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.

It Beggars the Imagination

When I first became aware of the "global warming" debate in late 2009 (a debate which was, years later, infamously changed to "climate change" when the "global warming pause" from 1997 to the present made it "politically expedient" to direct attention away from the continuing LACK of scientifically measurable global warming), I knew as a hard scientist that to find the truth I needed to dive to the heart of the matter and first seek definitive evidence CONTRARY to the consensus climate theory (of the "global warming greenhouse effect"), because there is no use holding, much less promulgating to the world, a theory that is definitively contradicted by real-world observations. Any scientist working within a theory always needs to keep a close eye out for such game-ending observations; it's known as looking for weaknesses in the theory being followed.

I have since found out that the weaknesses far outweigh the claims, and overwhelm the theory, at every turn, throughout climate science, and this is true not just of the "greenhouse effect", but even of the more fundamental "radiation transfer theory", which outlandishly treats the Earth's surface as a blackbody surrounded by vacuum (because atmospheric scientists "measure" the "radiation" coming off the Earth as just that coming off such a vacuum-surrounded blackbody). This fact alone should have caused competent scientists to demand a better radiation transfer theory, on the grounds that the "observed" Earth radiation is almost certainly a misnomer, and is really a measure of the TEMPERATURE of the surface, mistakenly interpreted as a blackbody radiation intensity (and a real "thermal radiation" spectrum). When one looks at the fundamental assumptions in the radiation transfer theory, one sees this error at a glance, because the theory divides the atmosphere into many layers, and the layers are all assumed to be "grey body" radiators, that is, blackbody radiators attenuated only by a local "emissivity" factor (a constant, less than 1, multiplying the fundamental Planck distribution spectrum of a blackbody). There are other obvious weaknesses in the radiation transfer theory (I have recognized it as basically a light extinction model, not a radiation transfer model), but the main one is this error of making everything a blackbody or a quasi-blackbody, mitigated only by a fudge factor called the "emissivity factor". A graduate student in physics could see that this theory almost certainly only works because the atmosphere is in fact subject to a strict vertical temperature distribution, a predominant, set (i.e., unchanging) distribution of temperatures, and so long as you have a predominant, unchanging set of temperatures, you can formally replace it with a set of "blackbodies", or "greybodies" with "emissivity" fudge factors. Such a theory won't allow you to predict temperature from radiation "forcings", because the reality works just the opposite way, with temperature controlling the "radiation" being measured, not vice-versa. But climate scientists don't want to question that theory, even though their models, based upon "radiation forcings", are infamously unable to track the observable global mean surface temperature. As I have found, from my 2010 Venus/Earth atmospheric temperatures comparison, it is the simple, set temperature distribution of the troposphere (known as the "lapse rate" structure) that controls the global mean temperature, not any constituent of the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide (CO2) or other so-called "greenhouse gases". That set, vertical temperature distribution can be overwhelmed, but only near the surface, by local and transient causes including night versus day, the seasons, localized temperature inversions and weather changes (of course it varies with latitude, but you can use an average, or mid-latitudinal, lapse rate structure, as the century-old Standard Atmosphere does); but it rules the global mean temperature, at any level in the troposphere, utterly, and the Venus/Earth comparison proves that definitively.

In the context of that Venus/Earth comparison, this post is about emphasizing how only the difference in the distance of the two planets from the Sun accounts for the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, which is essentially a constant (1.176) over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures (above and below the thick Venus cloud layer). This fact should be emphasized because of the huge differences in the conditions in the two planetary atmospheres, all of which are presumed by climate scientists to affect the temperature, but which have precisely zero effect in actuality. These differences include the amount of CO2 in the air (0.04% in Earth's versus 96.5% in Venus's); the amount of sunlight reflected, not absorbed, by the planet (either at the surface or off the planetwide cloud layer of Venus), 30% by Earth and 70% or more from Venus; and the difference in planetary surface (Earth being 70% ocean, Venus all solid crust).

But there is a further huge difference in the two planets, in the theory learned and defended by climate scientists, and this post was written primarily to remind everyone of it. It is a truism among today's climate and atmospheric scientists that "the Sun warms the Earth, and the Earth warms the atmosphere". But that physical "explanation" certainly doesn't extend to the other, cloud-enshrouded planets, which all show the same "negative lapse rate" structure that Earth's atmosphere does, even though their clouds absorb all of the sunlight before it can reach the surface. So the lapse rate structure does not depend upon warming the planetary surface first. As mentioned in my Venus/Earth comparison post, other physicists have pointed out that conditions for the "greenhouse effect" are not met on Venus, precisely because the effect requires that the atmosphere be heated from the surface, and not enough sunlight gets through to the surface there to heat it first.

So the biggest "difference" (though it's not real) is the different physics one has to imagine for atmospheric warming on Earth versus Venus. Venus, and all the other planets with massive atmospheres are obviously warmed from the top down, while Earth is believed by today's scientists to be warmed from the surface. Add that "difference", in the supposed fundamental physics of atmospheric warming, to all those other differences between Venus and Earth. And yet, the two atmospheres don't respond differently at all, to all those differences; only the distance from the Sun matters, very precisely.

