Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Since at least the days of Da Vinci, people have been fascinated by perpetual motion machines. One such “perpetuum mobile” designed around the time of the civil war is shown below. It wasn’t until the development of the science of thermodynamics that it could be proven that all such mechanisms are impossible. For such machines to work, they’d have to create energy, and energy cannot be either created or destroyed, only transformed.
I bring this up for a curious reason. I was reading the Jelbring hypothesis this afternoon, which claims that greenhouse gases (GHGs) are not the cause of the warming of the earth above the theoretical temperature it would have without an atmosphere. Jelbring’s hypothesis is one of several “gravito-thermal” theories which say the heating of the planet comes from gravity rather than (or in some theories in addition to) the greenhouse effect. His thought experiment is a planet with an atmosphere. The planet is isolated from the universe by an impervious thermally insulating shell that completely surrounds it, and which prevents any energy exchange with the universe outside. Inside the shell, Jelbring says that gravity makes the upper atmosphere colder and the lower atmosphere warmer. Back around 2004, I had a long discussion on the “climateskeptics” mailing list with Hans Jelbring. I said then that his theory was nothing but a perpetual motion machine, but at the time I didn’t understand why his theory was wrong. Now I do.
Dr. Robert Brown has an fascinating post on WUWT called “Earth’s baseline black-body model – a damn hard problem“. On that thread, I had said that I thought that if there was air in a tall container in a gravity field, the temperature of the air would be highest at the bottom, and lowest at the top. I said that I thought it would follow the “dry adiabatic lapse rate”, the rate at which the temperature of dry air drops with altitude in the earth’s atmosphere.
Dr. Brown said no. He said that at equilibrium, a tall container of air in a gravity field would be the same temperature everywhere—in other words, isothermal.
I couldn’t understand why. I asked Dr. Brown the following question:
Thanks, Robert, With great trepidation, I must disagree with you.
Consider a gas in a kilometre-tall sealed container. You say it will have no lapse rate, so suppose (per your assumption) that it starts out at an even temperature top to bottom.
Now, consider a collision between two of the gas molecules that knocks one molecule straight upwards, and the other straight downwards. The molecule going downwards will accelerate due to gravity, while the one going upwards will slow due to gravity. So the upper one will have less kinetic energy, and the lower one will have more kinetic energy.
After a million such collisions, are you really claiming that the average kinetic energy of the molecules at the top and the bottom of the tall container are going to be the same?
I say no. I say after a million collisions the molecules will sort themselves so that the TOTAL energy at the top and bottom of the container will be the same. In other words, it is the action of gravity on the molecules themselves that creates the lapse rate.
Dr. Brown gave an answer that I couldn’t wrap my head around, and he recommended that I study the excellent paper of Caballero for further insight. Caballero discusses the question in Section 2.17. Thanks to Dr. Browns answer plus Caballero, I finally got the answer to my question. I wrote to Dr. Brown on his thread as follows:
Dr. Brown, thank you so much. After following your suggestion and after much beating of my head against Caballero, I finally got it.
At equilibrium, as you stated, the temperature is indeed uniform. I was totally wrong to state it followed the dry adiabatic lapse rate.
I had asked the following question:
Now, consider a collision between two of the gas molecules that knocks one molecule straight upwards, and the other straight downwards. The molecule going downwards will accelerate due to gravity, while the one going upwards will slow due to gravity. So the upper one will have less kinetic energy, and the lower one will have more kinetic energy.
After a million such collisions, are you really claiming that the average kinetic energy of the molecules at the top and the bottom of the tall container are going to be the same?
What I failed to consider is that there are fewer molecules at altitude because the pressure is lower. When the temperature is uniform from top to bottom, the individual molecules at the top have more total energy (KE + PE) than those at the bottom. I said that led to an uneven distribution in the total energy.
But by exactly the same measure, there are fewer molecules at the top than at the bottom. As a result, the isothermal situation does in fact have the energy evenly distributed. More total energy per molecules times fewer molecules at the top exactly equals less energy per molecule times more molecules at the bottom. Very neat.
Finally, before I posted my reply, Dr. Brown had answered a second time and I hadn’t seen it. His answer follows a very different (and interesting) logical argument to arrive at the same answer. He said in part:
Imagine a plane surface in the gas. In a thin slice of the gas right above the surface, the molecules have some temperature. Right below it, they have some other temperature. Let’s imagine the gas to be monoatomic (no loss of generality) and ideal (ditto). In each layer, the gravitational potential energy is constant. Bear in mind that only changes in potential energy are associated with changes in kinetic energy (work energy theorem), and that temperature only describes the average internal kinetic energy in the gas.
