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".

Dr. Roy Spencer and the Myth of a Valid Global Climate Science

The Dr. Roy Spencer site has a post, about an experiment to show a cold object can warm a hotter object (by interposing a cool object between the hotter object and a much colder object). My response:

"Now, this experiment does not prove that gases can do what the cardboard has done....It only answers the 2nd Law violation claims some have made against a cool object (here, the cardboard sheet) causing a heated object to be warmer than if the cool object was not present, which is what the Earth’s greenhouse effect does."

The "Earth's greenhouse effect" is theorized to work by CO2 re-emitting radiation back to the planetary surface, thus warming it. The cardboard sheet does not work that way; it works, metaphorically speaking (in analogy with the real atmosphere), by REMOVING the "cold of space" from around the "heated Earth" (i.e., the cold of the dry ice from the effective vicinity of the heated surface), by replacing it with the "cardboard sheet" of the atmosphere (or the CO2 in the atmosphere).

Obviously, what your experiment really does, effectively, is force a new, reduced temperature "lapse rate" (say the cardboard sheet effectively removes the dry ice, or "outer space", to infinity, or at least to a much greater distance), so that the heated surface stabilizes at a higher temperature. That is not possible in the real atmosphere; the lapse rate is just -g/c (i.e., it is governed only by the acceleration due to gravity and the effective specific heat of the atmosphere), and has nothing to do with the amount of CO2 (or any other constituent) in the real atmosphere. My own "experiment", the Venus/Earth temperature-vs-pressure comparison proves what I have just written, for CO2 concentration all the way from 0.04% to 96.5% (the two planets' T-P curves, over the full range of Earth tropospheric pressures, are essentially the same--and precisely so, above and below the Venus cloud layer--when only Venus's smaller distance from the Sun is taken into account, despite Earth having only 0.04% atmospheric CO2 while Venus has a nearly pure, 96.5% CO2). Obviously, only the intensity of the incident solar radiation affects the absolute global mean temperature, throughout the tropospheric air column.

I don't know why so many, including yourself, continue to waste their efforts arguing over the "2nd Law" when the First Law is the one obviously being broken in the consensus theory. See "Runaway Global Warming Is Scientific Hysteria". In the consensus theory, the Earth's surface is emitting a mean 390 W/m^2, which is greater than the mean 342 W/m^2 incident from the Sun. That is a gross violation of the conservation of energy. And, also obviously (to this independent physicist), it is 390 W/m^2 because that is the intensity of radiation coming off a blackbody, surrounded by vacuum, at the same temperature as the Earth's surface (288K global mean), and atmospheric scientists must be "measuring" not the radiation being emitted, but the temperature of the surface, misinterpreted as an equivalent blackbody radiation intensity. The only problem, aside from the clear violation of conservation of energy, is that the Earth's surface is not surrounded by vacuum; even a blackbody, with an atmosphere, would not radiate 390 W/m^2 from its surface, because it would also lose heat by conduction and convection, so it could only radiate 390 W/m^2 minus the power per unit area lost through those other transfers of heat from the surface.

And despite what radiation transfer theorists and defenders claim, the Earth is not a blackbody by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. Look at it from space: It is a "Big Blue Marble", not a "Big Black Marble", partially covered by fleecy white clouds.

Of course, the Earth's surface is assumed to be a blackbody in the radiation transfer theory as applied in climate science, so even that sacrosanct (to all you believers) theory is wrong, and wrong-headed, and clearly incompetent.

Nor is most of the incident solar power in visible light, as one commenter above claims. It is only about 45% visible, about the same amount infrared, and 8-10% ultraviolet. Nor is the atmosphere transparent to incident solar radiation, as the infamous Trenberth-Kiehl "Earth Energy Budget" shows fully 67 W/m^2 out of the mean incident 342 W/m^2 is absorbed in the atmosphere. That's about 20% of the incident solar, absorbed in the atmosphere. And that is how, according to my Venus/Earth findings, the atmosphere is REALLY warmed, to its stable global mean, not from the surface at all. (And of course, that is how all the other massive atmospheres in the solar system are obviously warmed, for their clouds absorb all of the incident solar before it can reach those other planetary surfaces, and all of them show a negative lapse rate structure, just like Earth does. That the troposphere might be warmed by incident solar, not from the surface, was the first great hole I found in the consensus theory, and again, my Venus/Earth comparison proves it is so--to any competent physicist, in my professional opinion.

