The True and Simple Physics Being Ignored by All in the Climate Propaganda Wars

I have submitted the following short comment to the tallbloke site, in response to yet another internet post of alternative theory that ignores my definitive corrections to the ridiculous consensus theories of "global warming" (there is none, only a noisy and fraudulently adjusted "global temperature" record):

Too involved, and comes at the truth (of the temperature-governing lapse rate structure, due to the weight of the atmosphere itself), that I have already explained, and demonstrated clearly with my Venus/Earth atmospheric temperatures comparison, through a maze of bad thinking ("adiabatic" is unnecessary and meaningless, compared to the utterly simple physics of the Standard Atmosphere model; and there simply is no "radiation forcing" affecting atmospheric temperatures).

Nikolov still hangs onto the terms used in the entirely false consensus "climate science"...and you are lemmings to follow. I am the one who insists that the underlying, unchanging structure of tropospheric temperatures (the "lapse rate") are maintained by CONDUCTION, not either radiation or convection, because it is just the innumerable jostlings of air molecules, in the hydrostatic condition of the lower atmosphere, that distributes, unwaveringly and precisely, both the pressure and thence the temperature (due, yes, to the "gas laws", which you managed to get in there, without properly emphasizing how simple is "incident solar radiation + hydrostatic atmosphere + gas laws = atmospheric temperatures", with the surface of the Earth only a base for the weighty atmosphere).

So there is no "adiabatic lapse rate", and only the conduction, throughout the troposphere, of incident solar energy, directly absorbed by the massive, hydrostatic atmosphere. All my discoveries, and all from the definitive Venus/Earth comparison, which is universally ignored, yet which precisely confirms the Standard Atmosphere.

My Venus/Earth Comparison Should Not Even Have Been Needed

I received a comment (from one Chris Carter) yesterday (on this post), agreeing with, and emphasizing, my continual refrain with respect to my November 2010 Venus/Earth temperature vs. pressure comparison, that the close (or rather, precise) agreement between the Standard Atmosphere for Earth's atmosphere, and the actual profile of Venus's atmosphere over the same range of tropospheric pressures, cannot legitimately or even competently be laid to "coincidence" (as all of the critics of that comparison essentially do).

I don't want to debate with such critics; I say I am only here to inform, and I only maintain my original analysis is correct, as originally written, and definitive against the consensus "climate science" theories, of radiational forcing of global warming within the atmosphere, due to a "carbon dioxide greenhouse effect". The comparison of Earth and Venus shows there is no such effect in the real atmospheres (and Venus has 2400 times the concentration of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere as does Earth), and the simple physics of the Standard Atmosphere explains why -- because, for atmospheric pressures above approximately 200 mb (as can be observed in all the planetary atmospheres), the atmosphere overall, and thus globally, obeys the hydrostatic condition, and thus behaves like an unmoving ("static"), incompressible medium (to wit, water, hence the "hydro"). That condition enforces an increasing pressure with depth in the atmosphere, and the ideal gas laws in turn mean the temperature must also increase with depth in the troposphere (which, again, exists above 200 mb in all the planetary atmospheres). This explains the simple vertical temperature "lapse rate" structure, defined in the Standard Atmosphere (and based upon many years of temperature measurements throughout the real atmosphere), of -6.5 degrees Celsius per km of altitude above sea level. (The condition is quantified by simple calorimetry, in the equation mcΔT = -mgΔh, or ΔT/Δh = -g/c, where g is the gravitational acceleration and c is the effective specific heat of the air, determined empirically.)

I am only mentioning this yet again, because the very EXISTENCE of the lapse rate structure -- obviously a global constraint upon the temperature in the atmosphere, as any excess heat will only escape "down" that temperature gradient, without affecting the temperature at any point along the way, to outer space -- should have rung a bell in the minds of competent physicists, that there can be no radiative global-warming "greenhouse effect" in the real atmosphere (despite what radiation transfer theorists and laboratory physicists observe in an enclosed tank in a laboratory, for example).

This in fact is why I did the Venus/Earth comparison in the first place, because the subject of the lapse rate structure was brought up in the internet blogs earlier in 2010 (and not by me), and I quickly understood just how powerful a contradiction of the consensus it was, and I couldn't understand why others, of even the most pronounced "skeptical" positions in the climate science debates, weren't treating it as such. I felt a quick comparison of Venus, with its almost pure carbon dioxide atmosphere, with Earth should reveal, clearly and decisively, the truth of the matter. And of course, I found the utterly precise (!) agreement that I, and I thought any competent physicist should have, expected.

So my Venus/Earth comparison wasn't really even needed. Competent scientists should have agreed that, if in fact the Standard Atmosphere model correctly represented the temperature structure of Earth's troposphere (and of course it was developed, between approximately 1850 and 1920 -- the latter date, when the American Standard Atmosphere was first officially adopted -- to do just that), it should also, and just as accurately, represent Venus's atmosphere over the same range of pressures -- modified only by Venus's closer distance from the Sun.

And it did, and always will, due SOLELY to the fundamental nature of the hydrostatic condition. It should always be remembered that my comparison was between the Standard Atmosphere, known for decades, even a century, with the Venus profile on a much later, and single day, October 5, 1991 -- showing there can not have been any global warming in Earth's atmosphere since the development of the Standard Atmosphere model, a century and more ago. This negates all the research of all the alarmist "climate scientists" of the last two generations and more (since they turned away from the Standard Atmosphere in order to chase a chimera of unstable atmospheric temperatures) -- lifetimes, and generations, of work, wasted by miseducation and incompetent physics (and the resulting degeneration of modern science itself, as the many "skeptics" of the consensus have by now well shown).