Here’s the tricky part. In equilibrium, the density of the upper and lower layers, while not equal, cannot vary. Right? Which means that however many molecules move from the lower slice to the upper slice, exactly the same number of molecules must move from the upper slice to the lower slice. They have to have exactly the same velocity distribution moving in either direction. If the molecules below had a higher temperature, they’d have a different MB [Maxwell-Boltzmann] distribution, with more molecules moving faster. Some of those faster moving molecules would have the right trajectory to rise to the interface (slowing, sure) and carry energy from the lower slice to the upper. The upper slice (lower temperature) has fewer molecules moving faster — the entire MB distribution is shifted to the left a bit. There are therefore fewer molecules that move the other way at the speeds that the molecules from the lower slice deliver (allowing for gravity). This increases the number of fast moving molecules in the upper slice and decreases it in the lower slice until the MB distributions are the same in the two slices and one accomplishes detailed balance across the interface. On average, just as many molecules move up, with exactly the same velocity/kinetic energy profile, as move down, with zero energy transport, zero mass transport, and zero alteration of the MB profiles above and below, only when the two slices have the same temperature. Otherwise heat will flow from the hotter (right-shifted MB distribution) to the colder (left-shifted MB distribution) slice until the temperatures are equal.
It’s an interesting argument. Here’s my elevator speech version.
• Suppose we have an isolated container of air which is warmer at the bottom and cooler at the top. Any random movement of air from above to below a horizontal slice through the container must be matched by an equal amount going the other way.
• On average, that exchange equalizes temperature, moving slightly warmer air up and slightly cooler air down.
• Eventually this gradual exchange must lead to an isothermal condition.
I encourage people to read the rest of his comment.
Now, I see where I went wrong. Following the logic of my question to Dr. Brown, I incorrectly thought the final equilibrium arrangement would be where the average energy per molecule was evenly spread out from top to bottom, with the molecules having the same average total energy everywhere. This leads to warmer temperature at the bottom and colder temperature at elevation. Instead, at thermal equilibrium, the average energy per volume is the same from top to bottom, with every cubic metre having the same total energy. To do that, the gas needs to be isothermal, with the same temperature in every part.
Yesterday, I read the Jelbring hypothesis again. As I was reading it, I wondered by what logic Jelbring had come to the conclusion that the atmosphere would not be isothermal. I noticed the following sentence in Section 2.2 C (emphasis mine):
The energy content in the model atmosphere is fixed and constant since no energy can enter or leave the closed space. Nature will redistribute the contained atmospheric energy (using both convective and radiative processes) until each molecule, in an average sense, will have the same total energy. In this situation the atmosphere has reached energetic equilibrium.
He goes on to describe the atmosphere in that situation as taking up the dry adiabatic lapse rate temperature profile, warm on the bottom, cold on top. I had to laugh. Jelbring made the exact same dang mistake I made. He thinks total energy evenly distributed per molecule is the final state of energetic equilibrium, whereas the equilibrium state is when the energy is evenly distributed per volume and not per molecule. This is the isothermal state. In Jelbrings thought experiment, contrary to what he claims, the entire atmosphere of the planet would end up at the same temperature.
In any case, there’s another way to show that the Jelbring hypothesis violates conservation of energy. Again it is a proof by contradiction, and it is the same argument that I presented to Jelbring years ago. At that time, I couldn’t say why his “gravito-thermal” hypothesis didn’t work … but I knew that it couldn’t work. Now, I can see why, for the reasons adduced above. In addition, in his thread Dr. Brown independently used the same argument in his discussion of the Jelbring hypothesis. The proof by contradiction goes like this:
Suppose Jelbring is right, and the temperature in the atmosphere inside the shell is warmer at the bottom and cooler at the top. Then the people living in the stygian darkness inside that impervious shell could use that temperature difference to drive a heat engine. Power from the heat engine could light up the dark, and provide electricity for cities and farms. The good news for perpetual motion fans is that as fast as the operation of the heat engine would warm the upper atmosphere and cool the lower atmosphere, gravity would re-arrange the molecules once again so the prior temperature profile would be restored, warm on the bottom and cold on the top, and the machine would produce light for the good citizens of Stygia … forever.
As this is a clear violation of conservation of energy, the proof by contradiction that the Jelbring hypothesis violates the conservation of energy is complete.
