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.
We seem to be coming back to a question of semantics. And semantic questions almost always are unsolvable in this sort of setting for many reasons — different people have different definitions in mind; new people come into the middle of the discussion; different people have different scientific & mathematical backgrounds.
The very term “greenhouse effect” is a case in point. For many people, “greenhouse effect” means something like
This is the definition I typically have in mind, and it seems to be the most common definition when you google “greenhouse effect”.
In this thread, many people are expanding that definition to include ANY affect that ANY atmosphere would have on either the “average temperature” or the “effective temperature”. This is also and interesting question, but it is a different question. And when different people are discussing different things, it is inevitable that people will talk past each other.
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Another recurring problem is dealing with the concept of “other things being equal”. Any calculation or model or thought experiment necessarily has many factors that must be assumed to be constant to even begin to answer any questions. With things as complex and interconnected as the atmosphere and the climate, there is no way to be completely consistent with “other things being equal”. For example, the thought experiment “magically remove GHGs from the atmosphere” could imply that water must be removed, which would change albedo as the clouds disappear — and removing water could imply removing the oceans — and that could imply no life, completely changing the surface ….
Unless someone in the thread is allowed to control the definitions and the “other things being equal”, there will always be issues that are purely semantic, rather than getting at the science.
Bob Fernley-Jones says:
I have not thought enough about the atmosphere without greenhouse elements to have a strong opinion on its temperature structure, but here is the important point: Regardless of the structure, what will be true is that the temperature at the surface will have to be compatible with having 240 W/m^2 radiated back out into space which, for a uniform temperature distribution on the surface, means that the temperature will be about 255 K. Whether the atmosphere will have a lapse rate and thus get colder with altitude from there is a fairly subtle question and I don’t have a confident answer. (An atmosphere with no easy way to radiate away its energy is actually more complicated to think about than one that can!)
This is the general point that you and others often seem to get hung up on: Even if you know the lapse rate, that does not determine the surface temperature uniquely. You still need to know the temperature at one height. It turns out that the height that you know the temperature of is the effective radiating layer; it has to be 255 K and then once you know that and you know the lapse rate, you can extrapolate down to the surface to find the surface temperature.
In the case of an atmosphere with no greenhouse elements, the effective radiating layer is necessarily at the surface and the surface temperature would be 255 K for a blackbody-emitter Earth absorbing 240 W/m^2 from the sun. As you add greenhouse gases, the effective radiating layer rises higher in the atmosphere…and hence, the level at which the temperature is 255 K rises higher. This means that the surface temperature you get by extrapolating back down to the surface (using the lapse rate) also increases.
“As you add greenhouse gases, the effective radiating layer rises higher in the atmosphere…and hence, the level at which the temperature is 255 K rises higher.”
ok, fine.
” This means that the surface temperature you get by extrapolating back down to the surface (using the lapse rate) also increases.”
orly? why?
would it be cuz the ‘effective radiating layer which is not a surface” gets solar radiation and in addition, gets upside.down.back.radiated by greenhouse liquids and solids from below to raise their temperature?
and that’s why i put a pot on the electric burner – cuz it reflects radiation back and makes the burner hotter!
ooh- and if i use a really heavy pot- the gravity makes it even way hotter!
oh- and if i clamp it in a vise – the increased pressure makes it as hot as venus.
Joel Shore;
The part of my post you are missing is this, David:
However, I think that you are making much too big a deal out of this, at least for current Earth-like temperature distributions. The fact is that the distribution of temperatures on the Earth is such that this is a small effect. It may be a little bit larger an effect for an Earth without greenhouse gases, since this would allow somewhat larger temperature swings, but still likely not that large as long as there is a significant atmosphere of any kind.
If you want to argue that 390 W/m^2 might really be 395 W/m^2 or 400 W/m^2, then I won’t disagree. In fact, the updated version of Trenberth and Kiehl now says 396 W/m^2 and I think part of the upward adjustment is due to the fact that they have now tried to take into account the non-uniform temperature distribution issue. But, 390 W/m^2 is a nice round number and a good conservative estimate, so I continue to use it for the sake of such discussions.
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Joel,
You are not only grasping at straws, you are using them to poke yourself in the eye!
