Continuing Vain Climate Debates

The blogosphere continues to waste time on vain, incompetent climate debate on the part of non-experts, due to the failure of "expert" climate science, most recently on the WUWT site. The three most pernicious and most basic misunderstandings that plague such debates, especially among the consensus "experts", as brought to light by my Venus/Earth comparison, are:

1) Equating the "greenhouse effect" with the atmospheric absorption of infrared radiation. The latter is a physical reality, but the former is an hypothesis. When believers (and that is the only proper term for them, "believers") in the greenhouse effect go through their calculation that purports to prove that the "greenhouse effect" is responsible for warming the surface by 33°C, above what it would otherwise be, they are really (and rather obviously) arguing that the PRESENCE OF AN ATMOSPHERE is responsible for that added surface warming. But the real question is, and always has been, how is the atmosphere warmed, not how is the surface warmed by the Sun and THEN how does the surface warm the atmosphere? The unquestioned assumption of the latter question is what drives the nearly universal belief that planetary albedo affects the atmospheric temperature, which greenhouse believers use to incompetently dismiss my definitive factual findings.

2) Believing (again that word) that the atmosphere is warmed by heat from a warmed planetary surface, rather than by direct absorption of radiation from the Sun. This, in spite of the fact that even among consensus climate scientists, it is generally understood that at least 15% of the incident solar radiation is directly absorbed by the atmosphere. So, when pressed, they will admit that the atmosphere is partly warmed by direct absorption of solar radiation, and partly by heat from the surface (by both surface-emitted radiation and by convection and conduction). And so the complications begin to multiply for them, and for anyone trying to follow their explanations. The only reason they believe that the surface warms the atmosphere is because it is warmer than the atmosphere, so heat must flow upward from the surface and they cannot imagine that upward heat flow does not further warm the atmosphere. And they are right, in a limited sense: Heat from the surface can and does warm a part of the atmosphere -- but only transiently and locally (as within a temporary, rising column of warm air, or within a few meters of a "hot spot" surface, such as a fire or urban pavement). They fail to keep in mind that the general atmospheric temperature gradient, from surface to top of troposphere, is well explained by the vertical pressure distribution due to the weight of the atmosphere itself (in the governing hydrostatic condition of the atmosphere, the pressure at a given altitude is due to the weight of the atmosphere above that altitude, and the temperature necessarily increases with the pressure). There is no need to hypothesize a general atmospheric warming by surface heating, but it is an ingrained, unquestioned belief today among most scientists, and thus among their followers. And of course, my Venus/Earth comparison now makes it obvious that the atmosphere is fundamentally warmed ONLY by DIRECT absorption of incident solar radiation, specifically a portion of the infrared solar radiation (and the same portion, for both Earth and Venus). Since the visible portion of the Sun's radiation is not responsible for warming the atmosphere, the fact that Venus reflects 70% of the visible light from the Sun while Earth reflects only 30%, makes no difference in the warming of their atmospheres, and thus there is no albedo effect in the observed Venus/Earth temperature ratio, in my simple comparison.

3) Believing that the surface of the Earth is a blackbody. In the words of (for example) Raymond Pierrrehumbert, "The ground below the atmosphere emits as an ideal blackbody, characterized by the Planck function B." This belief underpins the radiative transfer theory and those who interpret the spectra of radiation emitted upwards from the top of the tropopause as "proof" of the greenhouse effect. The fact is, those spectra merely show the PRESENCE of water vapor, carbon dioxide and the other infrared-active gases in the atmosphere, and measured variations of those spectra over time can show the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- but they do NOT show increased atmospheric warming due to the increase in carbon dioxide, that is merely an unsupported assumption (particularly during the periods, such as 1940-1970 and the last decade or so, when the carbon dioxide has increased substantially, but the global average surface temperature has not increased at all, or even gone down, so that the assumption is not just unsupported, but positively invalidated). The question everyone should ask themselves is, is there any reason to believe that upward heat transport (including by absorption and emission of "upwelling" infrared radiation), along a temperature gradient governed solely by the hydrostatic distribution of pressure, will actually further heat the atmosphere; currently, in the present childish "scientific" debates, almost everyone laughs and says, "of course", but the real, factual answer, again provided by my Venus/Earth comparison, is "NO". In the absence of a change in the intensity of incident solar radiation, the temperatures at the top and bottom of the troposphere are held constant (as indicated by the empirically-determined Standard Atmosphere, which is confirmed by my Venus/Earth analysis), and increasing carbon dioxide or water vapor can only increase the efficiency, or speed, with which local temperature variations are dissipated by heat transfer, both vertically and around the planet (the temperature on Venus's dark side is just as hot as on the sunlit side, due, I claim, to the nearly pure carbon dioxide atmosphere there).

