Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
The Unified Theory of Climate post is exciting and could shake the world of Climate Science to its roots. I would love it if the conventional understanding of the Atmospheric “Greenhouse” Effect (GHE) presented by the Official Climate Team could be overturned, and that would be the case if the theory of Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller, both PhDs, turns out to be scientifically correct.
Sadly, it seems to me they have made some basic mistakes that, among other faults, confuse cause and effect. I appreciate that WUWT is open to new ideas, and I support the decision to publish this theory, along with both positive and negative comments by readers.
Correlation does not prove causation. For example, the more policemen directing traffic, the worse the jam is. Yes, when the police and tow trucks first respond to an accident they may slow the traffic down a bit until the disabled automobiles are removed. However, there is no doubt the original cause of the jam was the accident, and the reason police presence is generally proportional to the severity of the jam level is that more or fewer are ordered to respond. Thus, Accident >>CAUSES>> Traffic Jam >>CAUSES>> Police is the correct interpretation.
Al Gore made a similar error when, in his infamous movie An Inconvenient Truth, he made a big deal about the undoubted corrrelation in the Ice Core record between CO2 levels and Temperature without mentioning the equally apparent fact that Temperatures increase and decrease hundreds of years before CO2 levels follow suit.
While it is true that rising CO2 levels do have a positive feedback that contributes to slightly increased Temperatures, the primary direction of causation is Temperature >>CAUSES>> CO2. The proof is in the fact that, in each Glacial cycle, Temperatures begin their rapid decline precisely when CO2 levels are at their highest, and rapid Temperature increase is initiated exactly when CO2 levels are their lowest. Thus, Something Else >>CAUSES>> Temperature>>CAUSES>> CO2. Further proof may be had by placing an open can of carbonated beverage in the refigerator and another on the table, and noting that the “fizz” (CO2) outgasses more rapidly from the can at room temperature.
Moving on to Nikolov, the claim appears to be that the pressure of the Atmosphere is the main cause of temperature changes on Earth. The basic claim is PRESSURE >>CAUSES>>TEMPERATURE.
PV = nRT
Given a gas in a container, the above formula allows us to calculate the effect of changes to the following variables: Pressure (P), Volume (V), Temperature (T, in Kelvins), and Number of molecules (n). (R is a constant.)
The figure shows two cases involving a sealed, non-insulated container, with a Volume, V, of air:
(A) Store that container of air in the ambient cool Temperature Tr of a refrigerator. Then, increase the Number n of molecules in the container by pumping in more air. the Pressure (P) within the container will increase. Due to the work done to compress the air in the fixed volume container, the Temperature within the container will also increase from (Tr) to some higher value. But, please note, when we stop increasing n, both P and T in the container will stabilize. Then, as the container, warmed by the work we did compressing the air, radiates, conducts, and convects that heat to the cool interior of the refrigerator, the Temperature slowly decreases back to the original Tr.
(B) We take a similar container from the cool refrigerator at Temperature Tr and place it on a kitchen chair, where the ambient Temperature Tk is higher. The container is warmed by radiation, conduction and convection and the Temperature rises asymptotically towards Tk. The Pressure P rises slowly and stabilizes at some higher level. Please note the pressure remains high forever so long as the temperature remains elevated.
In case (A) Pressure >>CAUSES A TEMPORARY>> increase in Temperature.
In case (B) Temperature >>CAUSES A PERMANENT>> increase in Pressure.
I do not believe any reader will disagree with this highly simplified thought experiment. Of course, the Nikolov theory is far more complex, but, I believe it amounts to confusing the cause, namely radiation from the Sun and Downwelling Long-Wave Infrared (LW DWIR) from the so-called “Greenhouse” gases (GHG) in the Atmosphere with the effect, Atmospheric pressure.
Some Red Flags in the Unified Theory
1) According to Nikolov, our Atmosphere
“… boosts Earth’s surface temperature not by 18K—33K as currently assumed, but by 133K!”
