Ned and Karl have finally got some big exposure to the general public for their paradigm shifting breakthrough in geo and astro-physics. World Net Daily front page stories are read by over a million people. This is a great step forward for recognition of their work.
Study blows Greenhouse Theory out of the water
7-9-2017 By Alex Newman for World Net Daily
BOZEMAN, Mont. – A new scientific paper contends the entire foundation of the man-made global-warming theory – the assumption that greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere by trapping heat – is wrong.
If confirmed, the study’s findings would crush the entire “climate change” movement to restrict CO2 emissions, the authors assert
Some experts contacted by WND criticized the paper, while others advised caution.
Still others suggested that the claimed discovery represents a massive leap forward in human understanding – a “new paradigm.”
The paper argues that concentrations of CO2 and other supposed “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere have virtually no effect on the earth’s temperature.
They conclude the entire greenhouse gas theory is incorrect.
Instead, the earth’s “greenhouse” effect is a function of the sun and atmospheric pressure, which results from gravity and the mass of the atmosphere, rather than the amount of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and water vapor in the atmosphere.
The same is true for other planets and moons with a hard surface, the authors contend, pointing to the temperature and atmospheric data of various celestial bodies collected by NASA.
So precise is the formula, the authors of the paper told WND, that, by using it, they were able to correctly predict the temperature of other celestial bodies not included in their original analysis.
The paper, published recently in the journal “Environment Pollution and Climate Change,” was written by Ned Nikolov, a Ph.D. in physical science, and Karl Zeller, retired Ph.D. research meteorologist.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
There goes the wind industry.
OK, I’ve already asked one user to kindly use the Monckton thread for the green energy debate. I think Ned would probably appreciate it if we discuss his theory vs the radiative greenhouse theory on this one. Thanks.
This is a rehash of the dissertation of Hans Jelbring, was comnented by me in E&E. http://skepticgreenhouseguide.blogspot.nl/2011/01/hypothesis-of-jelbring-and-rebuttal-by.html
The most telling point is that Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt and James Hansen had no comment. Sounds like they are scared – in the past they would have shot this down on reflex. Interesting times.
Reblogged this on Wolsten.
Hans Erren: This is a rehash of the dissertation of Hans Jelbring
Hans’ dissertation was called ‘wind controlled climate’. You are referring to his E&E paper ‘The Greenhouse Effect as a function of atmospheric Mass’.
“In an ideal gas atmosphere, the adiabatic temperature lapse rate has to be –g/cp where cp is the heat capacity of the gas (ref 2 p. 49). Theoretical calculations are well confirmed by observational evidence in the atmosphere of Earth. The adiabatic temperature lapse rate on Earth is thus –9.81/1004 = –0.0098 K/m. As James R. Holton concluded after deriving this result: “Hence, the dry adiabatic lapse rate is approximately constant throughout the lower atmosphere.” The temperature lapse rate in our model atmosphere also has to be –g/cp, since its atmosphere is organized adiabatically.”
If you take the time to Read Nikolov and Zeller’s paper you’ll find it takes a completely different approach. Yes, the mass of the atmosphere being acted on by gravity is a central component, but you won’t find –g/cp being used, because the N&Z paper is not dealing with vertical atmospheric profiles. It uses dimensional analysis to derive a pressure temperature relationship that holds good across the solar system’s wildly varying conditions to accurately determine the average surface temperatures of numerous moons and planets both with and without atmospheres. Please do take the time to actually read the paper.
“So precise is the formula, the authors of the paper told WND, that, by using it, they were able to correctly predict the temperature of other celestial bodies not included in their original analysis.”
When you can apply the formula across a number of different planets and moons, then I think you are on to something.
Keep up the good work.
@tallbloke:
Roger, this is an excellent point about distinguishing between Jelbring’s approach and our method. We do not address the vertical temperature profile in planetary atmospheres at all. Our Equations 10a and 10b strictly describe the global average surface temperatures of planetary bodies …
The success of our semi-empirical model (measured in terms of accuracy, scope and robustness) implies that one does not need to know atmospheric lapse rates and the vertical thermal profiles to successfully predict the planets’ average surface temperatures. The current climate theory assumes that a planet’s surface temperature is determined by the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) and the vertical lapse rate. Changing the concentrations of greenhouse gases is thought to perturb the TOA energy balance (by modifying the outgoing LW radiation), and thus alter the surface temperature.
However, our results point to a different physical reality – the global surface temperature appears to control both the atmospheric vertical thermal profile and the TOA energy balance rather than being a function of these!
I hear that the special ‘see no report, hear no report, do no reporting’ filters (aka Cox filters) have been issued to all BBC staff just in case this leaks out.
Commercial channel are free to refer to Nikolov and Zellerit in any comedy routine, or on Sky news as nobody takes either of these seriously.
My problem with this idea, as opposed to using real physics, is that it doesn’t conserve energy.
Taking some rough numbers for the estimated mass distribution of Venus’ atmosphere, I get about 88 YottaJoules of gravitational potential energy in Venus’ atmosphere. Meanwhile, Venus’ surface is hot enough that it radiates about 7.6 ExaWatts of infrared.
The only way to maintain Venus’ surface temperature is to feed it constantly with 7.6 ExaWatts. The way you’d get this in the “pressure” hypothesis is by collapsing the atmosphere because dE = P.dV so a power is dE/dt = P.dV/dt.
The potential energy associated with pressure is enough to keep Venus warm for about 20 weeks, then it would be exhausted and the atmosphere would be squashed up to the surface.
If Venus’ atmosphere doesn’t shrink dramatically over the next 20 weeks, will you agree that this idea’s been falsified?
Congrats Ned, this is the first accusation of breaking the first law of thermodynamics you’ve had in a while. 🙂
@MieScatter:
Have you read our paper? If not, please read it before commenting on it …
Your are line of reasoning does not make sense, because: 1) our model is empirical meaning that the pressure effect on surface temperature is inferred from vetted NASA observations through regression analysis, not through a theoretical thought experiment; and 2) we use long-term data representing at least 30-yr averages;
You need to recall the first principle of the scientific method: Do not argue against empirical data using a “theory”. If your theory cannot explain a pattern that is apparent in the data, look for problems in your reasoning and/or theory instead of questioning the data!
wolsten says: “The most telling point is that Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt and James Hansen had no comment. Sounds like they are scared – in the past they would have shot this down on reflex. Interesting times.”
Yes, that is interesting indeed! Last month, I emailed the URL of our published paper to Gavin Schmidt, Kevin Trenberth, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Richard Lindzen and a few other prominent ‘warmists’ and ‘skeptics’, but have not received any responses yet. Also, last week I submitted a comment to a post on Gavin’s blog RealClimate and it never made it through moderation …
People can get glassy eyed when you talk science so I use simple anomalies, like pump up your car tyres with a hand pump and feel how hot the pump gets. Compressing the air warms it up! Q E D
Richard111 says:
July 10, 2017 at 7:35 am
So does friction. PV=nRT. Tyres also dissipate heat. However, I understand where you are going.
We need both Chris Booker and Delingpole to repeat the WND article, anyone on here with their contact info?
Congratulations on the paper. I hope it demolishes the GHGE which is riddled with assumptions and unanswered questions.
Roy Spencer is one of the few people who has taken the trouble to explain his reasons for disagreeing with your conclusions. How do you answer the points he makes?
Btw, the World Net Daily (WND) article by Alex Newman is excellent and covers all aspects of this issue.
http://www.wnd.com/2017/07/study-blows-greenhouse-theory-out-of-the-water/
The experiment is not analogous to what occurs in the real atmosphere, which does not have walls or a lid, according to Nikolov and Zeller.
So pv =RT cannot be used
The pressure is the weight of the atmosphere, he added.
Weight is a downward only force
Pressure is not a downward only force it is 3d energy density, J /m^3
However I do agree that:
And the combination of gravity and the mass of the atmosphere explains why the Earth, for example, is warmer than the moon.
Gravity changes the velocity ( and therefore T) of molecules
The old theory never made any sense.
Empirical observations make sense.
Placeholder shift is quick and natural under the circumstances. It’s done and over. We move on.
@MieScatter says: July 10, 2017 at 5:43 am
Please find a rocky solid planet with an immobile atmosphere and your theory works well.
Ay oop, we wait decades for a decent refutation of AGW as a significant problem and then two come along almot simultaneously: Monckton et al. and Nikolov/Zeller.
Problem is they can’t both be correct. N/Z are dismissive of the Greenhouse Effect while Monckton et al fully accept CO2 causing global warming, arguing only about the size of feedbacks involved.
I look forward to the titanic struggle between the Monckton camp and and the N/Z faction now that the leftist warmists are being put to the sword.
This is junk science. You can not have a greenhouse effect without greenhouse gases. The idea that temperature is controlled by only air pressure is completely wrong. See “The role of gravity in the greenhouse effect” at: http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=6305
Convection is induced by radiative transfer of heat through the atmosphere.
Radiative transfer is due to greenhouse gasses.
Convection causes the lapse rate in the troposphere.
There is no greenhouse effect without a lapse rate.
There can be no greenhouse effect without greenhouse gases. Gravity alone will not work.
Figure 4 of the paper just shows a curve fitted to Earth and Venus. Of course Mars, the Moon and Titron all have near zero pressure so they trivially are on the curve. Titan doesn’t fall on the line, so the curve does not fit the data. However, one would expect that planets and moons with higher surface pressures would also have higher surface temperatures according to current greenhouse theory since the effective radiating altitude would be at a high altitude and convection maintains a significant lapse rate, being 6.5 C/km at Earth and 7.7 C/km at Venus.
The effective radiating altitude of the Earth atmosphere is at 5.1 km where the atmospheric pressure is 55 kPa, so 54.5% of the atmospheric mass, and 54.5% of CO2 is above this level.
There would be no lapse rate without greenhouse gases. Some greenhouse gases are required for a stable lapse rate, but lapse rate doesn’t change much with greenhouse gas concentrations. A planet with a 100% nitrogen atmosphere at Venus’ location with the same atmospheric surface pressure as Venus would have no lapse rate, no greenhouse effect and would NOT fall on the red line of the graph.
A good article ‘The Atmosphere’ on how the atmospheric greenhouse effect works is at;
Ned, it’s great work, I keep thinking about this other related stuff…
Things to ponder (or your explanation /refutation please):
1. Energy. If the planet surface is hotter with an atmosphere and cooler without then where does the extra energy come from. Is gravity continually doing work on the atmospheric molecules and the final result is some energy from the sun and some from the gravitational field so 2 energies add together hence hotter?
2. What is the actual atomic size explanation for transfer of energy through the atmosphere. Does this tell us anything new about matter and/or e.m. waves?
3. Can we explain what is happening with the photon way of looking at things?
Ken Gregory wrote:
Is it possible calculate/predict the “effective radiating altitude”? Also, for the moon shouldn’t the temp be ~270 K, which is actually some distance beneath the surface, how does that work? There seems to be something circular going on with this concept.
@ Richard111
Compressing a gas warms it up, when you do work to squash it. What happens to your warm car tyre if you leave it in the garage for a week? Is it still hot?
I’ve done that experiment a lot of times and the answer has always been “no”, just like real physics predicts. It’s the same process here: Venus’ atmosphere is not measurably collapsing, so it’s not providing any power and cannot explain Venus’ surface temperature.
@ Ned Nikolov
I’ve been through it. You made an empirical model where you fit a curve to some points, great. Astrophysicists already have models that explain atmospheric structure and temperatures pretty well too, so you’re competing against those.
We know that Venus’ surface temperature is so hot that it radiates 16.5 kW per metre squared in the infrared. Is your pressure releasing 16.5 kW/m^2? How? Explain the process and the source of the energy flux.
Surely any truth of the hypothesis of AGW could now be tested.
If CO2 ‘traps’ heat should this not show up in how long an El Niño warms the planet. Thus we should have observational figures for how long CO2 did ‘trap’ that heat. We also would have a better handle on how long the ‘CO2 effect’ takes to dissipate. Research paper anyone?
Written explanations don’t work too well it seems. It’s the pump that gets hot, not the tyre.
Never mind, here’s some more. In my younger days I lived and worked for several years in desert regions. Out of boredom I became interested in astronomy. This resulted in long hours spent outside at night when the air was clear. Problem was desert sand got very cold at night however hot it might have been during the day. I accepted this as normal until one day I read about ‘greenhouse gases’ and had a ‘what the hell?’ moment. My studies informed me that Roman Legions 2,000 years ago used to make ice in the desert by digging a hole and placing a shallow container of water at the bottom and leaving it over night.
And where I live at 51 degrees north, the occasional warm sunny day when a high pressure region is slowly passing by is much appreciated and the rapid temperature drop after sunset is noted. And then the interesting bit. If a layer of cloud arrives overhead the temperature rises! Not just one or two degrees, I’ve recorded up to 10 degrees!! At Night!! So where did the heat come from? The ground, which had been nicely warmed by the sun during the day.
Look up the science of thermal conductivity and radiative heat transfer and explain to me how these imaginary ‘greenhouse gases’ warm the world. Oh, I forgot, the adiabatic lapse rate will also be involved in any explanation.
@ Ken Gregory:
Well, our paper deals with actual data (empirical evidence) and the theoretical explanation only follows the strong evidence, while you are just raising theoretical objections. Rule #1 of the scientific method states: Do not argue against empirical data using a “theory”. It’s backwards and silly!