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.

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.

Atmospheric CO2 and the Lapse Rate: No Effect

The notrickszone site has a post by a Japanese scientist that says CO2 "climate sensitivity" (defined as the temperature increase to be expected from a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere) is currently overstated, even "meaningless", because increasing the CO2 would change the temperature "lapse rate" in the atmosphere. My response:

All scientists should know by now that my 2010 Venus/Earth temperatures comparison already definitively showed there is no actual "CO2 global warming greenhouse effect".

Never mind doubling the CO2. The Venus atmosphere has over 2400 times the concentration of CO2 as does Earth's (that is 11.4 doublings of CO2, not just one doubling), without ANY effect upon the temperature at any given pressure level.

Further, since that Venus/Earth comparison precisely confirms the Standard Atmosphere model for Earth's troposphere as the true, stable equilibrium state of the atmosphere, it also confirms the physics behind that model, which is just that of the hydrostatic condition, that the pressure at any level in the troposphere is just the weight of the atmosphere above that level. And since the hydrostatic condition provides that the lapse rate MUST BE just -g/c, where g is the acceleration due to gravity and c is the effective specific heat of the atmosphere, the lapse rate has ESSENTIALLY NOTHING to do with the CO2 level in the atmosphere (certainly not in the trace amounts found in Earth's atmosphere, and even between Earth's .04% and Venus's 96.5%, as the Venus/Earth comparison I performed showed).

I have yet to come across ANY "expert", like the above author, who knows what they are talking about. The Venus/Earth temperature comparison makes them all appear incompetent.

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.

Nobody Is Learning Anything, Even the Skeptics

Doubters of the "global warming" alarmism (driven as it is by incompetent and criminal "leaders" in both science and politics today--as they are, figuratively speaking, shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre, when they know not only that they are deliberately trying to panic the world, but that there is no "fire", at all) need to begin to stand firm, not just against the alarmists, but also against the "lukewarmers" who make up the large majority of the critics of the alarmism. They misdirect their energies, and those of their followers (such as habitual readers of their blogs), by refusing to listen to those, like me, who have given them overwhelming evidence against even their lukewarm defense of the so-called "settled science" (basically, of the "greenhouse effect" as something capable of causing global warming). They are at pains not to rock the "settled science" boat, essentially, and in this they are just as incompetent as the alarmists (for there is no valid climate science, no global-warming greenhouse effect, and no competent climate scientists, as I have been informing those who would listen for 5 and 1/2 years now, using the definitive evidence I uncovered easily, as I insist any competent physicist can, and should already have done by now--most simply by listening to me, and taking the time to recognize the strength of my evidence).

In pursuing their agenda of defending the "settled science" even as they criticize its "exaggerations", "uncertainties" and political abuse (all skeptics agree about the political abuse), the lukewarmers continue to fill their blogs with essentially irrelevant chaff and worse. Judith Curry, a tenured professor, keeps putting forth posts on the "psychology" and "sociology" of the climate debate, and especially on governmental "climate policy", when she should know there can be no rational climate policy at all, in the current tattered intellectual and scientific climate of ignorance, incompetence, and raw, unthinking activism.

And Anthony Watts keeps putting up "straw men" for his readers to knock down as they like, as well as admiring posts of other "settled science", like Milankovitch theory and paleoclimatology, none of which is any more settled--any more correct, or even competent, in actual fact--than is "climate science" itself. Just today, Watts has a post titled "Study Claims Ancient Tectonic Activity Was Trigger For Ice Ages". His readers, predictably, lambast the assumption in the study that CO2 drives the "ice ages", so that the study is little more than empty speculation that the ancient tectonic activity drove down the CO2, causing catastrophic global cooling.

But, as I have informed him and any with ears to hear and eyes to see, for years, not only is there no CO2 "greenhouse effect", but there were no naturally-occurring "ice ages", nor was there any naturally-occurring "tectonic activity" responsible for moving the landmasses over the Earth to their present arrangement and shapes.

Instead, the Earth's surface was deliberately re-formed, to a precise pattern, as I proved in my 2009 post, "A Challenge to Earth Scientists", and several more in the "Challenge to Science" series here. It is a simple demonstration, that completely disproves any theory of chance "continental drift" responsible for the precise positions of the continents today, in a precise (and anciently referenced, as a dodecahedron) pattern. (As I noted in that post, the probability of chance placement of the world's landmasses is on the order of one in a million million--that is, one in 1,000,000,000,000. In other words, and to anyone who can look at the pattern and see how closely the landmasses conform to it--it is a certainty that the landmasses were deliberately moved to their present locations and orientations).

