Note: This was a poster, and adopted into a blog post by the author, Ned Nikolov, specifically for WUWT. My thanks to him for the extra effort in converting the poster to a more blog friendly format. – Anthony
Expanding the Concept of Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Using Thermodynamic Principles: Implications for Predicting Future Climate Change
Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. & Karl Zeller, Ph.D.
USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins CO, USA
Emails: ntconsulting@comcast.net kzeller@colostate.edu
Poster presented at the Open Science Conference of the World Climate Research Program,
24 October 2011, Denver CO, USA
http://www.wcrp-climate.org/conference2011/posters/C7/C7_Nikolov_M15A.pdf
Abstract
We present results from a new critical review of the atmospheric Greenhouse (GH) concept. Three main problems are identified with the current GH theory. It is demonstrated that thermodynamic principles based on the Gas Law need be invoked to fully explain the Natural Greenhouse Effect. We show via a novel analysis of planetary climates in the solar system that the physical nature of the so-called GH effect is a Pressure-induced Thermal Enhancement (PTE), which is independent of the atmospheric chemical composition. This finding leads to a new and very different paradigm of climate controls. Results from our research are combined with those from other studies to propose a new Unified Theory of Climate, which explains a number of phenomena that the current theory fails to explain. Implications of the new paradigm for predicting future climate trends are briefly discussed.
1. Introduction
Recent studies revealed that Global Climate Models (GCMs) have significantly overestimated the Planet’s warming since 1979 failing to predict the observed halt of global temperature rise over the past 13 years. (e.g. McKitrick et al. 2010). No consensus currently exists as to why the warming trend ceased in 1998 despite a continued increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Moreover, the CO2-temperature relationship shows large inconsistencies across time scales. In addition, GCM projections heavily depend on positive feedbacks, while satellite observations indicate that the climate system is likely governed by strong negative feedbacks (Lindzen & Choi 2009; Spencer & Braswell 2010). At the same time, there is a mounting political pressure for Cap-and-Trade legislation and a global carbon tax, while scientists and entrepreneurs propose geo-engineering solutions to cool the Planet that involve large-scale physical manipulation of the upper atmosphere. This unsettling situation calls for a thorough reexamination of the present climate-change paradigm; hence the reason for this study.
2. The Greenhouse Effect: Reexamining the Basics
Figure 1. The Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect as taught at universities around the World (diagram from the website of the Penn State University Department of Meteorology).
According to the current theory, the Greenhouse Effect (GHE) is a radiative phenomenon caused by heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere such as CO2 and water vapor that are assumed to reduce the rate of surface infrared cooling to Space by absorbing the outgoing long-wave (LW) emission and re-radiating part of it back, thus increasing the total energy flux toward the surface. This is thought to boost the Earth’s temperature by 18K – 33K compared to a gray body with no absorbent atmosphere such as the Moon; hence making our Planet habitable. Figure 1 illustrates this concept using a simple two-layer system known as the Idealized Greenhouse Model (IGM). In this popular example, S is the top-of-the atmosphere (TOA) solar irradiance (W m-2), A is the Earth shortwave albedo, Ts is the surface temperature (K), Te is the Earth’s effective emission temperature (K) often equated with the mean temperature of middle troposphere, ϵ is emissivity, and σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann (S-B) constant.
2.1. Main Issues with the Current GHE Concept:
A) Magnitude of the Natural Greenhouse Effect. GHE is often quantified as a difference between the actual mean global surface temperature (Ts = 287.6K) and the planet’s average gray-body (no-atmosphere) temperature (Tgb), i.e. GHE = Ts – Tgb. In the current theory, Tgb is equated with the effective emission temperature (Te) calculated straight from the S-B Law using Eq. (1):
where αp is the planetary albedo of Earth (≈0.3). However, this is conceptually incorrect! Due to Hölder’s inequality between non-linear integrals (Kuptsov 2001), Te is not physically compatible with a measurable true mean temperature of an airless planet. To be correct, Tgb must be computed via proper spherical integration of the planetary temperature field. This means calculating the temperature at every point on the Earth sphere first by taking the 4th root from the S-B relationship and then averaging the resulting temperature field across the planet surface, i.e.
where αgb is the Earth’s albedo without atmosphere (≈0.125), μ is the cosine of incident solar angle at any point, and cs= 13.25e-5 is a small constant ensuring that Tgb = 2.72K (the temperature of deep Space) when So = 0. Equation (2) assumes a spatially constant albedo (αgb), which is a reasonable approximation when trying to estimate an average planetary temperature.
Since in accordance with Hölder’s inequality Tgb ≪ Te (Tgb =154.3K ), GHE becomes much larger than presently estimated.
According to Eq. (2), 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.
B) Role of Convection. The conceptual model in Fig. 1 can be mathematically described by the following simultaneous Equations (3),
where νa is the atmospheric fraction of the total shortwave radiation absorption. Figure 2 depicts the solution to Eq. (3) for temperatures over a range of atmospheric emissivities (ϵ) assuming So = 1366 W m-2 and νa =0.326 (Trenberth et al. 2009). An increase in atmospheric emissivity does indeed cause a warming at the surface as stated by the current theory. However, Eq. (3) is physically incomplete, because it does not account for convection, which occurs simultaneously with radiative transfer. Adding a convective term to Eq. (3) (such as a sensible heat flux) yields the system:
where gbH is the aerodynamic conductance to turbulent heat exchange. 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). This is because convective cooling is many orders of magnitude more efficient that radiative cooling. These results do not change when using multi-layer models. In radiative transfer models, Ts increases with ϵ not as a result of heat trapping by greenhouse gases, but due to the lack of convective cooling, thus requiring a larger thermal gradient to export the necessary amount of heat. Modern GCMs do not solve simultaneously radiative transfer and convection. This decoupling of heat transports is the core reason for the projected surface warming by GCMs in response to rising atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations. Hence, the predicted CO2-driven global temperature change is a model artifact!
Figure 2. Solution to the two-layer model in Eq. (3) for Ts and Ta as a function of atmospheric emissivity assuming a non-convective atmosphere. Also shown is the predicted down-welling LW flux(Ld). Note that Ld ≤ 239 W m-2.
Figure 3. Solution to the two-layer model in Eq. (4) for Ts and Ta as a function of atmospheric emissivity assuming a convective atmosphere (gbH = 0.075 m/s). Also shown is the predicted down-welling LW flux (Ld). Note that Ld ≤ 239 W m-2.