Despite all the work that has gone into the theories championed and defended by atmospheric and climate scientists, despite the lifetimes of work that have been invested in them, the simple Venus/Earth comparison I did, fully 19 years after the Venus data I used became available, tells me--and any competent physical scientist--they are wrong, and wrong-headed, and indeed incompetent (because I am not a "climate expert", and what I have done is what any competent scientist, even any student of science, should have done more than a generation ago). This state of affairs beggars the imagination--and yet it goes on, as a runaway political agenda, and a cult idea ("global warming", or "climate change"), that is sowing the seeds of destruction in every direction, throughout the world.

Incompetent Climate Science: Balancing Large, Opposing "Effects", All False

In the current insane atmosphere over supposed "global warming" -- due primarily to a long-nurtured, dogmatic incompetence in all the earth and life sciences, not just climate science (which explains why the wider science community has not, as a whole, been able to recognize and repudiate climate science's utter failure), and the "expert" incompetence elevated now to a political crisis of the first order, by an opportunistic, revolution-minded political party in power (so outrageous that I, a professionally and personally dispassionate physicist, know them as the Insane Left) -- the ordinary man or woman cannot know how really broken is our system, from the top down, and hence who to believe in the public "climate change" debate.

Given that largely unrecognized, yet revolutionary context, the following "boring" (to the non-scientist) calculations will, I am sure, not cause a ripple in the beliefs of most people, or in the actions now being implemented by their "leaders" (a laughable designation, I assure you, given the leaders' determined wrong-headedness regarding the physical truth about the "climate"). I will simply provide these few calculations, dispassionately and "for what its worth" (as one says when one doubts anyone is really listening).

My 2010 Venus/Earth comparison showed that there is no greenhouse effect, because only the difference in solar distances of the two planets is needed to explain the Venus/Earth atmospheric temperature ratio, despite Venus's almost pure--96.5%--carbon dioxide atmosphere compared to Earth's minuscule 0.04%. (Surprising as it may be to believers in the "greenhouse effect", this is quite precisely true, both above and below Venus's thick cloud cover; in fact, inside Venus's clouds, Venus's atmospheric temperature is SMALLER than expected by a constant few degrees, not larger as the "greenhouse effect" would make it). As I originally wrote in that 2010 report, and as I have continually claimed ever since, the precision with which the Venus/Earth temperature ratio is determined ONLY by their respective distances from the Sun, shows not only that there is no "greenhouse effect" observed on these two hugely differing planets, but their atmospheres must be warmed by incoming solar radiation, not by heat from the planets' surfaces as climate scientists assume and teach to each succeeding generation of students.

Let us see what would be the Venus/Earth temperature ratio if other physical conditions affected it. The major differences between Venus and Earth are in 1) the albedo, or fraction of incoming solar energy that is reflected rather than absorbed, and 2) the supposed "greenhouse effect". I have already mentioned how hugely Venus differs from the Earth in its atmospheric carbon dioxide level (96.5% vs. 0.04%). The difference in albedo is also large, some 70% of the incident solar energy in the case of Venus, vs. only 30% reflected by the Earth.

For simplicity, let the intensity of the incoming solar radiation at the Earth's distance from the Sun be one unit of intensity, and let the Earth-Sun distance be one unit of distance. The solar radiation varies with distance R from the Sun as 1 over R-squared. Venus's distance from the Sun is 0.724 of Earth's distance, so the incoming solar radiation at Venus is 1/(.724) squared, or 1.91 times the intensity of incoming solar radiation at Earth.

If only the strength of the incident solar energy mattered in determining the temperature, the Stefan-Boltzmann formula tells us the temperature must vary as the fourth-root of that incoming energy, so the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, at any given pressure in the atmosphere, should be the fourth-root of 1.91, or 1.176. At 1 bar pressure, T_earth = 288K, so T_venus would be 1.176 x 288K = 339K. In fact, this is what is observed for the actual Venus temperature at 1 bar pressure in its atmosphere.

But how can we explain that observed fact, when we know that different fractions of the incoming solar radiation are actually absorbed in the two planetary systems, and also the "greenhouse effect" in Venus's atmosphere should be much, much larger than in Earth's. Venus has over 2400 times the concentration of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere as does Earth; 96.5% is some 11.4 "doublings" of Earth's 0.04%. (Climate scientists use the concept of a "doubling" of the carbon dioxide in their pronouncements to the public; they express the atmospheric "climate sensitivity" as the temperature increase expected from a doubling of the carbon dioxide).

Consider first the supposed albedo effect upon the temperature:

At Earth, incident solar = 1 (our "standard unit"), and the albedo (reflected intensity) is 0.3, so

Absorbed solar, at Earth = 0.7

At Venus, incident solar = 1.91, and albedo is 0.7, so its absorbed intensity is 0.3 x 1.91 = 0.573, which = 0.819 of Earth's 0.7.