Also, if you study a bit the history of the ‘Greenhouse’ concept, you’ll realize that it has never been supported by actual empirical evidence. The IR heat-trapping mechanism of the atmosphere proposed in the 19th Century was a conjecture. A fee convective atmosphere cannot trap heat!
So, it was the countless repetition of a physically wrong idea over 190 years that gave the ‘Greenhouse’ concept the appearance of a “solid physics” …
Can you point to a mathematical model based on the Greenhouse hypothesis of heat-trapping (i.e. atmospheric optical depth) that has a similar skill of accurately predicting the global temperature of these 6 planetary bodies as does our model (i.e. Eq. 10b in the paper)??
TO: The Badger and MieScatter:
The answers to your questions are provided in the paper. Please, read it carefully!
Click to access New-Insights-on-the-Physical-Nature-of-the-Atmospheric-Greenhouse-Effect-Deduced-from-an-Empirical-Planetary-Temperature-Model.pdf
To: Ken Gregory:
Your comment “There would be no lapse rate without greenhouse gases”.
It is interesting that temperatures warm below the Earth’s surface in mining ventilation shafts at the same dry adiabatic lapse rate as temperatures cool above the surface with an increase in altitude. This phenomenon in the mining industry is termed “auto compression”.
Ross Handsaker says:
July 11, 2017 at 7:45 am
It is interesting that temperatures warm below the Earth’s surface in mining ventilation shafts at the same dry adiabatic lapse rate as temperatures cool above the surface with an increase in altitude.
Click to access Lecture%205.pdf
See section 2 Auto compression
The atmosphere lapse rate continues underground.
It is good evidence that the greenhouse effect is caused by gravity and not radiation
There 2 important aspects of the Lapse Rate question:
1) What is the reason for the existence of an atmospheric lapse rate?
2) What controls the magnitude of the lapse rate?
The answers are: vertical pressure gradient is the reason for the existence of a lapse rate; surface heating controls the magnitude of the lapse rate.
Our planetary temperature model does not deal with vertical temperature profiles or lapse rates at all. The paper specifically makes the point that our Eq. 10b is not applicable to vertical temperature changes in a free atmosphere; it only predicts the global average surface temperatures of planets.
The fact that we were able to accurately describe average planetary surface temperatures without considering vertical temperature profiles and lapse rates indicates that the surface temperature is not controlled by the top-of-the-atmosphere energy balance and lapse rate as currently assumed. Instead, the lapse rate and the thermal profile of the atmosphere depend on surface temperatures … This one of several cause & effect confusions in the Greenhouse theory!
This is one of several confusions between cause and effect in the Greenhouse theory!
Surface heating via insolation results in conduction from surface to air.
That conduction is always uneven because insolation to a spherical surface is inevitably uneven.
Uneven conduction leads to temperature and density differentials in the horizontal plane.
Lower density gases rise above higher density gases and convective overturning begins.
As gases rise the molecules move apart so that kinetic energy becomes potential energy and the rising gases cool.
The rate at which cooling occurs is related to the rate at which density declines with height so it is the rate of density decline that sets the lapse rate.
The density decline is set by the force of gravity combined with atmospheric mass.
Conduction occurs more readily at greater density so one can say that the lapse rate represents the rate at which conduction takes over from radiation as one descends into greater densities.
The result of those simple facts is that Ned’s calculations work for any planet with a gaseous atmosphere above a hard surface.
I think that crystallises the situation for anyone who can accept that surface temperature can be ascertained solely from atmospheric mass, the strength of the gravitational field and external insolation.
I have been pushing that explanation for ten years or so.
@ Ken Gregory
“The effective radiating altitude of the Earth atmosphere is at 5.1 km”
Horsefeathers. The effective radiative altitude in the fundamental CO2 bend is the tropopause at 220K.
Importantly, radiation in the CO2 bands at the tropopause seen from above is NOT surface energy. It is easily shown in Modtran that there is ZERO transmission from the surface to the tropopause in these bands at 280ppm.
Furthermore, the “pause” in tropopause is there to indicate that temperature quits lapsing. The “lapse” rate goes vertical for a while, and then it goes negative. When increasing concentration pushes CO2 radiative bands higher, their radiation to space INCREASES to the fourth power of the negative lapse.
“There would be no lapse rate without greenhouse gases”
This statement is not even wrong.
[…] Ph.D. research meteorologist. (title is link to paper). H/T to Tallbloke for posting on this (here) along with comments by one of the […]
@ Ned Nikolov
I’ve read it and there’s no explanation there. What is the energy source that regularly provides 16.5 kW to every sq m of Venus’ surface?
Perhaps you could point to page and line numbers.
@ MieScatter
I hope you don’t mind if I intrude with an answer. The energy comes from the sun and from Venus’ atmosphere.
Mie Scatter. PV=nRT. This means that all else being equal, a higher pressure on the left side of the equation means a higher temperature on the right. No ‘extra energy’ or ‘work’ required. Planets are not closed systems. It has solar energy passing through continuously. How much energy the various components of the system hold and how hot they get depends on things like emissivity, heat capacity, and pressure.
Dr Postma
I’m sorry for my delay in responding to your kind explanation regarding albedo and why it’s canceled out in many cases. I’ve come to a better understanding of albedo and the radiative thermal equilibrium temp thanks to you.
This study is enlightening and vacillates the AGW hypothesis which has conjured so many demons within science. I would also point out that you made this argument few years back in regards to Venus and its atmospheric effect on surface temps.
@Ned Nikolov
“you are just raising theoretical objections.”
NO, each of my statements are backed by numerous measurement. Which of these statements are you unsure about?
Convection is induced by radiative transfer of heat through the atmosphere.
Radiative transfer is due to greenhouse gasses.
Convection causes the lapse rate in the troposphere.
There is no greenhouse effect without a lapse rate.
There can be no greenhouse effect without greenhouse gases. Gravity alone will not work.
Radiative transfer is measured in millions of experiments stored at http://hitran.org/about/
The dry adiabatic lapse rate is g/Cp, where g is the acceleration of gravity and Cp is the specific heat of the air at constant pressure, and is equal to 9.8 C/km. The moist lapse rate if for saturated air and is about 5 C/km. The average actual lapse rate is about 6.5 C/km. But the formula g/Cp assumes convection, which can not exist without radiative transfer. With no greenhouse gases there can be no convection, no lapse rate, so no greenhouse effect. The paper is must a poor curve fit with no mechanism. The atmospheres are not collapsing, so there is no compressional heating.
Hi Roger,
“PV=nRT. This means that all else being equal, a higher pressure on the left side of the equation means a higher temperature on the right. No ‘extra energy’ or ‘work’ required. Earth is not a closed system ”
Here’s a point I also made with my professor. The Earth is not a closed system, since our atmosphere allows energy to enter and escape and it’s the one reason AGW claim the 2nd Law does not apply. We have a dynamic equilibrium, but I argue the 2nd Law still applies because there’s no net change of energy within a dynamic equilibrium.
So when I read this new study it seems to me the most logical. That gases are not determining the radiative thermal equilibrium rather its atmospheric mass and the planets location to our Sun
@ tallbloke
Volume is not constant though, it’s determined by the temperature which in turn is determined by the energy balance. If you don’t believe that heating causes a gas to expand and insist that only pressure controls temperature, then how do you explain Titan having 45 % greater surface pressure but being 200 C cooler than Earth?
Venus’ surface radiates about 16.5 kW per metre squared in the infrared. Where does this heat come from? Real physics has an answer that works excellently, I’d like to hear your alternative.
No, linneamogren, atmospheric pressure is constant. Replacing greenhouse gases with the same mass on Nitrogen would reduce the temperature by 33 C if albedo and convection did not change. In reality, replacing greenhouse gases with Nitrogen would eliminate clouds and convection, so temperatures would fall much more than 33 C. Re-aranging the ideal gas law equation, T=V x (P/nR), where P, n and R are fixed. So T is proportional with V and with a doubling of CO2, T increases from 288 K to 289 K, causing the atmospheric volume to increase by 1/288 = 0.3%.
Ken G: Convection is induced by radiative transfer of heat through the atmosphere.
Radiative transfer is due to greenhouse gasses.
Hi Ken. The reason gliders stay over land is because that’s where the convecting thermals are. Sunlight psses through the atmosphere and warms the ground. That conducts and radiates heat to air and that air then rises. I agree with you that radiatively active gases in the air are important to convection, whether it’s water vapour on Earth, methane on Titan, or CO2 on Venus. Note well that the wet lapse rate is smaller than the dry lapse rate. If radiatively active gases were solely responsible for the lapse rate, you’d expect the opposite.
However, what Ned’s paper is about is not what sets up the lapse rate but what causes the higher surface temperature.
Ken Gregory suggested: “This is junk science.”
There’s a place for closed-minded, negative thinking that leads nowhere: WUWT.
bill h pointed to something comical: “Monckton et al fully accept CO2 causing global warming”
Empirically accounts for 0% of variance.
Pure theoretical coercion guarantees no stability.
The assumption that debate is needed for stability is strictly false.
Just a question. Does any of this figure in the above?
“Measurements of heat have led to estimates that the Earth is generating between 30 and 44 terawatts of heat, much of it from radioactive decay. Measurements of antineutrinos have provisionally suggested that about 24 TW arises from radioactive decay. Professor Bob White provides the more recent figure of 17 TW from radioactive decay in the mantle, and a more recent figure based on geoneutrinos is 20 +/- 8 TW from U-238 and Th-232 decay, plus 4 TW from K-40. This compares with 42-44 TW heat loss at the Earth’s surface from the deep Earth. The balance comes from changes in the core. Thus about half the Earth’s total heat flux is from radioactive decay. (There is very much greater heat loss arising from incident solar radiation, which is quite distinct.)”
From: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/the-cosmic-origins-of-uranium.aspx
@Ken
I assume you’re talking about an older post in regards to Nitrogen? I was referring to surface temperature and on Venus replacing C02 with N would make little difference in surface temp.
Ken,
I understand your reluctance to abandon purported influences of atmospheric composition on surface temps, but this new study shows composition is predominantly irrelevant to surface temperature and Venus makes for an excellent study. I stand by my statement that C02 or N will not change surface temp in any dramatic fashion if at all. Your remark on albedo is interesting but this study flips conventional thought on albedo.
” Another implication is that the planetary albedo is largely an emergent property of the climate system rather than an independent driver of the surface temperature. ”
Even Carl Sagan admitted that his runaway GH theory is wrong if there’s no high vapor count on Venus because even he believed the 99% C02 composition in the Venusian atmosphere was not a strong enough driver to produce surface temps of 737K Surface density 65-67 Kg/m^3 and atmospheric mass 96X is more than powerful enough to average a temp to melt lead at the surface. Since Carl Sagans theory we discovered the vapor count on Venus is only 0.002% to 0.001%. Being H20 is up to 95% of a greenhouse driver according to theory composition can’t be much of a driver on Venus.
Let’s for the sake of argument place the Venusian 9000 KPa on earth. We know if you move up from around 20 to 100KPa on our planet the temp will increase to about 80C. 20C+9000/(100-20)) 80C=400C at earths surface. Now move earth to the Venusian orbit you are close to Venusian surface temp without composition.
Bright young minds are quick to take up new ideas and test the implications I see. 🙂
@ linneamogren,
This “study” assumes that the volume of the atmosphere is basically determined by magic and can only work out the surface temperature once given information about how thick the atmosphere is.
If you replaced CO2 with N2 on Venus, then the infrared would rapidly leak out and the atmosphere would compress, which this “study” ignores. Unless you have can explain what would happen to the 16.5 kW/m2 of infrared heat leaking from Venus’ surface without resorting to real physics?
Ned, you wrote: ‘Do not argue against empirical data using a “theory”.’
But MieScatter was not doing that. MieScatter was arguing against your “theory” (i.e., your attempt to explain the empirical data via conjecture and mathematically vacuous analysis) using established physics (gas laws and thermodynamics laws). His argument is valid. Your counterargument is nonexistent.
Tallbloke wrote: “PV=nRT. This means that all else being equal, a higher pressure on the left side of the equation means a higher temperature on the right.”
This is one of many confusions between cause and effect by gravito-thermal “theory”.
It is temperature (kinetic energy at the molecular level) that causes pressure, not the other way around.
The act of compression — doing work on a gas — does raise temperature. But that is simply the work equation: force times distance. For example, a piston compressing air in a cylinder must be driven by a force equal to the piston’s cross-sectional area times the pressure, and that force must act through some distance equal to the change in volume divided by the cross-sectional area. Integrate the force (it will vary) over the distance, and you get work done, which heats the gas and increases the pressure. If you do it quickly, it is an adiabatic process; if you do it sufficiently slowly, it is isothermal. The adiabatic and isothermal compression processes do not have the same end temperature even if the end volume is the same.
No net work done on the atmosphere (no ongoing collapse, as Ken and Mie have pointed out) implies no heating of the atmosphere by compression. If the surface is hot like Venus’s, then eventually the heat radiates away faster than it can be replaced, until you reach the gray-body temperature that can be found by the standard S-B calculation — unless there is another heat source reaching the planet’s surface.
The N and Z paper is empirical curve fitting. It convincingly points to density and pressure as the cause of the greenhouse effect GHE . However it does not tell us about the mechanism. It does not favor a theory of top down or bottom up heating.
The unit of gas pressure is the Pascal. The Pascal is defined as force/area, N/m^2 acting on a surface. Pressure is energy density J/m^3 and acts throughout the whole volume
the heating mechanism of planetary atmospheres is
analogous to a gravity-controlled adiabatic compression acting upon
the entire surface.