Figure 4. According to observations, the Earth-Atmosphere System absorbs on average a net solar flux of 239 W m-2, while the lower troposphere alone emits 343 W m-2 thermal radiation toward the surface.
C) Extra Kinetic Energy in the Troposphere.
Observations show that the lower troposphere emits 44% more radiation toward the surface than the total solar flux absorbed by the entire Earth-Atmosphere System (Pavlakis et al. 2003) (Fig. 4). Radiative transfer alone cannot explain this effect (e.g. Figs. 2 & 3) given the negligible heat storage capacity of air, no matter how detailed the model is. Thus, empirical evidence indicates that the lower atmosphere contains more kinetic energy than provided by the Sun. Understanding the origin of this extra energy is a key to the GHE.
3. The Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement
Previous studies have noted that the term Greenhouse Effect is a misnomer when applied to the atmosphere, since real greenhouses retain heat through an entirely different mechanism compared to the free atmosphere, i.e. by physically trapping air mass and restricting convective heat exchange. Hence, we propose a new term instead, Near-surface Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement (ATE) defined as a non-dimensional ratio (NTE) of the planet actual mean surface air temperature (Ts, K) to the average temperature of a Standard Planetary Gray Body (SPGB) with no atmosphere (Tgb, K) receiving the same solar irradiance, i.e. NTE = Ts /Tgb. This new definition emphasizes the essence of GHE, which is the temperature boost at the surface due to the presence of an atmosphere. We employ Eq. (2) to estimate Tgb assuming an albedo αgb = 0.12 and a surface emissivity ϵ = 0.955 for the SPGB based on data for Moon, Mercury, and the Earth surface. Using So = 1362 W m-2 (Kopp & Lean 2011) in Eq. (2) yields Tgb = 154.3K and NTE = 287.6/154.3 = 1.863 for Earth. This prompts the question: What mechanism enables our atmosphere to boost the planet surface temperature some 86% above that of a SPGB? To answer it we turn on to the classical Thermodynamics.
3.1. Climate Implications of the Ideal Gas Law
The average thermodynamic state of a planet’s atmosphere can be accurately described by the Ideal Gas Law (IGL):
PV = nRT (5)
where P is pressure (Pa), V is the gas volume (m3), n is the gas amount (mole), R = 8.314 J K-1 mol-1is the universal gas constant, and T is the gas temperature (K). Equation (5) has three features that are chiefly important to our discussion: a) the product P×V defines the internal kinetic energy of a gas (measured in Jules) that produces its temperature; b) the linear relationship in Eq. (5) guarantees that a mean global temperature can be accurately estimated from planetary averages of surface pressure and air volume (or density). This is in stark contrast to the non-linear relationship between temperature and radiant fluxes (Eq. 1) governed by Hölder’s inequality of integrals; c) on a planetary scale, pressure in the lower troposphere is effectively independent of other variables in Eq. (5) and is only a function of gravity (g), total atmospheric mass (Mat), and the planet surface area (As), i.e. Ps = g Mat/As. Hence, the near-surface atmospheric dynamics can safely be assumed to be governed (over non-geological time scales) by nearly isobaric processes on average, i.e. operating under constant pressure. This isobaric nature of tropospheric thermodynamics implies that the average atmospheric volume varies in a fixed proportion to changes in the mean surface air temperature following the Charles/Gay-Lussac Law, i.e. Ts/V = const. This can be written in terms of the average air density ρ (kg m-3) as
ρTs = const. = Ps M / R (6)
where Ps is the mean surface air pressure (Pa) and M is the molecular mass of air (kg mol-1). Eq. (6) reveals an important characteristic of the average thermodynamic process at the surface, namely that a variation of global pressure due to either increase or decrease of total atmospheric mass will alter both temperature and atmospheric density. What is presently unknown is the differential effect of a global pressure change on each variable. We offer a solution to this in & 3.3. Equations (5) and (6) imply that pressure directly controls the kinetic energy and temperature of the atmosphere. Under equal solar insolation, a higher surface pressure (due to a larger atmospheric mass) would produce a warmer troposphere, while a lower pressure would result in a cooler troposphere. At the limit, a zero pressure (due to the complete absence of an atmosphere) would yield the planet’s gray-body temperature.
The thermal effect of pressure is vividly demonstrated on a cosmic scale by the process of star formation, where gravity-induced rise of gas pressure boosts the temperature of an interstellar cloud to the threshold of nuclear fusion. At a planetary level, the effect is manifest in Chinook winds, where adiabatically heated downslope airflow raises the local temperature by 20C-30C in a matter of hours. This leads to a logical question: Could air pressure be responsible for the observed thermal enhancement at the Earth surface presently known as a ‘Natural Greenhouse Effect’? To answer this we must analyze the relationship between NTEfactor and key atmospheric variables including pressure over a wide range of planetary climates. Fortunately, our solar system offers a suitable spectrum of celestial bodies for such analysis.
3.2. Interplanetary Data Set
We based our selection of celestial bodies for the ATE analysis on three criteria: 1) presence of a solid planetary surface with at least traces of atmosphere; 2) availability of reliable data on surface temperature, total pressure, atmospheric composition etc. preferably from direct measurements; and 3) representation of a wide range of atmospheric masses and compositions. This approach resulted in choosing of four planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and four natural satellites – Moon of Earth, Europa of Jupiter, Titan of Saturn, and Triton of Neptune. Each celestial body was described by 14 parameters listed in Table 1.
For planets with tangible atmospheres, i.e. Venus, Earth and Mars, the temperatures calculated from IGL agreed rather well with observations. Note that, for extremely low pressures such as on Mercury and Moon, the Gas Law produces Ts ≈ 0.0. The SPGB temperatures for each celestial body were estimated from Eq. (2) using published data on solar irradiance and assuming αgb = 0.12 and ϵ = 0.955. For Mars, global means of surface temperature and air pressure were calculated from remote sensing data retrieved via the method of radio occultation by the Radio Science Team (RST) at Stanford University using observations by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft from 1999 to 2005. Since the MGS RST analysis has a wide spatial coverage, the new means represent current average conditions on the Red Planet much more accurately than older data based on Viking’s spot observations from 1970s.
Table 1. Planetary data used to analyze the physical nature of the Atmospheric Near-Surface Thermal Enhancement (NTE). Information was gathered from multiple sources using cross-referencing. The bottom three rows of data were estimated in this study using equations discussed in the text.