1. If Trenberth and Kiehl had produced a new set of numbers taking into account the lack of uniformity of the earth’s temperature profile, they most certainly would have arrived at values MUCH higher than that. Given an “average” of 288K in a temperature distribution of that ranges across the globe from 190K at the poles to 313K in the tropics and fluctuates by 20 degrees or more planet wide on a daily basis, that would result in an effective surface temp (and hence w/m2) well above those values. Hence I presume that is NOT what they did.
2. Is this the same Kevin Trenberth who gloated about forcing Wolfgang Wagner to resign from an academic journal for having the temerity to publish results based on observed data that falsified Trenberth’s computer models?
3. Is this the same Trenberth that claimed his “missing heat” was being sequestered in the ocean depths without a single measurement from the ocean depths to corroborate that statement, with no physical mechanism to get it there, and with no explanation of how it could have done so without being noticed as it made itz way from surface to depths through the several hundred meters of ocean that we do have data for?
4. Is this the same Kevin Trenberth who, when confronted with his own data showing that the earth may not be heating up as expected and was simply losing the “missing heat” to space called it a travesty? He considers evidence in his own data showing that CAGW is NOT a concern and calls it a travesty?
You want to quote results from THAT Kevin Tremberth?
Tell you what, let’s accept that straw you are holding onto, no matter how ridiculous it is to hold onto it. Why are you poking yourself in the eye with it?
While you are directing attention to a possible explanation that would explain perhaps 5 or 10 watts, you’ve ignored the other end of the calculation! 255K isn’t even close! I demonstrated upthread that a simple calculation based on an artificial (but representative) insolation curve over a 24 hour period arrives at an effective blackbody temperature in the range of 150K, and that is for the tropics! Throw in the additional ranges of insolation from the temperate and arctic zones, and you will get a number even lower!
Until we start with the actual EFFECTIVE blackbody temperature of earth from the highly non uniform 240 w/m2, there is no point even figuring out how Trenberth et al arrived at their number. Even if their adjustment is within a few w/m2, so what? Calculating total GHE against 255K is wrong by AT LEAST 100K and most likely more.
wow. now that i’m ok on this, i must work on conquering my fear of widths. i think secondary dimensional effects in the length pipeline from a backlog of human shortness may cause that – but i need funds for studies.
Bob Fernley-Jones says:
January 8, 2012 at 1:19 pm
” However, I don’t think you have replied on what drives the conduction and various convective/advective energy transfers in said atmosphere. There is energy involved in doing that which implies that the surface could indeed be hotter than you intuitively assert.”
I suppose I would say that if I were to turn on a burner on my stove underneath a pot of water, I could be pretty confident in asserting that regardless of what convection or advection goes on in the water it will never get warmer than the burner.
“Richard Courtney has advised you that N&Z claim that as a consequence of atmospheric pressure, the surface T is higher than in the standard explanation, regardless of GHE. This concept does not require extra energy, just as the concept of GHE does not require extra energy.”
If the point is, *could* there be something that acts just like the GHE, but is not the GHE (as currently understood)? Then, yes, there *could* be. Something that acts like the GHE would not violate the conservation of energy. From my POV, being skeptical of such a new effect is just being scientific. We should not confidently assert the existence of such an effect in the absence of meaningful evidence of its existence.
Cheers, 🙂
shawnhet says:
January 8, 2012 at 2:42 pm
“I suppose I would say that if I were to turn on a burner on my stove underneath a pot of water, I could be pretty confident in asserting that regardless of what convection or advection goes on in the water it will never get warmer than the burner.”
While that’s undoubtedly true, what is at issue is whether or not you can trap more of the heat from the burner and whether that in turn would raise the temperature of the water. In your example, merely putting a fairly heavy lid on the pot does the trick.
As to your larger point, “being skeptical of such a new effect is just being scientific. We should not confidently assert the existence of such an effect in the absence of meaningful evidence of its existence”, you are totally right.
yeah- it’s a real good idea to keep water in the pot otherwise you can melt a hole in the bottom of the pot. water won’t let it get near hot enuff…. but i may recant if there’s an auto-da-fe just so’s not to get stuck reradiating ir at a pile of sticks.