Compression heating of gas occurs when the volume of gas is reduced. The volume of the atmosphere is not reducing. The GHE is not caused by compression heating.
The GHE is caused by gravity changing the velocity of molecules.
The Badger says:
July 10, 2017 at 11:37 pm
If the planet surface is hotter with an atmosphere and cooler without then where does the extra energy come from.
No energy is created by the gravity field of Earth acting on the atmosphere. The energy comes from the sun. Gravity changes the distribution of the energy in the atmosphere
The upper less dense atmosphere is colder and less dense than average. The lower part is more dense and hotter than average.
Energy depends on mass. Gravity causes the distribution of density and pressure, the energy density, J/m^3, of the atmosphere.
Stephen Wilde says: As gases rise the molecules move apart so that kinetic energy becomes potential energy and the rising gases cool.
The kinetic energy of a gas molecule derives from its physical properties of mass, momentum and energy.
The kinetic energy of a gas does change with temperature but not with volume. In a non-radiative atmosphere, expansion (+convection) and subsequent compression (-convection) are adiabatic. In a radiative atmosphere, they are not. A radiative atmosphere has a lapse rate. A non-radiative atmosphere does not.
Linnearmogren says “The Earth is not a closed system, since our atmosphere allows energy to enter and escape and it’s the one reason AGW claim the 2nd Law does not apply. We have a dynamic equilibrium, but I argue the 2nd Law still applies because there’s no net change of energy within a dynamic equilibrium.”
The Earth is in a steady state, held there by the energy flow through. Small changes in the dynamic flux will vary that state. The dynamic flux is superimposed on the flux distribution through the atmosphere. That flux distribution is essentially static being the energy content at varying altitudes. Radiative gases control that distribution.
At escape altitude, outgoing flux = incoming. At successively lower altitudes, that (essentially static) flux increases with temperature and defines volume. No work is done in steady state.
We will find out soon if their estimated GMAT for Mercury, Europa, Callisto and Pluto match the values we get for those bodies in the coming years.
If this formula holds up, then it would become very useful for terraforming. E.g. we can calculate how much gas (any gas) we need to add into Mars atmosphere to crank it up to livable surface temperatures with liquid water.
@ admin. Please remove earlier post of mine, – mea culpa for not checking properly. Many thanks.
Danny, it doesn’t work like that. You need to know something related to the volume of the atmosphere to use this equation, which this “study” can’t predict. you need to the energy balance to get the temperature and therefore volume of the atmosphere.
It’s useless in your Mars scenario because the temperature and volume of the atmosphere would depend on the greenhouse effect of the gases you add.
@ MieScatter says:
July 14, 2017 at 3:14 pm: Stubbornly refusing to let go of ghg dominance? Bring proof, not assertion. The Poisson relationship of ideal gas law wiped that out by 150ya. Modern proofs like this one, and other work on this blog, just reinforce how internal properties fail to alter what the gas phase of matter actually does when unconfined.
MieScatter: You need to know something related to the volume of the atmosphere to use this equation
No, you don’t.
A rise in temperature will cause an increase in volume, but since this theory doesn’t depend on fictional quantities such as ‘effective altitude of emission’, it makes no difference to the accurate surface temps obtained from the regression which uses NASA’s empirical data.
Does greenhouse gas theory have any comparably useful equation which can determine surface temperatues on so many solar system bodies?
No, it doesn’t.
Sorry for late approval on comments. I’m away from home, with very limited net access.
“In a non-radiative atmosphere, expansion (+convection) and subsequent compression (-convection) are adiabatic. In a radiative atmosphere, they are not. A radiative atmosphere has a lapse rate. A non-radiative atmosphere does not.”
I’m a little confused about this statement. The lapse rate is the rate at which atmospheric temperature decreases with an increase in altitude. Atmospheric gases start out warm at the surface which causes them to rise in altitude which causes the temperature of that parcel of atmosphere to decrease.
This is atmospheric circulation. Are you saying a non-radiative atmosphere does not have circulation in its atmosphere?
My understanding is any temperature sensing device records kinetic collision rate as well as molecular vibration. Thus as pressure reduces with altitude kinetic collisions reduce and a reduction in temperature is recorded. I often ask “Where did the energy go?”, my reasoning is gravity converted it to potential energy thus any gas in a gravity field will have an adiabatic lapse rate.
tallbloke, real physics applies to all solar system bodies. Sometimes the equations are a little more complicated, but at least they conserve energy.
Venus’ surface radiates 16.5 kW per square metre. In this idea, what happens to that energy? How is it replenished or prevented from escaping by pressure?
I bet £1,000 you can’t find it.
@MieScatter The formula presented in the paper uses none of the things you mention. It attempts to predict global average surface temperatures based on just two factors: TOA solar irradiance and surface atmospheric pressure. If this formula holds up for other rocky planets/bodies then it would indeed become clear that average temperatures on a planet have little or nothing to do with greenhouse effect. It would also mean we can directly calculate how much surface atmospheric pressure we need to introduce on Mars to get the temperatures up to a desired level.
“It would also mean we can directly calculate how much surface atmospheric pressure we need to introduce on Mars to get the temperatures up to a desired level.”
Very interesting. I don’t recall seeing this concept introduced anywhere else.
It’s good to have a place where this concept can be discussed in a rational way.
I really like this thought-provoking website.
@ MieScatter
What is your opinion of the Hansen-Matsushima paper “The atmosphere and surface temperature of Venus: A dust insulation model”? They theorize that particulate matter (dust) in the lower atmosphere is the reason for the high surface temperatures. They imply that the concentration of dust correlates with atmospheric surface pressure. It seems their theory would still hold even if all of the CO2 were replaced with nitrogen.
@ Danny,
Actually, you’re right: only 6 of the attempted curve fits need to know the surface temperature first in order to “predict” it (see Eq. 6). One of my original points stands though: this is just curve fitting which is generally useless outside the training dataset and explains nothing. If each of their 12 models has the 5 parameters they report in Eq 10a, then fitting 5 points with 60 free parameters isn’t impressive.
This is a great example of the difference between people doing real science and… whatever this is though. In real science, people are excited by questions and try to explore them. In this case, everyone refuses to think about where the 16.5 kW/m2 of heat flux from Venus’ surface goes.
This question, like measured back radiation, has to be ignored because for some reason this curve fit is more sacred than understanding the physics of this amazing and beautiful problem.
“If a trapping of radiant heat occurred in Earth’s atmosphere, the
same mechanism should also be expected to operate in the atmospheres
of other planetary bodies. Thus, the Greenhouse concept should be able
to mathematically describe the observed variation of average planetary
surface temperatures across the Solar System as a continuous function
of the atmospheric infrared optical depth and solar insolation. However,
to our knowledge, such a continuous description (model) does not
exist. Furthermore, measured magnitudes of the global down-welling
LW flux on planets with thick atmospheres such as Earth and Venus
indicate that the lower troposphere of these bodies contains internal
kinetic energy far exceeding the solar input [6,12,14]. ~~This fact cannot
be explained via re-radiation of absorbed outgoing thermal emissions
by gases known to supply no additional energy to the system.~~ The desire
to explicate the sizable energy surplus evident in the tropospheres of
some terrestrial planets provided the main impetus for this research.”
N&Z, pg. 17 (emphasis mine)
@ willb01,
Dust insulation was a fair proposal in 1967 before we had more data, spectroscopy and improved radiative transfer physics. Now we know that CO2’s greenhouse effect + clouds are key.
@ RobertF,
That’s handwaving and it’s false. Introductory atmospheric physics textbooks illustrate how it works, like Ambaum’s “Thermal Physics of the Atmosphere” p170 onwards.
What happens to the 16.5 kW/m2 radiated from Venus’ surface under this magic pressure heating idea? This whole thing is indefensible junk because it doesn’t conserve of energy, so its defenders will always change the subject or just ignore it whenever this question comes up. Look at the evasion on this thread as an example.
@MieScatter
One could just as easily say you’re the one doing the hand waving. Provide right here for all of us to see this precise model that explains all of this to the minute detail that you claim. You can’t because such a thing does not exist beyond the realm of sophistry. You pretend here as though everything is correctly, precisely explained by so-called settled science (“back radiation”) when it is in fact not, which is no doubt why the GCMs seldom if ever get anything right. (Where’s that “hot spot” again?).
TA says: “I’m a little confused about this statement. ”
And you’re not alone.
@ MieScatter
I believe more data is exactly what Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller are providing in their paper, which disputes the GHE as the primary cause of surface warming. You had asked if any physics-based rationale existed that might support their data analysis. It seems to me the Hansen-Matsushima theory could possibly provide this rationale. Do you know if their theory has been falsified?
To me, MieScatter poses a good question with “What happens to the 16.5 kW/m2 radiated from Venus’ Surface (…)”, and a good statement with “(…) measured back radiation, has to be ignored (…)”.
MieScatter: Venus….
Allowing for the difference in solar distance, Venus’ atmosphere has the same temperature at the same pressure as Earth’s. Yet Venus has a 96% CO2 atmosphere whereas Earth’s contains only 0.04% CO2.
Still waiting for greenhouse.
Q = m * Cp * deltaT (conversely, deltaT = Q / m * Cp)
Has anyone every performed this basic, well-known calculation for Venus (or Earth for that matter)? I assume we have sufficient data to accurately compute it. It seems to me that a great deal of this could be settled with this one basic, well-known relation. Ie, is Q(solar) alone enough to account for surface temperature(s)?
* Has anyone [ever]…
Mie is repeating the fluff warmists desperately use when they conflate spectral T with energy flux. It is yet another sidestep with their unfalsifiable non-hypothesis. The truth is that radiation is a side effect of the kinetic process which causes what we call temperature (vibration of matter in a field). The spectral is not doing the work, gases are not blackbodies, but they can uniquely be concentrated by gravity ie pressure on the results of solar input, so that Q=deltaU+W etc.. The use of kw/m2 instead of joules by Mie demonstrates total fallacy. It is not so, full stop. There are no watts in a can of petrol, but joules can be calculated.
I note that the scale of a Gas Thermometer (the best) is nearly independent of the gas specie used (U. Physics 8th ed.; p,415). Because (p. 428), “about the same amount of ‘heat energy flux’ is needed to raise ANY atom of matter by a certain temperature” (to paraphrase). “Holding Heat” is just childish.
But, I see that Mie is using Alinskyite bait and switch etc., so cannot be regarded as anything but a troll, with nothing useful to bring.
@ tallbloke, Brett Keane, RobertF
This is article claims to falsify real physics and proposes that pressure explains temperature on things with atmospheres. It’s the job of the people proposing and supporting this to defend the proposal. In this pressure madness, where does the 16.5 kW/m^2 of Venus’ surface radiation go? What replenishes that flux to keep the surface temperature so high? How does the pressure release heat?
You can’t answer that, all you can do is constantly try to change the subject.
MieScatter: Perform the basic calculation I gave above and we can (I should hope) possibly settle this once and for all.
And yes, Brett did directly respond to your point, ie, he was not changing the subject.
@ willb01,
I’m not a Venus expert, so I’m more likely to trip up on the details here so I’ll direct you to Dave Crisp and Dimitri Titov’s nice chapter in this:
https://books.google.com/books/about/Venus_II_geology_Geophysics_Atmosphere_a.html?id=vZfvAAAAMAAJ
Scientists include all known factors such as dust, clouds, CO2 etc. The Hansen paper’s dust has an effective greenhouse effect including “back radiation”. This isn’t obvious because they use terms like “absorption optical depth” and “imaginary refractive index”, but that’s what’s going on along with multiple scattering.
But with new data, it’s clear that the CO2 greenhouse effect is key in explaining the structure of Venus’ atmosphere, as the Crisp & Titov chapter shows.
Even if it were just dust, that’s nothing to do with pressure. The pressure isn’t controlling Venus’ temperature, it cannot sustain the 16.5 kW/m2 fluxes needed to keep Venus’ surface so hot. You can tell that even the proposers know their idea doesn’t work because they refuse to answer any direct questions about that.
@ RobertF, Venus’ surface is hot. Do Stefan Boltzmann and you see the longwave flux is about 16.5 kW/m2. This has to be provided to the surface to keep it that hot, otherwise it will lose energy and cool.
Where does this flux come from? You can’t answer that without using real physics.
MiaScatter: Yes, Venus is hot. We know this. Now tell us where the thermal energy comes from? Is it simply insolation? Again, Q = m * Cp * deltaT. What does that tell us? Forget S-B for now, I’ve provided a much more straight-forward way to arrive at a resolution.
@ RobertF,
You can’t just decide to “forget” the laws of physics. Most of the heat first came from the Sun, but the surface is radiating more than a hundred times as much power as it gets from sunlight. The greenhouse effect is key to recycle this heat and keep the surface hot.
It’s a fact that Venus’ surface is radiating about 16.5 kW/m2 all the time. Could you describe what happens to that flux?
The answer is no you can’t, not without using real physics. So you will change the subject and refuse to even consider the surface fluxes.
MieScatter says: “You can’t just decide to “forget” the laws of physics.” WTH are you talking about? Q = m * Cp * deltaT is one of the most basic, well-known, proven relations in physics that we have. Engineers all over the world use it every day. Moreover, I notice you never did directly respond to Brett’s comments. You’re the changing the subject now.
@ RobertF
You mean dQ, but yeah, that’s a law, and dQ = (dQ/dt).dt so dT/dt = dQ/dt / (m*Cp)
So for dT/dt to be small, dQ/dt must be small. Venus’ surface sends 16.5 kW/m2 upwards in longwave emission, following the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.
