Mar 24 2009
There Is No Atmospheric Green House Effect
Updated
Reader Crosspatch referred us to this excellent scientific paper (which has been out in one form or another for almost two years now) which debunks the entire man-made global warming myth at its source – the fact that no one has (or can) prove there is a “Greenhouse Effect”. It is a fascinating read and notes how real green houses warm up by heating the trapped air which cannot be cooled by convection (hot air rises, cool air drops in to take up the heat being absorbed by the ‘ground’). Â
The IPCC green house theory (which is proven to be false) relies on a radiation imbalance between the Sun and the reflecting/emitting Earth. It assumes visible light comes in, is absorbed by the ground, etc, and then heat radiation (infrared) is transmitted out. It assumes (wrongly) that infrared cannot escape the glass or atmosphere and that is how heat builds up (not because the air cannot be refreshed).Â
The paper is especially illuminating in its discussion on a car getting hot in the sun on the inside, while the ground and air right outside the car doesn’t. If radiation was the real mechanism (as all the priests at the Church of Al Gore/IPCC claim) then there would not be so much warming ‘inside’ relative to the outside.
In fact, the paper notes an experiment where a “salt house” was developed (because salt does pass infrared as easily as visible light) and it was shown both the ‘salt and ‘glass’ houses warmed at the same rate, even though there was no trapping of the infrared radiation in the salt house.
In fact, the salt house warmed more and faster – because of one monumental mistake made by the entire man-made global warming community! The priests of IPCC assume the sun generates more visible light than infrared, and it is the infrared radiation from the earth which is heating the atmosphere. They assume the heat from the Earth is trapped because the atmosphere captures the infrared but passes the visible.
But the reality is the Sun produces radiation in the following bands and percentages based on black-body radiation models (used to model suns): Ultraviolet (UV) – 10%, visible light 44.8%, Infrared (IR) 45.2%! The Sun produces more energy in the IR than in the visible. Those same atmospheric molecules absorbing the Earth’s IR is also absorbing the Sun’s IR – and guess which IR source is orders of magnitude larger? Does the Earth glow and shed light to planets across this solar system?Â
This really is just a stunning point. The Green House effect would have to work both ways. If trapped IR radiation by CO2 (which only accounts for 7% of the so called green house gases) is the driver behind global warming then it should be taking off like a rocket given how much IR is coming from the Sun. The Sun is an IR generator that dwarfs whatever heat is coming from the Earth’s surface. But we all know the CO2 has been rising the last ten years and the temperature has been dropping. What gives?
I find it completely dumbfounding that the IPCC and others never proved their IR radiation imbalance theories. Not once! In fact, the paper lists a string of smart sounding but incoherent and wrong statements about how green houses work and the atmosphere. In a shining example of getting so complicated in the their thinking they misses the obvious is this one:
Claim: The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lets the radiation of the Sun, whose maximum lies in the visible light, go through completely, while on the other hand it absorbs a part of the heat radiation emitted by the Earth into space because of its larger wavelength. This leads to higher near-surface air temperatures.”
Disproof: The first statement is incorrect since the obviously non-neglible infrared part of the incoming solar radiation [ajstrata: the 45.2% of the solar radiation] is being absorbed (cf. Section 2.2). The second statement is falsied by referring to a counterexample known to every housewife: The water pot on the stove. Without water filled in, the bottom of the pot will soon become glowing red. Water is an excellent absorber of infrared radiation. However, with water filled in, the bottom of the pot will be substantially colder.
The boiling water example is brilliant in its simplicity and ability connect to just about anyone. The heat from the Earth’s surface is carried away by the air which rises and drops the heat off in the upper atmosphere and into space. Just like the water in the pot. Heat is not dissipated by radiation, it is by conduction to the air and then convection of the air to remove the heat.Â
So it seems the entire Global Warming ‘science’ is built upon science fiction assumptions that defy the real laws of physics! They’ll grant a PhD to just about anyone these days.
Addendum: Clarification – the paper also notes that some or much of the Sun’s IR is reflected back into space by the ionosphere, which is probably why the paper keeps noting the ‘non-negligible” solar IR levels. Note; This reflection boundary is not part of the IPCC green house model.
Update: IPCC ‘science’ is based on 19th century theories – never proven:
In their research and review papers the climatologists refer to legendary publications of Svante August Arrhenius (19 Feb. 1859 – 2 Oct. 1927), a Nobel Prize winner for chemistry. Arrhenius published one of the earliest, extremely simple calculations in 1896, which were immediately - and correctly – doubted and have been forgotten for many decades [44{46]. It is a paper about the influence of carbonic acid in the air on the Earth’s ground temperature. In this quite long paper, Arrhenius put the hypothesis up for discussion, that the occurrences of warm and ice ages are supposed to be explainable by certain gases in the atmosphere, which absorb thermal radiation.
