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.
gnomish says:
January 6, 2012 at 10:44 am
“…when the physician takes the patient’s temperature, does he hold the thermometer halfway between the bed and the ceiling?
So, if we take the patient’s temperature orally, rectally, whatever, that will tell us the heat flux radiating away from the room he is in? Equally if the room is the Royal Albert Hall or an airplane lavatory? Is that what you are saying?
Richard M says:
Okay, I could have launched into a long-winded explanation about how there is no mechanistic reason to believe that it represents any fundamental limitation and so on and so forth, but I decided to do something a little bit different, along the lines of what James Randi does to debunk psychics: First, I duplicated N&T’s fit to the data shown in Figure 5. In fact, I first put in their values for the 4 free parameters and saw that my plot looked liked theirs. Then I let the nonlinear optimization routine vary them…It turns out that the parameters are not very well-constrained, so they settled to different values but ones that don’t improve the fit all that much, at least from a visual perspective.
Next, I did this: For the 3 bodies that have a substantial greenhouse effect, I replaced their actual observed temperature with the conventionally-calculated blackbody temperature (not N&Z’s unconventional calculation), which is 255 K, 82.7 K, and 232 K for Earth, Titan, and Venus, respectively. Now, I’ll admit that the data look squirrelier… because N_TE is no longer a monotonically-increasing function: N_TE for Venus is lower than for Titan and Earth! Nonetheless, the fitting routine was still able to get a good fit to the data…In fact, the sum of squares for this fit was even a tiny bit better than what I got for the real data. (I think visually, it looks a little worse, because it is a little worse for Earth and Titan, where one can easily see the errors, but is presumably better for those planets all squatched up on the y-axis where the errors are hard to see…. Nevertheless, it is still a fairly nice fit.)
So, by your logic, I think that we can now conclude that in fact, all of the “conventional” greenhouse effect on Earth, Titan, and Venus does not exist at all! The Earth can’t get any higher than 255 K and Venus is sitting at a chilly 232 K.
Brrrrr…I am feeling colder already!
Seriously though, I think this illustrates how one can fit data pretty well with several parameters. And note that I was at a disadvantage: It is quite likely that N&Z shopped around quite a bit with trying out different fitting forms…In fact, they could have even tried different estimates of the “surface temperature enhancement” (i.e., ways to compute their T_sb). I didn’t do that at all. I just took the exact functional fitting form and T_sb values that they had and tried the first thing that I could think of that would make a change to the data that would be dramatic enough to be illustrative but not so dramatic that one would expect it to completely change the sort of functional form expected. [I actually didn’t count on the fact that N_TE for Venus would lower than…in fact, less than half that…for Earth and Titan. That might have made me more nervous whether I would get a good fit if I had anticipated that!]
By the way, if anyone wants to duplicate my results, I already gave you the 3 modified “observational” surface temperature values above. The values for the 4 parameters in N&Z’s Equation (7) that the optimization routine converged to (in the order that they appear in that equation from left to right) are 0.228969, 0.0862835, -0.0009906245, 0.4062101.
Actually, SB is the radiation emanating from the surface, so you have to take the temperature there on the skin. Skin temperature is highly variable because the body regulates its temperature through the skin, and it is not the same on every part of the body. So, which temperature will you use, over what interval and in which surroundings, and what surface area determines to total energy flux? And, what is the spectrum of the emanations?
“You need equations, and data which shows the equations fit.”
If we had equations, we could do a fair job of predicting the climate.
Which can’t done at the moment. If it could there wouldn’t all talking:)
But one of latest wattsupwiththat posts:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/06/what-we-dont-know-about-energy-flow/
Does have equations.
And it looks correct to me.
Which means I don’t see anything wrong with it.
But isn’t done yet. Need to put number in it- but it’s equations
rather than just words.