Just answer this question: what replenishes that 16.5 kW/m2?
You can’t answer it without real physics, so you’ll ignore it or change the subject. And that’s why this is different from real science, because people who do real science look into things instead of changing the subject.
MieScatter: No, I mean Q (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_mass). Also I can assure you that in conditions like those at the earth’s surface (temps ~300k, contact transfer–conduction and convention–readily available) engineers do not spend much time thinking about the S-B equation etc because we know that radiation simply isn’t a major player in said conditions. Engineers do not have the luxury of playing fast and loose with what is well-known and proven to work, lest airplanes drop out of the sky and cities become engulfed in flames.
In any case, I’ve given you a very simple relation with which you can show that a) N&Z are demonstrably full of it, or b) that they are quite possibly on to something. I leave it to you (or someone else here) to perform the calculation with the appropriate values.
And you still have not responded to Brett’s comments.
The ball is firmly in your court.
why do so many comments seem to ignore the sun…??? The paper clearly treats to the input from the sun onto the surface I suppose creating a sort of hotplate to heat the lower atmosphere. Of course heat radiates away to cooler parts of the atmosphere and out into space, but if there is stasis then the solar input must equal the outbound heat (and any heat from inside the planet of course).
N&Z are not saying the surface temperature would be X amount out far, far away from the sun or that the surface temperature is Y strictly due to heat produced from gravitic squishing of the atmosphere.
It almost seems some folks did not read their paper through to the end. Hmmmmm… [and yes, I did read it. Heavy going for me but I stuck with it.]
@ MieScatter
Regardless of how much data we have on the atmosphere of Venus, it can’t possibly be more than what we have for our own planet and we are still trying to get to the bottom of the surface warming attribution question here. It is simply not rational to completely ignore the Hansen-Matsushima theory without first falsifying it somehow. Until/unless that happens, it ought to still be in play.
As to whether their dust theory connects atmospheric pressure to surface temperature, here are some quotes from their paper:
In discussing the drag velocity (v*) required to cause dust particles to become airborne, comparing Venus to Earth they say:
If Hansen-Matsushima are correct and dust is a factor in surface temperature, then it seems to me according to their theory so is pressure.
@ RobertF,
Differences in formalisms then, I was reading it as dT instead of $Delta;T.
Anyway, my point stands. dT/dt = dQ/dt / (m*cP).
Venus’ surface emits 16.5 kW/m2. You say you ignore it in engineering, but that’s just handwaving. How are the 16,500 W/m2 replenished? Explain the process.
@ willb01,
Did you read the Crisp & Titov chapter? Which other papers did you read?
MieScatter: Again, the ball is firmly in your court. I’ve given you the ~perfect~ opportunity to show that N&Z are all all wet (or possibly on to something). And of course, you continue to utterly evade what Brett said and harp about energy flux.
“Venus’ surface emits 16.5 kW/m2. You say you ignore it in engineering, but that’s just handwaving. How are the 16,500 W/m2 replenished? Explain the process.”
I don’t understand the process exactly, but it seems to me that the Sun is the one that replenishes it. How would a planet emit more than it receives from the Sun?
@ RobertF
Brett’s gobbledigook seems like irrelevant nonsense that’s trying to reject the concept of power. Maybe you could rephrase it as a single answerable question.
And in exchange answer one of mine. Remember, a single flaw in a hypothesis means it’s wrong, and N&Z’s idea doesn’t conserve energy so it’s dead. Unless you can answer my question.
Venus’ surface emits about 16.5 kW/m2 of longwave radiation, following Stefan-Boltzmann. If it doesn’t also receive a similar flux, then it would cool down immediately. Where does this flux come from? Please try not to change the topic, just state a single process and explain how it provides a huge flux of heat to Venus’ surface.
@ TA:
That’s the right question to start with!
The *planet* doesn’t emit more to space than it gets from the Sun, but the emission that reaches space mostly comes from higher up in the atmosphere where it’s cooler.
Only about 90 W/m2 of sunlight reaches Venus’ surface, but the surface is so hot that it emits around 16,500 W/m2. That’s an enormous gap! It’s filled because that 16,500 W gets absorbed in the atmosphere on the way up. The energy from the absorbed photons tends to eventually get re-emitted in a random direction, so a lot of it goes back down. That’s what closes the gap between the 16,500 W/m2 up from the surface and the 90 W/m2 down from the Sun.
The same process happens on Earth: the surface emits almost 400 W/m2 of longwave radiation, even though the total amount of sunlight reaching Earth is closer to 340 W/m2, and that’s before some of it gets reflected. The greenhouse effect recycles this energy, meaning that more stays in the atmosphere and it’s warmer than it would otherwise be.
This effect is measured every day at places all over the world. Physics even lets us calculate amazingly detailed spectra that we can then measure.
@ MieScatter
I’m going to assume from your non-response that you have no evidence disproving Hansen-Matsushima.
It seems to me that most of the discussion here is off topic. In this recent work N&Z are presenting an empirical fit to surface temperatures and showing that, as far as they have looked, surface pressure is the principal determinant. Nobody has shown them to be wrong in this.
Personally, I can’t see how this comes about for all the bodies they cover, but can see it for the Earth and Venus with help from some handwavium. I can see that they have tried a reasonable range of alternatives.
Others have pointed out that they haven’t provided a physical explanation (or explanations), which they admit. I gather that’s the next phase of their work. Science doesn’t demand that an explanation accompanies every empirical result, though it strives to find one.
I think I understand Earth fairly completely, which is the main planet we are interested in. The ‘trapping’ of heat by radiative gasses has a negligible impact on atmospheric temperatures because it just ‘delays’ heat transfer, not ‘traps’ it. The use of words by the alarmists is deceptive and their GHE of 33 K is just an assumption that has never been proven, and now has been shown to be wrong.
For more (OT) detail see RadiativeDelayInContext170713.pdf in my archive at brindabella.id.au/climarc/
@ MieScatter,
You keep repeating Venus surface radiation. So what? I don’t deny that. What point are you making, unless someone here has denied that radiative gasses radiate.
dai
@ dai davies:
In order to fit 5 datapoints they tried 12 equations with 5 free parameters in their best fit. You can correlate anything if you try enough equations and free parameters.
This claim is that pressure causes temperature but energy conservation says it’s nonsense. Venus’ surface radiates about 16.5 kW/m2 so to keep warm it must be getting about 16.5 kW/m2 back. Real physics explains this, but the pressure idea fails because to release that much power it would need to compress the atmosphere, which would collapse within months.
This idea doesn’t conserve energy, it’s nonsense. Only willb01 has thought about this, which is worth a separate reply. Notice how everybody else refuses to even try and think about how energy flows around Venus’ surface and constantly changes the subject – it’s because this pressure-causing-temperature idea is nonsense for a planet.
@MieScatter,
I count four free parameters if, as they say, Pr is arbitrary, and six data points. Others have pointed this out, and I agree it is pushing degrees of freedom a bit far, particularly since the three lower points are, in a sense, degenerate. But, even so, pressure gives the best fit.
There is no problem here with conservation of energy. This is a straw man you have thrown in without any justification. Of course the surface radiation must balance (with conduction thrown in).
Nothing in N&Z’s work suggests otherwise. If you look at their prior work, replicated and summarised in the article I pointed to, you will find explicit calculations for surface radiation balance. You can use my OCM package to check the calculations for yourself.
If you don’t attempt to make your point explicitly I’ll assume you are just trolling.
dai
This is way over my head but I observe and note that this is similar to the conclusions of Harry Dale Huffman, http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html
When I tell Mie that it is mis-applying Stefan-Boltzmann, it will feign ignorance. Or maybe it is not feigned…. Never mind, I look forward to them defending such ideas in the Trump Administration. A big cloud of dust as warmists flee, so far.
dai davies says: “In this recent work N&Z are presenting an empirical fit to surface temperatures and showing that, as far as they have looked, surface pressure is the principal determinant. Nobody has shown them to be wrong in this.”
That sums it up nicely. While I’m not entirely convinced of every aspect of the N&Z paper(s) and have my own questions/concerns, I’m more than a little intrigued. I hope that soon Ned will respond to the seemingly more cogent criticisms presented in comments here and elsewhere (eg, http://tinyurl.com/ycmrpt39).
“Venus’ surface emits 16.5 kW/m2. You say you ignore it in engineering, but that’s just handwaving. How are the 16,500 W/m2 replenished? Explain the process.”
“Venus’ surface radiates 16.5 kW per square metre. In this idea, what happens to that energy? How is it replenished or prevented from escaping by pressure?
“I bet £1,000 you can’t find it.”
I’ll give it a go, although from the standpoint of a non-scientist. I also can’t afford to take the bet (I’m a pensioner) but I’ll take the challenge seriously. I don’t pretend to know whether N&Z is correct or not, but it does seem intuitively that it has merit.
I’m struggling for a good analogy, but I think my furnace will work for now.
I’ve got a forced-air furnace located in my garage. I don’t know what temperature the heat exchanger reaches, but for whatever that is, the Stefan-Boltzman law can be used to calculate how much power is radiated into my garage. I would bet it’s a lot on a cold day, based on my gas bill. Weirdly, though, I can stand right next to it when it’s running and not feel any heat radiating into my skin. Also, the engineer who sized the unit for the heating company that installed it last year didn’t seem too concerned with all that heat being wasted in my garage.
Really, shouldn’t the furnace have been moved into my house and CO₂ added to the inside air to provide back-radiation to keep the heat in my house? The extra energy to replenish all that power being wastefully radiated into my garage could be buying me extra food for my family.
Well, here’s my theory: I think RobertF might be on to something. Maybe, just maybe, conduction does matter! It isn’t “pressure” per se that keeps all that radiation from escaping. However, pressure is directly proportional to air density and determines how much heat can be transferred from the heat exchanger to the circulating air. At planetary surface pressures, this vastly surpasses the amount of power being radiated (which is why engineers ignore it for this type of application). I’m at 5000 feet, but at sea level, the air would be quite a bit denser and would conduct even more heat. Conversely, at higher altitudes my furnace would be much less efficient and Stefan-Boltzman starts becoming more relevant.
As a bonus, the furnace’s fan sort of emulates another important thermal property on planets that have an atmosphere (regardless of the presence of “greenhouse gases”), which is convection. I realize this is really stretching the analogy, but I thought it was worth pointing out that if you look at my furnace’s heat exchanger as being an energy-absorbing planetary surface and my living room as the upper atmosphere, it’s easy to see that there’s no need to rely on greenhouse gases to explain things. Although I do think they have an effect, particularly water vapor.
@Dan in Nevada: Yes, radiation is a backwards, inappropriate way to analyze conditions at and near the earth’s surface (or Venus’ for that matter), which is why I don’t bother going down that rabbit-hole whenever it’s brought up, as it too often is. For purposes of determining earth’s surface temperature the only radiation of significance is that coming from the sun. The sun is ~93 million miles from earth in space (a vacuum) so of course the only way for it to transport thermal energy to earth is via radiation, nature’s means of last resort to transfer thermal energy. Other than that, the factors determining surface temperature are more tangible: thermal mass (heat capacity), conduction, convection, latent heat, pressure, and so on.
@Ned,
“Also, last week I submitted a comment to a post on Gavin’s blog RealClimate and it never made it through moderation …”
That says it all. Like you I have had little luck getting comments through “Moderation” (aka censorship) at RealClimate, SKS, Deltoid, Quark Soup and many other echo chambers. If the facts were on their side they would relish the opportunity to refute our arguments.
MieScatter says, July 15, 2017 at 9:02 am
“Venus’ surface radiates 16.5 kW per square metre. In this idea, what happens to that energy? How is it replenished or prevented from escaping by pressure?”
The explanation is so simple that a bright 11th grader can calculate the surface temperature of Venus using the known temperature of the cloud tops and then applying the adiabatic lapse rate down to the surface, sixty five kilometers below. Carl Sagan published papers in 1967 & 1968 that explained how to do this.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1968ApJ…152.1119S
If you don’t like that here is my explanation. When the total atmospheric pressure is less than 0.2 bar most gases absorb energy in direct proportion to the pressure. That is why temperature rises with altitude in planetary stratospheres, except on Venus where CO2 dominates.
When the pressure exceeds 0.2 bar most gases absorb energy according to the square of absolute pressure. That is why temperature falls with altitude in planetary tropospheres. Because absorption follows a square law tropospheres are opaque to radiation which means that energy emitted from the surface is captured in the lower atmosphere (troposphere). This means that radiation works to spread energy in the troposphere just as convection, phase change and conduction do. Thus all you need to calculate the surface temperature is thermodynamics (see Sagan’s papers mentioned above).
If you still don’t get it please take the trouble to examine the “Radiative-Convective Model” that Robinson & Catling described in a letter to Nat Geo. While this is a simple model with one “Down” short wave radiative channel and two “Up” long wave radiative channels, it is derived almost entirely from “First Principles”:
Click to access Robinson2014_0.1bar_Tropopause.pdf
The computer code related to the R&C letter is freely available on line and it works well even on Titan with its methane oceans:
Enjoy!
N and Z say:
Thinking in terms of physical
dimensions rather than measurement units fosters a deeper understanding
of the underlying physical reality.
Let us apply this principle to pressure
Pressure may be reported in units of Pascal, bar, atm.,
PSI or Torr, but its physical dimension is always [M L-1 T-2] because 1 Pa
= 1 N m-2 = 1 (kg m s-2) m-2 = 1 kg m-1 s-2
Force/area, N/m^2, is Pascal’s understanding of the physical reality. He thought of air as like wool sacks. N/m^2 calculates pressure at a surface.