Let me close by giving my elevator speech about the Jelbring hypothesis. Hans vigorously argues that no such speech is possible, saying
There certainly are no “Elevator version” of my paper which is based on first principal physics. It means that what I have written is either true or false. There is nothing inbetween.
Another “gravito-thermal” theorist, Ned Nikolov, says the same thing:
About the ‘elevator speech’ – that was given in our first paper! However, you apparently did not get it. So, it will take far more explanation to convey the basic idea, which we will try to do in Part 2 of our reply.
I don’t have an elevator speech for the Nikolov & Zeller theory (here, rebuttal here) yet, because I can’t understand it. My elevator speech for the Jelbring hypothesis, however, goes like this:
• If left undisturbed in a gravity field, a tall container of air will stratify vertically, with the coolest air at the top and the warmest air at the bottom.
• This also is happening with the Earth’s atmosphere.
• Since the top of the atmosphere cannot be below a certain temperature, and the lower atmosphere must be a certain amount warmer than the upper, this warms the lower atmosphere and thus the planetary surface to a much higher temperature than it would be in the absence of the atmosphere.
• This is the cause of what we erroneously refer to as the “greenhouse effect”
Now, was that so hard? It may not be the best, I’m happy to have someone improve on it, but it covers all the main points. The claim that “gravito-thermal” theories are too complex for a simple “elevator speech” explanation doesn’t hold water.
But you can see why such an elevator speech is like garlic to a vampire, it is anathema to the “gravito-thermal” theorists—it makes spotting their mistakes far too easy.
w.
Hans,
I almost fell into the same “the adiabatic lapse rate is the equilibrium condition since it implies the same total energy at any altitude”. Read the discussion below — you should find that the isothermal profile is indeed the correct answer. And you will see that physicists who know thermodynamics well struggle with this question, so it is no wonder that you and I could be misled. (I would love to say I was just playing the devil’s advocate, but I ignored some fundamental thermodynamics and let a too-simple argument cloud my judgement.) Since this is a fundamental assumption of your argument, it invalidates all the rest of your conclusions — sorry about that.
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/archives/2012/1_2012/msg00064.html
This is really not saying anything that has not been said here, but it is more technical/mathematical that the discussions here.
DeWitt Payne says:
January 20, 2012 at 5:51 pm
Let’s ditch this line of argument, shall we? Do you deny that there is an upper limit beyond which an atmosphere will boil off, and that your 2nd law objection is therefore inapplicable? If no, then the subject is moot. If yes, then we have reached an impasse.
Willis says: “Any random movement of air from above to below a horizontal slice through the container must be matched by an equal amount going the other way.”
It is worth mentioning that since there are more molecules below the slice than above, individual molecules below the slice must be less likely to move up than individual molecules above the slice are likely to move down. Some attempted counter arguments (such as David’s) fail for not taking this aspect into account.
thepompousgit says:
January 20, 2012 at 4:26 pm
I was in the class of 1965 at Caltech, so I heard the Feynman lectures first hand. I believe Feynman’s comment applies to understanding the mechanism of quantum mechanics. There is no understanding. It just is.
Ultimately, when participating in discussions like this, you have three basic choices.
1) Enjoy it as a rousing debate, where everyone can throw out whatever ideas they want. Listen to the various points — maybe argue for your pet position.
2) Accept the conclusions of those who are the experts. In this case, pretty much everyone with an advanced degree in physics agrees that the isothermal answer is the right answer.
3) Educate yourself so you are yourself an expert. This means actually reading books and/or taking classes and/or sitting down with serious students of the topic. Sometimes the comments here are sufficient to provide that education, but don’t count on random internet posters to provide a free, clear, correct, comprehensive education.
” There is no understanding. It just is.”
So it’s, like, magic?
Er, not I, Willis said that:
Hans Jelbring says:
January 20, 2012 at 5:45 pm
Myrrh says:
January 20, 2012 at 3:03 pm
And therein lies the problem, that you’re talking about perpetual motion and you don’t know it. Hans, you are indeed proposing perpetual motion. You are saying that gravity separates the warm and cold molecules.
Your lasr sentence is correct. The reason is that maximum entropy or the second law of thermodynamics has to be applied when a gravity field is at work and we are studying a insulated inclosed atmosphere as defined in my E&E paper. Yes, the consequences are tremendous.
======
Sorry, didn’t make it clear – I was quoting Willis and responding to him.
