justify a decrease in entropy just because entropy may increase more in some subsequent independent process.
I was probably the first in the world to publish in March 2012 a comprehensive explanation as to why the apparent transfer of thermal energy by radiation is in fact a one-way process, with the amount being transferred corresponding to the area between the Planck curves.
The rest of the radiation is common to both the Planck function for the warmer source and the Planck function for the cooler target. It is this radiation which undergoes what I called "resonant scattering" but others were starting to call "pseudo scattering."
This process involves photons raising electrons between energy states, but then the electro-magnetic energy (that became electron energy, but not kinetic energy) is immediately re-emitted as part of the target's Planck function, because the target can indeed radiate that frequency and intensity. Hence the target uses less of its own molecular kinetic (thermal) energy and so its radiative cooling rate is slowed. However, non-radiative cooling is not affected and can indeed accelerate to compensate.
Anyway, this is how and why the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to radiation. So back radiation never transfers thermal energy to a warmer surface. Thus it cannot raise the maximum temperature to which the Sun's radiation can heat a surface.
In any event, it doesn't work that way, and you need to understand the whole new paradigm relating to temperatures that are supported by the tropospheric thermal profile, the gradient for which is formed by the gravito-thermal effect.
William and all readers who find this on Google: this is important.
ReplyDeleteSkeptical Science team member Neal J King writes on Lucia's Blackboard, referring to thermodynamic equilibrium: "a transfer of energy δE between two sub-components, j = 1 and j = 2, will change neither E_total nor, to 1st order, S_total"
Yes, and that is exactly what happens when there is a thermal gradient such that the difference in mean kinetic energy per molecule (temperature) exactly matches the negative of the difference in mean gravitational potential energy per molecule.
You can see this in the second stage of the four molecule experiment: when thermodynamic equilibrium is attained we have homogeneous entropy (which must take PE into account) and every collision involves molecules with equal KE, and so KE for the system does not change, but is different per molecule at different altitudes. Similar happens in diffusion in a horizontal plane - KE of all molecules approaches homogeneity. But in a vertical plane you have to remember that KE changes because PE changes whenever there is a non-zero vertical component in the free path vector between collisions.
The gravito-thermal effect is blatantly obvious when convection stops in the early pre-dawn hours. It is then that the pre-determined thermal profile has a "supporting temperature" at the base of the troposphere on any planet. That is what explains all the observations on all planets with surfaces, and even planets without surfaces. Temperatures are set based on radiative balance and the gravito-thermal gradient.
The probability of these thermal gradients being so close to the -g/Cp value on all planets with significant tropospheres just because of some assumed warming by the Sun (whose radiation barely reaches some planetary surfaces) is absolutely infinitesimal. The evidence for the gravito-thermal gradient is blatantly obvious everywhere, as is the theory behind it.
And as for radiation from carbon dioxide supposedly helping the Sun to attain greater maximum temperatures each day (despite the Second Law) or even just slowing radiative cooling - so what? Oxygen and nitrogen slow non-radiative cooling and outnumber carbon dioxide 2,500:1. Radiation from carbon dioxide (with its limited frequencies) is like a picket fence (with most of its pickets missing) standing up against a torrent of full spectrum radiation from the surface. The mean temperature of carbon dioxide molecules in Earth's troposphere is far colder than the mean temperature of oxygen and nitrogen molecules colliding at the boundary with surface molecules. Rates of cooling depend on temperature gaps, so think!
But arguing with lukes and warmists is like playing chess with a pidgeon. No matter how good a player I am, the pigeon knocks over the pieces, craps on the board and struts around looking victorious.
PROOF of EXISTENCE of the GRAVITO-THERMAL EFFECT
ReplyDelete(1) The second law of thermodynamics states that "the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems always evolve toward thermodynamic equilibrium— a state depending on the maximum entropy."
(2) "In thermodynamics, a thermodynamic system is in thermodynamic equilibrium when it is in thermal equilibrium, mechanical equilibrium, radiative equilibrium, and chemical equilibrium. Equilibrium means a state of balance. In a state of thermodynamic equilibrium, there are no net flows of matter or of energy, no phase changes, and no unbalanced potentials (or driving forces), within the system. A system that is in thermodynamic equilibrium experiences no changes when it is isolated from its surroundings."