So thanks for reminding me to emphasize this critical point once again, Chris.

On "Global Warming: Science or Dogma?"

I have submitted the following comment to an article, "Global Warming: Science or Dogma" on the American Thinker site, in response to other comments there which hew to the dogma that there is a CO2 (carbon dioxide) greenhouse effect in the atmosphere:

Those scientists who think they are experts in talking about CO2 absorption of radiation from the planetary surface are over-educated and mis-educated. The point that any such "experts" need to understand is that such absorption is just one pathway by which heat is transferred from the surface of the planet to outer space. Heat is transferred not just by radiation, but by conduction and convection, and it is a BULK, macroscopic process, not a molecular, much less quantum, process. What governs the global mean surface temperature (and that at any other pressure level in the lower atmosphere, the troposphere) is the weight of the atmosphere above any level, pressing down on that level: Overall, the pressure at any level is due to the weight of the atmosphere above that level; this is called the hydrostatic condition, as it is the same condition in a static column of water. The global mean temperature has nothing at all to do with CO2 or any other constituent of the atmosphere, it is controlled, essentially, solely by the hydrostatic condition, the height (or total mass) of the atmosphere, and the intensity of incident solar radiation. The atmosphere is not even warmed by the heated planetary surface, on the global scale (uneven surface heating only drives the transient WEATHER patterns over the globe, not the global mean temperature) as all of the "experts" have been miseducated to believe, but by direct absorption of incident solar radiation and downward transfer of heat by CONDUCTION (not radiation at all, note), as strictly enforced by the hydrostatic condition (that means it happens very fast, through uncounted molecular collisions), so CO2 absorption of long wavelength radiation from the surface is doubly irrelevant. No "expert", on either side of the climate debate/war, wants to have anything to do with that explanation, it is too alien to the accepted dogma. But the real, true science is simple and easy, not complicated and contrived. This is why I have continually written, "There is no valid global climate science, and no competent climate scientists", ever since my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison of November 2010. There is NO global-warming "greenhouse effect".

Nikolov and Zeller Again

The tallbloke site has another post on Nikolov and Zeller's "Unified Climate Theory", about a Washington Post interview with Nikolov. Their latest paper was withdrawn (by "common agreement with the authors and editors") because they used pseudonyms to get past the consensus guardians that have long made a mockery of peer review (I gave up on peer review years ago--the defense of scientific dogma is just too strong, and universal). My response (and I have made the following criticisms many times before):

“Common agreement with the authors and editors” is a whitewash. If the paper passed on “scientific merit”, then the editor should have politely explained that they needed to publish the paper with the authors’ real names, and THAT should have been done “by common agreement with the authors and editors”.

Nikolov and Zeller still don’t get it, though:

“It is simply the hydrostatic condition”,

and that has been known for well over a century, in the Standard Atmosphere model, which my 2010 Venus/Earth temperature-vs-pressure comparison precisely confirmed.

And “The results from our empirical data analysis suggest that the thermal effect of the atmosphere is analogous to a compression heating” merely confuses the transient (and local) effect of compression with the constant (and global) effect of the hydrostatic condition (most simply described as “the pressure at any level in the atmosphere is just the weight of the atmosphere above that level”). The Standard Atmosphere, as everyone should know by now (I have been pointing it out for 6 years now), is based upon the hydrostatic condition.

And the figure really does no more than agree with what my Venus/Earth comparison showed more fully and clearly, that those two planets have essentially the same temperature-vs-pressure profile, over the full range of Earth tropospheric pressures, when only their different distances from the Sun are taken into account. Mars, Moon, and Triton are useless, as the curve is vertical–hence, the “thermal enhancement” is completely indeterminate–for very low surface pressure. I have also pointed out, many times, that the surface temperature of Titan is too low, by about 7K, when compared to Earth in the same way I compared Earth and Venus, and I have given the most likely reason for that (an observed haze in Titan’s atmosphere), while Nikolov and Zeller’s theory cannot even address it (I am surprised they even show Titan as a point off the curve, not on it, since previously they have reported that their theoretical relationship–the curve–predicts precisely the surface temperature of Titan). And Venus’s planet-wide, thick cloud cover does not affect its T-P profile, outside of the clouds themselves, so continually bringing in clouds to explain global temperature variations is also wrong. Sorry, but my Venus/Earth comparison is definitive, and everyone (consensus believer or skeptical critic) will have to admit that in the end.

My Venus/Earth analysis is earlier, better, and more simply and clearly explained, by the hydrostatic condition alone (without any “compressional heating”, which is irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial). The Standard Atmosphere, over a century old, contains that, so their “new understanding” is not new; it has just been ignored, for 2 generations now, by incompetent scientists and unethical politicians bent on world dominion.

Dr. Spencer, It Is Simply the Hydrostatic Condition

The Dr. Roy Spencer site has a post, "The Warm Earth: Greenhouse Effect or Atmospheric Pressure?". For what it's worth, that is the wrong way to pose the question, between those for and against the greenhouse effect. But too many "skeptics" of consensus climate science make the same mistake, even now, nearly 6 years after my 2010 "Venus: No Greenhouse Effect" post. So I want to make the point yet again, as I have over and over, that it is not the atmospheric pressure at the bottom of the atmosphere that warms the atmosphere; it is the vertical pressure DISTRIBUTION, due to the hydrostatic condition of the troposphere, that produces the vertical TEMPERATURE distribution (the negative-lapse-rate structure) which governs the global mean temperature (at any given pressure level in the atmosphere, and for a given level of incident solar radiation).

So Dr. Spencer's question should be, "The Warm Earth: Greenhouse Effect or the Hydrostatic Condition?" And the answer, as my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison definitively shows, is the latter.