If, as Nikolov claims, the Atmosphere boosts the surface temperature by 133K, then, absent the Atmosphere the Earth would be 288K – 133K = 155K. This is contradicted by the fact that the Moon, which has no Atmosphere and is at the same distance from the Sun as our Earth, has an average temperature of about 250K. Yes, the albedo of the Moon is 0.12 and that of the Earth is 0.3, but that difference would make the Moon only about 8K cooler than an Atmosphere-free Earth, not 95K cooler! Impossible!
2) In the following quote from Nikolov, NTE is “Atmospheric Near-Surface Thermal Enhancement” and SPGB is a “Standard Planetary Gray Body”
NTE should not be confused with an actual energy, however, since it only defines the relative (fractional) increase of a planet’s surface temperature above that of a SPGB. Pressure by itself is not a source of energy! Instead, it enhances (amplifies) the energy supplied by an external source such as the Sun through density-dependent rates of molecular collision. This relative enhancement only manifests as an actual energy in the presence of external heating. [Emphasis added]
This, it seems to me, is an admission that the source of energy for their “Atmospheric Near-Surface Thermal Enhancement” process comes from the Sun, and, therefore, their “Enhancement” is as they admit, not “actual energy”. I would add the energy that would otherwise be lost to space (DW LWIR) to the energy from the Sun, eliminating any need for the “Thermal Enhancement” provided by Atmospheric pressure.
3) As we know when investigating financial misconduct, follow the money. Well, in Climate Science we follow the Energy. We know from actual measurements (see my Visualizing the “Greenhouse” Effect – Emission-Spectra) the radiative energy and spectra of Upwelling Long-Wave Infrared (UW LWIR), from the Surface to the so-called “greenhouse” gases (GHG) in the Atmosphere, and the Downwelling (DW LWIR) from those gases back to the Surface.
The only heed Nikolov seems to give to GHG and those measured radiative energies is that they are insufficient to raise the temperature of the Surface by 133K.
… our atmosphere boosts Earth’s surface temperature not by 18K—33K as currently assumed, but by 133K! This raises the question: Can a handful of trace gases which amount to less than 0.5% of atmospheric mass trap enough radiant heat to cause such a huge thermal enhancement at the surface? Thermodynamics tells us that this not possible.
Of course not! Which is why the conventional explanation of the GHE is that the GHE raises the temperature by only about 33K (or perhaps a bit less -or more- but only a bit and definitely not 100K!).
4) Nikolov notes that, based on “interplanetary data in Table 1” (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Europe, Titan, Triton):
… we discovered that NTE was strongly related to total surface pressure through a nearly perfect regression fit…
Of course, one would expect planets and moons in our Solar system to have some similarities.
“… the atmosphere does not act as a ‘blanket’ reducing the surface infrared cooling to space as maintained by the current GH theory, but is in and of itself a source of extra energy through pressure. This makes the GH effect a thermodynamic phenomenon, not a radiative one as presently assumed!
I just cannot square this assertion with the clear measurements of UW and DW LWIR, and the fact that the wavelengths involved are exactly those of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other GHGs.
Equation (7) allows us to derive a simple yet robust formula for predicting a planet’s mean surface temperature as a function of only two variables – TOA solar irradiance and mean atmospheric surface pressure,…”
Yes, TOA solar irradiance would be expected to be important in predicting mean surface temperature, but mean atmospheric surface pressure, it seems to me, would more likely be a result than a cause of temperature. But, I could be wrong.
Conclusion
I, as much as anyone else here at WUWT, would love to see the Official Climate Team put in its proper place. I think climate (CO2) sensitivity is less than the IPCC 2ºC to 4.5ºC, and most likely below 1ºC. The Nikolov Unified Climate Theory goes in the direction of reducing climate sensitivity, apparently even making it negative, but, much as I would like to accept it, I remain unconvinced. Nevertheless, I congratulate Nikolov and Zeller for having the courage and tenacity to put this theory forward. Perhaps it will trigger some other alternative theory that will be more successful.
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UPDATE: This thread is closed – see the newest one “A matter of some Gravity” where the discussion continues.
Richard S Courtney says:
Show me where I said that. I think this is an outright fabrication.
The statement that Willis and I have made is that the surface can’t emit 390 W/m^2 if the atmosphere is transparent to radiation. Indeed, it can’t emit anything above ~240 W/m^2. What you are now saying is that it can if the atmosphere is not transparent to radiation. That is exactly what we are saying…The 33 K rise above a surface temperature of 255 K can only be attributed only to the fact that the atmosphere absorbs terrestrial radiation, i.e., that there is a radiative greenhouse effect.