So "skeptics", you are missing out on the greater truth, in your own willingness to hew to the consensus speculations piled upon false assumptions that constitute all of today's earth and life sciences, not just climate science. And in the lukewarmers, you are heeding the wrong voices, if you want to know the overriding truth that now faces mankind, with its many divisive and false dogmas so long nurtured and so stubbornly promulgated, by those who are perhaps best known as jihadists, or religious warriors, of every stripe.

Ben Is Glory, Glory Is Ben

I read a comment on the jonova site that referred to "the gravitational warming theory". My response:

There is no "gravitational warming", per se. There is instead gravitational distribution of atmospheric pressure (the pressure at any level is just the weight of the atmosphere above that level), which imposes a vertical temperature distribution (the "lapse rate" structure). Whatever energy is contained in the atmosphere, it has to be vertically distributed according to that elementary physics. This is entirely independent of HOW the atmosphere is warmed. In particular it is independent of any heating by the absorption of infrared radiation by CO2 or any other so-called "greenhouse gas" in the atmosphere; the only effect such absorption can have is to increase the radiation pathway for heat transfer in the atmosphere, compared to the pathways for conduction and convection (the other two processes by which heat can be transported). As radiation travels faster than convection or conduction, IR absorption can only increase the SPEED at which heat is transported (over a short distance), but it can do no more than re-attain the governing lapse rate structure more quickly than would be the case without "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere; it cannot change the lapse rate, nor the temperature (at the surface or at any other pressure level in the atmosphere).

My Venus/Earth temperatures comparison precisely confirms this (it confirms the Standard Atmosphere model of the Earth's troposphere, which is based upon the above physics), and shows that the Earth's troposphere is warmed by direct absorption of incident solar radiation, not by heat from the planetary surface as everyone has been taught. And of course it utterly disproves the "global warming greenhouse effect", since Venus's atmosphere has over 2400 times the concentration of CO2 as Earth's, without any effect upon the temperature.

But not many listen, or seem capable of understanding. I just happen to have the TV on now, and it is showing a rerun of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", where they are fighting the "god" Glory. Glory is limited by the fact that she turns into the harmless Ben at awkward moments, but even when people see this transformation take place right in front of them, they can't seem to remember it after a brief moment. The climate debate is like this, where no one seems able to retain knowledge of the simple physics of the Standard Atmosphere. So just remember, "Ben is Glory; Glory is Ben" and "there IS NO greenhouse effect".

In One Ear and Out the Other

The Real Science site has a post on "Understanding Climate Science in One Paragraph", a paragraph that informs the reader that the globe warmed from 1977 to 1991, and very little if any since.

I find this interesting, because I informed the Real Science author and his readers of this (I specified the time period as 1976 to 1989/90) as early as September 2013, nearly two and a half years ago--and in a number of later comments on the site. To my knowledge, he never mentioned my insight, including in this latest post. (To be fair, no other blog ever acknowledged me either, when I tried to inform them years ago that the global mean sea surface temperatures, from late 2010 through much of 2011, precisely tracked those in 1990/91, twenty years earlier.)

The Real Science author also never mentioned my informing him that US Temperatures Have Been Falsely Adjusted According to the Level of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere either--but he told it to his readers two years later (precisely two years later, as a matter of fact).

His acceptance of my insights thus has seemed to lag my attempts to inform him of them by two years or so, and without ever mentioning me. So I have generally stopped visiting his site.

Anthony Watts, meanwhile, will no longer accept my comments on his "wattsupwiththat" site, and he has been hostile to me ever since my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison showed any competent physical scientist that there is absolutely NO carbon dioxide "greenhouse effect" (which he adamantly defends), all the way from the 0.04% CO2 in Earth's atmosphere to the 96.5% in Venus's. The "greenhouse effect" is a religious cult, of brainwashed believers, whether "consensus" or "skeptics".

This is one of the reasons why I don't post on my blog as often as others in the climate debate--I have found both "warmists" and "lukewarm" critics of the warmist "consensus" to be tone-deaf to me, and to the definitive evidence I have tried to put forward.