(3) When, in the absence of phase change, chemical reaction or inter-molecular radiation, a gas has reached thermodynamic equilibrium, then there will be no net change in the distribution of energy on a macro scale.
(4) In such circumstances described in (3) for every molecular movement between collisions, any change in gravitational potential energy must be countered by an opposite change in kinetic energy.
(5) If (2) applies and noting (4) it follows that when any given molecule is about to collide with another, its own kinetic energy must be equal to that of the target molecule so that no net change occurs in the collision.
(6) Hence, for any pair of molecules at different heights (or altitudes) the difference in gravitational potential energy must be offset by an equal and opposite difference in kinetic energy, thus maintaining a homogeneous sum (KE+PE) for all molecules.
(7) Thus, because temperature is a function only of the mean KE per molecule, and because PE varies so must KE vary, causing a thermal gradient throughout the whole system,
IN A NUTSHELL
ReplyDeleteUnless you understand the physics you will never be convinced of the validity of the gravito-thermal effect. It is a direct corollary of the evolving process which statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics describe. Hence is cannot be just a temporary state, because it is the state of maximum entropy. You cannot decrease entropy, and that is what you would be doing if you were trying to generate an isothermal state with more gravitational potential energy per molecule at the top, and yet the same kinetic energy per molecule as at lower levels.
the Radiative Greenhouse is smashed by radiation itself:
ReplyDeleteThere is no two-way radiation involved when a black metal disc just under the surface of water is receiving solar radiation from the Sun. Its temperature is raised by the hotter Sun. Its temperature is not raised by back radiation from a colder atmosphere, because that would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Back radiation does not melt frost in the shade of a tree, but the Sun would if you cut down the tree. But the IPCC and NASA claim that the intensity of back radiation is greater than that of solar radiation reaching the surface.
Every one-way transition of radiation is a completed, independent process which must (on its own) obey the Second Law. To claim that there is some net reverse process (such as the black disc warming the water which then evaporates and, days later, releases energy when it rains, is absurd. How can the first process of one-way radiation "know" that will happen in the future? What does happen is that the back radiation is pseudo scattered with each photon resonating and only ever temporarily raising electron energy (between quantum energy states) in the first molecule it strikes. That electron energy is not thermal energy which takes the form of kinetic energy mostly in the far heavier neutrons and protons. In other words, the energy never gets from the electrons to the nucleus.
So here's how to get energy from back radiation:
Build a model toy train. Place a black disc under water in the tender (coal car) and, at night, the back radiation will warm the black disc (being still as intense as solar radiation in the day) and the water will boil and thus be able to be used to drive a miniature steam engine that makes the train go around, and around, and around .. the track.
You could make a fortune patenting this process scaled up to light up a city at night. /sarc
But, until you do, I'll rest my case.
And, finally, there's no greenhouse effect on Venus either.
ReplyDeleteIt cannot be substantiated with standard physics that the surface of Venus is kept hot by radiation from the colder carbon dioxide atmosphere.
In fact the surface temperature rises by about 5 degrees (from 732K to 737K) during the four-month-long day and so this requires an input of thermal energy, which cannot be coming from the colder atmosphere because, if it were, entropy would be decreasing.
Venus cools by 5 degrees at night, and so it could easily have cooled right down over the life of the planet if the Sun provided no insolation. So we can deduce that it is energy from the Sun which is gradually raising the temperature of the Venus surface during those four months of Earth time. But less than 20 watts per square meter of solar radiation gets through to the surface because carbon dioxide actually absorbs incident solar radiation.
If one tries to explain the 5 degree difference with Stefan-Boltzmann calculations for radiation, there is a difference of about 450 watts per square meter just between the two temperatures 732K and 737K, and so this is not supplied from the direct solar radiation which is only about one tenth of that which reaches Earth's surface.
Hence there is no scientific basis for assuming that direct radiation to the surface is the cause of the high surface temperatures on Venus.
Want another April Fools Day joke to play on your politicians? Try the greenhouse effect ...
ReplyDeleteThe argument that planets are still cooling off, or are somehow generating internal energy that maintains their existing temperature is not valid because ...