Joel Shore;
Not only do I probably spend a lot of time reading the “skeptic” point of view, I clearly have a much better understanding of it than nearly everyone else here.>>>
You arrogance knows no bounds. For the record, there is no such thing as the “skeptic point of view”. There are various people who describe themselves as skeptics and their reasons for doing so are as varied as the people themselves. In this very thread there are skeptics who have supported your position and skeptics who have decried it. Declaring yourself the emperor wrapped in the cloak of ultimate knowledge while parading around with no clothes on just doesn’t advance your position.
but heat is not temperature, is it? that’s how come you can’t convert degrees to watts. is that what i’m saying? or am i saying that the atmosphere is not exactly the planet surface? or am i saying that heavier women are hotter? i made a stupid analogy and analogies are always stupid one way or another.
i’m saying that ‘pressure’ IS the equilibrium state, not the cause of anything, but the observed relationship among p, v and t in an equilibrium state.
english is my first language. i respect definitions.
i’m saying that ‘gravitational thermal enhancement’ is part of that same supernatural world where you can fill a bucket full of holes and hang it on a sky hook. here’s the stupid analogies again…
i’m saying that the narrative surrounding the phony issue of co2 and radiation physics governing my tomatoes is characterised by false concepts produced by language abuse.
i’m saying that critical thinking can not be done with terms that are whimsical.
i’m saying that false distinctions are not useful for logic, too.
let’s just say that ‘effective radiative surface’ isn’t a surface, ok?
and the whole climate issue is about a refrigeration system. a refrigeration system does not have as its distinguishing characteristic that the working fluid be considered an insulator. the principles that apply are used all the time. but climatology lingo is just full of causal reversals, false distinctions and supernatural causes. did you ever hear the term ‘teleconnection’ used in physics before mann?
so yah, i suppose it was always a given that climatastrophe (neologism… ew..) was never about science – however, attempting to refute the nonscience on its own terms is just hugging the tar baby. (analogies… ew…) it seems to be metastatic. now i’m afflicted. time to stfu.
OK, folks, I’m gonna unilaterally declare victory here.
Why?
Because:
1) Nobody has been able to explain the mechanism whereby Nikolov says that planetary temperatures can be raised above the blackbody temperature for the planet.
2) Nobody has answered my question. To recap the bidding, I’d said:
Suppose we a planet, but without an atmosphere, in thermal equilibrium. The surface will radiate at the same rate that it is absorbing energy. Lets assume the surface is absorbing 235 W/m2. It has to be radiating the same amount, 235 W/m2. (Let’s also assume it is rotating quite rapidly, so that daily heating/cooling is not an issue.)
Now, lets assume that the Jelbring/Nikolov hypothesis is true. We add an atmosphere to the planet, an atmosphere that is totally transparent to long- and shortwave. Somehow, the Jelbring mechanism warms up the surface to say 250 W/m2 or something. Note that in the entire system, the surface is the only thing capable of absorbing/emitting radiation. So when the Jelbring Mechanism kicks in and the surface warms, it starts emitting more energy than it’s receiving. And because the atmosphere is totally transparent to longwave, all that 250 W/m2 is emitted from the surface to space. [NOTE: numbers for purposes of illustration only.]
At that point … the planet is emitting more energy than it is absorbing. It’s absorbing 235W/m2, and emitting 250 W/m2.
And yet by some unknown mechanism, according to Jelbring/Nikolov, the planet doesn’t cool back down to equilibrium. Instead, presumably because the atmospheric pressure “enhances (amplifies) the energy supplied by an external source such as the Sun through density-dependent rates of molecular collision” or somesuch doubletalk, the surface stays warmer indefinitely, despite the planet emitting more energy than it is absorbing.
Anyone care to explain to me how that’s not a violation of the laws of thermodynamics? I asked Konrad, with no answer, so let me throw the question to the crowd.
If the Jelbring Hypothesis is true, and a perfectly transparent atmosphere can heat a planet’s surface so that it is emitting more energy than it is absorbing … where is the extra energy coming from?
Those were my questions:
1. How does the proposed Nikolov mechanism work?
2. If it does work, and it can raise a planet with a perfectly transparent atmosphere above the blackbody temperature, what is the source of the energy needed to do so?
As far as I know, no one has answered them, so I’m gonna say there’s nothing to discuss.
w.
PS—Before someone says ‘where is the energy coming from in a planetary greenhouse’, the difference is that in the Nikolov situation (perfectly transparent atmosphere) the surface is the only thing emitting radiation. So it is constrained to be at the temperature specified by how much energy it is receiving.
When there are two things that can radiate (surface and atmosphere) the situation is different. The total radiation from the two needs to equal the incoming radiation. So the temperature of the surface is no longer constrained.
See my posts “The Steel Greenhouse” and “People Living in Glass Planets” for my explanation of how that affects things.
Bart says:
January 6, 2012 at 11:00 am
“So, if we take the patient’s temperature orally,…”
Bart, since H2O and CO2 are both GHG’s and are in your mouth at atmospheric concentrations radiation leaving your inside cheeks, roof of mouth and tongue would be absorbed by the GHG’s and heat your thermometer above the actual body temperture. At least that is the theory. I think under the arm would also have the same problem. Rectally maybe the only way to get a proper reading.