The other, main reasons are 1)that the public climate discourse, on the part of those in power now and their loyal followers, is insane and immune to honest reason, and 2)that almost no one wants to listen to my main message to the world, of the Great Design of the "gods", which overthrows the central theories of all the earth and life sciences, and heralds a new scientific paradigm, beyond that of "undirected evolution" of the physical world, and of the universe beyond. I have given definitive evidence proving that as well, on this blog.

The mess that is "climate science" is just the tip of a general incompetence in science today, across all fields of science, from the submicroscopic to the cosmic.

I do not write this to complain, but to inform anyone who wants to know the truth about the real size of the problem we face.

Hydrostatic Vs. "Gravito-Thermal": Real Physics Vs. Latter-Day Incompetence in Science

The Hockeyschtick site has another post hyping a "gravito-thermal" greenhouse effect. My response:

This is just a rehashing of Nikolov and Zeller's "Unified Climate Theory" (N&Z), only claiming the use of "dimensional analysis methodology", presumably meaning their mysterious "Eq(10)"--mysterious because it is not deemed important enough to actually reveal it here--has physical units consistent on both sides of the equation, that refer to the physical parameters involved in the problem (and not to an arbitrary amalgamation of variables--an ad hoc fitting function--without physical consistency, as N&Z did). There is still the "atmospheric thermal enhancement" (ATE) factor, the airy reference to the "Poisson formula", and the apparently absolutely precise fitting of the global mean surface temperatures of all the considered planetary bodies to one formula, that featured also in N&Z -- and no physics involved, of course, just carefree mathematical modelling (and the claim that it "deserves further investigation and possibly a theoretical interpretation"). The Moon, Mars and Triton are practically meaningless in it, however, as the fitting function is vertical (insensitive to the pressure) for such small-to-nonexistent surface pressures as these 3 bodies possess. And they say Titan wasn't even used in the regressions, so only Earth and Venus really matter in them (and see below for my caveat on Titan). I already, nearly 5 years ago, compared Earth's Standard Atmosphere to the temperature vs. pressure profile of Venus, not at one point (the planetary surface) but over the full range of Earth tropospheric pressures.

None of this present hype goes beyond, or even rises to the level of, my Venus/Earth comparison as the definitive correction of the false physics embraced by climate and atmospheric science today. None of it rises to the level of the utterly stable Standard Atmosphere, which was known to everyone before scientists turned away from it to pursue the chimaera of "runaway global warming". None of it rises to the level of understanding, gained from simply looking at the temperature and pressure profiles of all the planets, that they all have the same form: Above approximately 200 mb pressure, they all have the negative, constant vertical temperature lapse rate structure that Earth has, and which is due simply to the hydrostatic condition: that the pressure at any level in the atmosphere is just the weight of the atmosphere above that level. The Standard Atmosphere is of course based upon assuming the hydrostatic condition.

But none of the other planetary bodies compares so precisely with Earth as does Venus, where only the ratio of solar distances is needed to explain the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, at any given pressure. So the "gravito-thermal" theory glosses over (simply does not recognize) any other variables that are necessary to explain the temperatures in the other planetary bodies considered. The comparison of Earth's Standard Atmosphere with Titan, for example, as I compared Earth with Venus, shows that the near-surface temperature of Titan's atmosphere is too low, by about 7K (while near the tropopause, around 300 to 200 mb, it comes into close alignment with Earth's atmosphere, corrected only by the effect of its different solar distance); the modelling touted here, and that done by Nikolov and Zeller, can't even recognize that awkward fact, much less explain it physically--whereas the Venus/Earth comparison can, because Venus's temperatures, inside its thick cloud layer, are also too low, by about the same amount (5K), and both are probably due to the same cause: Non-gaseous particles suspended in the atmospheres (water-based clouds on Venus, particulate haze on Titan) that increase the effective specific heat of the atmosphere, in those regions where they occur.

And, of course, my definitive contribution was left out of the list presented above. No one is learning anything. The "gravito-thermal" effect is nothing but the effect of the hydrostatic condition, so far as any real physics is concerned.

No Consensus (or Too Many Chiefs)

Bob Tisdale has a post (also posted on the wuwt site) showing "no consensus on Earth's top-of-atmosphere energy imbalance" among the models touted by climate scientists. These kinds of critical analysis are pretty dense (detailed), especially for laypersons, and I have much better, simpler evidence to offer, so I responded:

Consensus climate science is so bad, it should come as no surprise to learn that a much simpler (and definitive) indictment of it can be made, just from the figure 1 above (Trenberth’s “global earth energy budget”). Concerning that figure, I wrote back in October 2010:

“It all looks straightforward enough, but then when you look closely you see something strange, off on the right side: The radiation coming off the surface is huge, and there is an almost equally huge ‘back radiation’ from the atmosphere to the surface. To a physicist–or at least to this physicist–that strange, gigantic loop of energy between the atmosphere and the surface appears unphysical, out of all proportion to the rest of the diagram.

