Why The Climate Debate Is Getting Nowhere in the End

I have submitted the following comment to the bishop hill site:

Unless and until they put my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison at the forefront of the debate, and everyone accepts that the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, at points of equal pressure and over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures, is due only to the two planets' distances from the Sun, both sides will be missing the point, and embarrassingly, incompetently so.

It is not just that the climate consensus is wrong, or even that all of our institutions have been suborned by it. It is that this definitive evidence is actively denied, as "coincidence", and even the stoutest "skeptics" can't seem to hold onto it, and emphasize it above all other evidence, as they should--because the Venus/Earth comparison immediately shows just what is wrong in climate science, and how to correct it, on a whole handful of fundamental points. Perhaps above all, it shows that all of the attention given to problems with the temperature records, and how they have been manipulated, is a minor debate on a side issue, because my Venus/Earth comparison does not use those records in comparing Earth to Venus, it uses the Standard Atmosphere model, and confirms that model precisely(!) This tells us in no uncertain terms that the atmosphere is stable, and not at all subject to "runaway" warming OR cooling.

My Venus/Earth comparison should have been done by climate scientists, or atmospheric physicists, 20 years ago, and the "greenhouse effect" dropped from science then--if there had been ANY competent scientists around to do it. That today's scientists, alarmist and "lukewarm skeptic" alike, avoid confronting that simple comparison of two quite different, yet warmed precisely alike, planetary systems, is the fundamental problem in accepted climate physics today. It is simply incompetent, on the part of "97%" of consensus believers and skeptics alike, not to recognize this. But the egos of everyone will not let them imagine that they MUST go back and start over with climate science, back to the Standard Atmosphere--and give up those grandiose "worldwide mitigation" schemes to direct the peoples of the world. And, of course, give up their pretense to expertise on the subject, en masse.

It is a simple logical test, but an extremely difficult moral one, for every supposed "expert". (That is why I only call myself a competent physicist, and those who do not accept my Venus/Earth comparison, incompetent. I will brook no debate on this, among scientists; you are either competent or not--and I do NOT hold uneducated laypersons to the same standard.)

Dismissive Academia: A Continuing Scientific Farce

I have submitted the following comment to Steven Goddard's Real-Science site, where the subject happens to be the intransigence and incompetence of climate consensus defender David Appell, a self-styled "science journalist" who also claims a Ph.D. in theoretical physics:

There is not a dime's worth of scientific competence in the wider public climate debate, particularly on the academics' side (which is Appell's side), otherwise the comparison of temperatures in the atmospheres of Venus and Earth, which simply disproves the "greenhouse effect" underlying the alarmist "consensus", would be front-page news worldwide by now, and all the defenders of that consensus, including David Appell, would be revealed for the science incompetents and academic cover-ups they are.

Any physical scientist, certainly any supposed "expert", having seen from my comparison that the Venus/Earth temperature ratio is a constant that is precisely--precisely--explained by the ratio of the two planets' distances from the Sun, and nothing else, and knowing the great differences between Venus and Earth (in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, cloud cover/albedo, and planetary surface) should quickly agree that the physical reason for that fact must be that both atmospheres are warmed by direct absorption of the same physical fraction of the incident solar radiation.

It has nothing to do with considering any part of a planet-plus-atmosphere system a blackbody (so don't even go there, Appell). It has to do with the Stefan-Boltzmann formula properly applied to ANY body in thermal equilibrium, and subject only to radiational warming (P, in Watts/m^2 ABSORBED RADIATION, properly averaged over the surface of the body--OR over some portion of the body that quickly attains local thermal equilibrium due to that warming, as is known for the airless Moon, for example):

P = σ (T)^4 (T to the fourth power)

I emphasize, P is the absorbed radiational power intensity, not the incident. (It should go without saying that, for a blackbody, the absorbed power is equal to the incident power, whereas for a non-blackbody, it is not.)