3.3. Physical Nature of ATE / GHE
Our analysis of interplanetary data in Table 1 found no meaningful relationships between ATE (NTE) and variables such as total absorbed solar radiation by planets or the amount of greenhouse gases in their atmospheres. However, we discovered that NTE was strongly related to total surface pressure through a nearly perfect regression fit via the following nonlinear function:
where Ps is in Pa. Figure 5 displays Eq. (7) graphically. The tight relationship signals a causal effect of pressure on NTE, which is theoretically supported by the IGL (see & 3.1). Also, the Ps–NTE curve in Fig. 5 strikingly resembles the response of the temperature/potential temp. (T/θ) ratio to altitudinal changes of pressure described by the well-known Poisson formula derived from IGL (Fig. 6). Such a similarity in responses suggests that both NTE and θ embody the effect of pressure-controlled adiabatic heating on air, even though the two mechanisms are not identical. This leads to a fundamental conclusion that the ‘Natural Greenhouse Effect’ is in fact a Pressure-induced Thermal Enhancement (PTE) in nature.
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. Thus, Earth and Titan have similar NTE values, yet their absolute surface temperatures are very different due to vastly dissimilar solar insolation. While pressure (P) controls the magnitude of the enhancement factor, solar heating determines the average atmospheric volume (V), and the product P×V defines the total kinetic energy and temperature of the atmosphere. Therefore, for particular solar insolation, the NTE factor gives rise to extra kinetic energy in the lower atmosphere beyond the amount supplied by the Sun. This additional energy is responsible for keeping the Earth surface 133K warmer than it would be in the absence of atmosphere, and is the source for the observed 44% extra down-welling LW flux in the lower troposphere (see &2.1 C). Hence, 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!
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, i.e.
Figure 5. Atmospheric near-surface Thermal Enhancement (NTE) as a function of mean total surface pressure (Ps) for 8 celestial bodies listed in Table 1. See Eq. (7) for the exact mathematical formula.
Figure 6. Temperature/potential temperature ratio as a function of atmospheric pressure according to the Poisson formula based on the Gas Law (Po = 100 kPa.). Note the striking similarity in shape with the curve in Fig. 5.
where NTE(Ps) is defined by Eq. (7). Equation (8) almost completely explains the variation of Ts among analyzed celestial bodies, thus providing a needed function to parse the effect of a global pressure change on the dependent variables ρ and Tsin Eq. (6). Together Equations (6) and (8) imply that the chemical composition of an atmosphere affects average air density through the molecular mass of air, but has no impact on the mean surface temperature.
4. Implications of the new ATE Concept
The implications of the above findings are numerous and paradigm-altering. These are but a few examples:
Figure 7. Dynamics of global temperature and 12-month forward shifted cloud cover types from satellite observations. Cloud changes precede temperature variations by 6 to 24 months and appear to have been controlling the latter during the past 30 years (Nikolov & Zeller, manuscript).
A) Global surface temperature is independent of the down-welling LW flux known as greenhouse or back radiation, because both quantities derive from the same pool of atmospheric kinetic energy maintained by solar heating and air pressure. Variations in the downward LW flux (caused by an increase of tropospheric emissivity, for example) are completely counterbalanced (offset) by changes in the rate of surface convective cooling, for this is how the system conserves its internal energy.
B) Modifying chemical composition of the atmosphere cannot alter the system’s total kinetic energy, hence the size of ATE (GHE). This is supported by IGL and the fact that planets of vastly different atmospheric composition follow the same Ps–NTE relationship in Fig. 5. The lack of impact by the atmospheric composition on surface temperature is explained via the compensating effect of convective cooling on back-radiation discussed above.
C) Equation (8) suggests that the planet’s albedo is largely a product of climate rather than a driver of it. This is because the bulk of the albedo is a function of the kinetic energy supplied by the Sun and the atmospheric pressure. However, independent small changes in albedo are possible and do occur owning to 1%-3% secular variations in cloud cover, which are most likely driven by solar magnetic activity. These cloud-cover changes cause ±0.7C semi-periodic fluctuations in global temperature on a decadal to centennial time scale as indicated by recent satellite observations (see Fig. 7) and climate reconstructions for the past 10,000 years.
Figure 8. Dynamics of global surface temperature during the Cenozoic Era reconstructed from 18O proxies in marine sediments (Hansen et al. 2008).
Figure 9. Dynamics of mean surface atmospheric pressure during the Cenozoic Era reconstructed from the temperature record in Fig. 8 by inverting Eq. (8).
D) Large climatic shifts evident in the paleo-record such as the 16C directional cooling of the Globe during the past 51 million years (Fig. 8) can now be explained via changes in atmospheric mass and surface pressure caused by geologic variations in Earth’s tectonic activity. Thus, we hypothesize that the observed mega-cooling of Earth since the early Eocene was due to a 53% net loss of atmosphere to Space brought about by a reduction in mantle degasing as a result of a slowdown in continental drifts and ocean floor spreading. Figure 9 depicts reconstructed dynamics of the mean surface pressure for the past 65.5M years based on Eq. (8) and the temperature record in Fig. 8.
5. Unified Theory of Climate
The above findings can help rectify physical inconsistencies in the current GH concept and assist in the development of a Unified Theory of Climate (UTC) based on a deeper and more robust understanding of various climate forcings and the time scales of their operation. Figure 10 outlines a hierarchy of climate forcings as part of a proposed UTC that is consistent with results from our research as well as other studies published over the past 15 years. A proposed key new driver of climate is the variation of total atmospheric mass and surface pressure over geological time scales (i.e. tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of years). According to our new theory, the climate change over the past 100-300 years is due to variations of global cloud albedo that are not related to GHE/ATE. This is principally different from the present GH concept, which attempts to explain climate changes over a broad range of time scales (i.e. from decades to tens of millions of years) with the same forcing attributed to variations in atmospheric CO2 and other heat-absorbing trace gases (e.g. Lacis et al. 2010).
Earth’s climate is currently in one of the warmest periods of the Holocene (past 10K years). It is unlikely that the Planet will become any warmer over the next 100 years, because the cloud cover appears to have reached a minimum for the present levels of solar irradiance and atmospheric pressure, and the solar magnetic activity began declining, which may lead to more clouds and a higher planetary albedo. At this point, only a sizable increase of the total atmospheric mass can bring about a significant and sustained warming. However, human-induced gaseous emissions are extremely unlikely to produce such a mass increase.