(1) Every planet cools on its dark side at a rate which could easily have enabled it to cool right down (even in its core) to about the temperature supported by any external radiation. Venus cools about 5 degrees in 4 months, Earth cools by about 10 degrees in 12 hours etc. In other words, if the Sun existed but emitted no significant energy, it would appear that all planets in our Solar System could have cooled down close to absolute zero.
(2) So it must be energy from the Sun which is maintaining the existing temperatures on all planets and satellite moons, even down to their cores, and it must be doing so by raising the temperatures back up again by the amount equal to the cooling the night before. Why, for example, is the core of our Moon so much hotter than the surface ever is?
(3) Hence we require an explanation as to how the necessary energy gets into the lower troposphere, the surface and even below the surface of a planet or moon in order to maintain the current temperatures. In general, radiation from a colder atmosphere cannot actually add net thermal energy to a warmer surface and thus contribute to raising its temperature, because that would decrease entropy. This is established by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
(4) The original NASA net energy budgets for Earth did not show radiative energy transfers by the atmosphere to the surface, but they then found that the radiation from the Sun alone does not explain the mean surface temperature when using Stefan-Boltzmann calculations. Such calculations are inappropriate anyway, because what is effectively "the surface" is a very thin layer (let's say 1cm thick) and about 70% of this thin 1cm layer is transparent water. A black or gray body is not transparent by definition, and so S-B should not be applied to a thin 1cm layer of transparent water. The mean temperature of the ocean thermocline (all of which is absorbing the solar radiation but not back radiation) is about 8 to 10 degrees below the mean surface temperature.
(continued)
ReplyDelete(5) Whilst for Earth climatologists and IPCC authors then claimed to overcome this shortage of direct solar radiation by adding back radiation, you cannot possibly imagine that this would "work out" on Venus. Such back radiation cannot participate in any raising of the temperature of the Venus surface and, even if you think it could, you would have to explain how it could be over 16,000 watts per square meter, somehow multiplying the energy in the incident solar radiation (20 watts per square meter at the surface) by nearly 1,000-fold. If you shine a light such that it reflects multiple times between parallel mirrors, do you create more energy? That is what the radiative greenhouse conjecture is implying can happen with radiation back and forth between the surface and the atmosphere.
(6) Between the base of the nominal Uranus troposphere and the TOA there is a mean thermal gradient which is very close to the usual calculated value (for the "Dry adiabatic lapse rate") which is the negative quotient of the acceleration due to gravity and the weighted mean specific heat of the gases. On Venus (as on Earth) the effective (environmental) lapse rate (thermal gradient) is reduced by about 25% to 35% by inter-molecular radiation between carbon dioxide molecules on Venus, and water molecules on Earth, together with some release of latent heat on Earth which may play a small part in producing the "wet adiabatic lapse rate" though not the major part. So, why is it so? Is it just a coincidence that the base of the nominal Uranus troposphere is 320K (hotter than Earth's surface) which is just the right amount for the correct thermal gradient to exist in the 350Km of troposphere above, such that the temperature at the so-called radiating altitude is just right at around 60K? Likewise on Venus and other planets?
Wikipedia gets it wrong again, but won't change a thing or answer an objection based on sound science.
ReplyDeleteWhat evidence can the author(s) and/or editors of the Wikipedia Venus article provide which shows any global warming on Venus in the temperature measurements for the Venus surface that have now been recorded for a few decades? If there is any proof of warming due to 96% of CO2 then why would that not indicate far, far lower warming expected for the 0.04% of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere?