Thus, if the albedo, or the fraction actually absorbed by a planet-plus-atmosphere system, also mattered, its maximum effect, for the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, would give

T_venus/T_earth = fourth root of 0.819 = .951,

and for T_earth = 288K, T_venus = 274K,

Note this is much smaller than the observed value of 339K. So the "correction for albedo" imagined by consensus climate scientists is very large.

Now let's suppose there is also a "greenhouse effect" to be considered. It would have to offset the large albedo effect just calculated, i.e., provide a warming of at least 339K - 274K = 65K. This would require a CO2 climate sensitivity of almost 6K per doubling of CO2 (i.e., 65K/11.4 doublings = 5.7K per doubling.

No one claims such high values; the most alarmist of climate scientists themselves, and the UN IPCC, promulgate a value of 3K per doubling of CO2, while the "skeptics" generally tout a value around 1K per doubling of CO2.

The above calculations really add little to a competent scientist's understanding of my original Venus/Earth comparison (if any such scientist existed among the "authorities" one hears from these days). These calculations merely show that the only way to "explain" the observed Venus/Earth temperature ratio, within the consensus "albedo plus greenhouse effects" theory, is to massively play with the supposed CO2 "climate senitivity", in order to exactly balance two large and diametrically opposed "effects", so that they precisely add up to zero. In the real world, scientists know that this is very highly unlikely, basically impossible, when the two "effects" are physically independent of each other, as the albedo and carbon dioxide are. (The point is made even stronger when one considers that the "albedo effect" upon the temperature is a multiplicative one, while the "greenhouse effect" is an additive one, so that it requires a different CO2 climate sensitivity at each pressure level to zero the two "effects". Performing the above "albedo" calculation at the 200 mb pressure level, for example, T_earth = 211.6K, giving T_venus = .951 x 211.6K = 201.2K, which is only 45.9K less than the observed value of 247.1K, not 65K as at the 1 bar pressure; this would require a CO2 climate sensitivity of 45.9K/11.4, or 4K/doubling of CO2, in order to precisely balance the "albedo" and "greenhouse" effects at the 200 mb pressure level.) The real situation faced by consensus climate science is even worse than this, because in addition to the differences in albedo and carbon dioxide concentrations, Venus and Earth also differ in their planetary surfaces, with one all solid crust and the other 70% deep ocean. So consensus climate science is faced with the vain task of precisely balancing not just two, but three supposed "effects" upon the temperature (one of them additive while the other two are multiplicative), which "coincidentally" all zero out in order for only the solar distances to precisely and "coincidentally" explain the Venus/Earth temperature ratio.

A competent scientist (that's me) knows better. A competent scientist knows, immediately from the precision of the Venus/Earth comparison, without needing to perform the explicit calculations above, that the atmosphere must be warmed only by incoming solar radiation, and so is not dependent, as the "greenhouse effect" is, upon a previously warmed planetary surface, nor upon any fraction of the Sun's radiation that is not directly absorbed by the atmosphere, including that which is reflected (hence, the albedo), by either clouds or the planetary surface.

On top of this simple scientific disproof of consensus climate science, of course, are the revelations of fraudulent adjustments to the world's temperature records, that fake global warming, and the hysterical claims, of imminent catastrophic "climate change", being made in the compliant media by environmental activists and "leaders" like U.S. President Obama, all of them committed not to the truth but to economic and political "transformation" of the world. They would make a new world order founded entirely upon lies.

The Bottom Line About "Climate Science" and "Global Warming"

The war of words over "climate change" and "global warming" continues to be a fragmented one, with a wide diversity of opinions and little focus overall. Most writers on the subject are set in their views now, as the consensus authorities--alarmist propagandists all--have been all along, in the interest of their own favored positions and of the political power these radical activists see now being wielded by an insane Left under President Obama. Another example of set opinion is Dr. Roy Spencer, who puts out a satellite-based global temperature record and is a harsh skeptic of the alarmist "consensus", but he is a "lukewarm" believer in the "consensus" science and therefore just as miseducated as the alarmists. He has, just this past weekend, decided to close all comments on his web page, simply to deny any further attention to those who, like me, deny the very existence of a measurable CO2 "greenhouse effect".

It is a complex situation for any layperson to try to learn the truth from. That is why my approach to the climate debate has been to present only simple, definitive evidence, all of which I have found to be against the consensus climate science. I can present my view in one clear and simple illustration.

The following image is my version of one presented to the public, on USAToday, in October 2010). It embodies, for me, the central truth about "global warming" and the "climate science" behind it, that everyone (particularly any "expert" who defends it, and any politician--like President Obama or his Attorney General--or dogmatic ideologue who demands obedience to it) needs to know and accept:

The original image purported to show that the "global temperature" (more correctly, the global mean surface temperature, or GMST) has increased with the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, since 1880.