Figure 10. Global climate forcings and their time scales of operation according to the hereto proposed Unified Theory of Climate (UTC). Arrows indicate process interactions.
6. References
Kopp, G. and J. L. Lean (2011). A new, lower value of total solar irradiance: Evidence and climate significance, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L01706, doi:10.1029/2010GL045777.
Kuptsov, L. P. (2001) Hölder inequality, in Hazewinkel, Michiel, Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Springer, ISBN 978-1556080104.
Lacis, A. A., G. A. Schmidt, D. Rind, and R. A. Ruedy (2010). Atmospheric CO2: Principal control knob governing earth’s temperature. Science 330:356-359.
Lindzen, R. S. and Y.-S. Choi (2009). On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L16705, doi:10.1029/2009GL039628.
McKitrick, R. R. et al. (2010). Panel and Multivariate Methods for Tests of Trend Equivalence in Climate Data Series. Atmospheric Science Letters, Vol. 11, Issue 4, pages 270–277.
Nikolov, N and K. F. Zeller (manuscript). Observational evidence for the role of planetary cloud-cover dynamics as the dominant forcing of global temperature changes since 1982.
Pavlakis, K. G., D. Hatzidimitriou, C. Matsoukas, E. Drakakis, N. Hatzianastassiou, and I. Vardavas (2003). Ten-year global distribution of down-welling long-wave radiation. Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 3, 5099-5137.
Spencer, R. W. and W. D. Braswell (2010). On the diagnosis of radiative feedback in the presence of unknown radiative forcing, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D16109, doi:10.1029/2009JD013371
Trenberth, K.E., J.T. Fasullo, and J. Kiehl (2009). Earth’s global energy budget. BAMS, March:311-323
===============================================================
This post is also available as a PDF document here:
Unified_Theory_Of_Climate_Poster_Nikolov_Zeller
UPDATE: This thread is closed – see the newest one “A matter of some Gravity” where the discussion continues.
Joel Shore (January 3, 2012 at 5:53 am):
To understand what I’m saying, you need to think about the change in the energy budget of Trenberth et al (2008) in which, at a point in Earth’s surface, the intensity of the back radiation increases by Delta F. If this is the only change, then the intensity of the absorption of IR by the Earth must increase by Delta F for energy conservation. However, if in addition the intensity of the convective heat transfer increases by Delta F, energy conservation ensures that the intensity of the absorption of IR at Earth’s surface does not change.
There is a naturally occurring mechanism which, in theory at least, automatically increases the intensity of of the convective heat transfer by Delta F. This mechanism is the feedback control mechanism in which the lapse rate serves as the variable that is under control and the adiabatic lapse rate serves as the set point.
Terry Oldberg says:
Terry:
(1) This does not in any way get around the issue regarding conservation of energy that I have identified.
(2) This sort of thing is well-known, although you may have misconceptions about how it operates. For example, if you read “Global Warming: The Hard Sciecne” by L.D. Danny Harvey (Box 3.1 on pp. 41-42) he does a little calculation comparing the effect of changing the radiative transfer between the atmosphere and the surface by an certain amount vs changing the radiative emission back out into space. And, you are right that the former is compensated almost completely by a change in convection. This occurs to the extent that a 10 W/m^2 change in radiative transfer between the atmosphere and surface only warms the surface by about 0.1 C. Unfortunately, however, the same is not true of a 10 W/m^2 change in the radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere, as would occur via a change in greenhouse gas concentrations…That produces a much larger temperature change because it cannot for the most part be compensated for by a change in convection.
davidmhoffer says:
David: Fine, so make other realistic estimates for what the temperature distribution is and you will still see it is a small different and basically irrelevant to what we are talking about here. Really, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. By contrast, you are giving Nikolov a free pass in making the truly horrific approximation that the global average temperature can be calculated using a local temperature calculated from the local (in space and time!) insolation. You want to talk about unrealistic approximations!
And, the fact is that this is the least of the problems with Nikolov’s “theory”. The bigger problems include
(1) The fact that he showed the greenhouse effect mainly goes away under convection by putting in convection in a completely incorrect way…i.e., he assumed the atmosphere is being driven to an isothermal state with height. Under that assumption, nobody who understands the greenhouse effect would expect otherwise! The fact that convection can never even nearly get rid of the lapse rate is the sole reason why it can’t largely cancel the greenhouse effect.
(2) Any version of his theory that claims that the surface temperature enhancement is not due to the radiative greenhouse effect violates conservation of energy AND a mountain of empirical evidence and a half century of radiative transfer theory that has been successfully used to study the empirical data…basically most of the field of remote sensing! (He, and some of his proponents, seem to be trying to back-pedal on this, so I no longer understand what the theory actually says.)
Joel Shore:
Your behaviour seems to be wilfully misleading. You would need to be an idiot to fail to see the direct contradiction of yourself by yourself in your posts to me. I shall spell it out so it is plain for all to see.
You suggested consideration of an imaginary planet with an atmosphere containing no GHGs.
At January 3, 2012 at 5:41 am I explained how that imaginary planet would lose heat from its hottest surface regions and gain heat at its coolest surface regions because its atmosphere would transport heat by conduction and convection. And I explained why this would result in a change to the planet’s average surface temperature.
At January 3, 2012 at 6:16 am you gave a ridiculous reply saying to me:
“But, you have forgotten about Holder’s Inequality, which even Gerlich and Tscheuschner know about. You are correct that the average temperature is not uniquely determined by the amount of power emitted. However, there is a bound on the average temperature…and that bound is that the highest average temperature that leads to the emission of a certain amount of radiative power is that which occurs when the temperature distribution is uniform.”
And at January 3, 2012 at 12:17 pm I replied to that saying;
“I am truly astonished that you have the gall to write such twaddle.
I have NOT “forgotten about Holder’s Inequality”. IT IS NOT RELEVANT.
As I pointed out, the planet is heated on its day-side and not on its night-side.
Therefore, THE PLANET IS NEVER AT THE LIMIT set by Holder’s Inequality.”
At that point any reasonable person would have agreed you had written nonsense but not you.
At January 3, 2012 at 12:42 pm you have the brass-neck to write:
“Only the hoplelessly lost or naive will be fooled by what you are saying here. Whether or not the planet is at the limit set by Holder’s Inequality is not relevant. What is relevant is that if you have an INEQUALITY, hence my statement: “From this, it follows that the highest average temperature for a planet with an IR-transparent atmosphere that absorbs 240 W/m^2 (and is essentially a blackbody emitter over the wavelengths of its emission) is 255 K. Any non-uniform temperature distribution emitting this amount of power will have a lower average temperature.”
