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.
Ira,
I think you have missed a bit here, or are looking at the same phenomenon in a different direction. When solar radiation introduces energy into the atmosphere, in an open system, the natural desire of the gas is to expand. If there is no other force operating on the gas then all it would do is expand, and not heat.
Gravity is, for all intense and purposes an elastic restraint on the expansion of that gas. It isn’t as final as a piston or sealed jar, it does allow some expansion, but it all restricts free expansion and forces the atmospheric pressure to rise in comparison to a free state.
The increase in temperature can indeed be categorized as temporary as you say, but that is no different than the temporary heating provided by the GHE. Absent solar radiation the Earth would cool off rather quickly. It’s Gravity, in effect, that amplifies the effect of solar radiation on climate in this Unified Theory.
this is a lot of information for non-science girl like me, but appreciate the post very much!! the nerd inside me got excited to read this.
Ira, Thank you for your enlightening post. I appreciate the thought and polite open discourse of all participants.
I know just enough science to follow the arguments, but not enough to predict. I do think the example is slightly off, where A is an open system (or more open) by allowing heat to leave the tank, and B is a closed system, even though in the example it is obviously a larger, but still a closed system because the pressure increase remains constant. Can you comment?
Thanks again and keep up the good work.
Peter 2108 says:
In the Gas Law PV = nRT the ‘n’ stands for the number of moles of the gas not the number of molecules as Ira said.
A mole is fixed number of molecules known as Avagadro’number which is 6.023 X 10 to the 23rd Ira is not wrong in the sense that n is in fact a finite number of molecules.
I tend to agree with Ira & Willis. Let me propose a few scenarios that get to the core issues and see what conclusions people reach …
1) Earth with no atmosphere (and consequently no clouds), somehow “painted” so that the albedo is 0.3 (emissivity = 0.7 for incoming solar radiation). I conclude the “average surface temperature” would be ~ 255 K, as required by Stephan-Boltzmann calculations.
2) Earth with a pure N2 atmosphere with a surface pressure of 1 atm (and consequently no clouds), somehow “painted” so that the albedo is 0.3 (emissivity = 0.7 for incoming solar radiation). I conclude the “average surface temperature” would STILL be ~ 255 K (as required by Stephan-Boltzmann calculations, since radiation at the surface is unchanged from Scenario 1), with the N2 above the surface cooling off at a rate of ~ 10 C/km (the dry adiabatic lapse rate).
2) Earth with a NEARLY pure N2 atmosphere but with 390 ppm CO2, with a surface pressure of 1 atm (and consequently no clouds), somehow “painted” so that the albedo is 0.3 (emissivity = 0.7 for incoming solar radiation). I conclude the “average surface temperature” would be pretty close to the current average of 288 K.
(NOTE: “average surface temperature” is not a simple concept – either experimentally or theoretically, but I don’t want to get bogged down in that right now in this discussion. I’m looking at the general temperature ranges: Scenario 1 Temp ≈ Scenario 2 Temp < Scenario 3 Temp).
OK, Scott Covert, consider the following. Say someone dumped a load of pure O2 and N2 into our Atmosphere, doubling its [Updated 30 Dec 6:20PM EST]
volumeWEIGHT but not increasing the GHGs (water vapor, CO2 , CH4, etc.) I know that O2 absorbs LWIR in a small portion of the spectrum near 10μ, so remove a bit of the CO2 to compensate for that such that the effect of GHGs remains constant.[NOTE: In the paragraph above, I meant to add pure O2 and N2 to double the WEIGHT of the Atmosphere, not its “volume”. Since gas is, of course, compressible, doubling the WEIGHT will not double the volume. I am sorry for the confusion I added by my poor choice of words. Ira]
The Atmospheric pressure would approximately double, and things would get warmer for a while (as in case A of my simple thought experiments where more air is pumped into the container). After time to for steady state to settle in, and the warming from the work we did dumping the extra pure air to dissipate, I think the Atmospheric pressure would remain double, but the temperatures would return to about the same levels as before.
The albedo of the Earth would remain about the same so the same amount of SWIR would penetrate the doubled Atmosphere and be absorbed by the Surface. The UW LWIR radiation from the Surface and the DW LWIR from the GHGs would be about the same. Convection and conduction would have thicker air to work with and the TOA would be somewhat higher, but not double.
Any comments on how the Nikolov theory would predict the results? Would the "Enhanced" effect due to double Atmospheric pressure cause great permanent warming? Perhaps a "tipping point" even? I do not think so but I would like your opinions.