Note, in the graph, that the temperature is shown as apparently closely tracking (to the eyes of the unwary, non-scientific layperson) the rise in CO2, from about 1975 on (to the end of the graph, about 2008). I say the temperature "apparently" tracks the CO2, because the scales of the two superimposed graphs have been selected to show just that (again, to "make it clear" to the non-scientist reader). The trouble is that the temperature data is very noisy, making that "jittery" appearance in the temperature graph, and it doesn't really follow the smooth CO2 curve all that well, particularly from 2000 on.

Now, honest scientists can legitimately argue over just how well or how bad the temperature tracks the CO2 from 1975 on, based solely upon this illustration as presented to the public by leading climate scientists. What cannot be honestly argued about, however, is that the temperatures BEFORE 1975 do NOT track the rising CO2; they vary, both positively and negatively, independently of the ever-rising CO2. That is the first simple, and devastating, point to be remembered by everyone, even those who are uninterested, or uneducated, in the debate.

This was so apparent to me, when I first came upon this image, that I posted the following comment:

"The graph shown here arbitrarily puts the CO2 curve on top of the temperature record so that the two curves rise together after 1979--but only after 1979, note. As an independent scientist, I do not hesitate to call this what it is: fraudulent science. This is very ugly, raw political propaganda in the name of science. All scientists should be repulsed, and ashamed, by the breadth and depth of the incompetence in their midst, and the foisting of that incompetence upon the public."

Since the public debate was not about the science, but was and is in fact a political war, my small voice for real science was ignored, as it has been by most ever since.

-------------------

In November 2010, just a month after seeing that fraudulent graph, I performed my Venus/Earth temperature-vs-pressure comparison that, in my view, definitively proved to any competent scientist that there WAS NO "global warming greenhouse effect" due to CO2. That Venus/Earth comparison precisely confirmed the Standard Atmosphere model of Earth's troposphere, which has been well-known for over a century. The Standard Atmosphere defines an utterly stable mean surface temperature, and is based upon both many years of temperature measurements throughout the atmospheres as well as on a very simple understanding of the physics behind the vertical temperature gradient in the troposphere. Simply put, that temperature gradient (a simple decrease in temperature of 6.5°C for each kilometer of height above sea level) is widely known as the "lapse rate", and while all of the "experts" have been taught that it is "the adiabatic lapse rate", in fact it is fundamentally and properly called "the hydrostatic lapse rate", physically due only to the very simple hydrostatic condition, that the atmospheric pressure at any height in the troposphere is just the weight of the atmosphere above that height.

Again, my Venus/Earth comparison precisely confirms the Standard Atmosphere (as of 1991, when the Venus data was taken by the Magellan spacecraft), over the full range of tropospheric pressures. And here is the second utterly simple and fundamental point for everyone to understand: The mean surface temperature, in the Standard Atmosphere, is 288K (15°C, or 59°F), and it has been so FOR A CENTURY OR MORE. Look again at the above illustration, where I have added that fact into the graph. Simply, according to the precisely confirmed Standard Atmosphere and its simple physics of the hydrostatic atmosphere, the surface temperature of the Earth is 288K, and not only has it been so throughout the modern temperature record, despite what the official global temperature calculations claim, but it is HIGHER than the supposed mean surface temperature today, despite a century of "global warming", according to the climate scientists themselves (the above is THEIR graph; I am only contrasting their claims with the precisely verified, and utterly stable, Standard Atmosphere).

The leading climate scientists ignore this utter failure of their science. "Lukewarm" scientists like Roy Spencer vehemently reject it also, refuse to even have it heard on their web sites. And radical activists have used this epidemic of incompetent stupidity (actually dogmatic adherence to failed theory) on the part of the scientists to push for ruinous legislation, to make "war on coal" for example, now a full-fledged war on any and all fossil fuel use, despite the utter dependency of our civilization upon that energy. The free peoples of the world are being warred upon, literally, using clearly false science.

There Is No Macroscopic Greenhouse Effect At All

The Australian Climate Skeptics blog has a post by Dr. Vincent Gray, a onetime IPCC insider and critic, and a long-time hero to climate skeptics. Dr. Gray is a "lukewarmer", believing that there is a global-warming greenhouse effect but that it is "very small". My response to his essay:

"The speculation by some that radiation cannot be absorbed by an object whose temperature is less than that of the radiant emitter..."