Say what!!
The transfer of heat from hottest to coldest regions will REDUCE temperature differences across the planet.
So, at January 3, 2012 at 6:16 am you rightly said;
“the highest average temperature that leads to the emission of a certain amount of radiative power is that which occurs when the temperature distribution is uniform.”
I pointed out that convection would make the temperature distribution more uniform.
But later on the same day, at January 3, 2012 at 12:42 pm, you say;
“Any non-uniform temperature distribution emitting this amount of power will have a lower average temperature.”
And you bolster that contradiction of yourself by saying to me;
“Only the hoplelessly lost or naive will be fooled by what you are saying here.”
The Moderators would snip my only appropriate response to that.
Then you try to obfuscate the matter further by mention of the real Earth.
YOU WERE THE ONE WHO INSISTED ON CONSIDERATION OF A PLANETARY ATMOSPHERE WITH NO GHGs.
It seems you are incorrigible.
Richard
Richard S Courtney:
My posts are there for people to read without your willful misinterpretation of them. Willis Eschenbach is trying to explain the same thing to people in the other thread on the subject ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-climate-theory-may-confuse-cause-and-effect ) If you want to cement your position in the neanderthal wing of the “AGW skeptic” movement, there is not anything I can do to stop you.
Joel Shore (January 3, 2012 at 4:16 pm):
Your claim that “This does not in any way get around the issue regarding conservation of energy” is falsified by the fact that energy is conserved. To prove that your claim is falsified is an exercise in 3rd grade math, as it requires only an ability to add and subtract. For a person like yourself who has a PhD in physics, this exercise ought to be duck soup.
Terry,
I am interested in science…Not pseudo-logistical semantic word games.
Joel Shore (January 3, 2012 at 5:22 pm):
You’ve switched the issue under debate from violations of energy conservation to me; allegedly, I am guilty of “pseudo logistical word games.” This is an example of an “ad hominem argument.” Like all ad hominem arguments, this one is logically fallacious.
Before you switched the topic to me, the issue under debate was your claim that “This does not in any way get around the issue regarding conservation of energy.” I say that your claim is falsified by the law of of energy conservation. I’ve proved the falsification of your claim mathematically. Are you able to respond to this issue or do you need to change the topic in order to avoid defeat?
I ordinarily stick to Physics and Math in my comments here, but I cannot help but notice that Joel Shore appears to have given up his entire life, seemingly 24 hours per day, to attempt a refutation of the Nikolov and Zeller work. He’s everywhere, all the time, on every blog where there’s a thread discussing the topic.
It seems to me that if the work of Nikolov and Zeller were truly such a piece of crap, it would not be necessary to attack it like a dog foaming at the mouth. It would die a normal death in due course after the actual papers have been presented and reasoned rebuttals had been presented. So why is that?
Why the rush? Why the vehemence? Why the foaming?
/dr.bill
Bill,
I think I can explain why the rush may be to discredit our work:
1) The radiative GH theory was the ‘only game in town’ until now, and although there is virtually no empirical support for it (i.e. evidence outside computer models), it was still a game that everyone, warmist and skeptic alike, was forced to play. Most skeptics currently are only arguing the degree of CO2-induced warming and hardly anyone dares to question its principle existence or physical reality .. One of our papers analyzes the CO2-temperature relationship using several global paleo-climate data sets over a number of time scales going back 65.5M years (the entire Cenozoic era). We found no empirical evidence that CO2 has ever affected Earth’s climate throughout history! The data analysis showed that CO2 changes have always lagged (followed) temperature changes and this lag increases exponentially with the time scale of the data set reaching 12.2M years at the scale of ocean sediment records covering the past 65M years… So, from the standpoint of empirical evidence, the radiative GH theory is on very shaky grounds. Maybe that’s why the mainstream science measures the GH effect only by the amount of absorbed outgoing IR radiation with little reference to its temperature effect. That’s because IR absorption is easy to measure and argue for, but it provides no proof for the physical cause of the GH effect. AND as shown by our study, that absorption is irrelevant …
2) We now have an alternative theory of the GH effect based on an irrefutable 160-year old Gas Law. This new theory has quite powerful predictive skills, so much so that it can accurately estimate the average temperature on hard-surfaced planets throughout the entire solar system, something that even 3D climate models have a challenge with. AND it does it by using only two parameters – TOA solar irradiance and mean surface pressure! …
I think you’d agree that those two sets of facts present a deadly combination by putting the current GH theory in a true chess-mat situation … 🙂
Ned Nikolov, January 3, 2012 at 10:35 pm :
That’s pretty much what I was implying in my “questions”, Ned, but thanks for the summary. The alarmists should be happy. Now they finally have a real reason for wetting their pants. ☺
All the best with your work,
/dr.bill
Ned Nikolov;
This new theory has quite powerful predictive skills, so much so that it can accurately estimate the average temperature on hard-surfaced planets throughout the entire solar system, something that even 3D climate models have a challenge with. AND it does it by using only two parameters – TOA solar irradiance and mean surface pressure!>>>
Nicely summarized.
It took me a while to get my head wrapped around your theory because I did exactly what Joel shore and your other detractors in the various threads did. I made the mistake of trying to add up all the tiny details into a cohesive whole. Then I had my aha! moment. We don’t need no stinkin’ details!
I suggested an analogy in another thread that I think bears repeating. We’ve been asked to determine the weight of gravel in a bucket. You’ve taken the obvious approach, weighed the bucket with the gravel in it, then poured the gravel out, and weighed the bucket. Simple arithmetic gives us the weight of the gravel from those two numbers. What are we hearing from the nay sayers?
o well, you’ve got a formula that substracts the weight of the pail from the weight of the gravel plus the pail. But gravel is made up of sand, pebbles and rocks. Those three categories can be broken down into small, medium, and large for each, giving us at least 9 variables governing the weight of the gravel. There’s no way one can arrive at a model with any predictive skill with 9 variables.
o well, I’ve taken a sample of the gravel, I’ve calculated the weight distribution of gravel sorted into particle size and added them up and your result is impossible.
o well, you have no way of proving that the weight of the pail before you poured the gravel out and after you poured the gravel out are the same.
o well, I’ve determined from the lack of documentation in your paper that the method you used to pour the gravel out is not definitive, and you may be measuring residual gravel that failed to leave the pail during the emptying procedure.
o well, I repeated your experiment with a pail of gravel but with the results adjusted for gravity on various planets and got a different answer every time, proving that weight is a function of gravity, a factor which your formula doesn’t take into account. you’ve obviously confused mass and weight and your results are thus suspect.