“And we don’t have to get into detailed physical theory or wordy explanations to pin down what’s wrong with it: The power coming off the surface (the number 390) is larger than the incident power from the Sun (342). (The power shown as ‘back radiated’ by the atmosphere is about as large as that from the Sun, too.)

“Just that one fact is enough for me to see that the ‘climate science’ of the U.N. and the consensus of (so we are told) 97% of all climate scientists–is absurd. No part of the ‘global energy budget’ can be greater than the incident energy. Either their numbers are wrong, or the model being illustrated is wrong. Period, full stop. You don’t have to know, or explain to the world, what is really going on, or why there has been recent ‘global warming’. Just know their explanation is nonsense, basic physics absolutely and undeniably forbids it. Everything else you read is either other scientists trying to show they know what is really going on (which obviously no one does at this point, entirely), or scientists or their followers trying to defend the indefensible, with complex, technical and always wrong-headed arguments.

“Of course, that unphysical loop of excess energy is just what they are calling the ‘greenhouse effect’. And it is garbage, and all the scientists who deny that, or refuse to see it for what it is, should be drummed out of science, or at least be required to undergo re-education. Because they are worse than first-year students, who are generally at least open to learning the hard truth.”

A little later, I realized the 390 W/m^2 supposed to be coming off the Earth’s surface was just that expected from a blackbody at the same temperature (288K), and then learned that the proponents of the radiation transfer theory (behind all those numbers in the “energy budget” diagrams and in discussions of “TOA radiation imbalance”) actually believe and teach, in their theory, that the Earth’s surface radiates like a blackbody poised in a vacuum. At this point, an honest and competent physicist can only recoil in horror, as if at a monstrous snake on one’s doorstep, and demand it be killed forthwith. And that’s where I stand, ever since. Trenberth is a miseducated idiot. All climate scientists are miseducated idiots, for not seeing that lie, of a huge loop of energy between atmosphere and ground, greater than that coming from the Sun, and expecting to get away with presenting it seriously to the world.

…and then I found the “skeptics” didn’t see it either, or pretended not to, because they never speak of it, that obviously ridiculous incompetence at the very heart of the consensus case.

And that (plus my Venus/Earth temperature vs. pressure comparison) is why I always say, there is no valid climate science, and no competent climate scientists.

I Am a Defier Now

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

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

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).

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.

Climate Science and The Darkness of Dogmatic Thought

Steven Goddard has a post today on "the definitive data on the global warming/climate change scam", with his first graph showing the high correlation between the official adjustments to US temperatures (not the temperatures themselves, but the adjustments made to them) and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, I first pointed out that definitive evidence, and called it definitive, exactly 2 years ago, in the post "US Temperatures Have Been Fraudulently Adjusted According to the Level of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere". The rest of Goddard's post is superfluous, and weakens appreciation of the fact that those fraudulent adjustments are by themselves the definitive evidence (in indicting a field of science, you can't top the revelation of deliberate fraud).

In the wider context of the general incompetence now running rampant, not just in science but throughout every public debate, and in virtually every confrontation in the world, the question that needs to be asked is, why did it take Goddard two years to acknowledge (and even now, without crediting me) what I specifically suggested and then demonstrated to him and the world 2 years ago, and repeatedly reminded him and his readers ever since?

And why have both climate alarmists and "lukewarmers" studiously ignored--for 4 years now-- my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison, which is not only the definitive evidence against the very existence of the global-warming "greenhouse effect" due to so-called "greenhouse gases", but the definitive evidence for the wholesale rethinking and correction of climate science?

Everyone has their own reasons for their behavior, but the fundamental answer is that mankind, both individually and en masse, cannot stand the full light of truth now, in one area of concern or another. And so they think that, by ignoring the light that seems too harsh, they can defeat it, can keep others from seeing it. But by warring on the truth--in favor of their favorite dogma--they are unwittingly asking for real war among men.

Are There Any Competent Climate Scientists?