Joel Shore @ur momisugly January 8, 1:54 pm
Thanks for your response Joel, on my suggestion that the surface temperature on an “N2 planet” could be higher than anticipated in standard theory because of non radiative effects. I understand what you explained, but you seem to have missed my main point:
Whilst Trenberth et al 2009 claim that the Earth’s surface cools substantially via evapotranspiration, (80 W/m^2), compared with the total radiative loss, (23 GHE + 40 direct W/m^2), there would still be conduction, convection, and advection in an N2 atmosphere. What is more, it is an interesting question intuitively to ponder if these effects might increase with less surface cooling*.
Well anyway, the point is that energy is transferred from the hotspot under the sun to the polar regions etc, and there needs to be an explanation as to what drives this energy transfer, since there cannot be any extra energy. To me, the only sensible explanation is that the surface temperature must be higher than your BB equivalent to the insolation. (somewhat like the GHE)
*OTOH, in a transparent atmosphere, the hotspot would be far more localised and very much hotter than on Earth today. Thus, per T^4, the radiative loss to space would be rather more significant.
davidmhoffer says:
January 8, 2012 at 11:23 am
“Bart’s statement is correct by definition of SB Law.”
At least one person understands. Maybe some others who are reading but not participating. That’s probably the best we can hope for. If others haven’t got it yet, they’re not going to get it. So, the next comment is my last.
Joel Shore says:
January 8, 2012 at 6:52 am
“Now, we are simply asking you to present some sort of evidence that the assumption is so poor that it makes a significant enough difference to matter.”
Well, maybe now you are. It’s what you should have been asking from the start, instead of wasting time and pixels being dragged kicking and screaming toward treating this problem rigorously.
I do not know the answer. That is why I have stated I am agnostic on the matter. But, given the very powerful non-equilibrium processes at the surface interface, I see it as a not-at-all-remote possibility, and will have to be convinced one way or the other.
“Tim has made the point that even given the highly non-equilibrium environment of the surface of the sun, the approximation seems to work pretty well in describing the emission from the sun.”
What is the “surface” under consideration? How do we calculate its temperature? If you think about it, you will see you are pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, and engaging in a logical exercise of the form a = b, and b = a, therefore a = a! Eureka!
Long ago and far away, Tim F. agreed with me:
which is why he broke my heart. The midpoint of the troposphere is only 5 km up, and at that point, everything balances. This is why I think the possibility of energy balance without GHGs is “not-at-all-remote”, or at least, not remote, anyway, and I need more info to make a personal judgment.
If someone were holding a gun to my head right now and insisting I take a stand, I do not know what I would say. Fortunately, nobody is, and I do not have to make a choice. Scientists should not be making decisions on such weighty matters with only ambiguous evidence. That is the essence of the scientific method, which brought us out of the dark ages where humans made decisions affecting wide swaths of the population based on nothing more than personal preferences of powerful people for how things ought to be.
Well, no, I see now he specified “a GHG atmosphere”. Oh, well. I don’t want to argue it anymore. I’m still waiting to be convinced. Over and out.
shawnhet @ur momisugly January 8, 2:42 pm
To your first point:
I can’t see the relevance of your analogy, but a few points for you:
• If you turn-up the heat under your pot of water, notice that convection increases. This demonstrates that energy is required to drive convection, and it is non-radiative.
• More energy is entering the water, but it does not get hotter. Among other things, evaporation increases thus balancing the increased energy input.
• The boiling temperature of the water will increase if atmospheric pressure increases
As to your second point, yes but so what?
gnomish says:
Because if the lapse rate stays constant at 6.5 C per km while the effective radiating layer where the temperature is 255 K moves up from 5km to 6km, then the temperature at the surface increases from 255 K + (6.5 C/km)*(5 km ) = 287.5 K to 255 K + (6.5 C/km)*(6 km) = 294 K.
Bart says:
What you are saying is that equations that are used everyday in engineering, remote sensing, and other fields might not be correct to the accuracy necessary that we are talking about here. That sounds like a pretty remote possibility to me. I can’t even find any information on supposed violations of these equations because of non-equilibrium conditions. I imagine that if such conditions exist, it would be in some extreme context like in lasers where you get an inverted population of the energy states or something like that.
It is interesting the extent to which people will demand much higher levels of evidence for things that go against what they want to believe.
Thanks Tim Folkerts. I do not pretend to “control the definitions” at WUWT but, since this is my Topic thread, let me suggest the following. as I wrote above at January 7, 2012 at 8:41 pm.