However we now have a broader understanding of gas pressure by using Kinetic Theory of Gas. This theory can derive the experimentally observed Gas Law pv =nRT.
pv is energy measured in Joules ,J.
p = J/m^3 that is Nm/m^3
If we remove m from top and bottom we get back to N/m^2, Pascal’s definition.
This is possible on paper with algebra but the physically reality of pressure remains 3d, that is m^3, not 2d, m^2.
Force/area, N/m^2 is only a partial definition of gas pressure
Pascal’s Law says pressure is in all directions.
N and Z say:
Pressure may be reported in units of Pascal, bar, atm.,PSI or Torr, but its physical dimension is always [M L-1 T-2] because 1 Pa = 1 N m-2 = 1 (kg m s-2) m-2 = 1 kg m-1 s-2.
kgm^-1s^-2 is mass/acceleration
However pressure is said to be caused by weight = mass x acceleration (g)
Weight does not cause gas pressure
Gas pressure is caused by change of momentum of molecules velocity when they collide with a surface and with each other
Ken Gregory says: ‘…a significant lapse rate, being 6.5 C/km at Earth and 7.7 C/km at Venus.’
And 7.7/6.5 being roughly the fourth root of the solar irradiance difference between Venus and Earth, conforms to the laws of radiation.
2601 Venus / 1361 Earth (watts per sq.km.) = ~1.911
4th root of 1.911 = ~1.176
7.7/6.5 = ~1.185 (> 99.2% match)
I find it interesting that the dynamic movement of the atmosphere is reduced to lapse rate and pressure to the supposedly scientifically literate. What about advection? Surely some of the energy is expended in the never ending winds that blow on all rock planets with an atmosphere?
Still very cold in Greenland.
Satellites show the real atmosphere well. Almost the whole mass is concentrated in the troposphere, which behaves like one body.
Here you can see how the troposphere expands depending on ENSO. The temperature trend in tropopause is practically near zero.
At the same time it should be noted that the polar vortex in
stratosfrzestratosphere strongly affects the circulation of air in the troposphere.Sorry.
At the same time, it must be noted that the polar vortex of the stratosphere influences strongly on air circulation in the troposphere.
tom0mason says:
July 17, 2017 at 11:09 pm: Advection is part of that convective effort/work which delivers most of the solar input back up to where the optical depth is low enough for radiation to space. All powered by heated air and latent heat release; particularly the resultant pressure differences around the globe. That is, suction to a partial vacuum where air rises. Yes, it is messy, thanks to rotation and collision.
tom0, I suppose we are looking at the overarching results and effect here. As far as we can see, even albedo is subsumed in the process. I read Maxwell’s “Theory of Heat”, where he refers to the vigourous activity of an atmosphere, which is unconfined, as being unlike in effect to the container-heating found in confined lab experiments. (No edges to heat, only space, and ground averages warmer than air, thus not heatable, no matter the dreams of warmists). He was a great experimenter, too. All in all, a thought-provoking question…..
Brett Keane
I think that pressure changes over polar circles show whether the troposphere shrinks or expands.
@Brett Keane
Yes I was looking at the overarching results and effect.
As far as I have understood it (and I may be very wrong here) climate studies, especially the modeled climate, pay scant regard for the horizontal movement of the atmosphere (and don’t mention the day/night changes). Within this movement energy must be expended, after all vast tonnages of clouds are pushed around the globe continuously, huge volumes of desert sands are also moved by it, so too in places are the ocean’s watery bulk and waves.
Or maybe I’m whistling in the wind.
Tom0: Yes, all these effects help shift the input energy out. Will Janoska(?) pointed out that just the diurnal condensation and evaporation of dew and fog/clouds transfer vast energies in a general spaceward manner, WV being half the density of air. Massive lift, overall doing 80% of the work ascribed wrongly to radiation in the lower troposphere. I took a while myself to realise that ‘equipartition of energy’ means it will take the easiest path, and that is not radiation below c.5km. A nitrogen atmosphere would allow more radiation, but would still warm the same from conduction – it only has to happen once while the sun shines still, and circulation starts and continues. Be interesting to find a nitrogen atmosphere, but such may not survive long, if it must evaporate. It may actually be amenable to modelling, even………
But, the same would happen even without any tri/polyatomic gases. They may just be lost quicker to space…..as Stephen Wilde points out, not a nice outcome for life. The multi-body data shows that the gas laws rule in their united PVrT behaviour at over ).1bar because they are different to solids and liquids, pure and simple. Whistle indeed, it’s the wind wot does it.
Swiss Physicist Concludes IPCC Assumptions ‘Violate Reality’…CO2 A ‘Very Weak Greenhouse Gas’
By Kenneth Richard on 17. July 2017
CO2 Contributed Only 0.12°C To Global Temps Since 1850
http://notrickszone.com/2017/07/17/swiss-physicist-concludes-ipcc-assumptions-violate-reality-co2-a-very-weak-greenhouse-gas/
Conclusion: The climate change must have a very different origin and the scientific community must look for causes of climate change that can be solidly based on physics and chemistry.
– – –
Nice idea, but…
TomO,
If you are whistling in the wind, kudos to you.
As demonstrated by a post from Dr. Roy Clark posted here awhile back, the heating “power” from a 100 ppm increase in CO2 (even if you accept the CO2 theory) is less than the cooling power from a .5 km per hour breeze.
Your whistle is stronger counter force than all of the man-made AGW forcing from industrialization.
Keep whistling that tune.
My apologies to Ned, but I have had to shoot this paper down wherever it has been linked on Australian news sites.
The problem is Ned is still searching for an atmospheric “greenhouse effect” where no such thing exists. Our radiatively cooled atmosphere is cooling the surface of our planet, not warming it.
Bizarrely the paper claims a pressure greenhouse effect of 90K! That would have the surface temperature of Earth at an average temperature of -75K in absence of atmosphere. 71% of the surface of this planet is water, an extreme SW selective surface. The snowline in our solar system is out at 3AU, in the outer reaches of the solar system. It is only after that distance that the sun can no longer heat ice above vacuum sublimation temperature (-20C).
Just like the CO2 climastrologists, NiKolov and Zeller didn’t do surface properties, therefore their results are wrong.
@MieScatter says: on July 16, 2017 at 2:36 am
You keep going on about Venus and 16.5 kw…
Lets try and conceive a practical experiment that will, or will not, demonstrate the effect you suggest is happening.
An insulated vertical tube, perhaps 10cm in diameter, 2m long.
At the base, 10 cm deep soil with a 10W resistor buried in it.
At the top of the tube, a heat sink (lump of metal etc)
Scattered through the tube, temperature sensors recording the temperature.
Inject a constant current through the 10W resistor causing the soil to warm up 10 degrees C.
The gas in the tube warms and a profile develops with slightly warm at the bottom, and slightly cool at the top.
You suggest (and correct me if I have misunderstood your position on this) if I inject CO2 gas into the tube, the soil will warm due to the GHG effect?
Soil = earths surface
Heatsink = cold outer space.
Is it believable to accept the the current/energy used to warm the soil will now be much more effective with the addition of CO2?
Are we getting something for nothing?
Unless there is an error in my thought process or writing, the above experiment expresses your view of the concept of GHG and climate change.
Let us ignore convection and just concentrate on radiative properties in the first instance.
TA says:
“Venus’ surface emits 16.5 kW/m2. You say you ignore it in engineering, but that’s just handwaving. How are the 16,500 W/m2 replenished? Explain the process.”
I don’t understand the process exactly, but it seems to me that the Sun is the one that replenishes it. How would a planet emit more than it receives from the Sun?
Exactly — it doesn’t. This is the flaw with the pressure model, which has the surface radiation outgoing to space because the atmosphere is assumed not to be radiative. (A non-radiating atmosphere must not be capable of absorbing radiation.) If the surface is hot enough to radiate thousands of W/m^2 more than the Sun delivers to it, and the atmosphere is non-radiative, then the surface cannot stay that hot for very long.
The pressure model has a huge energy deficit that all the hand-waving arguments given above cannot explain away.
dai davies says:
I count four free parameters if, as they say, Pr is arbitrary, and six data points. Others have pointed this out, and I agree it is pushing degrees of freedom a bit far, particularly since the three lower points are, in a sense, degenerate. But, even so, pressure gives the best fit.
You forgot this one:
Tna = 32.44 S^0.25
The “32.44” is there to fit the Moon. Note that the equation 10a evaluates to 1 for a no-atmosphere case, and that is true independent of what a, b, c, and d are. So the Moon is already a guaranteed fit.
32.44 is the fifth parameter.
Triton has a very weak atmosphere, so equation 10a evaluates to something very close to 1. Triton does not affect the a, b, c, d fit significantly.
The a, b, c, and d are there to fit the remaining four bodies, the ones that have significant atmospheres.
If they used a polynomial model, they could get a perfect fit to almost any set of data points for those four bodies. They are correct in eschewing such models. Now, because 10a is monotonic, getting a good fit in their physics-free model requires that Ts/Tna is monotonic (or nearly so) with respect to P. And that happens to be the case. But with only four bodies, that is weak evidence, and crumbles in the face of the failure to uphold the first law of thermodynamics. So until the first law failure is addressed, their conjecture cannot be taken seriously.
Someone says: We’ve found that there is a substantial energy imbalance, specifically, Pout >> Pin. If correct, this indeed presents a quandary. There must be another source supplying Pout – Pin joules per second. Someone else (eg, N&Z ) suggests that possibly pressure has something to do with this. The other side says, No! pressure cannot supply additional power. Instead they say, it must be CO2. We then naturally ask, so you’re saying that CO2 is a power source? The reply: Well no, not really, it does something else…
The flaws in the logic are painfully obvious.
And all of it based on a ~conjecture~ that was controversial virtually from the moment it was first stated. A conjecture that has never been experimentally confirmed (if anything it’s been falsified – http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/).
gallopingcamel says:
MieScatter says, July 15, 2017 at 9:02 am
“Venus’ surface radiates 16.5 kW per square metre. In this idea, what happens to that energy? How is it replenished or prevented from escaping by pressure?”
The explanation is so simple that a bright 11th grader can calculate the surface temperature of Venus using the known temperature of the cloud tops and then applying the adiabatic lapse rate down to the surface, sixty five kilometers below.
Yes, in that problem the cloud-top temperature and the height of that point of measurement are given, and we’re given an assumption that the adiabatic lapse rate is applicable (that assumption implies a convective atmosphere, which I grant is valid for the troposphere of Venus).
But how do you fix these two values other than by taking empirical measurements? (1) Temperature at top of convective part of the atmosphere, and (2) the height of the cloud tops?
You can calculate (1) directly from Stefan-Boltzmann, if the atmosphere above the cloud tops isn’t significantly radiative. Betcha can’t calculate (2) accurately without taking greenhouse gases into account.
@Konrad July 19, 2017 at 8:48 am:
Konrad, you are talking a sheer nonsense! Have you read our first paper about the 90 K atmospheric thermal effect on Earth?
https://springerplus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2193-1801-3-723
Do you understand the mathematical analysis and physical reasoning presented in that paper? If sounds like you do not. Please read the published science before giving opinions!
They’ve been brainwashed by the major western fault Ned. Don’t worry. We know that.
RobertF says:
Someone says: We’ve found that there is a substantial energy imbalance, specifically, Pout >> Pin. If correct, this indeed presents a quandary. There must be another source supplying Pout – Pin joules per second. Someone else (eg, N&Z ) suggests that possibly pressure has something to do with this. The other side says, No! pressure cannot supply additional power. Instead they say, it must be CO2. We then naturally ask, so you’re saying that CO2 is a power source? The reply: Well no, not really, it does something else…
The flaws in the logic are painfully obvious.
You are punching a strawman here, Robert.
Nobody has claimed that CO2 is a power source. It recirculates energy through radiant energy absorption and re-radiation in a well-understood manner that is consistent with laws of thermodynamics. There is no power deficit; everything balances.
What the pressure enthusiasts are claiming is clearly inconsistent with thermodynamics, in that there is no pressure-based energy recirculation mechanism that can resolve the power deficit.
Nobody is demanding that the pressure enthusiasts show that pressure is a power source, although (incredibly) some have responded by saying that it is. All that is needed is to show that there is no deficit because energy is redistributed by (fill in the blank with a physically viable mechanism).
The failure of the pressure conjecture is that it provides nothing to fill in the blank with.
Perhaps the pressure enthusiasts could answer a multiple choice question. The 16000 W/m^2 emitted upward by Venus’s surface is:
a) entirely radiated through a non-absorbing atmosphere into the void of space;
b) partially absorbed by the atmosphere, which reradiates it;
c) partially absorbed by the atmosphere, which does not reradiate it.
“You are punching a strawman here, Robert.
Nobody has claimed that CO2 is a power source. It recirculates energy through radiant energy absorption and re-radiation in a well-understood manner that is consistent with laws of thermodynamics. There is no power deficit; everything balances.”
Nope, not at all. And it’s easy enough to show. Answer this : What is the energy source(s) providing 16.5 kW/m^2 to Venus’ surface? Is it the sun alone or not?
ScottM says: “Nobody has claimed that CO2 is a power source.” It doesn’t matter whether or not you explicitly state it. You have a problem either way.
RobertF: Nope, not at all. And it’s easy enough to show. Answer this : What is the energy source(s) providing 16.5 kW/m^2 to Venus’ surface? Is it the sun alone or not?