I use the Second Law of Thermodynamics to confirm that any given location on the equator of Venus must cool by a finite amount during the 4-month-long Venus night. There is information that I have read which states the cooling is 5 degrees from 737K to 732K. The exact amount is not important, however, because there is no indication of any long term cooling in mean temperatures and so we can deduce that the given location will warm back up again by the same amount during the next 4-month-long day. Hence there is net energy entering the surface in the day. So I use the Second Law again to prove that the net energy entering the surface cannot be doing so by way of radiation from the colder atmosphere, because numerous sources (such as this) indicate that all regions of the atmosphere have lower temperatures than the surface, and the Second Law states that entropy cannot decrease. In addition I then use the Stefan-Boltzmann Law to determine that an incoming solar radiative flux that would be required to raise the surface temperature would be in the vicinity of 14,000 to 16,000 watts per square meter for a realistic surface emissivity in the vicinity of 0.85 to 0.95. I then compare known data pertaining to solar flux reaching the TOA of Venus and state that even all the radiative flux reaching TOA would be far too little to result in a net energy input into the Venus surface. The First Law of Thermodynamics can be used to prove that energy in the total flux entering the Venus surface cannot be increased by any amount by any process (such as back radiation) within the atmosphere, because we cannot get such a huge increase in energy in any given time coming out of the atmosphere than we put into the atmosphere. Hence the concepts assumed in the radiative greenhouse postulate pertaining to Venus do not fall within the laws of physics, and are thus invalid.
Today's comment on many climate blogs ...
ReplyDeleteApril Fools Day is over, so now we face reality, because the world has been fooled too long with garbage such as Wikipedia promulgates about there being a radiative greenhouse effect on Venus, when even all the solar flux reaching the top of the Venus atmosphere could not raise the Venus surface temperature. You cannot expect to get out from the base of the troposphere many times the energy flux that entered at the top.
This is what really happens on Venus, if you're curious and want to learn ...
Firstly, you need to know that the gravito-thermal effect is confirmed empirically by the Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube, as I've now explained in the talk page for the vortex tube in the second note here
This effect is what can be used to explain "heat creep" which is downward convection (diffusion and advection) driven by a temperature inversion which disrupts a prior state of thermodynamic equilibrium, that being the same as hydrostatic equilibrium.
That is the process by which the Venus surface receives thermal energy and that process maintains existing temperatures in all atmospheres, surfaces and sub-surface regions in all planets and satellite moons in the Solar System.
The straight forward fact is that simple physics proves there is no greenhouse on Venus. This is the thin edge of the wedge. You need to see that Earth is supposedly operating under different laws of physics than Venus is. Supposedly, according to climatology, that is.
ReplyDeleteSoon we will be reading about the Zeroth, First, Second and Third Laws of Climatology:
0: Listen to zero physicists
1: Remember you are number one authority
2: Radiation transfers thermal energy two-ways even if it only goes one way itself, like the Sun's radiation heating the ocean thermocline.
3: The Earth's atmosphere multiplies the Sun's energy by three.
Have you ever wondered why the thermal gradient in Earth's outer crust is at least 20 times steeper than in the hot regions of the mantle? It doesn't look anything like a linear conduction plot all the way from the core, now does it? Why is it so?
ReplyDeleteIf you look at data from the 9Km deep German KTB borehole you'll see they measured 270C at 9Km depth, which really surprised them. Furthermore, if you consider just the data from 9Km to, say, 5Km and extrapolate it to the surface you do indeed get close to the mean daily minimum temperatures of the surface. How does it "know" down there what temperature to aim at? There must be a feedback mechanism, and indeed there is as I have explained in my hypothesis for all planetary atmospheric, surface, crust, mantle and core temperatures.
Does the core of the Earth really "know" how to generate just the right amount of nuclear energy or whatever to get the "right" surface temperature, which then gets the "right" lapse rate to get down to the radiative temperature at the right altitude?
I can explain what happens, but can you?
None of you will ever understand what’s really happening until …
ReplyDeleteyou think about why, throughout the Solar System, does every planet exhibit just the right thermal gradient all the way from the core to the tropopause. Is it a fluke that this gradient is always close to the -g/Cp “adiabatic lapse rate” even in the crust and mantle, for example, and ends up at the expected temperature based on radiative balance?
It is a complete fallacy to imagine these planets are still cooling off after billions of years. The Sun is keeping all planets and satellite moons at the temperatures they are at, right down to their centres.
Live well and enjoy the slight cooling till 2028.
Doug
This week the March temperature data appeared here for example. As I predicted in August 2011, this year (2014) should see the rate of cooling increase a little, but there will be about half a degree of warming between about 2029 and 2059. The expected 500 years of long term cooling will probably start before the year 2100.
ReplyDeleteSo why are we in the middle of a 30 year period of slight net cooling? Because natural cycles control climate - not mankind.