Would you take a read of what I actually wrote in response and tell me what you think? Please don’t use maths.. 😉
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/19/perpetuum-mobile/#comment-871089
My next post on here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/19/perpetuum-mobile/#comment-871204
says: “Gravity, it seems to me, is as near dammit perpetual motion as long as the optimum conditions can be maintained because it is then a constant force as source of energy, is energy since energy does work – just ‘cos it sits around looking as if its not doing anything… “
KevinK says:
January 20, 2012 at 4:04 pm
“With all due respect, I am most certainly NOT ignorant of science. With multiple Master’s Degrees in Optics and Electronics and three decades of reconciling computer predictions with actual observations I am quite familiar with all of the relevant disciplines necessary to understand the “Greenhouse Effect”.”
This is really NOT a problem of being smart or dumb. This is an arena in which many misconceptions are deeply embedded and actual data is sparse, leaving smart and able people open to reaching multiple conclusions and interpretations which are not capable of being confirmed or denied.
But, I am afraid you have jumped the gun on this:
“When the energy returns to the surface from the “GHG” you cannot ADD it to the energy arriving from the Sun to produce an alleged “energy budget”.”
Energy is constantly coming in. If some of it is made to hang around longer than instantaneously, before the new batch arrives, then you will accumulate a net offset.
It’s not about increasing energy flow, which is always nearly constant. It’s about impeding that flow so that you keep more close to you.
Hans Jelbring says:
January 20, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Good luck getting a tan with long wavelength IR. One usually gets a tan from direct normal sunlight which reaches 1000 W/m² total flux with a significant fraction of that in the UV at reasonable elevations above the horizon. But you can point an IR thermometer at the sky at night and get a temperature reading, assuming it isn’t so cold as to be below the lower end of the IR thermometer range. Mine goes down to -60 C, so it has to be really cold and dry to not register. If the sky is clear, the IR thermometer reading will always be lower than the ambient near surface air temperature. With cloud covered sky, it will be about the same.
Or, you could build a box like Roy Spencer and see that while the internal temperature goes below ambient, it would go a lot lower if it were looking at a sky with an effective temperature of 2.7 K. The other advantage of building such a box is that you could also repeat the Wood experiment and prove to yourself that he was wrong. But you would need to paint the inside black rather than white. The other problem is that Roy uses foamed polystyrene. It will likely melt at the temperatures that can be achieved exposed to direct normal sunlight even with a polyethylene film cover. I recommend cardboard coated outside with aluminum foil and baked out in a 120C oven before applying the window and sealing. Otherwise you get condensation on the window. You also need to insulate the walls of the box with six inches (at least) of fiberglass insulation.
Smokey says at 1/20 6:32pm:
“So it’s, like, magic?”
LOL, for quantum mechanics, Einstein set the terminology – he didn’t go so far as to say “magic” but was ok with “spooky” action at a distance.
DeWitt Payne says:
January 20, 2012 at 6:13 pm
“The surface temperature would be limited by the brightness temperature of the incoming radiation or you violate the Second Law.”
My capacitor analogy is good here. Incoming radiation is the current. Temperature is the voltage. The capacitor accumulates charge continuously, and the voltage climbs continuously.
Does it violate the 2nd law? Yes, if it is an ideal capacitor. Which is precisely why an ideal capacitor cannot exist
Similarly, a non-radiating atmosphere cannot exist. So, if you’re looking for a violation of the 2nd law, it is embedded in the fundamental premise of the problem. But, that does not mean we cannot draw useful conclusions from the thought experiment.
sky says:
January 20, 2012 at 5:26 pm
Umm, it’s the same as the surface temperature. That’s what isothermal means. Of course it depends on what you mean by the TOA. I take it to mean the maximum altitude where the kinetic energy distribution of the molecules is still accurately described by the Boltzmann distribution. That’s going to be on the order of 100 km and includes 99.9999% or so of the total mass of the atmosphere. There’s still some mass left that is gravitationally bound, but when the mean free path is measured in km, the collision frequency is low and LTE doesn’t apply.
Willis:
“jae, I fear I don’t have a clue which “empirical evidence” you are speaking of. If it has to do with the N&Z hypothesis, I don’t understand the hypothesis so “evidence” means nothing. Let me know which evidence and which theory you’re talking about.
More light and less heat would help here.”
