Backradiation Reveals the Self-Delusion of Climate Scientists

Here is my response to a comment on the Jo Nova site, about "backradiation" (a comment that called it "as good an explanation as any"):

"Backradiation" is NOT "as good an explanation as any." The radiation transfer theorists use it because it is needed to balance the supposed blackbody radiation (390 W/m^2 at 288K) they claim the Earth's surface emits, and scientists like Roy Spencer believe in it because their radiation meters allow them to think they are actually measuring such radiation, when they are essentially only reading the temperature expressed as the equivalent in blackbody radiation [they throw in an "emissivity" fudge factor]. Raymond Pierrehumbert, a leading voice for the radiation transfer theory, writes (in "Physics Today", Jan. 2011, for example) with perfect assurance, that the Earth's surface radiates like a blackbody at 288K; but in a competent scientific community he couldn't get away with that for a second. A blackbody maintained at 288K and surrounded by vacuum--and thus only able to lose heat by radiation--will radiate 390 W/m^2; the Earth's surface, at a mean temperature of 288K, loses heat not just from radiation but through the atmosphere by conduction and convection, and thus CANNOT radiate 390 W/m^2. To get around this, but incompetently, they invented backradiation to negate most of that imagined 390 W/m^2; in doing so, however, they deliberately choose to ignore the fact that their "explanation" involves a gross violation of the conservation of energy, as 390 W/m^2 (and the "backradiation" as well) is larger than the mean incident solar intensity (of 342 W/m^2) that is the input energy to the system. It is only the deep belief and intellectual investment in the radiation transfer theory that has kept the "lukewarmer" skeptics from becoming total deniers of the false greenhouse effect, as they should. Roy Spencer (or Anthony Watts, or Jo Nova, or etc.) is a good example of the intransigence of opinion, even among skeptics, of "greenhouse effect" believers against those of us who KNOW, based upon observed and verifiable facts, that there IS NO greenhouse effect whatsoever.

A Good Climate Policy: You Can't Get There From Here

Climate Etc has another post featuring sociologists/psychologists, "Against Consensus Messaging", where a commenter made the ridiculou claim that "consensus is an important part of the scientific method." My response to that comment, and to the blog's host, Dr. Judith Curry:

The scientific method only encompasses the discovery and objective verification of truth--a true understanding of a thing, a system or a process. Consensus is just a collective opinion about a thing, and has only a potential, tangential relation to the scientific method, a potential that is not realized unless the consensus opinion reflects the objective truth discovered and verified by the scientific method. Consensus is not "an important part of the scientific method", it does not in fact have any value in and of itself; it is, at best, only worthwhile to the extent it reflects the truth. That is why, as we now see everyday, even a consensus of authoritative experts, even of "97% of everybody", is worthless today--because the experts are all incompetent, before definitive evidence against their supposed understanding.

And blogs like this, addicted to sociological misdirections, away from the objective truth into the mire of mere opinion (collective or otherwise), merely thrash around in the mire, going nowhere and helping not at all (or only to the extent that they show just how incompetent the experts, like Dr. Curry, all are now).

Or to put it bluntly, sociology and psychology cannot enlighten physics, or any physical science. Dr. Curry needs to learn that her pursuit of good climate policy marks her as fundamentally deluded, because there is no such thing. "You can't get there from here", because there is no "here" here, where you continue vainly to focus your attention on opinion-making.

But I have been saying as much for about 5 years now, so I know you who feel yourselves to be part of a working system--a working scientific method, above all--are not heeding the evidence to the contrary (ironically, the sociological and psychological evidence, of the benighted and dysfunctional public and political debate).

I Am a Defier Now

Judith Curry has a post on "The State of the Climate Debate in the US". She says climate science is caught in the middle, in the ongoing fight between the Democrats and the Republicans. My response is:

Publically point out that the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, over the full range of Earth tropospheric pressures, is essentially a constant that is precisely determined by the two planets' distances from the Sun, and nothing else, despite Venus's atmosphere having 2400 times the concentration of CO2 as Earth's (so there is no greenhouse effect due to "greenhouse gases" at all)...or you are a denier, of the definitive fact that disproves the consensus, and an incompetent climate scientist. The bottom line is that the stable Standard Atmosphere rules in Earth's atmosphere, on the global scale, and that will be the obituary for this generation of failed climate scientists, whose consensus opinion is worthless and is the real culprit--given the gargantuan political misuse of it and the subornation of all of our supposedly authoritative institutions by it. Climate science is NOT caught in the middle of the Left-Right political divide over "climate change"; its absolute, complete incompetence both started and maintains it. You are all a joke, and your climate science has no business on the all-too-serious stage of public discourse. I used to say I am a denier of it, not just a skeptic; now, given the runaway political machinery, I am a defier. So get your burning stakes ready; you will be needing them.

It Is Fraud, Not Climate Science At All

The masterresource site, among many other blogs, has addressed the new claim that there is really no "global warmng pause" (over the last two decades) to counter the mentally unhinged political narrative (of Barack Obama) of imminent runaway "climate change". My response:

The whole "debate" is laughably incompetent (and has been for 25 years--since the inception of the UN's IPCC, it should be emphasized). All of these "experts" fall far short of competence by not demanding the immediate firing of Karl (et al.) for deliberate deception--fraud, that is--and the immediate rescinding of any and all regulations falling under the general heading of "climate policy". Earth's "climate" varies internally (over the globe, you see) from tropical to polar, but the global average (as referenced by the global mean surface temperature) is unchanging, as the century-old Standard Atmosphere model of the atmosphere implies, and that model is precisely--precisely--confirmed by the simple comparison of temperatures in the atmospheres of Earth (with .04% CO2) and Venus (with a whopping 96.5%). There is no discernible global warming greenhouse effect, a simple fact that no "expert"--or politician--will truthfully admit.

The proper lesson of the present debate, over Karl et al., is that the data used to calculate the global mean surface temperature (GMST) by today's climate scientists is too noisy (naturally varying and uncertainly measured) to support any claim of global warming at all, and it has to be tortured--fraudulently, to any truly competent physical scientist--to do so. That's what the man on the street should be hearing from any so-called "expert".