Standard physics tells us why carbon dioxide has no warming effect and water vapour has a significant cooling effect, because it reduces the thermal gradient and thus lowers the supporting temperature at the base of the troposphere.
The Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube confirms what physics tells us, namely that the force of gravity produces a state wherein the maximum entropy (at thermodynamic equilibrium) has both a density gradient and a temperature gradient, because of the effect of gravity acting on molecules when they are in free path motion between collisions.
Hence, since the whole greenhouse conjecture starts out from an assumption that the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be ignored and so (they think) isothermal conditions would apply if you removed all the "pollutants" like water gas, droplets and vapour, carbon dioxide and its colleagues from the atmosphere.
Why waste your time with the IPCC junk? There is absolutely no valid physics which supports it. The gravito-thermal effect is now supported by empirical evidence. Loschmidt was right in the 19th century. All temperatures follow the pre-determined thermal profile from the tropopause to the centre of the core of all planets and satellite moons in our Solar System, and no doubt beyond.
ReplyDeleteYou all need a paradigm shift in your thinking.
It is blatantly obvious that direct radiation cannot raise the temperature of the Venus surface from 732K to 737K. And because you cannot prove that it could do so, my $5,000 offer is pretty safe.
Lukes and warmists - face the facts!
ReplyDeleteMy physics gives the right answers.
You cannot explain the gravitationally induced thermal gradient in a vortex tube.
You cannot explain how the extra energy gets into the Venus surface to raise its temperature with what has to be a net energy input. There cannot be a net energy input brought about by radiation from a colder atmosphere as that obviously would violate the Second Law.
The Venus atmosphere cannot magnify the incident solar radiation at TOA up to 14,000 to 16,000 watts per square metre that would be needed if radiation were adding energy to the surface to raise its temperature 5 degrees during the Venus day.
Oxygen and nitrogen molecules in Earth's troposphere absorb thermal energy by conduction and diffusion processes. They do most of the slowing of surface cooling because there are 2,500 times as many of them as there are carbon dioxide molecules..
I can explain why surface cooling slows right down and upward convection sometimes stops altogether in calm conditions in the early pre-dawn hours, even though the thermal gradient is still there.
I can explain why hydrostatic equilibrium is the same as thermodynamic equilibrium, because there can be only one state of maximum entropy.
Of the incident solar radiation entering Earth's atmosphere, NASA net energy diagrams showed 19% absorbed on the way in compared with only 15% absorbed on the way back up from the surface. What does that tell you about how the atmosphere gets warmed? It's like on Venus - more solar energy is absorbed on the way in.
I can explain why real world data (which I will publish in an Appendix to my book) proves with statistical significance that water vapour cools. The IPCC wants you to believe that it warms by a staggering amount of the order of 10 degrees per 1% of moisture in the atmosphere. That's simply not what it does, and only the most gullible of people would believe that to be the case.
I can explain why planets are neither warming or cooling significantly.
I can explain why the core of our Moon is kept hot by the Sun, as is the case for the cores of all planets and moons.
I can explain the temperatures in the Uranus troposphere where there is no surface and no significant source of insolation or internal energy.
I can explain all known and estimated temperature data above and below any surface on any planet or satellite moon.
You can't.
More will be explained here.
ReplyDeleteThe real issue is that this whole analysis of what carbon dioxide can or cannot do in relation to warming or cooling is totally within the realm of the physics of radiative heat transfer and thermodynamics.
ReplyDeleteYet arrogant "climatologists" who are not physicists have presumed to know more about it all that physicists, and they have well and truly bungled their physics due to complete misunderstandings of what radiation does and the process described in modern statements of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The nearest they get to the Second Law is to mix up entropy with enthalpy. They assume there are always compensating heat transfers each way which enable them to "excuse" obvious reductions in entropy, because they are really only thinking of enthalpy - in other words, conservation of energy.
But the one single most compelling argument that knocks them out cold is the obvious fact that 70% of the effective "surface" (which determines the temperatures we measure as climate) is an almost completely transparent thin layer of water through which perhaps over 99% of incident solar radiation is transmitted out the other side. So how can they count all that solar radiation as supposedly heating the thin surface layer which we could consider to be perhaps just 1 centimetre in depth?