Well, I will assume you are being honest, because you always have been, AFAIK. But…maybe because you get a “headache” when you read Huffman’s stuff (your words, I think), you did not really read his stuff and pay attention to the DATA (aka, EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE!). Same with the other papers. It seems that the atmospheres of other planetoids that have atmospheres have temperatures that are not correlated in any way to the amounts or types of GHGs present in those atmospheres. You continue to ignore all that part of the question, and do not confront it/explain your position. Is it confirmation bias? Old age? Ego? What, Willis?
AND, Willis, we have the little issue of rapidly increasing GHGs (OCO), but steady or maybe decreasing temperatures for the last few years! Although many other factors are involved, this fact does not help the concept the GHG/heating nonsense and must be annoying, no?
DeWitt Payne says:
January 20, 2012 at 6:13 pm
“The only way that a surface couldn’t be in LTE is if the temperature is increasing (or decreasing) extremely rapidly.”
Exponential rise is generally considered “extremely rapid”. What would the exponent be? What would you expect the heat capacity of a non-radiating material to be?
Bill Hunter says:
January 20, 2012 at 5:01 pm
Willis says:
“IF GRAVITY ACTUALLY SEPARATES TEMPERATURE, WE HAVE FREE ENERGY FOREVER!
If sealed thermally isolated containers of air were to gravitationally separate, with warm air at the bottom and cool air at the top, then we could build tall insulated cylinders and pull power out of them forever.”
Apparently you’ve never heard of OTEC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion
Willis says:
“IF GRAVITY ACTUALLY SEPARATES TEMPERATURE, WE HAVE FREE ENERGY FOREVER!
Why do you think the oceans are colder on the bottom and hotter on the top? Gravity separates the oceans by temperature.
However, water is incompressible, which explains why the oceans are colder at the bottom. Water can only change density as a result of temperature. Air on the other hand changes density in response to both temperature and altitude.
For Davidmhoffer, if you liked my shorter analysis this longer analysis may be of interest to you;
The CRITICAL flaw in the “Greenhouse Gas” hypothesis….
Lots of attention has been given to the alleged “Greenhouse Effect” over the last few decades. It seems an elegant hypothesis that can explain almost every weather effect that occurs (i.e. droughts, floods, blizzards, warm spells, cold spells, more arctic ice, less arctic ice, shrinking glaciers, etc.)
However this hypothesis has a CRITICAL flaw.
Please allow me to me explain…
In any proper analysis of energy flow through a complex system it is necessary to stop occasionally to perform a “sanity check”, this indispensable tool is applied by engineering professionals to ascertain if our predictions/calculations still make sense in regard to the system we are analyzing/designing.
So let’s do a simple sanity check on the “Greenhouse Effect” (moving forward this will be abbreviated as the “GHE” for simplicity).
To quickly summarize the GHE;
1) Visible light (aka EMR radiation) is absorbed by the surface of the Earth
2) The warmed surface of the Earth emits Long Wave Infrared (LWIR) light
3) This LWIR is absorbed by gases in the atmosphere
4) These “warmed” gases emit energy back towards the surface of the Earth
5) And THEREFORE the “GHGs” cause the surface of the Earth to acquire a higher “equilibrium” temperature
I hope I have captured the essential essence of the GHE with this short summary. Of course, I fully expect some folks to disagree and inform me that I have misunderstood the GHE. So be it, we will deal with that at a future time.
To describe the flaw in the GHE we first need to conceptualize a convenient bundle of energy that we can follow through the Sun/Earth/Atmosphere/Universe system. This bundle of energy needs to be large enough so we can (largely) ignore effects that happen at the atomic level. Also the bundle needs to be small enough so we can track it in a “real time” fashion and determine what happens to the energy.
For the purposes of this discussion I propose we use 1 milliJoule of energy. This is 1 one-thousandth of a Joule. This should be just the right size for my purpose of demonstrating the flaw in the GHE hypothesis.
So let’s get to it, here is the sequence of events involved in the GHE;
1) A bundle (1 mJ) of energy in the form of mostly visible light arrives at a specific location on the Earth’s surface, courtesy of our friendly neighbor the Sun.
2) Some portion of the bundle is immediately reflected and departs at the speed of light in an opposing direction. I won’t bother to get into an interminable discussion of what the Albedo is since this proof does not require this knowledge. In fact it could be any number above zero and less than or equal to 1 without making any difference.
3) The remaining portion of the bundle is absorbed by the surface and converted to heat, this is the FIRST warming event (Warming Event #1) caused by our little bundle of energy. And if we know what material (sea water, soil, etc.) absorbs the bundle we can make a pretty good estimate of the temperature increase, but that calculation is not necessary.