Thus, any two planetary atmospheres, which are warmed by direct absorption of the same physical fraction of the incident solar radiation, will have a temperature ratio governed only by the ratio of their distances from the Sun (I show the explicit equations for the two atmospheres, and their temperature ratio, at the above link). I claim this is the only reasonable physical interpretation of the Venus/Earth comparison, and that it should have been made 20 years ago, when the Venus data was taken by the Magellan spacecraft, and the "greenhouse effect" quickly dropped from the canon of "established science" then. It is a continuing embarrassment for all of physical science that it was not, and a scientific fraud that my findings have been, and continue to be, dismissed by the likes of David Appell, all the defenders of the climate "consensus", and even skeptics like Monckton, Lindzen, Spencer, and anyone else who insists there IS a carbon dioxide greenhouse effect contributing to global warming. THERE IS NO SUCH EFFECT.

My Venus/Earth comparison confirms the Standard Atmosphere model as the equilibrium state of Earth's troposphere, and the mean tropospheric temperature in that model is 259.3K. With the mean incident solar power 1367 W/m^2, at Earth's orbital radius, that temperature implies 18.75%, or approximately 19%, of the Sun's incident radiation quickly warms the troposphere directly beneath its rays (I would suggest, for the "expert's" consideration, perhaps over the entire daylit side of the planet) to the Standard Atmosphere equilibrium, vertical temperature lapse rate--and the Earth's surface, separately heated by the Sun during the day, and prevented by the atmospheric lapse rate from further heating the atmosphere beyond transient/local effects (i.e., just those effects we call "weather", and "climate"), acts to cool the near-surface atmosphere during the night (so that many locations see a local temperature inversion near dawn). I note, without further discussion, that the infamous Kiehl-Trenberth earth energy budget, shown here, shows some 19.5% of the incident solar radiation being directly absorbed by the atmosphere (though that would include not just the troposphere, as I am focusing upon here, but the stratosphere as well--so I suspect that energy budget is not necessarily accurate, or the albedo may be 0.23, rather than the widely touted 0.30--and this needs to be looked into by atmospheric physicists).

My Venus/Earth comparison (rather than any proposed "complete" theory of weather/"climate") is the definitive evidence needed for the fundamenatal correction of climate science. Academia needs to embrace it, and because it has already been published, and academia has dismissed it without proper, and public, consideration, they should not wait for it to be published in their favorite peer-reviewed (i.e., academic) journals (which are behind the times in this revolutionary time). Too much wrong has been done in the name of bad climate science, and everyone needs to be dragged, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the science shower, to come clean.

Incompetent Public Climate Debate Wrongly Accepted as "Post-Normal Science"

Everyone knows there is dissension among scientists over the supposed climate consensus, which is being politically, massively abused. There are a range of scientific opinions, virtually all of them incompetent in accepting, to some degree, the false "greenhouse effect", of increasing temperature with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But the politicization of the consensus, and the subornation of all of our institutions to that consensus, makes the climate debate a public one, with mostly non-scientific voices pretending to follow the science. There are a range of such non-scientific voices, or opinions, too. At one extreme of that range lies the call for an entirely open debate, in which all voices are welcomed indiscriminately. That extreme position is well exemplified in the Judith Curry climate blog, Climate Etc., as well as the Klimazwiebel ("Klima Zwiebel", German for "Climate Onion") site. The entirely open debate has been elevated at such sites to its own category, known as "Post-Normal Science", as if such open debate were the democratic evolution of science into a community sing-along, with every song welcome.

I have submitted the following short response to the latest entry, and reference to "post-normal science", at Klimazwiebel:

Werner Krauss wrote: "...Science indeed is plural, it is many sciences in one. It is plural enough to give a voice to 'skeptics, political interests, climatic determinism, religion'..."

Science is no such thing. What you are talking about is the sociology of public debate over a scientific question (like "global warming", or more correctly, for the layperson beset by climate dogma, "runaway climate"). Science is much larger, deeper, grander than a mere concatenation of voices with different points of view. It is something entirely other than such an inharmonious concatenation, and you have wrongly identified it by accepting that concatenation of voices as science, calling it "post-normal science". It is not science at all; science simply IS NOT a "ritualized societal practice". (I suspect you are a sociologist, or merely strongly attracted to sociology, for the truth is rather that sociology is but an imitation of science--an attempt to apply the scientific method, based firmly upon objective observation, to sociological questions, but ever stymied by those questions' essential subjectivity, as exemplified by the many voices with different points of view that you refer to with such motherly concern, as if they were your children, all needing encouragement.) Sociology is not a meta-science, that can subsume any and all other sciences within itself; you are fundamentally mistaken, and go beyond the bounds of competent logical debate, by assuming it can.