I never said that vertical heat transfer is not important in determining a planet’s temperature. In fact, I have explained that the Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse effect would be EVEN GREATER than the empirically-observed 33 K if it were not for convection, which is able to offset some of it. The fact that convection is not able to offset essentially all of it is because the atmosphere is only unstable to convection if the lapse rate exceeds the adiabatic lapse rate. Hence, convection drives the lapse rate back to the adiabatic lapse rate but no further, allowing the temperature of the troposphere to still decrease with height…a situation that is necessary in order for the greenhouse effect to cause an increase in the surface temperature. (And, the reason why the way the Nikolov and Zeller added convection to a simple model of the greenhouse effect does offset essentially all of the greenhouse effect in their model is because they incorrectly assumed that convection drives the atmosphere to an isothermal profile with height.)
David: It is ridiculous that we are duplicating our conversation on two threads, so instead of copy my response to what you have posted above (and posted in the other thread), I am simply giving a link to my response in the other thread: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/#comment-854261
The iceman cometh says:
January 5, 2012 at 9:58 am
“3) Eventually both the planet and the atmosphere will reach T (and realize we are talking averages here – I don’t want to wander into diurnal/seasonal/equatorial-polar stories at this juncture, to keep it simple). If at any stage the atmosphere needs to lose heat, the process will reverse – it will heat the planet, and the planet will do the radiation.”
Ok, just following this along here then. If the sun were to heat the surface to -18C, the air would heat to -18C, right and no warmer? And even if we multiplied the amount of N2 in the atmosphere by 10 times the air would still only be -18C, right? Convection and conduction can’t raise the temperature of the surface to higher than the surface was originally in this example.
Cheers, 🙂
David Hoffer says:
Just to expose you rewriting of history for what it is, I am going to quote an entire post that I made 5 days ago ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/#comment-848676 ):
My position has always been the same: That the problem with N&Z is in the assumption that they make for the temperature distribution. They make an assumption that is nowhere near correct for the current Earth and seems unlikely a very good approximation even for even an Earth without greenhouse gases (unless you removed essentially the entire atmosphere also)….And that, at any rate, the way to consider what amount of temperature rise is really attributable to the greenhouse effect is to consider the case of a uniform temperature distribution…because that is what Holder’s Inequality tells you is the highest average temperature that you can get for a given amount of surface emission.
“Ok, just following this along here then. If the sun were to heat the surface to -18C, the air would heat to -18C, right and no warmer? And even if we multiplied the amount of N2 in the atmosphere by 10 times the air would still only be -18C, right? Convection and conduction can’t raise the temperature of the surface to higher than the surface was originally in this example.”
The original surface with no atmosphere has Mass 1. It will have temperature T1
Add a non GHG atmosphere and the combination will be Mass 2.
Mass 2 will lead to higher temperature T2 at the surface.
Add more non GHG atmosphere for Mass 3
Mass 3 will lead to higher temperature T3
And so it goes with no need for GHGs at all.
If one then replaces some of the non GHGs with GHGs mass remains the same as does temperature because the extra energy in the atmosphere from the GHGs gets removed from trhe surface by a mixture of faster non radiative processes for a zero or near zero effect on temperature.
Which is why one does not need a figure for the radiative aspect in order to reliably calculate the surface temperature of a planet with a given atmospheric pressure and distance from the sun.
That is and always was the true and accepted greenhouse effect (gravity driven) until someone in climatology who seems to have been unaware of the gravitational effect suddenly decided it was all due to the proportion of GHGs in the atmosphere and thus nothing to do with gravity.
As we see here, lots of people were never taught about the gravitational aspect so the false scenario took hold.
Richard S. Courtney says:
I disagree with your conclusion 100%. The statement is highly meaningful and explains pretty much everything about the traditional understanding of the GHE if you understand what is being said.
shawnhet says:
January 5, 2012 at 9:03 am
Given a completely nitrogen atmosphere then and a surface temperature of T, the surface will heat the air to T correct? Regardless of the processes involved you can’t heat to something more than T by using convection and conduction with a surface of temperature T. Further, if the atmosphere doesn’t radiate at all, how does it ever lose energy?