4) Now, several things will happen to this bundle of thermal energy;
a) It can be conducted to locations below (or adjacent to) the surface which are colder.
b) It can be conducted to a stationary gas molecule in contact with the surface.
c) It can be convected away by a moving gas molecule that happens to contact the surface while travelling past.
d) It can be radiated as Infrared Radiation away from the surface.
It is important to note that in most cases all four of these events will happen in parallel (i.e. at the same time), so the actual Portion Radiated can vary from 0% to 100%.
5) No matter what happens in step 4, the surface cools (Cooling Event #1) by an amount which corresponds to the loss of of energy at that location. The amount radiated is somewhere between 0% and 100% (Albedo * Portion Radiated) leaving our radiated bundle at somewhere between 0 and 1 mJ. Again, if we wanted to calculate the temperature drop associated with the cooling we could use the thermal capacity of the material to make an estimate. It is important to note at this time that this absorption/remission process IS NOT instantaneous; it requires a finite amount of time (Time Delay #1) that is greater than zero.
6) The radiated energy (something between 0 and 1 mJ) now travels away from the surface at something close to the speed of light. Note that there are a few “flavors” of the speed of light depending on the material our little bundle is travelling through. The fastest flavor is when the light is travelling through a vacuum. When moving through the lower atmosphere the speed is slightly slower.
7) Our little bundle, speeding happily along and accelerating as the atmosphere gets less dense MAY be absorbed by a GHG. Whoops, that’s inopportune; it was hoping to get to Alpha Centuri before next Tuesday to watch the REAL Miss Universe show (ok a lame joke). The important thing to note is that a finite amount of time (Time Delay #2) has elapsed before the absorption occurs.
8) Once our bundle of energy is absorbed by the GHG it ceases to exist as IR light and is converted to heat (Warming Event #2). This is our little bundle’s second warming event within a few milliseconds, boy am I proud. Note that with any flavor of the speed of light our bundle can make it to the top of the atmosphere (TOA) in a few milliseconds at most.
9) Now, of course the same possibilities shown in step #4 may happen at the GHG molecule. Again all four of the possibilities can occur. To speed up this discussion we will assume that 100% of the energy is emitted as IR radiation. So the best case (or worst case if you still believe in the GHE) is that all of our 1 mJ has arrived at the GHG molecule and is going to be radiated away. A couple of important points need to be made here, first something less than 50% of our bundle can hope to head back towards the surface (as fixed by the geometry of a sphere). And secondly there is some finite time delay involved in the absorption/remission event (Time Delay #3).
10) Once the bundle of energy has been radiated by the GHG molecule the molecule will cool (Cooling Event #2) by an amount commensurate with the energy reradiated. And we could, if we wished, estimate the temperature drop, but it is immaterial.
11) Once again our little bundle is happily speeding along at the speed of light, but slowing down this time as the atmosphere gets denser. Oh well, zipping along at any flavor of the speed of light still beats a Lamborghini. And of course our little bundle is now no more than half of the man (or woman) that it used to be.
12) Damn, we flew our bundle right down into the ground (after Time Delay #4); I hate it when that happens. But the good news is we now have GHE induced warming (Warming Event #3). We could again have the Albedo argument (in the IR portion of the spectrum this time), but it does not matter. The IR radiation has ceased to exist and is now heat. So this takes us full circle and we are back at step #3, EXCEPT, AND THIS IS A REALLY BIG EXCEPT STATEMENT, two subsequent warming and two subsequent cooling events with four time delays interspersed have also taken place in the meantime. TO SUM THE FIRST WARMING EVENT WITH THE THIRD WARMING EVENT (both of which happen at the Earth’s surface) CLEARLY VIOLATES THE FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. THE GHE DOES NOT AND CANNOT CAUSE ANY “HIGHER EQUILIBRIUM” TEMPERATURE TO EXIST AT THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH (or anyplace else for that matter).
13) You are free to expand this time series to describe the third, fourth, fifth, etc, etc. sequential warming/cooling events if you wish, but I am extremely proud of my little bundle at this point and do not see the need. It should be noted that as one bundle of energy is absorbed/reemitted multiple times the amount reaching the surface declines as follows, 50%, 25%, 12.5%, 6.25%, 3.125%, 1.5625%, 0.78125%, 0.390625%, 0.1953125%, 0.09765625%. So after as few as ten bounces (taking at maximum perhaps 40 milliseconds if the energy makes it all the way to the TOA) the energy is already less than 1/10 of 1 percent of the initial amount.