Seriously nay sayers, you’ve wandered off into some sort of land of magical excuses. You cannot argue that N&Z are wrong based on how you THINK radiative, conductive, and convective processes work. Why? Because we’ve been trying to apply how we THINK those things work to climate models for years and years and ALL the climate models have proven useless!
The climate models are useless because they are based on how we think the minutia works. If we actually knew how the minutia worked, the climate models would be correct. But the climate models are not correct, proving that we DO NOT understand the minutia. Given that we DO NOT understand the minutia, arguing that N&Z are wrong because their method is falsified by the minutia that we DO NOT UNDERSTAND is ludicrous.
Joel Shoire:
Your resort to name-calling in your post at January 3, 2012 at 4:56 pm is a demonstration that you know I have shown you are wrong.
I ask all observers to read my post at January 3, 2012 at 4:38 pm and your immediately following post at January 3, 2012 at 4:56 pm then to decide for themselves which of us is guilty of “willful misinterpretation”.
Richard
Richard S Courtney said:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/#comment-849873
“Firstly, the IPCC said, and you quote from the link I provided,
“About twice as much warming (0.2°C per decade) would be expected if emissions were to fall within the range of the SRES marker scenarios.”
The emissions HAVE fallen “within the range of the SRES marker scenarios” so my statement was and is correct.”
No, it isn’t and wasn’t. You said “But the IPCC AR4 said “committed warming” (i.e. warming certain to occur because it was already ‘in the pipeline’) would be 0.2 C per decade”. In fact the IPCC said “Committed climate change (see Box TS.9) due to atmospheric composition in the year 2000 corresponds to a warming trend of about 0.1°C per decade over the next two decades, in the absence of large changes in volcanic or solar forcing.”, as I said. You were wrong. Why can’t you admit you were wrong? It’s not exactly ambiguous.
“Secondly, as you say, “he” did say “the warming was .18C/decade since Jan 1999 (according to UAH)”.
But – in fact – that warming was NEGATIVE and not positive. Even this warmist site shows about -0.18C or less.”
No, it wasn’t. He said specifically that from January 1999 there has been .18C/decade of warming according to UAH, and that is exactly what the record shows.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/data/uah/from:1999/to:2012/trend
“#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0175143 per year
1999 0.0274169
2011.92 0.253643”
It did not show a cooling at all over the last 13 years, and your link doesn’t support that claim either. One wonders why you thought posting it would help your case.
So nothing you said was correct.
Keith Gordon says.
It seems to me this new theory has great potential. The current AGW theory has some consensus but, this only condemns it to just a hypothesis, If it were universally accepted there would be no need for a consensus, that is why there is no consensus for E=mc2, because it has been tested and universally accepted. Both sides of the “climate change” debate have some sort of consensus, both remain as a hypothesis in the eyes of the other. Only enough indisputable proof can change each others position,
Why then is there so much potential in this new theory, firstly it is simple and beautiful (most good theories are) it is also testable on other rocky planetary bodies in the Solar System with atmospheres, it purports to explain past and future climates on earth, I think it will explain the faint sun paradox, it seems to explain the shortcoming’s of AGW and Sceptical theory, it explains why Co2 levels didn’t drive past climate, It explains why the Sun is the main driver of climate, as we all knew, It could be the basis of everything we don’t know and everything we do know about climate, and wouldn’t that be an amazing and wonderful thing. Give this theory a chance, nothing I have heard so far in 550+ comments makes me think it wrong, if it is, it will get found out, and if there is only a reasonable consensus for it, it remains just a theory. Thank you to authors and good luck with your work. I await your next post with extreme interest.
Keith Gordon
Terry Oldberg says:
Let me explain why it is a semantic word game: You seem to be claiming that there is no way not to have conservation of energy because we have the Law of Conservation of Energy. However, this is a word game because I am not saying that energy is not conserved in the real world. What I am saying is that it would be impossible to have conservation of energy in a world where you had a planet like Earth but with an atmosphere transparent to terrestrial radiation and still had the elevated average surface temperature of 288 K.
The reason that conservation of energy would in fact be obeyed as it must is that such a planet would not have such an elevated surface temperature, but would rather have an average surface temperature of 255 K or less (the less because it depends on the temperature distribution with a uniform distribution yielding the 255 K average temperature). Ergo, the elevated surface temperature is due to the fact that, in our actual Earth, we have elements in the atmosphere that absorb terrestrial radiation. Although this follows from conservation of energy, there is also abundant empirical evidence confirming it, including the fact that the Earth as seen from space only radiates ~240 W/m^2 rather than the ~390 W/m^2 being radiated by its surface, and the fact that the spectral distribution of this radiation is in good agreement with radiative transfer calculations based upon the known absorption spectra of the atmospheric constituents.
dr bill says:
Bill, this is a good question (which others…my girlfriend, and physics colleagues) have often asked when Ithey learn what I do on the web, but your presumptive answer is way off the mark! The reason I have dedicated so much time to this is most likely a combination of the following:
(1) I have a lot of free time at the moment because we are on break…and this is a good distraction from whatever non-pressing work I could be doing.
(2) A certain obsessiveness, best summarized by what I think is perhaps the best cartoon ever: http://xkcd.com/386/ Arguing against nonsense on the internet really does have an addictive nature to it. And, as a physicist, I hate seeing physics abused, which is why I have spent a lot of time of these “theories” such as Nikolov’s and various “the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist theories” like Postma’s. A more rational part of me thinks that I should just let the AGW skeptics who endorse such nonsense make complete fools of themselves and probably do more to discredit the movement than I can with reasoned scientific debunkings, but it is hard to go with that part.
By the way, if you think that your and Ned Nikolov’s explanation of why I am spending so much time debunking this “theory” is correct, how do you explain why the most scientifically-literate skeptics like Roy Spencer, Willis Eschenbach, and even (although I hesitate to put him in this category) Monckton are similarly trying to point out its obvious fatal flaws? As “AGW skeptics”, surely they should be embracing it if they think it is anything but nonsense.