Cheers, 🙂
It heats up to a maximum of Ts,day during the day and is cooled by the surface to Ts,night during the night.
Just to beat a dead horse, let me again point out part of what I said 5 days ago ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/#comment-848676 )::
Now, let’s fast-forward to last night when our good friend David M Hoffer had such an epiphany that he felt it necessary to post his entire long rambling post explaining it in both threads. His epiphany is best summarized by the statement he makes here ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-climate-theory-may-confuse-cause-and-effect/#comment-853333 ):
So, what David breathlessly discovered last night is what I said even before the New Year, i.e., that with a certain amount of emitted power, you can have a variety of different average temperatures. The only difference is that my statement already had more physics in it because I explained what the temperature distribution is that gives the maximum possible average temperature for a given amount of emitted power.
Stephen Wilde,
I am having a harder and harder time replying to you because your claims seem to keep getting wilder.
* I contend that the effective temperature for both cases is T1 (based on radiation in & radiation out as shown here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body#Temperature_relation_between_a_planet_and_its_star).
* I contend that the effective temperature must be at ground level in both cases (because the non-GHG atmosphere does not radiate)
* I contend that mass plays no (significant) role in radiation.
Therefore I contend the surface of both planets has the same effective temperature.
I have given my reasoning, along with the equation for calculating the effective temperature for either planet’s surface (in the link). Please state
1) why this equation is incorrect and
2) what equation (or even what principle) you use to reach your conclusion that mass of an invisible atmosphere can change the effective temperature of a planet.
Also please define “the gravitational effect” using an equation (or even a paragraph stating how it is derived from other fundamental principles).
David Hoffer says: “I like your idea of referring to “effective” temperature instead of “average” temperature! Unfortunately the casual reader would be completely lost by that reference … ”
And there in a nutshell is one big reason why discussions in this sort of setting are doomed to be rather ineffective. If the goal is to understand subtle applications of advanced physics topics, then casual readers will always be lost. If the goal is to give a basic understanding to casual readers, then the physics must always be simplified. Here we are often trying to do both at once. 🙁
davidmhoffer says:
Sorry for the continued posts, but I keep realizing more and more misconceptions that you have. Your belief that N&Z have averaged T^4 and not T, whereas everyone else averages T is exactly backwards! N&Z have not averaged T^4. If they had averaged sigma*T^4 over a hypothetical (no surface-temperature-enhancement) earth, they would get P = 240 W/m^2. If they then used this to derive an average temperature by dividing by sigma and taking the 4th root, they would have gotten T = 255 K.
What N&Z have done is to assume a certain temperature distribution for the Earth (a very naive one where the local temperature is simply determined by radiative balance with the local insolation, i.e., neglecting all horizontal heat transfer processes and heat storage processes). They have then used this naive temperature distribution to compute an average T simply by averaging the temperature over the globe. [Look at the integral in Eq. (2) and see how they are taking the 4th root before they are doing the integration…That means that they are averaging T, not T^4.]
The problem with this method is that the average temperature you get is very dependent on the assumed temperature distribution, so much so that one can raise their average temperature by 100 K and still have the same average emitted power simply by making the temperature distribution uniform!
And, the temperature distribution they assumed, while pretty reasonable in the limit of no atmosphere, becomes worse and worse for planets with an atmosphere, which is why they find a “surface temperature enhancement” even for bodies with essentially no greenhouse effect.
Stephen Wilde says:
January 5, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“The original surface with no atmosphere has Mass 1. It will have temperature T1
Add a non GHG atmosphere and the combination will be Mass 2.
Mass 2 will lead to higher temperature T2 at the surface.”
Let’s see where we disagree: 1.under your scenario M2 raises mass and pressure. 2.Then by the Ideal Gas Law raises air temperature to T2 3.which being greater that T1 raises the surface temperature so to T3 and 4.cools the air (by conduction) to T3. 5.The surface of the planet emits more heat and cools eventually sucking all the excess heat from the addition of mass to the atmosphere into the surface and where it is radiated out to space. The end temperature is T1.