Steven Goddard has a post claiming "Some climate scientists are actually competent". My response:

There have been two basic camps in climate academe, those who spout "greenhouse effect" and "runaway global warming" with alarm, and those who beat the drum for "ENSO" (or "multidecadal ocean oscillations") and a cyclical variation in global temperature, on top of a widely-believed global warming from the depths of the Little Ice Age (c. 1680) of 0.5 °C/century (but, like Phil Jourdan above, I doubt their global temperature records either way, since I found the utterly stable Standard Atmosphere model for Earth's troposphere agrees precisely with the same pressure regime in Venus's atmosphere--when the latter's temperatures are corrected for its closer distance from the Sun--despite Venus having 2400 times the concentration of CO2, more than twice the albedo, a miles-thick planetary cloud cover and an entirely solid planetary surface, all hugely different from Earth but having no effect on the temperatures). To the academic theorists of the latter (ENSO) persuasion, the time period from about 2000 to 2030 is expected to show a slight temperature decline, like the periods 1940 to 1970 (or '75) and 1880 to 1910. I say it should amaze both sides that the Standard Atmosphere model, known for over a century, agrees so precisely with Venus's atmospheric temperature profile for ONE DAY (October 5, 1991), which literally screams out "stable equilibrium" for both planets, to any competent physicist (and a reader of my blog informed me, a few months ago, of Venus data from 1979 that also agrees with the Earth's Standard Atmosphere). But even the most recalcitrant global warming skeptics--aside from me--believe implicitly in today's non-climate earth science theories, and so think that a mere 5 degree decrease in global mean surface temperature must bring on a global ice age (that would take it down from the present 59°F mean temperature, to 50°F, and I say that it is the height of hysteria to think 50°F is consistent with a global ice age). So I say, there is no valid climate science, and no competent climate scientists. None. Zero. Period. As in, they all need to let go of their current theories, across all the earth sciences, if they want to become competent in my book. Of course, I have an entirely different, dogma-free perspective on the Earth, since I found, in my own research, that its surface was reformed wholesale, less than 20,000 years ago, and to a great design whose features gave rise to all the so-called "ancient mysteries" of man, worldwide (so there was no "continental drift" over millions of years, but deliberate breakup, transport, and reassembly of landmasses to their current shapes and locations). And the present generation would rather war with one another, than realize that scientists, and mankind generally, have painted themselves into a corner with a failed paradigm that specifically denies the possibility of deliberate design of the Earth.

There Is No Valid Climate Science and No Competent Climate Debate

The WUWT site has a post on alarmist "pseudoscientists' claims debunked", containing a statement that I find absolutely incompetent, and to which I respond here:

"Let us be as precise as They are vague. The existence of the greenhouse effect is definitively established both in theory and in experiment and needs no 'consensus' to prop it up."

You call that precise? The "greenhouse effect" touted to the world's citizens is this, and this alone: The global mean atmospheric temperature at the Earth's surface (or at any given pressure level) supposedly increases with an increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. I have presented the definitive evidence against this "greenhouse effect", 3 and 1/2 years ago, now--so stop trying to "prop it up" with the claim that carbon dioxide gas absorbs infrared radiation (at wavelengths in the range emitted by the Earth's surface)--no one denies that--and then calmly but irrationally claiming that there must then be SOME global warming with increasing carbon dioxide, despite the definitive fact (which you all have kept yourselves determinedly blind to) that the Venus/Earth comparison shows there is NO SUCH WARMING WITH INCREASING ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE, ALL THE WAY FROM 0.04% (Earth) to 96.5% (Venus). Unless and until greenhouse effect believers can show, using the consensus theory, that the Venus/Earth temperature ratio MUST BE--coincidentally--just what I showed it to be, and yet just what it must be if only the distance from the Sun matters in the comparison of these two planetary atmospheres (at points of equal pressure, over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures), you are all being, not merely imprecise, but incompetent in ignoring the results of comparing those two real, detailed planetary atmospheres--the largest and most definitive experimental result in all of climate and atmospheric science. You can't just say it's a "coincidence", you have to show how the consensus theory predicts precisely that temperature ratio, while taking account of all the supposed effects that consensus theory says must affect the temperature (including the great differences in albedo and cloud cover, mass of the planetary atmosphere, and state of the planetary surface)--YOU HAVE TO SHOW HOW CONSENSUS THEORY PREDICTS THE OBSERVED FACT, THAT ALL THOSE OTHER SUPPOSED EFFECTS ADD UP TO PRECISELY(!) ZERO, FOR VENUS AND EARTH, AND ONLY THE DIFFERENCE IN DISTANCE FROM THE SUN MATTERS IN THE FINAL, DEFINITIVE RESULT. UNTIL YOU DO, YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE FOR CLAIMING "THERE IS A GREENHOUSE EFFECT" at all. Until you do, there is no valid climate science, and no competent climate scientists, whether alarmist or lukewarm believers in the consensus "greenhouse effect".