Repetition does not strengthen your arguments. Throwing the word “nonsense” into a group of people trying to critically analyze a hypothesis is deliberately insulting those people’s intellectual labor. You should realize – that is inflammatory and useless argumentation. This is a falsifiable hypothesis (unlike most AGW hypothesis/conjecture), and therefore can pass through normal scientific process. It doesn’t rely on post-normal, pseudo science. Your proper skeptical viewpoint has been duly noted. Now why not apply the same skepticism to the post-normal – “CO2 is evil and will kill us all meme.”
It has been clearly shown, that this hypothesis is NOT nonsense. It has NOT been shown that the hypothesis is correct. Validity and correctness are two different parameters. The hypothesis is valid, it remains, to be determined, whether it is correct or not.
Citing people who disagree is a very weak argument, and may be indicative, of misunderstanding the assertions of the hypothesis. Give it some more critical thought and time. If the hypothesis violates the conservation of energy (I disagree), then the hypothesis will die a sudden and complete death soon. Vindication and nose rubbing rights, will be yours. Happy days. GK
Joel Shore, January 4, 2012 at 6:43 am :
Hi Joel,
Well, at least you haven’t responed with “I AM NOT FOAMING !!!”, but xkcd notwithstanding, if you’re that obsessive, I’m surprised you still have a girlfriend. I also don’t believe you, but that’s just me. Pay no attention… 🙂
To answer your question briefly, I am also a physicist (Theoretical Condensed Matter), and after reading (several times) the pdf of the Nikolov and Keller poster that I got at tallbloke’s place, I think that their ideas have merit, and should be examined and explored more fully. Nothing more complicated than that. They might be in error, but their errors, if any, have not been identified yet, and are certainly not contained in any of the things I’ve seen you write in response to it.
On the other hand, you’ve written so much, and in so many places, in so few days, that I doubt that anyone has read even half of it. At some point, so much activity starts to look foolish and desperate, even if it were to contain something of merit.
Happy foaming,
/dr.bill
Richard S Courtney says:
Of course, Richard wants you to read only his sophistry and where I finally got fed up with his repeated sophistry and refused to continue to engage him in his nonsense. He does not want you to read what I wrote in previous posts responding to him, like here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/#comment-852024
and here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/#comment-852129
Joel,
The professional (PhD) skeptics are very similar in their thinking to professional AGW supporters in one respect – they are quite knowledgeable about the details involving radiative transfer and various aspects of atmospheric dynamics. However, that knowledge of details overwhelms their holistic perception, so that they oftentimes cannot see the forest for the trees. This phenomenon is observed not only in atmospheric/climate science, but in all fields of science! It’s part of human psychology rooted in the workings of our minds… For example, if you read carefully Roy Spencer’s response to our paper, you’ll note that he does not address any of the central points/findings of our study such as the amazing predictive skill of Eq. 8, the 3 major problems of the current GH theory outlined in Section 2.1, or the implications of the Gas Law for planetary climates discussed in Section 3.1. Instead he spends all his time discussing energy balance issues and putting forward theoretical arguments about how pressure could not have a thermal enhancement effect, while the Gas Law and analysis of actual planetary data clearly show that it can! … Knowledge is power, but it can also be an obstacle in seeing new paradigms! This is why major breakthroughs in science (especially new theories) have mostly been developed by ‘outsiders’, i.e. people who have a broader overall knowledge, but are not part of the ‘establishment’ in a given discipline, and are not ‘handicapped’ by technical details … With respect to our particular topic, I was surprised to see that prominent researchers had difficulty with one of the most fundamental premises in thermodynamics that higher pressure would always result in a higher equilibrium temperature for the same amount of absorbed energy … I’m addressing this issue in more detail my official reply …
Fellows,
If I may, I would like to invite everyone participating in this discussion to restrain from resorting to personal attacks. What we are discussing here should have nothing to do with our personalities or private lives. The discussion is strictly about the physical truth, and no one should take any remarks made here personally … I believe that one of the highest virtues in science is the ability to stay ‘detached’ from (not fully identified with) one’s own views and theoretical concepts, so that when new evidence comes along, one could easily transition to a new concept. .. After all, no theory is ‘final’ … 🙂
Joel Shore says:
January 3, 2012 at 1:12 pm
I forgot to say thanks for the response.
However, since PdV is W (work) and work is done on/at the boundary I believe you are incorrect in your W is zero statement. As work is a path function and not a property the work done by gravity may not be offset by the work done by convection. Further, if IR can do no work then I find it hard to accept that it can increase the T of the earth’s surface.
Ned Nikolov says:
Lots of skeptics have dared to question this and your paper in fact bears a lot of resemblance to the previous arguments that have been made, e.g., by Gerlich & Tscheuschner, the “Slaying the SkyDragon” book, and Joseph Postma. Yet, no serious climate scientist has endorsed these “theories” (including skeptics like Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, and Willis Eschenbach) because it is obvious that they are incorrect, just as yours is (and, indeed, both Spencer and Eschenbach seem to think this too).
Personally, I doubt you can resolve the temperature and CO2 data this accurately as you go back further in time…and given the elementary errors you have made in your “theory”, there is not reason to believe you have done any better with paleoclimate data. That said, it is true that our current situation is somewhat unique: In the past, only natural processes could increase CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere; In the current situation, we have an entirely new phenomenon where sentient beings can take carbon that has been locked away from the atmosphere for millions of years and very rapidly (on geologic timescales) release it into the atmosphere.
Yes, it does provide “proof” (to the extent you can ever have proof in science, which is inductive, not deductive): The only way that one can satisfy energy conservation when the Earth’s surface emits ~390 W/m^2 while the Earth and atmosphere absorb only ~240 W/m^2 from the sun is to have ~150 W/m^2 of that ~390 W/m^2 be absorbed by the atmosphere. And, this is exactly what the satellite data shows is happening and in exactly the way that radiative transfer models using the empirically-measured absorption lines of the atmospheric constituents predict it happens.
How have you done this? You certainly haven’t done it by incorporating convection correctly into a model of the greenhouse effect. Instead, you’ve incorporated it in a way that drives T_a and T_s to be equal. In reality, convection only drives the temperatures to the point where the lapse rate is equal to the appropriate adiabatic lapse rate. And, any elementary book on climate science (such as Ray Pierrehumbert’s) would emphasize that the greenhouse effect relies vitally on there being a lapse rate so that the level of the atmosphere where radiation successfully escapes to space is colder than the surface. For example, on p. 148 of Ray’s book, he says, “The key insight taken from this discussion is that the greenhouse effect only works to the extent that the atmosphere is colder at the radiating level than it is at the ground.” You’ve eliminated that possibility by allowing convection to drive the two temperatures to equality, in contrast to what elementary thermodynamics tells us will happen!