Willis says:
Just to be clear, what Willis means is that the total radiation ***escaping the Earth’s atmosphere*** has to equal the incoming radiation. The point is that some of the radiation from the surface is now absorbed by the atmosphere and, while the atmosphere emits some radiation into space too, it emits less into space than the amount it absorbs from the surface.
Joel Shore says:
January 6, 2012 at 11:13 am
So, by your logic, I think that we can now conclude that in fact, all of the “conventional” greenhouse effect on Earth, Titan, and Venus does not exist at all!
It appears your reading comprehension is a little off. I’ve been saying they all have a GHE. Yes, just the opposite of what you claimed. My point is the GHE may have a limiting physical basis which is why all the planets can be described by the same equation.
It could be your equation is a better description of that physical basis, I don’t know. But, misrepresenting what I said isn’t going to change anything.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 6, 2012 at 12:00 pm
OK, folks, I’m gonna unilaterally declare victory here.
I’m with you. However, I would caution that you read my comments a little closer. What I have been saying is the Jelbring/Nikolov conjecture may have some interesting material to chew on. The idea that multiple planets can have their temperature profile (which I agree is based on the standard view of the GHE) described by a simple equation just begs for some physical explanation. My conjecture is that explanation is a maximum GHE.
Look at the differences in the atmospheres and yet a simple equation can predict the temperature of each planet. Does that not make you curious? If my conjecture can be explained physically then we have no need to fear future emissions. The GHE can’t make it any warmer in and of itself.
PS. It was your little question that convinced me the Jelbring/Nikolov mechanism itself was flawed. Thanks for the insight.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 6, 2012 at 12:00 pm
“At that point … the planet is emitting more energy than it is absorbing. It’s absorbing 235W/m2, and emitting 250 W/m2.”
Only if you assume a blackbody distribution for the planetary surface. But, because it is in contact with the atmosphere, and conduction and convection are acting on the surface, it will not be a Planck distribution, and the assumption is not justified. What distribution will it be? It does not appear that anybody knows.
Sorry, the proclamation of victory is premature. We went into overtime, and the ultimate conclusion remains in flux (pun intended).
(1) No…You did not. Where do you think you did?
(2) No, Tim did not agree with you. He is talking about the case where the atmosphere has elements in it that absorb and emit radiation. What Willis and I (and Tim) are talking about is the fact that in the absence of such elements in the atmosphere, it is impossible for the Earth’s surface to be at a temperature where it is emitting more than ~240 W/m^2. In fact, it is currently at a temperature where it is emitting ~390 W/m^2.
I want to say, I do not have a dog in this fight. I do not care if the GHG hypothesis is correct or not. It does not affect my broader view of the AGW debate. So, I am claiming the status of impartial observer, and trying to get to the bottom of the problem.
As anyone can see in my various posts, I have wavered from openness, to near certainty that the GHG hypothesis is correct, and back to agnosticism. Data is needed, quantitative relationships need to be expressed, and people need to dig deeper than standard formulas which are based on assumptions which do not hold for the system in question.
Richard M says:
And, I am demonstrating to you that we can come up with just about as good a fit using N&K’s form even if we change the data quite a bit! The exact way in which I changed the data isn’t so much important as the fact that we could still fit the wrong data pretty well. That doesn’t inspire much confidence that their good fit means anything whatsoever now, does it? [It is analogous to what James Randi does when he demonstrates that he can “bend spoons” just as well as Uri Geller can, but he tells you flat-out that the isn’t doing it using paranormal methods but rather by sleight-of-hand.]
(And, by the way, most of what N&K are calling their surface temperature enhancement is not due to the greenhouse effect. It is simply due to the redistribution of temperature across the planetary surface in a way that does not change the amount that the planet emits back out into space, which is what is fundamental.)
I am not claiming my equation is a better description…In fact we know that it predicts a temperatures for the Earth and Venus that are wrong (but are close to the values that I fit to). My point is that getting a good fit with several parameters is no indication whatsoever of having a sound physical basis. And, the fact that their “theory” is nothing more than a curve-fitting exercise with various mumbo-jumbo and incorrect things thrown into the mix does little to suggest there is any sound physical basis.
