Saturday, May 11, 2013
Put Up or Shut Up, Indeed
Dr. Roy Spencer, another in the Church of The Lukewarm Greenhouse Effect, tells deniers of that effect to "put up or shut up", to which I have responded:
After all this time, everyone still clings to their own pet statement of a "greenhouse effect", when the only valid statement--promulgated to the public for over 20 years -- is "an increase in global mean surface temperature with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide".
But a simple comparison of temperatures in the atmospheres of Venus and Earth, at points of equal pressure over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures, shows that the Venus/Earth temperature ratio is a constant (there is no ADDED temperature on Venus due to its much higher atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration), and in fact a constant that is PRECISELY explained by Venus's smaller distance from the Sun, and nothing else (except within Venus's cloud layer, between about 650 and 200 mb pressure, where the Venus temp. is about 5K LOWER--in other words, a minor ADDITIVE effect within the clouds themselves--than that calculated, simply, from the Standard Atmosphere model here on Earth and the ratio of solar distances of the two planets).
"Lukewarmers" like Spencer and Watts are stymied by their unswerving belief in the radiative transfer theory. My Venus/Earth demonstration of the absolute absence of a greenhouse effect--as I define it, and as it is sold to the public--implies the radiative transfer theory is also wrong, physically; but I am not about arguing theories, and I don't feel any need to put forward a better one to replace theirs. I only insist that the Venus/Earth temperature ratio is the definitive evidence that denies their theory. Contrary to Spencer's insistence heretofore, the onus is on defenders of the consensus greenhouse theory to demonstrate quantitatively, that the observed Venus/Earth constant temperature ratio--needing nothing but the ratio of their solar distances to explain--arises naturally from their theories. I have already demanded you put up or shut up, many times over the last two and a half years. Instead, you go on about how you "observe" the greenhouse effect (but not the one that counts), without confronting the definitive evidence that denies that effect's existence (specifically, in the atmospheres of Venus and Earth). How lukewarmers can fight against the alarmists, and often give evidence that the global warming "greenhouse effect" must be very small, nevertheless are dogmatically set against admitting that effect is zero, is all that separates you from the "Slayers", in the end. (And no, I am not one of them; they like to say carbon dioxide is a coolant, but my Venus/Earth comparison says that is no more correct than that it is a heater. It is a "heat lubricant", whose increase only speeds up heat transfer--by radiation--within the atmosphere, without changing either the lapse rate or the surface mean temperature; it neither traps nor slows down heat).
I'm sorry but you can't just point to one isolated fact and claim to have overcome a competing hypothesis. What if Venus didn't exist? How would you go about disproving the GHE? There is nothing about the current GHE theory AFAIK that suggests that the ratio you point to is impossible.
ReplyDeleteI could argue that the existence of blue jelly beans disproves the theory of relativity but I wouldn't expect that to convince anyone.
Cheers, :)
Shawn,
ReplyDeleteYour illogic and avoidance of the point is stunning, and I have allowed your comment in only to show others who read this far how the dogmatic believers in the consensus theories simply throw off their absolute responsibility to explain recalcitrant facts, indeed definitive facts against those theories. I will not allow another such comment here.
Your true, emotional reaction to the Venus/Earth challenge is revealed in your saying, "what if Venus didn't exist?". Well, in that case we wouldn't have that one definitive fact that denies the GHE, would we? Oh, well done, you've done it! Except that amazing, precise quantitative fact, spanning the full range of Earth tropospheric pressures, DOES exist, and is easily explained by simple physics, but not by the consensus theory which you believe, obviously so mindlessly. I have explained this in the comments section of the original Venus/Earth analysis, and in other posts. If you think otherwise, you have to prove it. But I'm sure that goes right over your head -- or in one ear and out the other.
Don't bother trying to comment here again, you have shown yourself a silly fool who refuses to think, in favor of empty argumentation. I won't even bother recommending you study my physical analysis of the Venus/Earth comparison in earlier posts. But other readers here are well advised to understand that your easy, dismissive beliefs are in fact quite general among today's scientists (and in other fields of human endeavor now, as well). You are but one isolated example of what I know to be a general incompetence now, part of what I conclude is a general testing (and widespread failing) of mankind at this time in human history. Such a tragedy is ill-served by false gestures like your final, passive-aggressive "cheers". I know you, and I reject your false-intellectual kind.
Shawn,
DeleteI have indeed deleted your follow-up comment, and here is why: You write,
"Personally, I don't see how this can be any more than a coincidence for a variety of reasons: For instance, a big portion of the reason Earth's temperature is what it is at the surface is due to the effect of the evaporation and condensation of WV. Since the effects of such evaporation and condensation must necessarily be different on Venus, the fact that should alter the temperature profile on Venus on its own."
But it does NOT alter the temperature profile on Venus -- that is the point. You continue to wish away the awkward fact, that NOTHING alters the temperature profile, except the incident solar intensity. And now you are done here, unless and until you show you are willing to accept that fact as a fact, whether you like it or not.
Harry,
ReplyDeleteThe analysis in your Venus/Earth challenge is totally correct as far as I can see. May I clarify the position of PSI on one point: while we find CO2 acts as a cooling gas, the quantity in the atmosphere is so tiny it can have no measurable impact whatsoever on climate. Thanks again for your excellent independent work.
Good Morning, John,
ReplyDeleteThank you. I am basically on the side of anyone who has figured out that the "global warming" greenhouse effect is essentially just a theoretical (and just as bad, a political) fraud, so I don't want to harp on our differences too much; I am trying to remain focused on the definitive facts, and avoid arguing theory. But I have addressed this "cooling" point before, in an exchange of comments with Nasif Nahle (a.k.a. biocab) on the Venus/Earth page, and I will give you the same answer I gave him:
"the Venus/Earth temperature comparison shows not only that Venus is not warmer than it would be with less CO2, but that Earth is not cooler. Their temperatures at any given pressure level depend only on their distances from the Sun. No theory is needed to understand that, it is obvious from the data, as I have shown as simply as possible. So increased atmospheric CO2 neither warms nor cools, it only increases the efficiency of heat transfer within the atmosphere, distributing the available heat in accordance with the governing temperature lapse rate more quickly, but not to a different temperature-versus-pressure profile."
Put another way, while CO2 is a tiny part of Earth's atmosphere (.04%), it is the predominant component of Venus's (96.5%)--and it still makes no difference. This should tell everyone that there simply is no CO2 greenhouse effect, at any atmospheric concentration.
That is for the vertical heat transfer. As I also pointed out, however, when Alberto Miatello brought up the equal daytime and nighttime temperatures on Venus,
"...both the great mass of Venus's atmosphere and its greater efficiency of heat transfer around the planet (due to its almost pure CO2 composition), account for the equal temperatures in both lighted and dark hemispheres."
So I think increasing CO2 concentration can and does affect the horizontal distribution of heat energy. (Stephen Wilde is the only other one who appears to understand this, in my limited reading of others' views so far.) Vertically, the lapse rate governs over all else, even night and day (and its existence alone should have caused insightful physicists to realize there is no global warming greenhouse effect due to increasing triatomic, or "greenhouse", or IR-active, gases).