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.