I know lots of folks will disparage this discussion. So I will suggest a few FAQs in advance;
1) Q: But, but, but… all the other proud energy bundle parents are sending theirs out to do the same thing, so surely the volume of little bundles will make the GHE occur.
A: NO, all of the little bundles are travelling in parallel and do not sum. If we cannot demonstrate how one bundle of energy can make the GHE real, then we cannot claim that the GHE exists when discussing a “higher equilibrium” temperature
2) Q: But, but, but… the time delays you suggest are so long that energy is left over at the end of each day, and this is really what the GHE is about.
A: NO, at the speed of light each bundle could make 10 round trips to TOA and back to the surface in less than about 40 milliseconds. For reference, each day contains about 86 million milliseconds. So no energy is left over at the end of each day. Besides if energy was left over the Earth would slowly heat up 1 little notch at the end of each day and would have melted a long time ago (ignoring for a moment the fact that as the surface warms the emission spectrum shifts to lower (i.e. more transparent) wavelengths).
3) Q: But, but, but… you assumed the wrong value for the Albedo, Lapse Rate, Amount of
GHGs present, etc. etc. etc.
A: NO, this discussion is about the fact that sequential warming and cooling events occur with finite time delays (more than zero, but otherwise undefined) between each event and the events have finite (greater than zero and less than or equal to one) probabilities of occurrence and therefore CANNOT be summed to yield a “higher equilibrium” temperature.
4) Q: But, but, but… you have not presented any explanation about how the surface of the Earth reaches its average temperature without the GHE.
A: Agreed, I have not yet presented any theories about why the temperature of the Earth is what it is. So here I will;
First, I believe that the application of the Stephan-Boltzmann equation in conjunction with the
Kirchhoff radiative equilibrium equation have been performed incorrectly. Yes, I realize that’s a big deal because it’s written in all the climate science textbooks, so IT MUST BE SO. Well, if we never revised textbooks we would be in a bunch of hurt. Just because it is written down in a 20 year old book does not necessarily make it so. And a computer model that implements the assumptions of a hypothesis IS NOT a proof of the hypothesis, regardless of how fast the computer can collide numbers together.
Second, I suggest that the average temperature of the Earth is determined by the massive thermal capacity of the Oceans and the amount of energy already deposited there (by some undefined prior event(s)). Clearly, the Oceans do not respond to changes in the energy arriving at the surface on a time period of days, or even hundreds of years. A good analogy (as an electrical engineer I must mention this) would be the battery that you (likely) use to start your internal combustion car each day. It has a bunch of energy stored inside (provided by the manufacturer). Each day when you start your car you suck a whole bunch of energy out of it. Then you slowly recharge it (with the alternator) while you drive. So it always has a bunch of energy present, we are missing the fact that the manufacturer filled it up before you bought it. Just like the Ocean was already “charged up” before we invented the GHE.
5) Q: But, but, but… you are ignoring all the “evidence” of climate change, the shrinking glaciers, the floods, the droughts, the heat waves, etc. etc….
A: Two Words; CONFIRMATION BIAS. And unlike our current Vice President, I can in fact perform a simple task like counting the number of words in my statements.
6) Q: But, but, but… you are not a climate scientist that has peer reviewed publications, so we should not listen to you.
A: Yes, I am not a climate scientist with peer reviewed publications. This is in fact a situation I take some pride in. This discussion relies on a simple flow of logic. Read it at your own risk. Find the flaws. Point them out. Be skeptical.
In summary, the critical flaw in the GHE hypothesis is that the warming from GHGs happens sequentially AFTER a previous cooling event WITH an intervening time delay, THUS it cannot be added to the initial warming event. And therefore the GHE does not create “extra energy” or “net energy gains”.
Further, these warming and subsequent cooling events happen so quickly that the GHE has nothing to do with the “equilibrium” temperature present at the surface of the Earth.
Further, the warming from the GHE dissipates so quickly that it cannot be reasonably expected to influence the massive thermal capacity of the Oceans in any way.
Cheers, Kevin.
thepompousgit says (in response to Hans Jelbring):
Yeah…The way I was going to put it is that infrared radiation doesn’t give you a sun tan for the same reason that cell phones don’t give you brain cancer: The energy of the photons are way too small to cause this sort of cell damage to occur.
Einstein figured this out about a century ago.
pochas says:
This may well be the understatement of the century!
Willis says:
“IF GRAVITY ACTUALLY SEPARATES TEMPERATURE, WE HAVE FREE ENERGY FOREVER!