---That "less than" must be a mistake, as no one speculates that a cooler object cannot absorb heat from a hotter one. It should read "more than", as in, a hotter object cannot be heated by a cooler one. Dr. Gray (along with the "consensus" alarmists and all the "lukewarmist" believers in the greenhouse effect) is denying even the latter when he states that "backradiation" from CO2 (in the cooler atmosphere) further warms the planetary surface; he is wrong, and merely covering his error by admitting that the warming due to such backradiation "must be very small as it has not been detected, despite the enormous effort that has been applied to try and find it." The definitive evidence against the consensus greenhouse effect is my Venus/Earth temperature-vs-pressure comparison, which simply shows it does not exist, and the CO2 climate sensitivity is (-0.026 +/- 0.12) °C per doubling of CO2--the possible size of the effect is one-fifth of the uncertainty in the calculation and is thus essentially zero. While an individual photon from a cooler object may very rarely be absorbed by a warmer object, that is essentially on the microscopic scale; macroscopically, photons from a cooler object cannot be absorbed by a warmer object. Failing to distinguish between rare events that are possible on the quantum scale, but not in the macroscopic, bulk transfer of heat energy, is the common error of all believers in the greenhouse effect. It really does boil down to the simple proscription against a cooler body further warming a warmer body, as the definitive Venus/Earth evidence (which compares an atmosphere with .04% CO2--Earth--to one with 96.5%--Venus; the difference could hardly be greater, and the result--zero sensitivity to CO2--is definitive) simply demonstrates to anyone with eyes to see (and very few do, as I did that comparison 4 and 1/2 years ago and it is still ignored by both sides). 97% of both sides in the debate are incompetent (and that includes, unfortunately, even Dr. Gray).

The Ocean and the Ill-Defined "Climate"

The Tallbloke site says "ocean makes climate", with 2 graphs. My response:

I don't know whether the last "430 words" [of the original post, linked to by tallbloke] address the direction of energy flow, but these two graphs do not. The ocean covers 70% of the surface, so one would worry if variations in the GMST and the GMSST did not largely agree. What these graphs tell me--and should tell anyone who didn't actively ignore my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison--is that it is the atmosphere, stupid (I add the "stupid" lovingly, not hatefully, sports fans), that controls the global mean SST (and of course the GMST). I would say (and I'm no expert, but at least I have some common sense) the oceans make weather, not global climate as defined by the GMST (and while they can make regional or local climate--and when are you all going to realize that that is the only "climate change" that can occur, so long as the Sun continues to shine on this world--they only do so in tandem with other local factors like latitude, topography--like mountains, affecting the prevailing winds--and the degree of forestation). The public and internet debate on "climate science" remains a case study in incompetence all around. This generation is failing a critical test.

There Is Still No Global Warming Greenhouse Effect

Steven Goddard is insisting that there is a "greenhouse effect" due to IR absorption by "greenhouse gases"; he claims they impede heat energy flow from the Earth's surface upward, like a dam across a river impedes the river's flow. My response:

From the Earth's surface to the tropopause, the energy flow is governed solely by the lapse rate in temperature, which is due solely to the gravitational acceleration g and the effective specific heat of the atmosphere--completely independent of just how the atmosphere is warmed, as for example by absorption and emission of IR radiation by IR-active ("greenhouse") gases in the atmosphere. "Greenhouse gases" don't impede the energy flow upward, as--again--my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison proved (simply: it precisely--precisely--confirmed the Standard Atmosphere, which is based upon the temperature lapse rate as the governing physical condition of the atmosphere--and this, despite local and transient, as well as latitudinal, variations of the real troposphere from its precise definition in the Standard Atmosphere). Your argument is based upon a false premise, and is therefore irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent.

Modelling a Negative, Or the Easy Proliferation of Hypotheses in Science Today

Jo Nova has a series of posts on the apparent discovery of a "notch filter" mechanism in the Earth's climate system, that doesn't do anything positive, but only negates, quite improbably, an "expected" dependence of the global mean surface temperature on the total solar irradiation (TSI). I submitted the following:

It is just too pat (i.e., characterized by a highly improbable "coincidence"): You find the temperature doesn't follow the 11-year solar cycle of TSI; now you find that something (apparently, the Sun's magnetic field) is cancelling that "expected" following--with an improbable, 11-year delay, just the same period as the solar cycle--so there is no 11-year cycle in the (global mean surface) temperature (GMST). Considered logically, without regard for any existing theories or common assumptions, by far the simplest, and therefore most probable reason for this "dog that doesn't bark" is that the expectation of a GMST dependence upon TSI is wrong (the dog doesn't bark because there is no dog, or nothing for the dog to bark at, after all).

Everybody wants to ignore the definitive Venus/Earth temperatures comparison I performed in late 2010, and what it indicates for the correction of climate science. Above all, in the present context, it indicates that the troposphere is fundamentally warmed--globally(!)--to the Standard Atmosphere profile (which represents the real, equilibrium vertical profile of the atmosphere, as the Venus/Earth comparison quantitatively and precisely demonstrates), by direct absorption of incident solar radiation, not by heat from the separately warmed surface. But of course that does not mean the TSI, which includes the major portion that warms the surface; it means just that incident portion (obviously in the infrared) which is directly absorbed by the troposphere! Climate and other atmospheric scientists need to identify that portion; I expect it will be found that it simply does not vary according to the 11-year solar cycle.