Venus Again

I have submitted the following comment to the Steven Goddard site, where the subject of Venus's hot surface is erupting again:

Convection does NOT dominate in the global troposphere, the constant vertical temperature lapse rate (temperature gradient) does; that is the stage upon which weather (and climate) plays its part. Convection just drives the weather (primarily horizontally), it does not create or maintain the vertical lapse rate--the hydrostatic condition does that (and Jerry Gorline needs to understand that his derivation above is even more easily, and effectively, done as: mcΔT= -mgΔx, as provided by the hydrostatic condition). The stable lapse rate means heat rises naturally "down" the temperature gradient--convection would only destabilize such a precise structure, and so cannot dominate, rather that structure dominates, on the global scale (too many--incompetent "experts" and lay citizens alike--in the global warming debate continue to be confused by local and transient effects that have no global effect).

The critical piece of evidence remains (I brought it out in November 2010) that the Venus/Earth tropospheric temperatures comparison shows that essentially the only difference in temperatures in the two atmospheres, at points of equal pressure over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures, is due to the difference in distance from the Sun--and that is a PRECISE quantitative fact above and below the Venus cloud layer (so clouds don't affect the global lapse rate structure either, nor does planetary albedo, at least for Venus and Earth, because that great difference between them also has no effect (obviously, unless you want to try to explain how these various effects DO matter, but add up to PRECISELY zero in the comparison of Venus and Earth). The only explanation for this is that both atmospheres are warmed by direct absorption of incident heat (infrared) energy from the Sun (so, for example, it doesn't matter that they have quite different reflections of VISIBLE light--albedos--or that little light reaches the Venus surface to heat it--atmospheric warming, to the ruling temperature lapse rate structure, has already occurred. So I concur with Jason Calley, that the astronomers are not experts--or really, all that competent--in their attempts to understand, and in their claims to fine new discoveries. (Nor do I claim to have all the answers myself. Nor am I as interested in the climate field as are most of those engaging in the unending "debate", which consists of vainly lobbing theoretical points past each others' unheeding heads, in an insane controlling political environment to boot.)

Incompetent Skeptics IV: Dr. Judith Curry

The climate depot site has a link to a puff piece on Judith Curry and her views on climate change/global warming. The following is my response:

This is a puff piece, based entirely on a friendly, personal view of Dr. Judith Curry. But the climate change debate is not about any person, especially any academic who basically accepts the climate science as sound and, as they like to say in their own best interests, "settled". Those who have involved themselves in the debate--who have studied the science behind it, and the arguments about that science--are strung out over the full range, from complete acceptance of the academic science to complete rejection of it. A layperson must either choose an "authority" to believe in, blindly, or seek out the definitive facts that tell for or against climate science theory--for that is what they are getting from all sides, predigested theory presented, smoothly and easily, as fact.

I am a 65-year-old physicist by education and long experience, in the academic and high-tech industrial sectors, and in presenting my view to laypersons, I take the latter route, of uncovering the definitive facts that anyone can appreciate. I uncovered the definitive fact that disproves the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect, and any need to worry about a "runaway global climate" at all, nearly 3 years ago, in November 2010 (see here).

When I found that definitive fact against the greenhouse effect, I knew the consensus climate science was not just wrong, it was in fact incompetent (for what I had done should have been done 20 years earlier, when the relevant data, on the atmospheric temperature and pressure profile of Venus, was obtained by the Magellan spacecraft. That it was not done at the time is a gross error by climate scientists at the time, and that it has been dismissed even after I pointed it out in November 2010 is a gross crime against all of science and the trust of the public that we scientists are both competent and honest.) In late November, when I first tried to inform Judith Curry and her blog readers of the definitive fact of the Venus/Earth temperature ratio--which depends only upon the two planets' distances from the Sun, and no additional "greenhouse effect" at all, despite Venus's atmosphere having over 2400 times the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide as does Earth's atmosphere (Venus 96.5%, to Earth's 0.04%)--the following telling exchange took place:

Judith Curry:

"whether atmospheric gases such as CO2 (and H20, CH4, and others) warm the planet is not an issue where skepticism is plausible."