Christopher Monckton: Incompetent Skeptics

Recently, my earlier post, "Blackbody: The Key Error in Climate Science", was attacked by Christopher Monckton (a widely-known "lukewarm" believer in the consensus greenhouse effect), on Jo Nova's site. I became aware of this about a day later, but since I had not been contacted by anyone (in particular, either Jo Nova or Monckton) to participate, and no one had submitted any comments about it to my "Blackbody..." page, I did not, and will not now, go there to respond. I generally only answer comments made directly to the relevant posts on my own site, or e-mailed to me at newhdh@netzero.com. I will just say here that Monckton's points (which I came across during a casual internet browsing session just now, some four days after their posting) are scientifically and logically empty, merely consensus dogma sprayed forth without even noting that my blackbody claims are confirmed by my earlier Venus/Earth analysis, which used my understanding of the proper use of the blackbody equation. His detailed attack (which I, rather obviously, consider simply wrong in its basic blackbody assertions, and wrong-headed in its use of consensus theory) adds up merely to saying that my factual finding -- that the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures (particularly outside of the thick cloud layer on Venus), is precisely and solely explained by the ratio of the two planets' distances from the Sun (and nothing else) -- is only an amazing coincidence. This is of course pathetic, on the part of a supposed "expert". Mr. Monckton, you have not explained my (yes, amazing) results with your irrelevant theoretical cant; you are miseducated, and incompetent in neglecting the factual results of my Venus/Earth analysis (you merely misdirected attention from them -- even Jo Nova had just enough integrity to quote from my blackbody article, "This of course was confirmed in my previous Venus/Earth analysis..."). In your attack upon me, you accomplished nothing real; you merely pontificated before an audience that accepts everything you say as gospel. There is no greenhouse effect as promulgated by you and the consensus, and your supposed expert knowledge about using the blackbody equation is worth precisely nothing, against the facts I have brought forward in my Venus/Earth analysis. Your loyal followers are ill-served by your dogmatic defense of the greenhouse effect, against those definitive facts.

How To Save Science

The "Climate Etc." blog of Dr. Judith Curry has a post on the fundamental problems with peer review. Instead of adding a comment there, I offer the following:

Scientific fundamentals like peer review are broken because science has not been self-correcting, but figuratively adding epicycles to planetary circles, for a long time, so that incompetence proliferates instead of the expertise that is advertised and expected. Materialistic scientism (dogmatically opposed to religion and, by false logical extension, to a higher meaningful reality than the merely physical) is leading science on a dead-end street; the "undirected evolution" paradigm is a failure, but that is largely unknown, especially among self-proud, cloistered academics. I am already showing the way to correct science--by identifying and focusing upon the definitive evidence that disproves key scientific errors of understanding. All scientists have to do is be willing to have even their favorite theories and supposed understanding undone, when the definitive facts say so. Science should be organized learning, first , last and always, not memorized, ritualized explanation.

Recent Responses to Consensus Defenders

Followers may be interested in recent comments I have fielded from climate consensus, or greenhouse effect, defenders.

Here is my latest response on my "Venus: No Greenhouse Effect" page.

Here you can find my response to another inane critic, on Climate Etc (although you will have to look for my name).

You can see those dismissing me are clearly incompetent, obviously because they refuse to take any fundamental criticism of the consensus seriously. If they are competent otherwise, they cannot be trying very hard to make sense on this subject.