The True Situation in Climate Science

I have submitted the following comment at Steven Goddard's Real Science site, where another commenter noted that he had only just noticed a change in the "Earth Energy Budget" diagram put out by NASA et al., no longer showing "back radiation":

They changed the diagram because it was so obviously ridiculous, as only I, so far as I am aware, first strongly pointed out in 2010, here. But they never changed their theory -- not just the "greenhouse effect", but the underlying, radiation transfer theory (which is basically just a simple-minded "light extinction" model, of light extinction in passing through a nearly transparent medium), which is also clearly wrong, because it ignores conduction and convection, and reverses the real physics, making the temperature the effect of radiative transfer, instead of acknowledging that the supposed radiative transfer is due to the fixed temperature structure of the atmosphere. The definitive evidence remains my Venus/Earth comparison, which disproved the greenhouse effect, precisely confirmed the stable Standard Atmosphere model for the troposphere, showed that the atmosphere is warmed, not from the surface but by direct absorption of incident solar infrared radiation, and should have opened everyone's eyes to the fact that radiative transfer--within the atmosphere, and between the surface and atmosphere-- is the wrong way to approach the problem of atmospheric warming. Dr. Johnson (cf, Richard Fowler's comment above) gets caught up in theoretical radiative transfer arguments, that boil down to "heat goes from warm to cold regions", when the simple truth of the atmosphere is that the vertical temperature distribution of the troposphere has nothing to do with radiative transfer (which is just one of the three ways heat is transferred, after all--the other two basically ignored in the consensus theory) but is provided by the hydrostatic condition of the atmosphere, which imposes the well-known temperature lapse rate structure, defined by the Standard Atmosphere model. That structure is stable and predominates over all other conditions, globally, in the atmosphere, including night and day (wind and weather are essentially local and transient variations in the underlying stable structure). Until this basic understanding is learned and accepted by climate scientists, there will be no correction, and no progress, in climate science.

CO2 Climate Sensitivity Vs. Reality

Anyone who has followed the climate debates on the internet knows that even most "skeptics" of runaway global warming (and all of those who ever make the news or have a large audience on their blogs) accept the consensus "greenhouse effect" and the idea of a "CO2 climate sensitivity", or theoretically expected global mean surface temperature (GMST) increase with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2--due, everyone is brainwashed to believe, in increasing fossil fuel consumption by man). Anthony Watts has posted yet another article by one of his fellow-believers, arguing for a significant value of the CO2 climate sensitivity (albeit smaller than that claimed by the alarmist climate scientists). The following is my response, to any who are still capable of thinking for themselves on the subject, and who want definitive, quantitative proof of the truth of the matter.

Anyone who wants to keep worrying about the "CO2 climate sensitivity" needs to explain why, in the Venus/Earth temperature comparison I performed well over 2 years ago, there is none at all: Venus has 96.5% CO2 to Earth's less than .04%, yet the Venus/Earth temperature ratio is a constant due entirely and precisely to the ratio of their distances from the Sun and nothing else (no "greenhouse effect" contribution, no "difference in planetary albedo" contribution--no anything but the difference in the solar distance).

The precision with which the solar distance, by itself, explains the Venus/Earth temperature ratio--at points of equal pressure, over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures--is nothing short of amazing, in the present tattered intellectual climate, in which the greenhouse effect is adamantly, vehemently claimed to be "settled science", and even most "skeptics" smugly argue for SOME CO2 climate sensitivity. But the Venus/Earth comparison says that smug certainty is a lie, and there simply is no greenhouse effect, of increasing temperature with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, AT ALL.

If one is dense enough, after studying my Venus/Earth analysis, to demand what that analysis shows the CO2 climate sensitivity to be, here is what it says:

First, for over half of the range of Earth tropospheric pressures (between ~650 - 250 mb), the Venus temperature is COOLER, by about 5°K, than is predicted from the solar distances alone. But as indicated in my original analysis, in this pressure range lies the thick planetary cloud cover of Venus. Below that range--between 1,000 and 700 mb--the temperature ratio is essentially just that predicted from the solar distances alone; above the cloud layer as well (at 200 mb), the ratio again comes back to very near the "solar distances only" prediction, though not quite all the way (the Venus temperature there is only ~1.7K cooler than so predicted)

The best estimate of the climate sensitivity to changes in CO2 alone, then, is made with those points below the Venus cloud layer. For the 4 points in that pressure range, in my original analysis, the Venus/Earth temperature ratio varies between 1.172 (at 800 mb) and 1.178 (at 1,000 mb), with the average being 1.175.

(The uncertainty in that measured ratio is just the uncertainty in the Venus temperature (1.4K) divided by the corresponding Earth temperature (average 278.3K, for those 4 points), or +/-.005.)