Do you see them reducing the solar radiation by 99% before they bung the value of solar radiation (plus back radiation - LOL) into the Stefan-Boltzmann equation to come up with their 33 degrees of warming? No.
Radiation striking a planet's surface (if there is one) is not the primary determinant of planetary atmospheric, surface and sub-surface temperatures.
A new study (published in this book) refutes the claim that water vapor causes greenhouse warming. Water vapor is supposed to be the most prolific greenhouse gas but real world temperature and rainfall records show that it cools rather than warms. So too would carbon dioxide.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 19th century it was suggested that the reason we observe cooler temperatures as we go up high mountains is because the force of gravity acts upon individual molecules and affects the air temperature in that region. The temperature may be thought of as relating to the speed at which these air molecules move, and so, if they are "falling" they gather speed and end up being warmer, or if they are rising they cool.
In recent years an interesting device was invented in which air is forced through this "Ranque Hilsch vortex tube" in a helical motion that creates a very strong artificial gravity field due to centrifugal force. The center of the tube is like the top of that mountain and, indeed, the air in the tube is cooled in the center and warmed at the outside. So this "gravito-thermal" effect, as it is called, is clearly demonstrated to be a reality in the vortex tube, just as it is in a planet's atmospheric troposphere.
The laws of physics can be used to explain just how and why this temperature gradient is formed by gravity, and it is found on all planets with atmospheres. But its existence has been overlooked by so-called "climatologists" who have assumed that Earth's troposphere would have had uniform temperatures throughout if it had not been for so-called "greenhouse gases" like water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and a few other radiating gases somehow warming the surface with energy sent from the far colder atmosphere.
So, disregarding the laws of physics concerning this temperature gradient, climatologists have tried to explain why the Earth's surface is in fact hotter than the average temperature in the troposphere. It seemed to make sense that the Sun heats the surface which then warms the air, but the Sun's rays mostly pass through the thin surface layer of the oceans. Nearly all the "heat" in the atmosphere is "trapped" not in radiating molecules but in non-radiating air molecules (mostly nitrogen and oxygen) which then collide with radiating molecules, transferring energy to those "greenhouse gases" so they can then radiate it away to space.
The trouble is, that the Sun could not actually warm the surfaces of planets to the temperatures we now know exist. For example, there just is not anywhere near enough solar radiation entering the Venus atmosphere to raise the surface temperature by hundreds of degrees. The atmosphere cannot magnify the incoming energy at the top and send more out of the base of the atmosphere and into the surface. Yet the surface of Venus does get a few degrees hotter during its four-month-long daytime.
"Why it's not carbon dioxide after all" could potentially free the world of all concern that carbon dioxide is causing warming.
In fact, all such warming ceased around the turn of the century and the world is currently enjoying a very slight cooling trend, which the author expects to continue for about 30 years into this century. Yes, there will probably be another half degree or so of warming spread over the following 30 years, but 500 years of long-term cooling is likely to commence within the next 100 years or so, all due to natural cycles possibly regulated by planetary orbits and solar cycles. The book is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, and also in $8.95 e-versions from these distributors as well as for iPad and iPhone.
ReplyDeleteWilliam and others:
All alarmist comments are based on IPCC documentation, and that documentation says the Earth's surface would be 33 degrees colder without greenhouse gases. Water vapour is thus meant to be doing most of that warming from about 254.5K to about 287.5K to the nearest half degree.
But in calculating the 254.5K temperature they fail to alter the albedo which, according to their energy diagrams includes 30% of solar radiation reflected back to space by those clouds which would only exist if the greenhouse pollutant, water vapour actually existed. But they have assumed it doesn't in this scenario. So they incorrectly use only 70% of a quarter of the solar flux (1365W/m^2) and then they also assume incorrectly that emissivity is 1.0000, and so then then incorrectly get that temperature of 254.5K in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations.
The ramifications of this enormous oversight are huge, because if they had not reduced the radiation by 30% due to the clouds that don't exist. and if they had used a more realistic emissivity for a dry, rocky planet - say 0.88, then they would have got a temperature of 287.58K which is close enough to what is the existing mean temperature with GH gases that are thus doing no warming at all. I would add that the emissivity is more likely to be lower than 0.88, this giving a higher temperature above 290K, and so GH gases are cooling Earth.