If this definition of “Greenhouse” Effect (GHE) with all else being equal is accepted, can we all agree the so defined GHE effect is about 33K, more or less? Earlier, some suggested it was more like 18K or perhaps an equal excursion up to 50K or thereabouts, and I would say 33K +/- 50%. Would that be agreeable?
Once we accept this rough and ready approximated temperature enhancement of our current actual GHG Earth vs a non GHG equivalent that holds Atmospheric mass and Earth System albedo constant, we can then move on to ask about the additional effect of changing the Atmospheric mass, more or less CO2 and other GHGs, etc. Just a suggestion.
-Ira
“I can’t even find any information on supposed violations of these equations because of non-equilibrium conditions.”
Like saying “I cannot find any information on the supposed requirement that bicycles have two wheels.” It’s definitional.
“It is interesting the extent to which people will demand much higher levels of evidence for things that go against what they want to believe.”
Isn’t it, though?
All right. I’m really going now.
Bob Fernley-Jones says:
Bob: I can’t really understand what you are trying to say here. It sounds like a vague hope that convection or conduction or evaporation-condensation can somehow allow you to get the surface temperature up. Alas, that just isn’t going to work: The problem is very basic – The only way that the Earth & its atmosphere communicate with the rest of the universe is via radiation. You have 240 W/m^2 coming in, so you have to have around 240 W/m^2 coming out; if you have a lot more, the Earth-atmosphere system as a whole will rapidly cool. If the surface of the Earth is at a temperature such that it is emitting 390 W/m^2 and there are nothing to absorb any of this radiation in the atmosphere and prevent it from escaping into space, there is nothing to stop the Earth-atmosphere system from rapidly cooling.
And, the satellite measurement of the emitted radiation confirm that what is preventing this from happening is the absorption of radiation in the bands where the greenhouse elements absorb such that the Earth as seen from space is only emitting ~240 W/m^2.
tallbloke:
Here http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/joel-shore-the-art-of-scientific-discourse/ I said, “This is why Nikolov and Zeller had to put in convection in such a way that, by their own emission, it drives the temperatures T_a and T_s to be the same (in obvious contradiction to what convection does in the real atmosphere).”
You have replied
I am talking about what they did in Section 2.1B) of their paper where they added convection into the simple radiative model and used it to show that “Equation (4) dramatically alters the solution to Eq. (3) by collapsing the difference between Ts, Ta and Te and virtually erasing the GHE (Fig. 3).” And, indeed they are right, if you write down an incorrect equation that forces Ts and Ta to be the same then you will virtually erase the GHE, guaranteed! For example, this is what Ray Pierrehumbert says on p. 148 of his textbook:
Allowing convection to drive the temperature at the radiating level and the ground to be equal is thus a very effective way to eliminate the greenhouse effect. However, it ignores the physical reality which is that convection can only drive the lapse rate down to the adiabatic lapse rate because lapse rates lower than that are stable and convection is suppressed.
Bob Fernley-Jones says:
January 8, 2012 at 5:22 pm
“I can’t see the relevance of your analogy, but a few points for you:”
The relevance is that convection and advection cannot increase the temperature beyond the temperature of the heat source. As such, if the sun provides the Earth with enough energy to uniformly heat the Earth to -18C no amount of moving heat around will increase the average temperature above -18C by the exact same logic as why the water cannot become warmer than the burner by moving heat around. Convection can increase the average temperature by making overall temperatures more uniform, but clearly something else is going on with Earth’s temperatures. I don’t see the relevance of talking about convection in the context of trying to explain why Earth’s or other planets temperatures are, on average, higher than *the highest possible temperatures allowed* by the solar input alone.
“As to your second point, yes but so what?”
So what is that there is not much to argue with the proposition that there *could be* another process that acts like the GHE but with a different mechanism entirely. Clearly IMO that *could be* true. You seem to be expecting people to be able to argue against the idea on logical (or philosophical) grounds. Well, I agree it is logically possible that things are as you assert, but so far you have not been able to point to any independent evidence of this property.
Cheers, 🙂
Joel Shore @ur momisugly January 8, 5:59 pm
Joel, oh verily, whenst thou spakest to Bart, nay didst scoldest he:
I’m trying to think of an appropriate metaphor…. Two edged sword maybe? No, anyway see if you can work-out what I mean.