Can you let me know which number(s) you disagree with?
Cheers, 🙂
Stephen Wilde @ur momisugly January 5, 2012 at 12:25 pm
I have difficulty with some things you have said, but concerning the influence of gravity and various cause and effect arguments, I find this earlier statement in part from Tim Folkerts @ur momisugly January 5, 2012 at 12:25 pm to be interesting.
I find that rather interesting, since it may suggest that lapse rate is dependent on gravity, which again seems to be rather supportive of N&Z
1) M2 raises mass and pressure.
2) Incoming solar irradiation interacts with the gravitational field to raise the temperature to T2 because the energy flowing through the system slows down more under the influence of increased gravity and the system energy content rises.
3) It stays at that new temperature T2 as long as the pressure (caused by the mass) and solar input stay the same.
4) GHGs make no difference to the surface temperature because unlike the gravitationally induced temperature they affect the atmosphere only and not the surface.
This is not new, it is established basic physics. Joel has already accepted that a thicker atmosphere produces a higher temperature. Thickness is related to mass and not thermal characteristics of GHGs.
I don’t have the time to respond further. It is obviously a waste of effort anyway.
“I find that rather interesting, since it may suggest that lapse rate is dependent on gravity, which again seems to be rather supportive of N&Z”
Exactly. Goodnight.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 5, 2012 at 12:24 am
“Konrad, I’m still waiting for an explanation of how it is supposed to work. Until then, how can you possibly test it with an experiment? What will you test, what experiment can you possibly do, if you don’t know how the warming is supposed to occur?”
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Initially a simple experiment is all that is required.
1. create a pressure vessel 100mm diameter 50mm high
2. insulate the interior walls with 5mm EPS foam and thin reflective foil
3. place a matt black cast iron target disk in the base of the cylinder 80mm diameter 5 mm thick
4. close the top of the cylinder with a double layer low density polyethylene window with vacuum between the layers
5. above the top of the cylinder but not in contact with it, place a matt black plate that is cryo cooled as cold as practical
6. through a small hole in the centre of the plate focus a strong light source so that the target disk but not the walls of the chamber are illuminated
7. include one thermometer to measure the target plate and one radiation shielded thermometer to measure gas temperature
8. fill the cylinder with 1 atmosphere pressure of dry nitrogen
9. allow the gas and target disk to reach a stable 20 degrees
10. switch on the light source for a set period of time
11. record temperatures
Then increase the gas pressure, allow internal temperatures to stabilise at 20 degrees and repeat the experiment. If Nikolov and Zeller are correct, the test with the higher gas pressure should result in more energy being retained by the combined mass of the gas and target plate.
The chamber may not be perfectly insulated, the polyethylene may not be totally IR transparent and the matt black cold plate will not be at 3K. However the effect should be strong enough to be detectable despite these limitations.
SORRY, my refernce to Tim Folkerts should have been http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-climate-theory-may-confuse-cause-and-effect/#comment-850945
This may be my last post here – unbearably slow – my computer
Bob Fernley-Jones says:
Yes, the lapse rate is dependent on gravity…but I don’t see how this is supportive of N&Z except to the extent that they say some things that the scientific community agrees with. (For example: ***News Flash**** N&Z are not the first people to realize that the ideal gas law applies to the atmosphere!)
In particular, the dry adiabatic lapse rate is given by -g/c_p where g is the acceleration of gravity and c_p is the specific heat at constant pressure. And, in the troposphere, the actual lapse rate is basically pegged to the adiabatic lapse rate because the radiative effects are driving the lapse rate to a value higher than the adiabatic lapse rate but such a lapse rate is unstable to convection. Hence, convection lowers it back down to the adiabatic lapse rate. As a result of this, convection reduces the radiative greenhouse effect from what it would be in the absence of convection. [If the adiabatic lapse rate were zero instead of its actual value, convection would drive the troposphere all the way toward an isothermal profile with height…and the radiative greenhouse effect, which depends on the temperature decreasing with height, would essentially disappear.]
“Ok, just following this along here then. If the sun were to heat the surface to -18C, the air would heat to -18C, right and no warmer? And even if we multiplied the amount of N2 in the atmosphere by 10 times the air would still only be -18C, right? Convection and conduction can’t raise the temperature of the surface to higher than the surface was originally in this example.”