Consider ice. Ice is colder than liquid water, yet unlike liquid water, ice floats to the top (because of gravity). Liquid water on the other hand sinks when it gets colder. Again due to gravity.
Ice shows that density work together with gravity to separate the oceans by temperature.
Almost by definition I am the guy for which an elevator speech is supposed to be comprehensible.
I may be asking some bizarre stuff but if somebody doesn’t start answering them I would have to think that there is no hope or desire by anybody to come up with an elevator speech.
So that said here is one more. I have been led to believe 2 things.
1) the adiabatic convention process does not change the kinetic energy of a molecule of gas but does change the temperature. Though kinetic energy might change via radiation to space or to another molecule that lost some of its energy to space.
2) My reading on thermopiles is they do not respond to absolute temperature but instead gradients represented by kinetic energy differences (e.g. frequently also temperature gradients).
Are these substantially correct facts?
DeWitt Payne said @ur momisugly January 20, 2012 at 6:21 pm
De Witt, I envy you. Nothing to disagree with when you use the modifier. Did you by any chance attend the lectures on the derivation of Newton’s Laws from conic sections? They are my favourite…
Bart wrote;
“Energy is constantly coming in. If some of it is made to hang around longer than instantaneously, before the new batch arrives, then you will accumulate a net offset.”
Bart, have you ever taken any classes in the analysis of AC (alternating current) circuits ? I am very serious in this question.
If you have determined a means to effect a DC (direct current) “offset” by changing the response time of an electrical circuit you are quite a bit ahead of those that do electrical circuit design for a living. We can do this but we use diodes (aka rectifiers) to accomplish this task. the GHE does not behave as a rectifier does (i.e. energy only flows one way).
I suggest you study electrical engineering a bit before you discuss “offsets”, it is quite a BIG topic in our field.
Cheers, Kevin.
(To Moderators: Very Sorry – previous post unfinished and held a contradictory statement – please use this one) [Done -w.]
Taking the most simplistic approach possible:
A uniformly irradiated world, no rotation, no poles, two gas atmosphere (no water/condensation)
Atmosphere is uniformly dense – no pressure gradient:
Assuming there is only 1 GHG gas present in trace amounts and only that GHG can absorb IR energy. Assuming the ‘one other gas’ TG is totally transparent to all incoming and outgoing radiation.
Assuming all energy absorbed by the surface from the sun is then emitted at one IR wavelength which is only (and totally absorbed) by the one GHG gas.
Assuming all IR energy (100%) is absorbed by that GHG in the first 10 meters above the surface.
Assuming that energy is transferred rapidly by collision to TG molecules near the surface.
Assuming it is largely the TG molecules which carry the energy to the upper atmosphere by convection.
Assuming the energy can only be emitted to space by being passed back to a GHG in the upper atmosphere.
Case 1 Double the quantity of GHG, energy is totally absorbed and passed to TG twice as rapidly. After the system equilibrates there is a trace amount of extra energy retained in the atmosphere at any point in time. (related to that held by the extra GHG molecules).
There are now twice as many GHG molecules in the upper atmosphere with the opportunity to emit energy to space, but there is also twice as much opportunity they will intercept each-others’ IR emissions – average emission to space remains the same, and atmospheric temperature remains (almost) the same.
Case 2 Double the quantity of TG, retaining the original level of GHG There is twice the opportunity of collision between GGH and TG at all levels of atmosphere , energy near the surface is transferred more quickly to the TG. The atmosphere can now retain twice the energy of the original world. In the upper atmosphere there is twice the opportunity to pass the energy from the TG to the emitting GHG. Emission rate in the upper atmosphere is dependent on the opportunity of the GHG to collect some energy (now doubled), and the density of GHG at altitude (only another GHG molecules can intercept the transfer of IR energy to space). As GHG density at the upper atmosphere is still the same, emission rate should double (Twice the opportunity to collect energy, but retaining the original opportunity to emit to space.)
The lower atmosphere at equilibrium retains twice the energy of the original world. The upper atmosphere emits it twice as quickly. What effect does this have on atmospheric (and surface) temperature?
Repeat the exercise with graduated layers of from greater to lesser density atmosphere. Do the effects remain the same layer by layer?
KevinK says:
January 20, 2012 at 7:28 pm
“I suggest you study electrical engineering a bit before you discuss “offsets”, it is quite a BIG topic in our field.”
Maybe you need to review laser cavities a little.