The Sun is an energy source providing a flux of about 90 W/m^2 to the surface. There are no other sources save geothermal (Venusio-thermal? What’s the correct word?) which is probably on the same order of magnitude. The remainder is from the atmosphere, which is by no means an energy source, but a reactive element taking radiated energy and returning it to the system. Have you ever studied electrical power systems? If so, you may remember something called reactive power, which can greatly exceed the real power delivered to the network from the source. It’s a good analogy to what happens with greenhouse gases. Nobody calls the reactive load on the network a power source.
Good luck finding a reactive element in your non-physical pressure model.
Incidentally, even though reactive power is borrowed power, it can contribute to I^2 * R losses in the network, i.e., heat. So the analogy holds there, too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volt-ampere_reactive
So, nobody claims CO2 is an energy source, because it isn’t, and doesn’t need to be for the model to work. Just as nobody claims that a reactive load on a network is an energy source, because it isn’t, and doesn’t need to be for network model, including its added heat dissipation, to work.
ScottM: So you are telling us that the power entering the Venusian system from the sun (plus geothermal if required) (Pin) is greater than or equal to the power radiated at the surface (Pout)? Please show us the actual calculation for this using your own numbers. This should be a simple exercise, no need for a lot of wordy distractions.
(PS – Yes, I’ve studied electrical systems. I’m an electronic engineer.)
Most likely “geothermal” is of little consequence regarding Venus – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Magnetic_field_and_core
And no, a reactive load, while it changes other properties in a system, does not change the actual energy balance. In other words, it does not ~source~ ~additional~ ~power~ to the system.
RobertF, solar flux at the Venusian system, less reflection, is about 1400 W/m^2 (I’m going from memory so give me a little leeway). Venus is roughly spherical so it averages 350 W/m^2. Less than 100 W/m^2 reaches the surface; I will trust mieScatter’s number on this but it is in line with other data I have seen. I’m not calculating these numbers because they are empirical. Check the data with any good planetary database.
For the radiation emitted by the surface, go here http://www.endmemo.com/physics/radenergy.php
and enter 0.9 (a common assumption for emissivity of a solid planetary surface in LWIR), 1 square meter, and 740 K.
ScottM: So you refuse to do the actual calculation, with numbers that have been bandied about here numerous times by you and others, but still tell us you know what is correct (ie, no additional power source is involved). Strange. Again, this is very simple stuff: The Pin (sun) entering the Venusian system should be greater than (or at least equal to) the Pout from the surface.
“And no, a reactive load, while it changes other properties in a system, does not change the actual energy balance. In other words, it does not ~source~ ~additional~ ~power~ to the system.”
Exactly my point. And CO2 doesn’t source energy to the surface. It borrows it from the surface (and from other radiative layers) and returns it. The balance is preserved because only a fraction of the 16000 W/m^2 is allowed to leave the system.
No, ScottM, I’m not doing it for you. You need to do this using the values that you believe to be most correct. Only then can we move on with this.
Do the calculation, Scott. Then we’ll see where the chips fall and go from there.
RobertF – “The Pin (sun) entering the Venusian system should be greater than (or at least equal to) the Pout from the surface.”
Ah, I see the problem here. While most of the other pressure enthusiasts are violating the first law of thermodynamics, you choose instead to believe that the surface radiation is less than the insolation, violating Stefan-Boltzmann instead.
I’ve answered enough of your questions, now would you mind answering the simple multiple choice question I posted earlier? Or do you fear a trap?
ScottM: No, I’m saying no such thing. You’re the one evading now. This is very very simple stuff. Do you or do you not believe that Pout cannot be significantly greater than Pin without an additional power source?
RobertF, I did the calculation using the calculator I linked. I got 15302, a bit less than mieScatter’s number, but that’s probably due to a difference in assumed emissivity. I gave you the input values I used, but if you are too lazy to check my work, you will have to trust me.
What is your point with this elementary exercise, anyway? If you have one, state it. If not, please move on and stop wasting my time.
If by Pout you mean reactive power (so that the “out” is a misnomer), yes it can be. I am not evading you since I already stated as much. If you mean power leaving the Venusian atmosphere, then my answer is no, if the planet is at equilibrium.
ScottM: You still haven’t shown the complete calculation: Pin to the Venusian system vs Pout at the surface.
And the point of this exercise should be fairly obvious. There can only be two results:
a) Power from the sun alone explains Venus’ power output (and in turn its surface temperature). In which case, it becomes difficult to see where the RGHE hypothesis explains much. Or,…
b) There has to be an additional power source (which you yourself admit CO2 cannot answer).
Why, after all the harping in this thread about the energy flux at Venus’ surface, would someone not want to directly address such basic questions. Odd.
ScottM says: July 19, 2017 at 5:18 pm
You forgot this one: Tna
Forgot to mention it but I was including it with Pr as an arbitrary scaler – debatable but I’m not particularly interested. As I said, it is pushing degrees of freedom a bit far, but the same applies for the other measurements they tried and pressure worked far better.
At 7:27 you say: The failure of the pressure conjecture is that it provides nothing to fill in the blank with.
I’d say not failed but so far not a fully fledged theory.
At 7:32
Or:
d) fully absorbed by the atmosphere and completely radiated near TOA.
RobertF 7:46
A: CO2 mainly. As with Earth, it is pressure dependent.
ScottM 9:44
Reactive power is a good analogy (I guess, without giving much thought) but obscure for most. With RobertF we agree it doesn’t change overall energy balance.
RobertF 10:25
If by Pout at the surface. you mean solid surface then these don’t have to match. I presume you mean Pout at TOA.
Ned is correct in pointing to their prior work with RDE to explain surface temp. Day-night smoothing that, I gather, is saturated on Venus with CO2 doing the heavy lifting. The RDE is pressure dependent.
No kittens or laws of physics injured.
dai
dai davies says:”If by Pout at the surface. you mean solid surface then these don’t have to match. I presume you mean Pout at TOA.”
They don’t have to match but certainly Pout (surface) cannot be greater than Pin to the system. I’m assuming that no one is saying that I can design a circuit (for say, a heating element) in which I get more power from the element than I’m putting into the circuit. If so, my clients will be thrilled. I can see the dollar signs dancing in their heads now.
To sum up the difference between the physical realists and the pressure enthusiasts:
The realists don’t have an energy balance problem with Venus, because they know that almost all of the 15000 to 16000 W/m^2 radiated by the surface is returned by a radiative atmosphere. No “second energy source” is required, because very little of that radiation is lost to space, so the surface stays hot.
The enthusiasts deny the radiative return, and this creates an energy imbalance that they can’t explain away. They could satisfy the demands of the realists in one of two ways: Either find a second energy source, or find some reactive mechanism to capture and return the radiated energy to the surface.
So far, they have come up empty on both counts. As a last defense, many deny either the first law of thermodynamics or the SB law.
Such efforts are doomed to failure at persuading any realists.
Do the calculation (Pin/Pout = ?), ScottM. We’ll then see who the “realists” might actually be. Again, I’ve given you a very simple way to show that N&Z are all wet. But you continue to ignore it and engage in what is clearly illogical sophistry.
“They don’t have to match but certainly Pout (surface) cannot be greater than Pin to the system. I’m assuming that no one is saying that I can design a circuit (for say, a heating element) in which I get more power from the element than I’m putting into the circuit. If so, my clients will be thrilled. I can see the dollar signs dancing in their heads now.”
The temperature generated at the surface will never exceed the temperature of the Sun’s surface. You don’t get power out of the system that is greater than the power in, and that is true of electrical systems as well. But the (useless) reactive power can exceed what is delivered to the output load by a large amount. And that reactive power can heat the resistive elements in your circuit.
ScottM says: “The temperature generated at the surface will never exceed the temperature of the Sun’s surface. You don’t get power out of the system that is greater than the power in”
That my friend is nothing more than a diversion. No one is saying that Venus’ surface temps should match those of the sun’s. Again, do the calculations (Pin/Pout = ?) and show us your work and the figures you used. I suspect then we can settle this once and for all.
ScottM, July 19, 2017 at 6:09 pm
“Yes, in that problem the cloud-top temperature and the height of that point of measurement are given, and we’re given an assumption that the adiabatic lapse rate is applicable (that assumption implies a convective atmosphere, which I grant is valid for the troposphere of Venus).
But how do you fix these two values other than by taking empirical measurements? (1) Temperature at top of convective part of the atmosphere, and (2) the height of the cloud tops?
You can calculate (1) directly from Stefan-Boltzmann, if the atmosphere above the cloud tops isn’t significantly radiative. Betcha can’t calculate (2) accurately without taking greenhouse gases into account.”
Nikolov & Zeller tell us that all gases are “Greenhouse Gases”. What matters most is the mass of the atmosphere. Put in simple terms I can keep warm by putting on one Tee shirt. However if I put on ten or twenty T shirts things will be much toastier.
N&Z have done an excellent job predicting the surface temperature of rocky bodies with atmospheres. My goal is to extend their thinking to temperatures at any altitude even in gas giants where we have yet to locate a solid surface.
IMHO the Robinson & Catling model explains what is observed from the surface of a body, through the troposphere, through the tropopause and on to the top of the stratosphere.
https://www.google.com/#q=robinson+catling+tropopause
The above Nat Geo letter includes a detailed convective-radiative model and a link to the computer code that I tested here:
Whether the energy balance is calculated at the surface or at the “Top of the Atmosphere” should not make much difference, yet I have been unable to reconcile Nikolov and Zeller with Robinson & Catling.
The N&K theory works well for surface temperature but not for temperature at an arbitrary altitude. The R&C theory works from the surface to the top of the stratosphere for the seven bodies in our solar system that have significant atmospheres. However it does not work for Mars.
My take is that we should respect N&K and R&C even though they don’t have all the answers. They are way ahead of “Climate Imbeciles” who still cling to Arrhenius’ discredited hypothesis:
“The selective absorption of the atmosphere is……………..not exerted by the chief mass of the air, but in a high degree by aqueous vapor and carbonic acid, which are present in the air in small quantities.”
gallopingcamel: You still have not stated how to calculate height of the top of clouds without accounting for greenhouse gases. It looks like the parameters in that R&C model are empirical parameters, and as I phrased the question, “how do you fix these two values other than by taking empirical measurements?”, it appears like this doesn’t address it. However, it does show that N&Z (mislabeled N&K in the graph in your second link) don’t know how to get there either, and do a far worse job of predicting it. Certainly the R&C model doesn’t fit your idea of a simple linear calculation done by an 11th grader.
The various fluxes in the R&C model that are given as input parameters are really constraints that the curve *must* comply with. Since their values are empirically sourced, the model doesn’t tell how to predict those values, only how to use them to get the shape of the curve.
N&Z calling nitrogen and oxygen “greenhouse gases” when they are very nearly transparent to LWIR is absurd. With an atmosphere of only nitrogen and oxygen, the “top of the atmosphere”, at least for radiative calculation purposes, is ground level, and you don’t even need to know the lapse rate to calculate surface temperature.
RobertF says:July 20, 2017 at 1:43 am
Pout (surface) cannot be greater than Pin to the system.
I’m taking Earth because that’s what we know most about. Wild et.al. energy balance diagrams which claim to be current industry standard give (land and sea):
340 W/m^2 in at TOA, your Pin
398 your Pout at surface
342 Pin at surface
with the balance from evaporation and conduction.
OT, but I can’t help taking the opportunity to point out that they admit to fudging the figures to get a 1 W/m^2 imbalance TOA to match the 0.6 they claim is going into the oceans. Errors are 10 to 20 W/m^2, at least. Another ‘trick’ data adjustment.
I think electrical analogies just confuse the issue.
ScottM says: July 20, 2017 at 1:52 am
The enthusiasts deny the radiative return, and this creates an energy imbalance that they can’t explain away.
I can’t see anyone making that claim. You’ve conjured it up as a straw man. (Are you a farmer?) For myself, as a physical realist, I have explicity refuted it.
dai
If RobertF were to advertise his heating device as having an output power equal to the reactive power bouncing around inside the device, he would soon find himself having to defend against fraud charges. The same would be true for anyone claiming to produce a perpetual motion machine based on N&Z style gravito-thermal “physics” (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/19/perpetuum-mobile/).
ScottM says: July 20, 2017 at 6:37 am
perpetual motion machine based on N&Z style gravito-thermal “physics”
Wow! What a reference. He is/was totally bamboozled. Is this a wind-up?
dai
dai davies:
At 7:32
Or:
d) fully absorbed by the atmosphere and completely radiated near TOA.
To recap the list I gave:
a) entirely radiated through a non-absorbing atmosphere into the void of space;
b) partially absorbed by the atmosphere, which reradiates it;
c) partially absorbed by the atmosphere, which does not reradiate it.
Your option (d) doesn’t sound compatible with what the pressure enthusiasts are saying, and we since the atmosphere of Venus is known to be partially transmissive, replacing the “partially” of option b with “fully” doesn’t make much sense. And anyway, option d runs into an additional problems, since TOA is much cooler than the surface, and consequently can’t radiate at the same intensity as the surface. So it’s not clear how it could be “completely radiated near TOA” when the TOA can generate is only a fraction of the surface flux.
ScottM 9:44
Reactive power is a good analogy (I guess, without giving much thought) but obscure for most. With RobertF we agree it doesn’t change overall energy balance.