Now 1.175 is just .001 less than the 1.176 predicted by the solar distances alone, and since that error is much less than the +/- .005 uncertainty, it should be immediately obvious that there is no greenhouse effect, without even bothering to calculate a "CO2 climate sensitivity". But let's do so anyway. That .001 "error" in the temperature ratio gives a possible error of only .001 x T_earth, or about -.3K, from the Venus temperature predicted by solar distances alone (that is, using 1.176 for the ratio). If one assumes that -.3K difference is due entirely to the "CO2 greenhouse effect", then the maximum CO2 climate sensitivity (in degrees K per doubling of CO2) is -.3K divided by the number of doublings, between ~353 ppm on Earth (in October 1991, when the Venus data was obtained) and 965,000 ppm (96.5%) on Venus--which is 11.4 doublings of CO2, so that -.3K/11.4 = -.026K/doubling of CO2, or about -.03K/doubling (a slight negative number, note), for the CO2 sensitivity.

But with an uncertainty of +/- 1.4K in the Venus temperature (see my original analysis), the uncertainty in the CO2 climate sensitivity is +/- 1.4/11.4 = .12K/doubling.

So my Venus/Earth comparison demands that the CO2 climate sensitivity must be less than

( -.026 +/- .12) K/doubling

and since the indicated sensitivity is much smaller than the uncertainty, the CO2 climate sensitivity revealed by my Venus/Earth comparison must be reported as

essentially zero (0),

...which is just a precise quantitative statement of the fact that has been obvious all along, that the Venus/Earth comparison shows there is NO greenhouse effect, period. Only solar distance counts in the detailed comparison of these two vastly different planet-plus-atmosphere systems. And the physical reason is because both atmospheres are fundamentally and globally warmed in precisely the same way: by direct absorption of the same physical fraction of the incident solar energy (and NOT from the planetary surface, as almost everyone--and certainly every mis-titled "expert"--believes is the case on Earth).

Added Note: In the above, there are in fact three different, but equivalent, quantitative statements to demonstrate that there is no greenhouse effect of increasing temperature with increasing CO2:

1) The error between measured Venus temperature and that predicted from Earth's Standard Atmosphere and the smaller solar distance of Venus = (-0.3 +/- 1.4)K,

2) The error between measured and predicted Venus/Earth temperature ratio = -.001 +/- .005,

3) The possible size of the CO2 climate sensitivity = zero (-.026 +/- .12)(K/doubling of CO2)

In all three quantitative statements, the (+/-) uncertainty is about 5 times the error, indicating the error is entirely negligible

The Greenhouse Effect: Parsing a Scientific Lie Does Not Help Science or the Public

The climaterealists site has yet another article that seeks to apportion the contributions to the "greenhouse effect" and "anthropogenic greenhouse effect", and I have submitted the following there:

There is a general incompetence in climate science, among all scientists on both sides of the debate over the "consensus". Too many identify the "greenhouse effect" as simply the absorption of IR radiation by those atmospheric gases that can do so (and are then, by circular reasoning, called "greenhouse gases"). There will be no competent climate scientists until they change their fundamental thinking, and hew to the "greenhouse effect" which is being foisted upon the public: That increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) causes increasing global mean surface temperature (or simply "increasing temperature", in the loose public vernacular). This is the very heart of the global warming scare theory.

And once they get that into their heads (which they show no signs -- as in Jonathan Duhamel's article here -- of doing, or even trying to wrap their minds around), then they need to confront, and accept, the definitive evidence, that completely disproves the greenhouse effect at the real heart of the debate:

Venus: No Greenhouse Effect

This definitive -- I will say it again: definitive -- disproof of the greenhouse effect also shows that the atmosphere is warmed by direct absorption of incident solar radiation, not by heat from the warmed planetary surface.

It is atrocious that all of climate scientists, and all of those debating climate science, ignore and dismiss the definitive Venus/Earth temperatures comparison, for that is the only competent "climate science" in the world today: The comparison of two detailed, and quite different, planet-plus-atmosphere systems. Despite their many, gross differences, Venus and Earth are both warmed in precisely the same way, by precisely the same fraction of the incident solar radiation (over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures, in the two atmospheres).

The public is not being served by climate science, nor is it being served by the debate, such as it is, because the definitive Venus/Earth evidence is being avoided, and that in turn is because that definitive evidence does not allow anyone to pretend to be "expert", so far it merely establishes that a stable atmospheric background exists, well represented by the Standard Atmosphere model (which is confirmed by my Venus/Earth comparison), upon which weather and climate (neither of which are global, but regional and temporal -- or "local and transient" -- and above all, periodic, i.e. ever repeating) play their recurring roles.

You are all facing, not a running argument among climate experts, but a revolution in scientific understanding of a fundamentally stable thermodynamic system in the atmosphere (not at all subject to runaway global warming OR cooling), and how that atmosphere is really warmed.

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.

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.

For Climate, All the World's a Stage

I have submitted this posting as a comment on the tallbloke site:

adolfogiurfa (March 12, 1:58 am) wrote, "There is nothing of the above without the SUN…"

tallbloke responded, "...Hans plays safe and treats solar output as constant in his thesis presentation."