Incompetent Climate Consensus Defenders

I came across a blog in which someone had made a comment referring to my "Venus: No Greenhouse Effect" post (Nov. 22, 2010), and the blog author and others made a series of disparaging comments about it, all quite scientifically incompetent. I submitted a long comment of my own to clear up the science, but I checked back later to find my comment had been ignored, and despite someone coming to my defense, the disparagement continued. The site had 82 comments when I last looked (my comment would have been 81 if it had been accepted). For followers of my position on the greenhouse effect hypothesis, the following is the comment I submitted there (you may want to find the earlier comments, in Swedish, to which I was trying to reply--I used google translate to understand them myself):

"1) I am not an engineer, I am a physicist. I don't call myself a genius, only a competent physical scientist. This is a most important point (see point 7 below).

2) The greenhouse effect is not a warming of the planetary surface due to carbon dioxide or other "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere. It is an INCREASE in the atmospheric temperature due to an INCREASE in atmospheric carbon dioxide or other IR-active gases (water, methane, etc.). It is explained by consensus climate scientists as due to absorption of infrared radiation from the surface, with subsequent backradiation back to the surface, thus slowing heat loss. The consensus is incompetent, however, and their greenhouse effect does not exist, as my Venus/Earth comparison definitively shows.

3) I have not ignored albedo; instead, I have shown that there is no albedo effect, because the atmosphere is fundamentally warmed by direct absorption of incident solar infrared radiation, not by a previously warmed planetary surface. Specifically,

4) The Venus atmospheric temperature, at any given pressure over the range of Earth tropospheric pressures, is just 17% higher than the Earth atmospheric temperature at the same pressure. Outside of the thick cloud layer on Venus, the ratio of temperatures, Venus/Earth, is very precisely 1.176, and this is due, again precisely, to the ratio of the two planets' distances from the Sun, and nothing else. This is because the 1.176 temperature ratio corresponds to a 1.91 power ratio in the solar radiation received by the two planets (1.176 = fourth-root of 1.91), which is just the actual power ratio incident on the two planets. Thus, even though the clouds of Venus reflect much of the visible solar radiation, Venus's atmosphere is still warmed by 1.91 times the power per unit area as is Earth's atmosphere. This of course means (to a competent physicist like myself), that the atmospheres of Earth and Venus are not warmed by the visible portion of the solar spectrum--in the troposphere, the atmosphere is warmed by infrared absorption. Since the actual Venus/Earth temperature ratio is due solely to the ratio of their distances from the Sun, both atmospheres must absorb the SAME PORTION of the Sun's infrared radiation. That is a definitive finding for the correction of climate science: Even with its much higher albedo, Venus's atmosphere is still warmed by the 1.91 greater power expected solely from its closer distance from the Sun.

5) There is no albedo effect upon the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, precisely because the atmospheres are warmed by incident solar infrared radiation, not from the ground as most scientists believe.

6) I recommend people read not just my article, "Venus: No Greenhouse Effect", but the comments following it, which go into the above points, and more.

7) Those who refuse to study and understand my article, or having gone through it, dismiss it on any physical grounds, especially a supposed albedo effect, are, in contrast to myself, incompetent as physical scientists. It is, as I have written in my article, both a student-level analysis and the definitive correction of the incompetent consensus. This includes Judith Curry, Jo Nova, and the other so-called "lukewarm" believers in the consensus greenhouse effect, as well as the alarmist climate scientists and their defenders. My Venus/Earth analysis separates the competent physical scientists from the incompetent ones, on the subject of the greenhouse effect. I do not say that haughtily, I say that as a scientist who knows what he is talking about. My analysis should have been done by James Hansen and others back in October 1991, when the Venus data was obtained by the Magellan spacecraft, and the greenhouse effect dropped as wrong back then. That is how incompetent the climate consensus really is."