I am fairly certain physics has evolved quite a bit since the First World War.
Major Update: I want to, once more, go to the boiling pot model to explain why there is no radiative green house effect as the IPCC claims (some clown on Powerline doesn’t understand that the ‘real’ green house effect is heat transferred by conduction and then trapped by limiting convection – which the atmosphere can do with clouds, etc).
If the radiative model existed at all then the following would not happen:
3.8.3 In the kitchen: Physics-obsessed housewife versus IPCC
In Section 3.3.5 it was indicated how simple it is to falsify the atmospheric greenhouse hypotheses, namely by observing a water pot on the stove: Without water filled in, the bottom of the pot will soon become glowing red. However, with water lled in, the bottom of the pot will be substantially colder.
In particular, such an experiment can be performed on a glass-ceramic stove. The role of the Sun is played by the electrical heating coils or by infrared halogen lamps that are used as heating elements. Glas-ceramic has a very low heat conduction coecient, but lets infrared radiation pass very well. The dihydrogen monoxide in the pot, which not only plays the role of the “greenhouse gas” but also realizes a very dense phase of such a magic substance, absorbs the infrared extremely well. Nevertheless, there is no additional “backwarming” effect of the bottom of the pot. In the opposite, the ground becomes colder.
Dihydrogen monoxide is of courtse water. But what the pot shows is is there is no radiation back to the pot from the water molecules (the number one “green house” molecule). The heat transfer process is completely overwhelmed by convection and conduction with water in place, and the run away heating is contained to ‘the ground’ when there is not sufficient water or air to transport the heat out.Â
The fact is there is no proof or evidence of a radiation driven green house effect, therefore there is no physical reality to the IPCC theories. Remove the concept of CO2 absorbing and re-emitting IR heat creating a feedback heating from the IPCC assumptions and they have nothing. The heat transfer of the atmosphere is in convection and conduction – which has nothing to do with CO2 specifically (any atoms or molecules convey heat through these methods).
Moreover, the regulating of the Earth’s climate is more likely due to the vast oceans which are heat sinks. The warm, livable atmospheric conditions are driven more by the heat contained in the 75% of the planet which is covered by water (which is why coastal cities and towns are degrees warmer than their inland cousins a few miles away).Â
Basically, these goofs at the IPCC have it completely wrong because they don’t have the knowledge and mathematical skills to apply the equations they misuse.
Addendum: The confusion also seems to be that no one is aware that the IPCC doesn’t assume the driving force is convection (which is neutral regarding the trace gas CO2 verses H2O vapor). The paper lists a long litany of evidence that the IPCC assumes CO2 is the global warming culprit because of their mythical IR radiation transport via CO2 – why else focus on CO2 in the first place? Yes, there is heat energy in the atmosphere, but it is driven by conduction and convection – which means CO2 is no different from any other molecule in the air. Duh.
Some snippets of the IPCC claims:
“If one raises the concentration of carbon dioxide, which absorbs the infrared light and lets visible light go through, in the Earth’s atmosphere, the ground heated by the solar radiation and/or near-surface air will become warmer, because the cooling of the ground is slowed down.”
…
“In a real glass house (with no additional heating, i.e. no greenhouse) the window panes are transparent to sunshine, but opaque to terrestrial radiation. The heat exchange must take place through heat conduction within the glass, which requires a certain temperature gradient. Then the colder boundary surface of the window pane can emit heat. In case of the atmosphere water vapor and clouds play the role of the glass.”
…
“Name for the influence of the Earth’s atmosphere on the radiation and heat budget of the Earth, which compares to the effect of a glass house: Water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere let short wave solar radiation go through down to the Earth’s surface with a relative weak attenuation and, however, reflect the portion of long wave (heat) radiation which is emitted from the Earth’s surface (atmospheric backradiation).”
These are all wrong statements (might as well say the Earth is flat and the Sun orbits the Earth). There are plenty more in the paper. The point is the IPCC cannot target CO2 UNLESS the driver of heat transfer is this mythical IR radiation loop. It doesn’t exist, QED their models and predictions are fiction.
I was always aggravated at the people who wanted to “Stop Global Warming” now. Where completely out of common sence!
1) Where is the study which determined at what temperature the world works best. Don’t you need a destination before you determine direction?
2) Lets just assume that we need to cool the Earth. Anyone study how we can stop the cooling at the temperature we want before we go to far the other direction?
Lets see if I have this right, we don’t know what direction we should be heading, we don’t know how move forward, we don’t know how to go back, and we don’t know how to stop. Makes perfect sence that we should be doing something quickly, before we take the time to figure out what?.
Come to think of it… kind of reminds you of TARP 1 and 2, bailouts, and the Budget. Its all coming clear to me now.
Global Warming and Climate Change in Perspective: Truths and Myths About Carbon Dioxide, Scientific Consensus, and Climate Models
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5441
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