I’ve never seen such a confused welter of comments, brought on by the confusing presentation by Nikolov & Zeller, but not helped very much by Glickstein, who I am sure knows his thermodynamics, but who hasn’t made his central point(s) stand out either while losing track of what may be correct in the Nikolov & Zeller article. One of their points–again, it is their bad for not making more clear what their main points ARE– may have something to do with the response of an atmosphere at density to insolation and other “forcings,” –gad, I hate that term– rather than to the forces which have put the atmosphere under pressure in the first place. Hope that it gets straightened out before the RC crowd pile on in an attempt to bury the good with the bad.
thetempestspark says:
December 30, 2011 at 3:34 am
R. Gates says:
December 29, 2011 at 11:04 pm
“Greenhouse gases warm the planet above a level it would otherwise be without them. The only issue is how much warming we can exspect from a doubling of CO2 from preindustrial levels, and the key area of uncertainty here is the full nature of feedbacks, slow and fast, and more specifically the role of clouds.”
If you took two quantities of CO2 of equal volume, both quantities had a temperature of 1°C and mixed them both together what would the temperature be as a result of doubling one quantity of CO2 with the other?
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What about the volume? Did you force one into the volume of the other? If you did, then of course work was done on “the system” by the application of a force over a distance and of course the temperature would go up. Pv=nrt, but work must be done when compressing a gas! If however, you simply open a valve between the two containers then of course nothing would happen.
R. Gates says:
December 29, 2011 at 11:04 pm
“Some excellent points, and I think that this “Unified Climate Theory”, will be fairly quickly placed into the “hmmm…interesting” dustbin of quirky science sidebars. Your desire to see the so-called “Official Climate Team” put into its proper place belies the undercurrcent of thought shared of course by many skeptics, but I fear such desires shall go unfulfilled. Greenhouse gases warm the planet above a level it would otherwise be without them. The only issue is how much warming we can exspect from a doubling of CO2 from preindustrial levels, and the key area of uncertainty here is the full nature of feedbacks, slow and fast, and more specifically the role of clouds.”
____________________________
Pardon, R. Gates, but the effects of a doubling of CO2 is not the only issue, but is merely a question on the way to the only issue.
The issue becomes: are any effects from a doubling of CO2 actually harmful and if so, what do we do about it?
In the freely- accessible dialogue and literature of the CAGW advocates, there is a continuous undercurrent of and calling for a rush to tyranny and attendant death to many millions, if not billions of human beings. Indeed, the desire to implement the loss of individual freedoms and willful depopulation of the planet is often explicitly and boldly stated, as if the rest of us should willingly acquiesce and thus relinquish our lives and freedoms to make life better for a self- aggrandizing class of elites who would (in their vision) remain untouched and without need of remorse.
Using your terms, “Your Desire” to implement dark days for mankind becomes the only issue.
I think a better simple example would be a pressure cooker. They work by causing the pressure in the vessel to rise which results in a higher cooking temperature, which is essentially what Nikolov is suggesting a change in atmospheric pressure does on earth. The higher the pressure, the higher the temperature and without any change in energy input (stovetop burner remains at same setting). Once equilibrium is reached, there will be as much energy leaving the “system” as is being input. Some of that will be radiative, but most will be through the pressure relief valve in the form of steam (not sure if that qualifies as convective). Nobody would argue that the extra pressure is creating energy, but it does allow the temperature to be a lot higher than would be the case at a lower pressure. It’s not important that the pressure rise is caused by the energy input by your stove, you see the same thing cooking at various elevations.
I believe the major reason a pressure cooker works is that the higher pressure increases the boiling point of the water in your polar bear stew. What I’m wondering is whether the same thing applies to, say, air. Will air heated in a pressure cooker reach a higher temperature at higher pressures? Or does the whole effect rely on increasing the temperature at which a phase change takes place? Can any of this be related to the mechanism Nikolov is trying to describe?
Finally, I don’t think I’ve seen anybody verify/falsify Nikolov’s primary assertion that the greenhouse effect has been underestimated by about 100 degrees K. They offer their equation (2) as a better way of doing things. I know most WUWT readers drift off to sleep contemplating Hölder’s inequality between non-linear integrals, but I don’t have a clue what that means. Is there any merit to their argument?.
Thanks as always for the entertaining discussion.
This is just silly. Temperature and Pressure are just ways of expressing things. They are not things in and of themselves. For instance pressure is simply an expression of force over an area. It doesn’t say what the force is or what caused the force. Temperature is simply an expression of heat transfer. It doesn’t say what’s causing the transfer. Temperature is a measure of the average translational kinetic energy associated with microscopic motion of atoms and molecules. The flow of heat is from a high temperature region toward a lower temperature region. Temperature is proportional to the average kinetic energy of each atom….