Richard M says:
See…And, here you have given further examples of just the kind of nonsense that my little experiment was meant to demonstrate. The fact that I can also “bend spoons” should perhaps make you consider the likelihood that spoon-bending ain’t that difficult!
I agree with Bart [@1:04 pm], whose comments have been consistently objective.
By the way, as a light-hearted aside, here is a fun proof of silliness of a claim by “I can do it too”: There was some guy named Richard Wallace who published a book advancing the theory that Lewis Carroll [Charles Dodgson] was Jack the Ripper on the basis of the fact that Dodgson is known to have enjoyed word games like anagrams and that Wallace could create anagrams from various passages of Carroll’s work that said various horrific descriptions of murder.
Now, the more conventional way to argue against this would be to try to explain to people how it is not that difficult to create anagrams out of passages of a certain length, and so on and so forth. However, two readers of Harper’s Magazine (Francis Heaney and Guy Jacobson), where an except of Richard Wallace’s book appeared, took a very different tack: They actually created an excellent anagram (honestly better than any of Wallace’s that I saw) out of the first few sentences of Wallace’s work!
Here is the original:
And, here is the anagram:
When I saw this, it seemed too good to be true and so I wrote a MATLAB program to count letter occurrences just to verify that it is indeed a perfect anagram! These two people are now forever my heroes!
Bart says:
What are you talking about? The radiative emission from a surface is independent of conduction and convection. It just depends on temperature. Besides which, there are measurements that the surface emission is at least somewhere around 390 W/m^2, and certainly not down anywhere near 240 W/m^2.
That hardly makes you impartial anymore than I would consider someone who was agnostic about whether the Earth is 4.5 billion years old or 6000 years old to be an impartial observer! The fact that you remain agnostic about the obvious shows us how partial you really are!
Bart, disregard Joel Shore. His last paragraph above shows how he is trying to paint you into a creationist corner. Reprehensible. When Joel Shore fails to make a valid point and is called on it, his standard fallback position has been to label skeptics as “ideologues”. He’s done it more times than I can count.
In contrast to Joel Shore, your comments have little emotion and much thoughtful common sense. And like Willis’ comments, I read them all.
“Suppose we a planet, but without an atmosphere, in thermal equilibrium. The surface will radiate at the same rate that it is absorbing energy. Lets assume the surface is absorbing 235 W/m2. It has to be radiating the same amount, 235 W/m2. (Let’s also assume it is rotating quite rapidly, so that daily heating/cooling is not an issue.)”
Any shaped body [including a sphere] which rotates can not receive an equal amount of energy per square meter.
The hemisphere of the Moon facing the sun does not receive an equal amount of sunlight equally on this hemisphere.
Second: If you spin the moon fast, you will cause the night time surface to be warmer- since you have given enough time to reach thermal equilibrium, it radiate same total amount energy as the moon rotating at current speed.
Said differently our Moon radiates far less energy on the nite side than compared to it’s day side- spinning it faster will allow more energy to get to the night side; resulting in more energy emitted on night side and less energy emitted on day side.
You can’t rotate the moon fast enough so daily heating/cooling is not an issue. If we ignore physics, and imagine one could spin it this fast [making 1 hour being a day] , then the surface temperature at the equator [and up to around 40 latitude {more half the total surface area}]
would be about 15-18 C from the Sun’s level of solar energy- about 1360 watts per square meter.
If one day were an hour, then this tropic zone would receive about 1300 watt for 15 mins- starting 7 1/2 mins of morning and followed by 7 1/2 of late afternoon, and 30 mins of nite,
“Now, lets assume that the Jelbring/Nikolov hypothesis is true. We add an atmosphere to the planet, an atmosphere that is totally transparent to long- and shortwave. Somehow, the Jelbring mechanism warms up the surface to say 250 W/m2 or something. Note that in the entire system, the surface is the only thing capable of absorbing/emitting radiation. So when the Jelbring Mechanism kicks in and the surface warms, it starts emitting more energy than it’s receiving. And because the atmosphere is totally transparent to longwave, all that 250 W/m2 is emitted from the surface to space. [NOTE: numbers for purposes of illustration only.]”
When you say warms up surface to say 250 W/m2, you saying in beginning of day the surface is emitting less than 250 W/m2, so say, 200W/m2, then warms so at some point so it emits 250 W/m2, and does so for some period of time and toward late afternoon the surface drops to say, emitting 245 W/m2, and in the during nite drops to say 200 W/m/2?