Why the Climate Debate Is Over, and Why Both Sides Continue to Debate Anyway

I have submitted the following short post to Steven Goddard's Real-Science website, where the recent corrupt actions, and underlying belief, of Peter Gleick are the topic of discussion:

I agree with Gleick (but he is wrong): I also think the debate/war is over, just on my terms (there is no greenhouse effect whatsoever, of increasing temperature with increasing carbon dioxide, and there are no competent climate scientists whatsoever, because they refuse to accept the definitive facts of the Venus/Earth temperatures comparison, which shows that only the ratio of the two planets’ distances from the Sun is needed to precisely explain the Venus/Earth temperature ratio at points of equal pressure in the two atmospheres. Fraudulent “experts” are those who say they will only recognize evidence presented through the peer-review process, even though that has been shown to be merely “pal-review”, and those who say the Venus/Earth comparison result (over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures, mind you) is just a “coincidence”. In other words, the “debate”, on both sides, is insane, and everyone knows why–1) the emotional (not scientific) intransigence of the individual ego, multiplied over the millions of individuals who are invested in the consensus, 2) the ideological (not scientific) linking of the idea of “runaway global warming” with a reasonable concern for the environment, and 3) the political (not scientific) assumption of tight control over the people of the world, on the basis of fraudulent, wrong-headed “scientific consensus”.

In Science, Competence Can Overcome Bias

I have submitted the following comment to Dr. Judith Curry's Climate Etc. blog site, where she has posted on "The Bias of Science":

The issue is competence. With competence, bias can be quickly overcome; without it, bias inevitably becomes hardened, unquestioned dogma. When I compared the temperatures in the atmospheres of Venus and Earth, I very simply--and as it turned out, naively-- used the Stefan-Boltzmann equation as applied beyond the atmosphere, without consideration of the difference in albedo for the two planet-plus-atmosphere systems. I did not consciously assume the planet-plus-atmosphere system was a blackbody, however (I just used the easiest model that occurred to me, to investigate the expected temperature ratio--the simple approach I learned from my earliest physics education, starting in high school and continuing throughout college), and when I discovered, quite directly by my simple approach, that the actual Venus/Earth temperature ratio was a constant that in fact depended only upon the ratio of the two planets' distances from the Sun--thus definitively disproving the "greenhouse effect" hypothesis, of increasing global mean temperature with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, as well as disproving the need for any correction due to the large difference in albedo--I was able to immediately interpret this, with correct physical intuition, as being necessarily due to both atmospheres directly absorbing, and being fundamentally warmed only by, the same physical fraction of the incident solar power. In a March 2012 update to my original "Venus: No Greenhouse Effect" post, I provided the proper Stefan-Boltzmann equations for the temperature in each troposphere, assuming both tropospheres are warmed by the same fraction of incident solar power, and showed that their temperature ratio at any given pressure is indeed independent of the fraction of solar power absorbed, and is just dependent upon the ratio of their solar distances. This of course confirms my original, insightful interpretation of my Venus/Earth comparison.

So my basic scientific competence and physical insight overcame the naivety (a form of bias, one might say) of my overly-simple approach; I in fact made the correct physical interpretation, and I have correctly stood by it ever after (see here for example). Not so for all of those (including Judith Curry), who have dismissed my findings when informed of them, generally with the flat--and in fact wrong--statement that my comparison was worthless because I had not "corrected for the difference in albedo" in the two planets, and also no doubt because no one was willing to seriously consider that these two atmospheres were both warmed by direct absorption of incident solar power, rather than from the surface (which was and continues to be the consensus belief--that is, the consensus bias). As a competent physicist, I knew, and know, my original interpretation was correct, and I maintained that any competent physicist must come to the same conclusion as I did, from the observed constant Venus/Earth temperature ratio, but it has done no good, from November 2010 to now. Even after posting those equations that starkly PROVE my original interpretation was good, there has been no sign of any growing acceptance, on either side of the climate debate, of my Venus/Earth comparison as a definitive correction to the patently incorrect consensus beliefs of climate scientists.

So the basic INcompetence of all of the defenders of the climate consensus has so far kept them from overcoming their bias against my definitive disproof of the "greenhouse effect", which continues to be promulgated to the public, falsely and incompetently, as unarguable fact.