And, you certainly haven’t done this by fitting data for 8 celestial bodies (several of which exhibit almost no surface enhancement) to a model with 4 or 5 free parameters.
Do you honestly think you are the first climate scientists to apply the Ideal Gas Law to the atmosphere? Read a textbook on climate science, for heaven’s sake!
And, your model has, by my count, 5 free parameters. (I am sure that 4 of them are free, since you state as much.) You haven’t predicted anything…You have just fit some data. And, for a reason that you noted (absorption line-broadening) and a reason I noted (celestrial bodies need an atmosphere with some significant pressure to have any gases, and thus a significant amount of greenhouse gases), one expects there to be a generally positive correlation between surface temperature enhancement and surface pressure. So, once you have several adjustable parameters to play with, it is not surprising that you can get a good fit to the data.
My prediction of two things that we will not see in your final paper:
(1) We will not see any detailed physical explanation of how one could possibly get a surface temperature enhancement (above the value predicted by the Stefan-Boltzmann equation for a UNIFORM temperature distribution) without the greenhouse effect and still obey conservation of energy. We will not see a detailed explanation of this because it is impossible to do so.
(2) We will not see any correction of the way that you incorporated convection into the simple greenhouse effect model in Section 2.1 above. This is because a correct incorporation of convection would not give the desired result of essentially eliminating the greenhouse effect. (We also won’t see any acknowledgement of the fact that correctly-formulated radiative-convective models are already used to actually do quantitative calculations of the greenhouse effect.)
Joel Shore (Jan. 4, 2012 at 9:51 am):
You assert that “The only way that one can satisfy energy conservation when the Earth’s surface emits ~390 W/m^2 while the Earth and atmosphere absorb only ~240 W/m^2 from the sun is to have ~150 W/m^2 of that ~390 W/m^2 be absorbed by the atmosphere.” As Richard Courtney and I believe we have proved on numerous occasions in the past couple of days, this assertion is false. Rather than endlessly repeating your counter claim, why don’t you attempt a proof that it is true?
Hint
While the vector of intensity 390 W/m^2 is a flux of energy, it is not a flux of heat. On the other hand, th vector of intensity 240 W/m^2 is a flux of heat. By its definition in thermodynamics, the “heat” is the energy that crosses the referenced boundary .At Earth’s surface the heat flux is the vector sum of a number of different vectors, only one of which has an intensity of 390 W/m^2. Once the additional vectors are taken into account, the apparent violation of energy conservation is falsified. Climatologists have adopted an abberant definition of the word “heat” under which it it not necessarily the energy that crosses the referenced boundary. In doing so, they have quite possibly created the AGW scare.
davidmhoffer says:
January 4, 2012 at 12:44 am
It took me a while to get my head wrapped around your theory because I did exactly what Joel shore and your other detractors in the various threads did. I made the mistake of trying to add up all the tiny details into a cohesive whole. Then I had my aha! moment. We don’t need no stinkin’ details! >>>
There you go David, seems it is sinking in.
The only thing I had still in question was on the matter of density, it being the only dependent variable when you look at a temperature at a given layer and point within an atmosphere, by ρT = constant. But I have since come across a comment made by Ned that relieves me at bit, that this explanation in more detail will be forthcoming in his explanations this week.
You’re right, standing back at the planetary scale there are few details necessary. Any details will be more intra-atmospheric variances or weather type event since our planet is never in local (portions of the planet) equilibrium though it is at a planetary scale. The later, weather event variances in the atmosphere we largely already know. It is the intra-atmospheric variances, that is the specific energy at each layer and altitude which is pretty much still wide open and Dr. Miskolczi’s papers are the first I ever saw that is touching on those empirically. That is why I do like his papers even though there might be a question on the correctness here and there. You have heard me talk of that before.
You are good at the talking, spread it. It will fall down there.
Ned,
I see that our posts have crossed, so let me briefly address the scientific part of your latest post:
Predictive skill: I’ve discussed that in my most recent post.
Section 2.1(b): I’ve discussed that in my most recent post.
Section 2.1(a): I’ve discussed that but just to re-iterate, your calculation of surface enhancement convolves two different things. One is the true enhancement of the power that the surface emits above that which the body (including its atmosphere) absorb. The other is the fact that for any given emitted power, there are an infinite number of temperature distributions that will give that emitted power. Extremely broad distributions, such as the one that you have proposed by assuming that at each point on the surface emits at the same rate as it is receiving radiation from the sun (i.e., no heat flow & no heat storage), will give lower average temperatures because of the upward curvature of T^4 vs T (or Holder’s Inequality, if you want). Thus, it is probably better to talk about the enhancement in emitted power than the enhancement in average temperature. (The 33 K number quoted for the magnitude of the greenhouse effect is derived by assuming a uniform temperature distribution…and, indeed, the current earth’s actual temperature distribution is close enough to uniform that you get close to the same result for emitted power as you get using a uniform distribution.)
Section 2.1(c): Frankly, this argument is just confused. For one thing, while the heat capacity of the atmosphere may be small in comparison to the ocean, it is not THAT small. (E.g., you can calculate the amount of time it would take the atmosphere to cool down by a certain amount if it were not absorbing any energy and it takes some significant time.) For another, there is simply no reason whatsoever why the flux of radiation from the atmosphere has to be less than that received from the sun. (I have made an analogy with aluminum recycling whereas Tim Folkerts has made one with money here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/#comment-852001 )
Section 3.1: This is again just very confused. Yes, there are implications that follow from the ideal gas law and other thermodynamic considerations, such as the adiabatic lapse rate. However, these do not result in an increase in surface pressure on a planet where there is no atmospheric absorption of IR emissions from the surface. On such a planet, the average temperature (or, more precisely, the average of T^4) is set by radiative balance considerations and you’d get the temperature of the atmosphere by working up from the surfacxe. On a planet with atmospheric absorption of IR emissions from it’s surface, the average temperature at the “effective radiating level” in the atmosphere is set by radiative balance considerations and then the surface temperature follows from the lapse rate and the altitude of this effective radiating level. The effective radiating level (i.e., the level at which radiation can successfully escape to space without being absorbed) depends, of course, on the composition of the atmosphere.
The reason that Roy Spencer has chosen not to address the confusions above is probably because it is a bit painful to wade through the errors you have made, and your “theory” can be dismissed on the much simpler grounds that he has discussed.