Harry Dale Huffman:

"The issue is whether they warm by absorbing incident solar radiation, or by absorbing secondary LW [longwave, i.e., infrared] radiation from the surface. I say the former, and there is no bouncing and amplifying of heat between the surface and the atmosphere."

In other words, I identified for her the mistaken belief she (and every other climate scientist) was nursing, that the atmosphere is warmed, on the global scale, from the surface, when in fact it is warmed, to its stable, equilibrium vertical temperature structure, by direct absorption of incident solar infrared radiation.

No climate scientist, including Judith Curry, has ever shown the slightest interest in or serious consideration of the fundamental corrections to climate science dogma that are provided by the definitive fact of the Venus/Earth temperature ratio. Yet any STUDENT of climate science could have done what I did, and seen what I saw.

So, as nice as Dr. Curry may be, she is--as is every other climate scientist or academic who defends the science behind the "global warming" scare--simply and unavoidably incompetent. And to put this in the proper context (because I know that charge of general incompetence among the "experts" sounds flamboyant and hyped to the unwary), I suggest the reader here also read the short article, "The System Is Broken: Incompetent Science and Insane Politics".

Modern Science Has Gone Wrong

I have posted the following response to a comment on my November 2010 Venus: No Greenhouse Effect article:

Good Morning, Astrobiology,

The proper statement, of fact not theory, is that the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, at points of equal pressure in the two atmospheres and over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures, is determined only by the ratio of their distances from the Sun (in accordance with the fundamental physics that relates mean absorbed radiation intensity with attained temperature, at equilibrium), and nothing else. That fact has implications for the temperatures in the other planetary atmospheres, but of course it should not be expected to predict their temperatures; it is not a theory of planetary warming, it is a fact relating the Earth troposphere with an equivalent (in pressures) portion of the Venus atmosphere.

The easy, even lazy, answer to your first question is that when you say, "Venus is hotter than Mercury", you really mean the surface of Venus is hotter than the surface of Mercury, despite being much farther from the Sun--that ignores the atmosphere, of course (and that little detail of comparing at points of equal pressure in the atmosphere, which my comparison emphasized), and any hack will tell you the surface of Venus is hotter because it lies at the bottom of a deep, heavy, heat-retaining ocean of air, while the surface of Mercury is essentially bare to the near-absolute cold of space. (All of this is so obvious, I suspect your question is merely disengenuous--suspect so strongly, that I say so here for any interested reader to see. David Appell, a charlatan who pretends to be a competent PhD physicist, recently tried to comment on this site with the same incompetent point, that the Venus/Earth comparison does not work for the other planets. I wouldn't be at all surprised if your comment was an attempt to get by my denial of any further comments from him, as an unthinking, determinedly dismissive, disruptive influence. If you follow his lead, you won't get anywhere worthwhile--here, at least.)

I have always emphasized that I do not have a theory, only that definitive fact, which disproves the greenhouse effect of increasing atmospheric temperature (at any given pressure) with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (for Venus's atmosphere has over 2400 times the level of carbon dioxide as does Earth's atmosphere, yet it makes no difference in the temperature--and note, if there WERE such an effect, it would be ADDITIVE to Venus's temperatures, not multiplicative as the constant Venus/Earth temperature ratio implies).

To explain the temperatures in the atmospheres of the other planets would require a general theory of atmospheric warming. I do not feel the slightest need to bail out climate and atmospheric scientists from their responsibility to produce such a theory--which MUST EXPLAIN the Venus/Earth result quantitatively and precisely, note. I have done some comparisons of the troposphere of Earth with the equivalent parts of the other planetary atmospheres, as I have said in earlier responses to earlier comments here, but nothing as definitive as the Venus/Earth result emerged from that preliminary work, and I am interested only in communicating definitive results--facts, not theory.

All of the earth and life sciences are now working with fundamentally false theories, to a lesser or greater extent. That is the larger point, that has emerged from my own research, with my discovery of a great world-encompassing design at the very beginning of mankind's intellectual history, and motivating every aspect of its development. Random cosmic events and undirected geological and biological processes are not the truth about Earth's origin and development. The Earth and solar system were subjected to deliberate wholesale reformation, to impose an overall design--and modern science has, thus, gone wrong.