This exchange is a fleeting but vital clue to a fundamental point, which I have tried to focus upon, as a result of my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison (which basically says, the global mean temperature at any given pressure level in the atmosphere depends, above all else, only on the Sun, not on atmospheric carbon dioxide, nor--most surprisingly to everyone--even on the planetary albedo). The fundamental point is, what IS climate and what comes BEFORE it? For example, those who speak of the "complexity" of the "climate system", or label the system "chaotic", are simply not focusing upon the larger picture, which is: The stage, upon which "weather" and "climate" play their parts. My small but definitive contribution to climate science has been to sweep the stage of those players and their never-ending entertainment, and show its bare simplicity. I am not a climate scientist, nor even a meteorologist, but all those with theories of climate have largely confused non-specialists--and too often themselves--with too many details, given without a sense of their proper scale in the overall picture; in other words, they mistake the forest for the trees, or they fail to frame the system, but rather consider it a roiling mass of incoherent (not well understood) processes, always on the verge of being an out of control, or "runaway", climate.

My Venus/Earth comparison--which compared Earth's Standard Atmosphere model, developed over many years of painstaking observations, with the Venus temperature- and pressure-profiles obtained on a single day (October 5, 1991)--should first and foremost be understood as confirming the Standard Atmosphere as the true, unchanging stage upon which weather and climate (or weather/climate) play their parts (or its various parts).

The atmosphere is subject to heat from the Sun and from the independently warmed surface, and the understanding I have so far gleaned is two-fold:

1) Solar forcing is primary, and vertical--it sets the stage.
2) Surface forcing is secondary, and horizontal--it drives the weather/climate.

In other words:

1) Direct heat from the Sun (in the infrared portion of the solar spectrum) fundamentally warms the atmosphere, and gravity parcels that heat, in accordance with the hydrostatic pressure distribution, into the observed vertical temperature lapse rate structure. The Sun essentially warms every body exposed to its rays, separately--you, me, the surface of the planet, and every level of the atmosphere.

2) Heat from the warmed surface (mostly ocean, on the Earth) diffuses horizontally, as it tries to escape toward space along the governing temperature lapse rate, the temperature gradient. That diffusion is huge (and the surface heating is uneven, primarily latitudinally), producing the winds, whose detailed causes range from the rotation of the planet down to local topography and land/ocean boundaries. My Venus/Earth comparison should tell everyone that the heat from the surface (which is dependent upon the albedo) has no effect upon the fundamental level of warming of the atmosphere. It basically acts to generate horizontal forces to spread the heat retained by the Earth, from one day to the next, around the planet. Those horizontal forces, nevertheless, are nicely balanced with the vertical flow along the lapse rate, so that vertical heat transport predominates at the equator and poles, while horizontal flow predominates in between, and an impressively coherent, general circulation is maintained (the details of which, I have not studied, and know little).

This is not a theory, but only the merest sketch, connecting the stage conditions, as exposed by my Venus/Earth comparison, with the resulting grand play of weather/climate.

Like It Or Not

I have submitted the following comment to the Claes Johnson blog, where commenters are still dogmatically adhering to the common, yet--to me, and to many of my readers--now known false belief, that the Earth's atmosphere is warmed from the surface, not by direct absorption of incident solar infrared radiation:

For those who visit this site open to new, definitive facts: The lapse rate, as a basic concept, does NOT require the surface heating the troposphere. The latter is just a naive assumption and, as my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison has revealed, such surface heating exists only as weather, overlaid on the fundamental equilibrium state described by the Standard Atmosphere (which climate science incompetently turned its back on over 40 years ago). That comparison clearly and simply shows that the troposphere is fundamentally warmed only by direct absorption of solar IR radiation; there is no other physical explanation (given the great differences in the CO2, albedo and planetary surfaces of Venus and Earth) for my factual finding that the observed Venus/Earth atmospheric temperature ratio, over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures, is due only to the ratio of the two planets' distances from the Sun. From that finding (completely unexpected by defenders of consensus climate theory, although it should have been discovered 20 years ago), logic dictates that both atmospheres MUST be warmed by the SAME portion of the incident solar, diluted in each case only by the planet's distance from the Sun; and furthermore, this can only be through direct absorption of that portion of the incident solar, not by heat from the surface. Like it or not, this is elementary and inescapable reasoning, and a definitive, fundamental correction to the common belief of scientists--and insisted upon here, dogmatically and without factual support, by Michele, and unquestioningly accepted by Claes Johnson--that the surface warms the atmosphere; the latter has simply been disproved by my Venus/Earth comparison. So vertical heat transfer from the surface does not fundamentally warm the troposphere; that which does not simply follow the lapse rate up through the atmosphere, without heating it, and on out to space, must only manifest locally and/or transiently, as weather (including the observed variations in the general circulation of the atmosphere). All of the posturing by the miseducated and thoroughly deluded scientists of today will not keep my Venus/Earth findings from forcing the fundamental rethinking of climate science, and the rethroning of the stable Standard Atmosphere. It is just a matter of time.