“If the Jelbring Hypothesis is true, and a perfectly transparent atmosphere can heat a planet’s surface so that it is emitting more energy than it is absorbing … where is the extra energy coming from?”
i don’t think Jelbring Hypothesis is saying this. The only way something can emit more energy than it absorbed is to cool- that is what cooling is.
Our sun is cooling itself- without doing so it would get to billions and billions of degrees:)
“Those were my questions:
1. How does the proposed Nikolov mechanism work?”
Imagine something one could make, that cools the surface.
How could you rob the heat from the surface? Got any ideas?
How about a heat pump- or refrigerator.
What you do is make cold gases, runs through pipe to heat exchanger, sun warms it then you could transport the hotter gas somewhere else. One could use the hot gas to do work or simply heat the ground a mile below the surface. Because you allowing the sun to do more work- by heating something cold, you are going to cause “global warming”.
Such a thing might be called green- and it would cost a lot money and be pointless- filling in that check box, but it also would slightly warm the planet. And it could be called “self-sufficient” in terms of not needing an external source of power. Though not “self-sufficent” in terms paying for the labor and materials cost needed- so obviously, it’s job creation.
“2. If it does work, and it can raise a planet with a perfectly transparent atmosphere above the blackbody temperature, what is the source of the energy needed to do so?”
The sun? Unless it’s something exotic fission or fusion, it’s generally the sun.
But I think it’s explained in wattsupwiththat recent post:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/06/what-we-dont-know-about-energy-flow/
And I am waiting for more detailed paper on it.
Joel Shore says:
January 6, 2012 at 1:11 pm
See…And, here you have given further examples of just the kind of nonsense that my little experiment was meant to demonstrate. The fact that I can also “bend spoons” should perhaps make you consider the likelihood that spoon-bending ain’t that difficult!
Sorry Joel, that is just hand waving. Just because you could come up with a separate method of bending spoons doesn’t mean another valid method doesn’t exist. You’re using a fallacious analogy to try and support what is simply your opinion. Just because you can create a similar equation does not mean the given equation is invalid. Look, you may be right. I don’t really know. But, without further exploration we cannot know for sure.
OTOH, if there does exist a valid limit or maximum greenhouse effect it could explain a lot of problems. Co2 does not correlate well with temperature. If we’re at the peak of the GHE then we wouldn’t expect it to. It would also explain why GCMs are having trouble. Who knows, you could become famous by figuring out the physical mechanism.
Regarding Willis’s thought experiment comparing an airless planet to one that had a significant non-GHG atmosphere, can someone explain why the outgoing radiation (watts/mtr2) would have to correspond directly to temperature (Willis seems to be saying this; Stephen seems to be disagreeing)? I remember back in the 70s when I put a lower-temperature thermostat in my old Plymouth to try to keep it from boiling over during a really hot August. I always assumed I was using (roughly) the same amount of energy and my radiator was transferring the same amount of heat. In any case, I didn’t notice my gas mileage going up due to a cooler engine (I believe the reverse would be true if anything due to lower efficiencies).
I’ve tried Googling this on my own and the best I can find is that temperature does correlate directly to the movement of energy into or out of a system. But doesn’t having an atmosphere that is conducting away heat energy at the same time greatly complicate this? It seems possible, at least, that a higher temperature and an energy balance aren’t mutually exclusive. (I realize we’re all waiting to hear what the mechanism for that would be from N&Z.) Is the answer dependent on what you believe to be the truth about GHE, or is it a fact that a given surface will radiate at a rate proportional to temperature? This is really a sincere question.
Thanks in advance,
Dan
Dan in Nevada says:
January 6, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Regarding Willis’s thought experiment comparing an airless planet to one that had a significant non-GHG atmosphere, can someone explain why the outgoing radiation (watts/mtr2) would have to correspond directly to temperature (Willis seems to be saying this …
Dan, it has to do with the way this special situation has to work. If the atmosphere has no GHGs it cannot radiate any energy to space from the air itself. Hence, all the energy has to be radiated from the surface. In addition, the for the planet to be in balance (not gaining or losing energy) the energy in must equal the energy out. So, it’s go to be at the surface and it’s got to equal the incoming radiation. That’s what Willis stated.
Also note that any conduction into the atmosphere would have no way to radiate out since our assumption is the atmosphere has no radiating gases. So, it could only conduct back to the surface. I could come up with a dense atmosphere that might be warmer at higher altitudes but it wouldn’t be realistic and it still wouldn’t change the temperature of the surface.