Correct.
So what explains Venus.
What is the hottest a planet at Venus distance could be warmed?
At Venus distance the Sun has average flux of 2700 watts per meter.
Venus is 737 K. And has average solar flux of 2700.
737 cubed times .0000000567 is 16726 watts per square meter.
With 1 atm of nitrogen Venus should be less than 470 K
Or 2766 watts per sq meter of solar flux could only get to 470 K [197 C]
Venus atmosphere is so large and such pressure water wouldn’t boil
at 197 C. Water at 197 boils at below 225 psi about 15 atms.
At Venus current temperature of 737 K with it’s 92 atm atmosphere
water would instantly boil. Spraying a water hose on Venus would
interesting. It’s not added energy- it’s endothermic. rather than explosion
it be an implosion.
I can’t think of anything like it occurring on earth.
You could two mechanism which bring non gaseous water to Venus.
Volcanoes and space rocks.
Anyways after brief calculation roughly for every molecule of water turning
into gas you have 4 -5 molecules of CO2 turning into liquid CO2. Not as
implosive as thought. If try to use a hose to fill a kiddie pool with water,
you get kiddie pool of liquid CO2.
Only thing I can think of that causes Venus to get so hot is interior heat.
With earth you lose even enormous amount of volcano heat, and with
Venus only small percentage of that heat leaves- so accumulation of millions
of years of internal heat.
Stephen Wilde says:
January 5, 2012 at 2:18 pm
“2) Incoming solar irradiation interacts with the gravitational field to raise the temperature to T2 because the energy flowing through the system slows down more under the influence of increased gravity and the system energy content rises.”
Do you mean the mass of the atmosphere rather than the gravitational field? The gravitational field of Earth would not be changed very much even if the atmosphere was ten times as massive? IAC, I am interested in how this slowdown works. One could say that GH gases slow radiation down by causing the radiation to absorbed and emitted many times before it finally leaves the atmosphere. Is it the same basic process under your framework?
Cheers, 🙂
Stephen Wilde says:
To the extent that I have said that, it is as an explanation as to why the data that they plot generally shows a positive correlation between their defined “surface temperature enhancement” and the surface pressure.
It does not support any of the scientific nonsense that you write, and particularly your claim “GHGs make no difference to the surface temperature because unlike the gravitationally induced temperature they affect the atmosphere only and not the surface” which is utterly and completely ridiculous.
While it’s true that a small increment in T will radiate incrementally more power than the same incremental decrease in radiation due to a small decrease in T of the same increment value, this difference amounts to very little when the difference in T is very small compared to the magnitude of T. T is nominally around 288k for the Earth. Assuming variations tend to be typically around 5% of this value, one can compare the SB (T+5%)^4 and (T-5%)^4 actual calculation with the approximation of Simga* T^4 * ( 1 + 4*5%) and Sigma *T^4 * (1-4*5%) and come out with values that are good to within 3% for the power. For differences in the neighborhood of 10%, the error with the approximation increases to around 12% on the low side and just over 6 % on the high side. 10% low corresponds to around -13 C
if you are talking about a solid, then density has nothing to do wth temperature.
if you are talking about a liquid, then density has nothing to do with temperature.
if you’re talking about a refrigerant fluid in contact with a heat source, density improves the conductivity from the source to anywhere else – but does not increase the temperature.
and gas pressure is meaningless outside of PVT=PVT. raising p does not raise t. that’s not even passable algebra. there is no p without vt. p does not cause vt
reason can only rely on prayer when the basics of epistemology are blithely disregarded,
Joel Shore @ur momisugly January 5, 2:34 pm
Perhaps you need to think outside the covers of Ray Pierrehumbert’s book(s). Perhaps even remove it from under your pillow and place it in storage to gather dust.
I just realised why GHGs have a zero net effect as per the Nikolov equations and observations.
Remember that a non GHG atmosphere cannot radiate out.
If one introduces GHG molecules then suddenly it can radiate out.
Half of the radiated energy goes up and out.
Half of the radiated energy goes down.
Net effect zero.