Incompetent Comments on UAH GMST Data

I do not take the fevered climate debate seriously anymore, since my definitive Venus/Earth temperatures comparison has not brought everyone to their senses, that the consensus is entirely incompetent in promulgating the carbon dioxide "greenhouse effect". But I still sometimes comment here and there. I just submitted the following comment to Dr. Roy Spencer's site, where he has posted the April 2012 update of UAH (University of Alabama at Huntsville) satellite data on global mean surface temperature anomaly:

The remarks here--especially the ones deducing continued global warming from obviously stalled data--indict the commenters as incompetent. Dr. Spencer, you do a disservice to any lay readers who stop by here and take these comments as serious scientific appraisal, by allowing these comments to go unanswered by you.

I wrote over a year ago that the global mean surface temp (GMST) would, according to the multidecadal ocean-oscillations theory, vary by a few tenths of a degree around an average +0.10°C for the next 5 years or more--and the average of your table here, from the beginning of 2011 to now, is +0.125. The only recent difference in the data is the magnitude of the swing, between successive maxima and minima--in years past, it was only .2 to .3°C, while in your table here, encompassing the last 3 such swings, it is more like .4 to .5°C, with an average of .426°C. So it's somewhat looser data recently, but it is not warming at all (and, as I have also written for over a year, the temperature is about where it was in 1991, over 20 years ago now).

There is no competent climate debate, because there are no competent climate scientists. It is all political maneuvering, lay readers, and you shouldn't take anyone's--any "expert"'s--word on anything in the "debate".

Atmospheric Warming and the Tropospheric Temperature Lapse Rate

I have posted the following at the Tallbloke site, where the tropospheric temperature gradient is being discussed: The fact that the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, at points of equal pressure over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures (excepting only at points inside the Venus cloud layer), is a constant that is precisely and entirely due only to the ratio of the two planets' distances from the Sun, IS the definitive empirical evidence--of two detailed atmospheres, and thus the largest, and clearest, experimental test--revealing the fundamental physical mechanism of warming of planetary atmospheres by direct absorption of radiative (infrared) energy from the Sun. My Venus/Earth comparison establishes: 1) The tropospheres of both Venus and Earth must directly absorb, and be fundamentally warmed only by, the same physical fraction of the incident solar energy, whose intensity varies with solar distance r as one over r-squared (in which case, as I have shown at the above link, the temperature ratio is necessarily what it is observed to be); 2) The tropospheres, especially Earth's, are not fundamentally warmed from the surface at all, as most scientists currently believe, as any such warming would cause the Venus/Earth temperature ratio to be other than what it is, due only to the solar distances of the two planets; 3) The Standard Atmosphere properly represents the stable equilibrium state of Earth's troposphere, while Venus's atmosphere is always in its equilibrium state (this means the Earth is not subject to "runaway" global warming OR cooling--meaning no "ice ages" due only to undirected physical processes, and no need for auxiliarly theories, like the physically suspect Milankovitch correlation-model theory, to "explain" them); 4) There is no "greenhouse effect", of increased global mean surface temperature, with an atmospheric increase in carbon dioxide or any other so-called "greenhouse gas"; 5) There is no albedo effect, either from the planetary surface or from cloud tops, upon the equilibrium atmospheric temperature, since the great differences in these variables for Venus and Earth have no effect upon the Venus/Earth temperature ratio (and this is also the obvious physical consequence of atmospheric warming solely by direct absorption of solar IR); and 6) the proper handling of the Stefan-Boltzmann formula in analyzing the problem of atmospheric warming (it applies only in the case of warming only by incident radiation, assumes that all absorbed radiation is transformed into heat energy, and it cannot be applied anywhere within a system in which other forms of heat transfer--conduction and convection--are occurring). My Venus/Earth comparison also shows that the temperature lapse rate structure of the troposphere predominates over all other atmospheric conditions, including night and day, that it fundamentally and strictly governs atmospheric temperatures, and that the lapse rate structure does NOT depend upon gross vertical convection, especially from the surface, since each layer of the atmosphere is directly warmed by the Sun. The term "adiabatic lapse rate" should be replaced by "hydrostatic lapse rate" (as I have consistently emphasized) to be consistent with the fundamental physics--of real gases in a gravitational field--behind it.