The argument of pressure causing or not causing temp change is vapid. Look at the force, look at what is being transferred and look as to why. Temp and pressure is just shorthand for expressing other things.
Next up in the argument, Amps and volts! Which is more important to watts!?!
Don K says:
December 30, 2011 at 7:27 am
R. Gates says:
December 29, 2011 at 11:04 pm
“The only issue is how much warming we can exspect from a doubling of CO2 from preindustrial levels,”
============
An important issue to be sure, but hardly the only one. Some other questions one should probably think worthy of attention.
1. What is the complete list of factors (“forcings” in climate-speak) that affect global climate?
2. What is the approximate magnitude of each?
3. What causes glaciations?
4. What causes glaciations to end?
5. Why does the behavior of the “Offical Climate Team” more closely resemble that of a doomsday cult than that of a scientific community?
6. What will a warmer (or cooler) world actually look like?
7. Given the need later in this century to support some 9 or 10 billion humans — (hopefully in reasonable comfort), what is the optimum global temperature?
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I don’t disagree with.the importance of some of your additions, but 1-4 are being studied every day, 5 is unimportant to the actual science, and answering 1 through 4 should answer 6 & 7.
“Correlation does not prove causation.” Keep repeating this over and over.
How very true. How many times have various posts pointed this out? In addition, multivariate analyses suffer from so much multicolinearity (as in the accident, traffic jam, police example) because there are sooooo many variables impacting upon climate, and simultaneously upon one and other, that predicting climate is, at the present time, with present data and technology, pretty much a fools errand. This applies to both AGW fanatics and all of the various theories proposed here by skeptics.
The real answer is that climate is changing but the causes are presently undefined and not predictable. Time series cyclicality can be somewhat interesting but since even the dependent variable measurements are suspect, such are not extremely enlightening.
The crime is basing public policy which negatively impacts real people and the world economy upon fantasy science.
The Nikolov and Zeller paper is badly writen in parts, but the basic message is that the “climate” of a planet is determined by the mass of its atmosphere, insolation, gravity, rotation and nothing else – NOT chemical composition. This hypothesis has been under consideration for several years, but “climatologists” choose to ignore it. For example, if Earth’s atmosphere was primarily composed of carbon dioxide (molecular weight = 44) rather than nitrogen (atomic weight = 14) and oxygen (atomic weight = 16) the atmosphere would be about two orders of magnitude more massive, and the surface temperature much hotter, according to the gas laws.
The bottom line is that if we doubled the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 content from 0.04% to 0.08% ppmv (for example) it would haver no measurable effect upon the Earth’s climate.
@Joe Kirklin Zeise December 30, 2011 at 4:59 am
That’s the first thing that hit me about Ira’s experiment as well. The inside of the refrigerator is not a system at equilibrium, as it uses external energy (probably from Evil Coal) to remove the additional heat from pressure increase and vent it to the outside. Of course the temperature is going to revert to whatever the refrigerator is set to.
Is a solar wind from the north (?) of earth colder than a solar wind from the south (?) of earth, how does that affect glaciers?
Does the pressure increase from said solar winds cause the clouds to disburse water vapors faster thus causeing cooling of the earth.
(sarc)
Here’s the spherical cow model that I think N&Z are roughly trying to present:
1) Draw an envelope that coincides with the tropopause.
2) Greenhouse radiative physics govern above the envelope (tropopause).
3) Below the tropopause, convection governs transport, and adiabatic compression governs temperature.
In this model, you determine the tropopause temperature by greenhouse calculations, and then you determine surface temperature by adiabatic compression. So while you don’t get any heat out of raising the pressure, you do increase the temperature.
At least that’s what I think N&Z were trying to say. If so, it’s plausible, but needs more work to be sure. But the increase in temperature as you go down doesn’t require addition of heat.
Paraphrasing the new theory is it’s not the reflection of radiation that increases the temp at the surface but the simple partial rebound of kinetic energy at the atomic/molecular level the allows the heat energy to be higher. So the compressor analogy that IRA is posting is irrelevant. I also think of the BB gun where you compress the air in it which makes the chamber hotter which if you shoot right away the BB will go through much more of the phone book. But let the temp in the chamber go down, the amount of air is still in there and compressed but not with as much pressure and the BB won’t go through as much of the phone book.
In other words the BB gun and the compressor example IRA is using the temp rise is a one time event caused by forcing more air into a closed chamber than the surrounding air.