It’s not about changing overall energy balance. The 16000 W/m^2 emitted by the surface is absorbed by the atmosphere, which is acting at the reactive element in this case, and the same quantity is returned to the surface by the same reactive element. So all that reactive power has a net flux of zero, as we’d expect at equilibrium — it doesn’t change the balance, it maintains it.
Letting the 16000 W/m^2 escape into space, as the non-reactive atmosphere imagined by the gravito-thermalists would do, does affect the energy balance, because it creates a deficit that now must be accounted for somehow. And in all the years I’ve heard about this supposed effect, I have yet to see such an accounting, so I remain skeptical.
My LED light bulb has a spectral T of 6500K, but I can hold it in my bare hand. There is a lot of ridiculous mis-statement of physics going on above, amounting to thread-jacking. Now where and by whom have we seen that before?
dai davies:
ScottM says: July 20, 2017 at 1:52 am
“The enthusiasts deny the radiative return, and this creates an energy imbalance that they can’t explain away.”
I can’t see anyone making that claim. You’ve conjured it up as a straw man.
Really? How hard did you look?
Changing the concentrations of greenhouse gases is thought to perturb the TOA energy balance (by modifying the outgoing LW radiation), and thus alter the surface temperature.
However, our results point to a different physical reality — Ned Nikolov, July 10
Look up the science of thermal conductivity and radiative heat transfer and explain to me how these imaginary ‘greenhouse gases’ warm the world. — Richard111, July 11
The atmosphere lapse rate continues underground.
It is good evidence that the greenhouse effect is caused by gravity and not radiation — Roger Clague, July 11
…and that’s just within the first three days of commenting.
Brett Keane: True. Your LED doesn’t work by thermal emission.
ScottM, July 19, 2017 at 7:32 pm
QUOTE
Perhaps the pressure enthusiasts could answer a multiple choice question. The 16000 W/m^2 emitted upward by Venus’s surface is:
a) entirely radiated through a non-absorbing atmosphere into the void of space;
b) partially absorbed by the atmosphere, which reradiates it;
c) partially absorbed by the atmosphere, which does not reradiate it.
UNQUOTE
It is likely that the surface of Venus radiates 16,000 W/m^2 as predicted by Stefan-BoItzmann but that has no effect on surface temperature because the Venusian troposphere is opaque to long wave radiation. Thus IR radiation is just another means of distributing heat in the lower atmosphere along with convection, conduction and latent heat. If you want to calculate the surface temperature of Venus, forget about HITRAN. High school thermodynamics is all you need.
This lot can play with child’s toys like their ‘radiation calculator’ until the cows come home, but they have no watts. It is energy, in joules, that is at the bottom of Venus’ atmosphere, concentrated by gravity as pressure and holding the air there from turning solid. Only just. The posts above are a loony-bin as threatened warmists scramble while their claims crumble. Their last straw, spectral colour temperature, is a representation of colour a theoretical blackbody would have at that T. It does no work, hence no watts. Kinetic energy does the work. And of course S-B is a theoretical discharge to a receiver at 0K. That stupid calculator relies on S-B.
Nor do they know aught about kinetic energy transfer taking several orders of magnitude less time than radiative transfer, nor even that emission must follow transmission if it gets the chance. Heat cannot be ‘trapped’, it is an ongoing process or it is nothing.
And ScottM, I think you have the picture – atmospheric energy transport also does not work by thermal emission either, until it gets less than one optical depth from space.
ScottM says:
July 19, 2017 at 7:27 pm
All that is needed is to show that there is no deficit because energy is redistributed by (fill in the blank with a physically viable mechanism).
N ad Z say :
“According to Eq. (10b), the heating mechanism of planetary atmospheres is analogous to a gravity-controlled adiabatic compression acting upon the entire surface.”
I suggest the physical mechanism of GHE is different velocities of molecules caused by gravity difference between surface and 20 km. This is 0.3% of g = 0.003 x 10m/s^2 =0.03m/s^2
This 0.03m/s^2 acts over 20 000m
Change of velocity = 20m/s^2
Molecules nearer the surface move faster than average. Molecules at 20km move slower than average. Gravity redistributes energy density in the lower atmosphere
Kinetic theory of gas is a physical mechanism for the GHE. Gas pressure is caused by velocity not weight.
Corrected calculation for previous post
change in v^2 = 2gs
= 2 x 0.03m/s^2 x 20 000m
= 1200
v = 35 m/s
Gravity causes the change in velocity at surface and 20km.
Change in velocity causes the change in T between surface and 20km
ScottM says: “If RobertF were to advertise his heating device as having an output power equal to the reactive power bouncing around inside the device, he would soon find himself having to defend against fraud charges….”
WTH are you talking about!? This has nothing to do with my saying that Pout (surface) cannot exceed Pin (system). Nothing!!
You really are quite the little sophist and will go to great lengths to avoid the quite elementary questions you’re confronted with.
“Furthermore, satellite- and surface-based radiation measurements have shown
[12-14] that the lower troposphere emits 42-44% more radiation towards the
surface (i.e. 341-346 W m-2) than the net shortwave flux delivered to the
Earth-atmosphere system by the Sun (i.e. 240 W m-2). In other words, the lower
troposphere contains significantly more kinetic energy than expected from solar
heating alone, a conclusion also supported by the new 90 K GE estimate. A
similar but more extreme situation is observed on Venus as well, where the
atmospheric downwelling LW radiation near the surface (>15,000 W m-2) exceeds
the total absorbed solar flux (65–150 W m-2) by a factor of 100 or more [6]. The
radiative greenhouse theory cannot explain this apparent paradox considering the
fact that infrared-absorbing gases such as CO2 , water vapor and methane only
re-radiate available LW emissions and do not constitute significant heat storage
or a net source of additional energy to the system. This raises a fundamental
question about the origin of the observed energy surplus in the lower
troposphere of terrestrial planets with respect to the solar input. ” N&Z, pg 1.
Are N&Z’s numbers right or not? Someone has explaining to do.
Wow, this is a really interesting discussion and I think I’m learning a lot. I’m really weak on radiative physics, though, and have a question that I hope ScottM can help me with. He seems to have a pretty good grasp on the subject.
Here’s a really easy experiment that demonstrates what I’m trying to figure out: If I light a kitchen match (not sure if they are legal in the UK – if not, you’ll have to take my word for it), and move my hand around it, it becomes really obvious that almost all the heat is being radiated UPward! Seriously, if I put my hand below the burning match, I can almost touch it before feeling any heat. If I put my hand above the match, I have to hold it several inches above it in order not to get burned.
So what’s going on? Does gravity repel heat? Am I living in a Mystery Vortex? Why don’t my lights work the same way? Light is radiation too, I think. Why doesn’t my ceiling light up more than my floor when I turn the lights on?
Thanks in advance for helping me on this.
Dan: see here – http://evolutionj11.imascientist.org.uk/2011/06/if-warm-air-rises-because-it-is-less-dense-than-cold-air-then-why-does-the-air-get-colder-with-height-in-the
Warm air rises, but in doing so it expands and cools. That’s the short version.
Oldbrew: I don’t know if you are being as sardonically indulgent as I was being sarcastic, but either way it’s a nice reply. This might be a better link for what I was getting at.
@Dan in Nevada says:
July 20, 2017 at 7:41 pm: “And that rising, instantaneously by both warmed air and water vapour, is what overpowers radiation by about 80:20 until it gets to thin air.”
Folk like RobertF are not seeing “atmospheric downwelling LW radiation near the surface (>15,000 W m-2) exceeds the total absorbed solar flux (65–150 W m-2) by a factor of 100 or more”. That is a fallacy, total BS. Once again the Climategate crew, should have stuck to Geography and Maths. Physics seems to be beyond them, and they lead others astray. There is no GHE (Prof Robert Woods refuted that with finality well over 100ya. What we see is the Gravito-Thermal Effect where kinetic energy, vibrating molecular structures, is concentrated by mass above it. For the Electricians here, the moving molecules in the EM Field generate the appropriate radiative potential. Physicists know that EMF is a VECTOR quantity, only flux-ing DOWN a gradient. With no net downwelling from cooler air above, there can be no power flow ie wattage involved. Forget it. Upwardly, radiation would get there if mass flow processes had not beaten it, but it takes over when density diminishes.
For the last time, temperature is an attribute of Mass through KE, kinetic energy, which causes radiation potential flux, a weaker force (heat over the match is kinetic mostly, radiation alone is underneath, relatively feeble. If the finger was hotter than the flame, it would not flow. The cause is KE, EMF is only an effect that needs a “downhill slope” to flow while KE just keeps going above 0K. As gc, our loping llama, says, It is highschool stuff, and well worth getting a basic textbook in the 2ndhand shops for. Or, study TB blog archives, a real gem…..
Brett Keane: I’m not sure why you’re mentioning me. I’m merely asking a basic question–a question which could resolve much of this–that someone here should be able to positively answer,
Moreover, I have said more than once ~in this thread~ that radiation (nature’s means of last resort to transport thermal energy) is a backward way to consider things in these conditions. So in effect you’re just repeating points that I’ve already made myself.
Brett says: “atmospheric downwelling LW radiation near the surface (>15,000 W m-2) exceeds the total absorbed solar flux (65–150 W m-2) by a factor of 100 or more”. That is a fallacy, total BS. ”
I guess then that N&Z were led astray as well (something I’m more than willing to consider). In any case, it is difficult to get past all of this, to get out of the rabbit hole so to speak, until that issue is cleared up once and for all.
As the last several comments by the pressure enthusiasts have deteriorated into content-free and alchemy-like gobbledy-gook, further response by me would be pointless. Go ahead and indulge in your fantasy physics, ladies and gentlemen. Maybe you will even get your pressure-driven perpetual motion machines to work someday; however, I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
ScottM: July 20, 2017 at 7:18 am
Your comments seem to be based on the assumption that CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere. This is an unproven assumption.
Radiative gasses, mainly water vapour, just delay the radiative transfer of heat in the atmosphere. The critical question is: by how much? By my calculations, enough to heat the atmosphere by less than 1 K. (see my Radiative Delay article for details)
The AGW consensus assumption of total trapping to account for an increase of 33 K above a planet with no atmosphere was made because they couldn’t, and probably didn’t bother to, think of any other mechanisms.
N&Z’s previous work brought forward a mechanism that provides a complete alternative – what they labelled Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement, or ATE. The ball is now in the IPCC-AGW court to justify their assumption.
N&Z’s latest work throws another idea into the mix of what is a complex system with many processes at work. New ideas always generate a degree of chaos as is well exemplified in this discussion. The process of generating a degree of order can be slow and frustrating, but for some of us that’s the attraction of science – the never ending challenge. When it stagnates it degenerates in to the static consensus ‘truths’ of the cult of Scientism.
You try to characterise the discussion as a competition between two teams. You can’t. As has been said before, trying to get a consensus from sceptics is like herding cats. Its the nature of scepticism. When threatened by stagnant certainty the sceptical mind compulsively tries to break it.
There are no certainties in science, just a process for generating the most orderly perpective possible at a particular point in time.
dai
The atmospheric perpetual motion machine
The idea that if gravity dictated the lapse rate (vertical temperature profile of the of the atmosphere) it would imply a PMM, surfaced in the early days of thermodynamics and is easily rebutted. It has been, many times, but still gets trotted out just because some famous physicist made the claim. I won’t tarnish his name by looking up who it was. We all make mistakes.
Any thermal gradient can be tapped to produce, say, electricity. You could, indeed do so with the atmospheric gradient regardless of how it is formed. The ‘perpetual’ bit comes from whether the energy is replenished. In the case of the atmosphere it is by the sun, as long as you don’t draw a significant fraction of incoming solar energy.
The scale of such a device that would have to span kilometers, and the inherent inefficiency with such a low temperature difference, would make it a particularly expensive source of solar energy.
The gravitational basis of the lapse rate challenges the Postmodern Climate Science assumption that radiative (aka greenhouse) gasses caused the lapse rate. What RGs, along with convection and the water evaporation and condensation cycle, do is reduce the fundamental gravitational lapse rate locally by varying amounts to create the environmental lapse rate. I’ve dealt with this in detail in my Lapse Rates article.
dai
As all these rocky planets with an atmosphere have atmosphere that generally vary in density getting ‘thicker’ as you go from the TOA to the surface. When density is changing like this does not the optical (and IR) refraction change?
Brett Keane says:
July 20, 2017 at 9:03 pm
What we see is the Gravito-Thermal Effect where kinetic energy, vibrating molecular structures, is concentrated by mass above it
You describe kinetic energy in a solid or liquid. Gas is different
Gas molecules do have vibrating internal structure. They also have random motion, made up of velocities, accelerations, collision and rebounds. Solids and liquid molecules do not have these random motions.
If mass can compress and concentrate air in the atmosphere why can’t I feel it or measure it on a weighing scale (force meter)?
My theory
Gravity is acceleration
Temperature is caused by velocity
Gravito=Thermal effect is physically
gravity changes the velocity and temperature of molecules
@ScottM: You claim that people who disagree with you are engaging in “… content-free and alchemy-like gobbledy-gook …. fantasy physics … perpetual motion machines …”. That kind of ad hominem attack doesn’t help you make your point.
It’s particularly rich given your own “fantasy physics” argument, which I’ll allow you to sum up:
[begin quote]
“To sum up the difference between the physical realists and the pressure enthusiasts:
The realists don’t have an energy balance problem with Venus, because they know that almost all of the 15000 to 16000 W/m^2 radiated by the surface is returned by a radiative atmosphere. No “second energy source” is required, because very little of that radiation is lost to space, so the surface stays hot.