None of this is relevant to the new climate theory. The new climate theory is more like this: the air is transparent to much of the radiant energy but is going to delay return of that energy back to outer space. Anything that creates a delay be it the radiative feedback of classical CO2 theory or the simple delay in a return from a mostly transparent convective gas under pressure will delay the energy return increasing the temperature at the surface.
We generate heat and use a blanket to delay the rate of return so we are warmer at our surface. The surface of the earth has a blanket of air covering the surface that is being heated so it’s warmer. Anything creating a delay increases the temperature equilibrium point.
Think blanket, not bottom of a bike pump getting heated when used and you’ll see the difference between what IRA thinks they are saying and what they are actually saying.
Willis:
In a word: Synergy?
Ira said:
“OK, Scott Covert, consider the following. Say someone dumped a load of pure O2 and N2 into our Atmosphere, doubling its volume but not increasing the GHGs (water vapor, CO2 , CH4, etc.) I know that O2 absorbs LWIR in a small portion of the spectrum near 10μ, so remove a bit of the CO2 to compensate for that such that the effect of GHGs remains constant.
The Atmospheric pressure would approximately double, and things would get warmer for a while (as in case A of my simple thought experiments where more air is pumped into the container). After time to for steady state to settle in, and the warming from the work we did dumping the extra pure air to dissipate, I think the Atmospheric pressure would remain double, but the temperatures would return to about the same levels as before.”
THis simply isnt true- if you double V and the number of air molecules the pressure and tempeature will remain the same
PV = nRT
P 2V = 2n RT
the IDeal Gas Law is a state equation- it will be true at any time for your model assuming it applies
the problem is your model is wrong but plenty of people have already said that
Still working my way through the original paper. There are many good comments here.
Perhaps our focus should be a form of “peer-review” which will work to improve/correct that which is lacking, and reinforce that which is good. We have the expertise, in this blog, to accomplish this goal. Once we have thrashed it all out, the authors can present a ‘revised’ version, taking into account the comments, and making corrections to that which we find inconsistent.
Let us recall that Wegener was ridiculed for not having a mechanism for “mobile” continents, but in the end, his basic premise was found to be correct. We might be in a similar situation here; let us work together to improve, and if the original hypothesis is eventually found to be incorrect, we can discard it, and chalk it up to experience.
Best regards to all, and thanks to the mods and Anthony, and the purveyors of thoughtful comments,
Mark H.
‘This makes the GH effect a thermodynamic phenomenon, not a radiative one as presently assumed!’ (Nikolov)
“I just cannot square this assertion with the clear measurements of UW and DW LWIR, and…”
Ira- good experiments you did, but I like their assertion (noted by many others in other posts) that a locale heated by whatever will then rise as a convection current to upper troposphere where it will then dump more energy back into space. Also, it seems to me your experiment has a flaw. The refrigerator in the actual earth case is the surrounding air. I think this takes the container of gas out of the refrigerator to the ambient (elevated temp) of the close to earth warmth (ATE?). I believe all they are appealing to is the average density of the close to earth layer presents a higher mass (higher heat capacity).
Definition: STP corresponds to 273 K (0° Celsius) and 1 atm pressure. STP is often used for measuring gas density and volume.
If you take the time and use PV=nRT with standard P (14.73psi), a V up 62 miles, figure n and plug in R you get a T of 273 K. Although Ned and Karl may or may not be correct in the figure they use there is some level of internal energy in the atmosphere caused by gravity/pressure, work. So the GHE maybe only 15 K not 33.
Ira says:”Due to the work done to compress the air in the fixed…”
“Downwelling Long-Wave Infrared (LW DWIR) from the so-called “Greenhouse” gases (GHG)..”
Ira you use the word work when talking about Ned and Kar’sl post, but have not recognized what many have said when talking of DWLWIR that it has no ability to do work. Mr. MyDog….Nose, several PE’s and myself have mentioned this before.
To me the atmosphere seems to look like a Carnot cycle.
Ira, I think you’ve not addressed the central issue. You should look at Dale Huffman’s clearer, though more basic explanation of what is going on at;
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
Comparing the known science of a sealed container of even pressure and density, to the open system of the atmosphere with gravity, higher pressure and temperature at the surface, which decline with altitude is in no way valid. Sorry.
You need to falsify / invalidate the Huffman Venus paper first, then re-address yourself to the Niklov Zeller paper.
James Sexton says:
December 30, 2011 at 8:31 am
Temp and pressure is just shorthand for expressing other things.
Next up in the argument, Amps and volts! Which is more important to watts!?!
Lol! Class – Thanks James.