The enthusiasts deny the radiative return, and this creates an energy imbalance that they can’t explain away.”
[end quote]
This is classic misdirection, asserting faulty assumptions as fact then offering your own answer as the only possible conclusion.
“[T]hey know that almost all of the 15000 to 16000 W/m^2 radiated by the surface…” is where you start to lose me and makes me think that “they” must not be very bright. I’m not a PhD and certainly not an expert in heat transfer, but even I know that Stefan-Boltzmann is accurate only in a vacuum. So sure, if Venus had no atmosphere I would agree that somewhere around 15000 to 16000 W/m^2 is being radiated given a surface temperature of about 750 K.
The problem is that Venus does have an atmosphere (something has to hold those greenhouse gases up), which in turn means that much of the heat at the surface is not being radiated but being carried aloft through convection, among other mechanisms. Which in turn means that your flat assertion that the heat being radiated from Venus’s surface is the same as in a vacuum can’t be right. Not even close to right would be my guess. (Note that I’m not denying radiative effects. There’s been many times I’ve marveled at the ability of clouds to keep a night much warmer than it would have been.)
What’s actually happening at the surface is where the mystery lies. I’ve read N & Z’s paper, and to the extent I understand it, I think there might be something to it, but don’t claim to know. But I certainly can’t buy your refutation as stated. I can understand “ceteris paribus” arguments where they make sense, but to pretend that things like conduction, convection, advection, etc. don’t exist at all is just dishonest. My apologies if I’ve misunderstood you.
Roger Clague says:
July 21, 2017 at 1:44 pm : I was most definitely writing about gas, that is most of the point, and not what you miscalled it. We have all been through this before, honestly trying to learn one would hope. Ned and co will maybe comment on our various approaches, or expand and simplify. It’s their hypothesis. Distance learning can only go so far……
Roger, “Gas pressure is caused by velocity not weight”. I had given this some thought. The effect of the weight from gravity of air above, squeezes gas molecules closer together as they collide. Under conditions in an atmosphere (unconfined), frequency of the ‘shorter strokes’ might increase. This could change spectral T but remain adiabatic, maybe so, maybe not. In the real world, nothing stands still, sideways more or less up or down is the rule for gas. KE is of course traded for Potential Energy PE all the time, an effect of gravity.
https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/pressure.html
http://zonalandeducation.com/mstm/physics/mechanics/energy/heatAndTemperature/gasMoleculeMotion/gasMoleculeMotion.html
https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/which-factors-contribute-to-average-velocity-of-gas-particles.407636/ (for a debate)
https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/40224/gas-pressure-and-molecular-mass
Anyway, I still have doubts, so please explain.
Another thing to be careful of is that physics, dealing with the ‘nature’ of things, differentiates between internal events and the behaviours of macro bodies and systems. E.g. T being a quantitative measure – while internally much is happening. What pressure does in a box and when atmospheric hardly matches at 1st glance. Then there are vector, planar, scalar, pseudo, forces etc.. ‘Getting the units right’ is a discipline in itself……
To be frank, I suspect N+Z are just building another link in the chain needed to lock the gravito-thermal postulation (actually proven as far as anything outside of maths can be, long ago) into a solid framework. Warmists actually lack the physics to fight it honestly, but disinterested Physicists need something solid to get their attention and investigate. There being so much else to study than climate.
If this is correct wouldn’t the temperature of the oceans increase with depth?
Damian Scott:
The effect of gravity is still there but it is overwhelmed by the force between water molecules. Gravity is very weak. Plus, the oceans are heated from above and warm water rises, so it’s relatively stable except at the poles.
dai
Another article about Ned and Karl’s theory:
TB wrote: “Ned and Karl’s theory”
Correction:
Ned and Karl’s observation
Thanks Paul, quite right.
Brett Keane says:
July 22, 2017 at 12:38 am
“Gas pressure is caused by velocity not weight”. I had given this some thought. The effect of the weight from gravity of air above, squeezes gas molecules closer together as they collide. Under conditions in an atmosphere (unconfined), frequency of the ‘shorter strokes’ might increase
All your references discussion Maxwell-Boltzmann Kinetic theory and not weight
Weight can’t squeeze gas molecules closer together, because, as you say, the atmosphere is unconfined.
The consensus theory is gravity causes pressure and pressure causes temperature
But p/h is curved, T/h is straight. Also we get low pressure in hot places and high pressure in cold places
So evidence is against that idea
I think g causes p and T in completely different ways.
p/h variation is caused by movement of molecules by diffusion and convection which is slow, about 1m/s
T/h variation is caused independently from pressure by movement of radiation between H2O molecules quickly at 10^8m/s
Roger, thanks for that. I’ll have to work on it. Two things at this point – atmospheres are unconfined (no lid) but remain constrained. By gravity overall, and local topography etc.. Also, some phenomena are microscopic, and some are macroscopic ie T. Sorting these out is part of the figuring. Lack of AGW ghe, but instead ATE/GTE is what is difficult to avoid empirically.
The expansion of gases through KE, and resulting mass flow away and up is near enough to instantaneous though. Radiative emission is orders of magnitude slower, and there’s the rub…..
I can see some sketching and thinking is needed at my end. What I am fairly sure of is that the Berthold-Klein Mylar balloon experiment absolved ghe from the blame.
https://www.defyccc.com/search/?q=Berthold-Klein+Mylar+balloon+experiment#gsc.tab=0
Brett Keane says:
July 24, 2017 at 8:10 pm
atmospheres are unconfined (no lid) but remain constrained. By gravity overall, and local topography etc..
Gravity constrains in a different way to a lid. In a human scale container (e.g. diesel engine cylinder) the T and p are constant from top to bottom. In an atmosphere there is variation of T/h and p/h. The bulk gas laws do not apply to the atmosphere
some phenomena are microscopic, and some are macroscopic ie T.
All phenomena can be analyzed at molecular and human scale (bulk). Fluid mechanics is for bulk and statistical mechanics is for molecules. I think statistical mechanics gives a better understanding of vertical differences T/h and p/h.. Fluid mechanics is right for horizontal differences, especially wind.
The expansion of gases through KE, and resulting mass flow away and up is near enough to instantaneous though. Radiative emission is orders of magnitude slower
Can you give figures to support your claim that in the atmosphere radiation is slower than mass movement?
I have watched a thunder cloud form at 10 000 m in 2 hours caused by convection. 10 000/7200 m/s = 1m/s
Radiation travels at 10 ^8 m/s between water vapor molecules. When a cloud at 5 000 m blocks the sun I feel the temperature fall at ground level after less than 5 s. that is 1000 m/s
A comparison of atmosphere theories
The atmosphere has energy input from the sun’s radiation R and Earth’s gravity (g). The result is pressure/height p/h and temperature/height T/h
In: R and g Out: T/h and p/h
> means causes
CO2 Greenhouse
R > T, g + T > p
Older theory restated by N and Z
R + g > p > T
My theory
R + g > T, R + g > p
@ Damian Scott: “If this is correct wouldn’t the temperature of the oceans increase with depth?”
Yes, but it’s obviously not correct because it doesn’t conserve energy. I have no doubt that in their minds there are magical energy fields between water molecules that somehow cancel this, but they can’t possibly come up with a description of that based on physics equations that actually conserves energy, so they’ll hand wave and change the subject.
@ Dan in Nevada,
That’s convection, which is different from radiation. Radiation matters more for planets because you can’t convect into empty space.
The greenhouse effect is a fact which we measure worldwide every day.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature14240.html
Roger: The thunderhead you see is actually moving energy to where it can be radiated ie to less than one optical depth. As in past years, people like you just push fantasia even when truth is in front of them. Spectra are caused by energy which we represent as T but are doing no work themselves, worth mentioning. You bore us with more desperate nothingness.
Oops, Spectra =Mie
Brett Keane says: July 24, 2017 at 8:10 pm
The expansion of gases through KE, and resulting mass flow away and up is near enough to instantaneous though.
Pressure changes propagate at the speed of sound. The fact that it is not infinite is significant.
Radiative emission is orders of magnitude slower,
The rate of radiative energy transfer varies with altitude. Near ground level, the mean free path of IR radiation is almost equal up and down. By the time you get to the tropopause the distribution is highly asymmetrical and IR increasingly exits directly to space.
You can see visualisations of this with my OCM package. Both decreasing temperature and decreasing density create net upward energy flows. The former is detailed in my Radiative Delay article and plotted in OCM. The latter is displayed in the OCM skew plot.
Eventually, radiative transfer cancels the gravitational lapse rate, so we get a region that is roughly isothermal with height before atmospheric temperatures rise with altitude in the stratosphere. This can be seen in the lapse rate plot, though the scaling of the effect is a bit arbitrary. Work to be resumed at some later date, perhaps.
Brett Keane says: July 25, 2017 at 7:25 pm
I think optical depth is too narrow a concept when dealing with an active medium. It tends to reenforce the ‘trapping’ narrative.
dai
MieScatter says: July 25, 2017 at 4:07 pm
I have no doubt that in their minds there are magical energy fields between water molecules that somehow cancel this,
Nothing magical here. It’s the attraction that holds liquid water as a liquid rather than a gas. It is small by comparison with the chemical bonds that hold the molecules together but very much larger than gravity.
Up to around 300 Kº, water forms transient local crystalline structures which restrict relative movement.
MieScatter says: July 25, 2017 at 4:10 pm
The greenhouse effect is a fact which we measure worldwide every day.
What you link to isn’t the greenhouse effect, just radiative emissions from a warm atmosphere. The GHE is the supposed ‘trapping’ of heat in the atmosphere.
The atmosphere is awash with collision induced IR. Radiative transfer is happening everywhere as radiative gasses, mainly water vapour, get excited in collisions with other molecules. Usually the energy is lost in a subsequent collision, but sometimes they radiate it.
A fundamental flawed assumption in the the AGW narrative is that radiative emissions are ‘trapped’ by radiative gasses. The reality is that while transfer is slower than direct speed of light transfer from surface to space, it’s still fast enough that there is negligible heating of the atmosphere. By my calculations less than 1 K, not the 33 K assumed by postmodern climate science.
dai
dai: I agree. There is no ‘throttling’ effect in IR transmission which heats the atmosphere. There’s a lot more than enough water vapour to transfer heat efficiently. That said, radiative transfer of energy up the atmospheric column is less efficient than convection. If it wasn’t, than we wouldn’t see large-scale convection. Those convecting blobs of atmosphere usually contain a lot of latent heat in water vapour too, which simply bypasses the radiative pathway. Climate models aren’t sophisticated enough to dynamically couple radiation and convection, and so we end up with the fiction of a radiatively supported lapse rate and the 33C GHE.
Miescatter: Yes, but it’s obviously not correct because it doesn’t conserve energy.
You’ve said this quite a few times now, but you haven’t offered any argumentation to substantiate the claim. I think you’d better do that now.
OCM takes a while to get used to so I’ll try an image:
Brown are IR mean free path distributions showing asymmetry increase with height due to air density decrease.
This causes an increase in upward energy transfer, skew, given by the dotted line. Ignore the drop above 16 km, it really keeps rising sort of exponentially. The quick-calc for distributions becomes unrealistic above here. OCM has a more precise one but that takes forever to run.
Skew transfer undermines the gravitational lapse rate pushing the lapse rate (light blue) to zero. Impact on temperature profile shown in dark blue, which matches typical behaviour shown in literature.
As I said, scaling is a bit arbitrary, giving a 16km tropopause. I think tropopause is where upward skew transfer cuts in to cope with heat from convection and condensation to form a sharper transition from troposphere that you get just from density gradient.
I hope that makes sense. First time I’ve tried to put it into words.
dai
WP ignored my attempt to insert an image. the link is:
dai
So the trick is not to try to be too clever with html.
Nice work dai.
Brett Keane says:
July 25, 2017 at 7:25 pm
Brett Keane says:
July 25, 2017 at 7:25 pm
In reply to a comment by RogerC
You bore us with more desperate nothingness.
I asked
“Can you give figures to support your claim that in the atmosphere radiation is slower than mass movement?”
You did not answer
I gave my evidence that radiation is faster than mass movement
“I have watched a thunder cloud form at 10 000 m in 2 hours caused by convection. 10 000/7200 m/s = 1m/s
Radiation travels at 10 ^8 m/s between water vapor molecules. When a cloud at 5 000 m blocks the sun I feel the temperature fall at ground level after less than 5 s. that is 1000 m/s”
You did not dispute my evidence.
Tommo Mason says: The clouds show how the air mass expands as it rises. If it expands on the way up, surely it must be compressed at the lower levels? It is all that continual air mass movement, natures attempt at normalizing the temperatures across the globe, that drives the system. Simple mechanical air mass movement cools the atmospheric system, each air cell is not that dissimilar to air in a vortex cooling tube folded back on itself. Or am I caught by Maxwellian demons?
Largely correct. The convection is driven by the Sun’s energy being re-emitted from the surface as latent heat, conducted heat and radiation. It goes up, cools to space, and comes back down.
Roger Clague says:
July 26, 2017 at 1:03 pm: At lower atmospheric densities, radiative input/emission is several orders of magnitude slower than the collision rate of molecules, by which energy is transferred kinetically. There is no ‘trapping’, as shown by your rapid cooling once the sun is blocked in any spot. Mass flow and the even greater latent heat transport by water phase changes do the job up to where air is thin enough to let photons out to space. I was using ‘optical depth’ as a shorthand for that.
Anyway Roger, check KE collision rates vs radiation reception to emission periods. We have done this before…..