Blackbody: The Key Error in Climate Science

Update 10 March 2012: I have realized the error in my blackbody understanding, and why that error does not affect my Venus/Earth comparison or my physical conclusions about atmospheric warming. I have posted on this at "My Own Blackbody Error". The article below should no longer be taken to be my scientific position. [Note added 6 June 2013: I see a few visitors continuing to come here, obviously concerned about theory, while I want to remain focused upon the definitive facts. For my view of the proper use of the Stefan-Boltzmann formula, see here. The error in the original post below is that I neglected to say the power per unit area involved in the formula is not the INCIDENT, but the ABSORBED power.]

The climate consensus in science is founded upon the greenhouse effect as imagined by the IPCC-sponsored scientists, which my last post simply disproved. Their greenhouse effect is, in turn, founded upon one key scientific error, that competent students of my generation cannot make: Misusing the "blackbody" equation, otherwise known as the Stefan-Boltzmann equation.

A blackbody is defined as a body (or system of bodies in thermal contact) which absorbs all of the radiation incident upon it. A blackbody necessarily has an albedo (reflection coefficient) of zero. If you can define your body (or system) so that only radiation is passing into and out of it, then you can -- indeed you must -- define all the radiation passing into it as "incident", and you can replace the system with a blackbody, and use the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, with that incident radiation, to calculate a mean temperature for the body or system (it's "effective blackbody temperature" or "radiating temperature"). That's it, that's all there is to it.

So how do current "expert scientists" go wrong? Because they define their "effective blackbody" system as inside the solid Earth, bounded by the Earth's surface -- and it should be obvious there is more than just radiation passing through that surface (there is conduction through the surface, and convection away from it). To use the Stefan-Boltzmann equation properly, they must define the boundary of the Earth system as outside of its atmosphere -- beyond all conduction and convection -- and use the mean incident solar irradiation only, not the "incident minus reflected" as they do.

You cannot "correct for albedo" to use the Stefan-Boltzmann equation at the Earth's surface, because a blackbody by definition has no albedo to "correct" for. This of course was confirmed in my previous Venus/Earth analysis, which showed there is simply no room for an albedo effect upon the long-term mean temperatures in the atmospheres of Venus and Earth.

All of the billions of words wasted upon "explaining" the climate consensus are founded upon this elementary error of understanding, that a student in his/her first physics class could see is wrong (providing he/she were taught in that basic class the definition of a blackbody, and how it must be applied to solve appropriate problems -- and apparently they are not being so taught, for the last 20 years or more).

The climate consensus, and physicists who defend it, utterly fail to understand how to use the concept of the blackbody properly. I charge them all with scientific incompetence of the first order. No one who writes authoritatively in defense of the climate consensus is, in my professional scientific judgment, worthy of calling him/herself a scientist, although I usually just use the qualifier "competent" or "incompetent".

Venus: No Greenhouse Effect

Comments are closed here. Comments about this post should be made here

The flip side of the entrenched incompetence in science today is that all it takes is scientific competence to make revolutionary discoveries, or fundamental corrections to current dogma. Being a competent physicist rather than an incompetent climate scientist (which 97% of them demonstrably are), I was able recently to post an answer on yahoo.com to a question about the greenhouse effect on Venus, an update to which I give here:

Surprisingly to most, there is no greenhouse effect at all, and you can prove it for yourself.

From the temperature and pressure profiles for the Venusian atmosphere, you can confirm that, at the altitude where the pressure = 1000 millibars, which is the sea level pressure of Earth, the temperature of the Venusian atmosphere is 66ºC = 339K.

This is much warmer than the temperature at the surface of the Earth (at pressure = 1000 millibars), which is about 15ºC = 288K. HOWEVER

Venus is closer to the Sun, and gets proportionally more power from it. Earth is 93 million miles from the Sun, on average, while Venus is only 67.25 million. Since the intensity of the Sun's radiation decreases with distance from it as 1 over r-squared, Venus receives (93/67.25) squared, or 1.91 times the power per unit area that Earth receives, on average.

Since the radiating temperature of an isolated body in space varies as the fourth-root of the power incident upon it, by the Stefan-Boltzmann law, the radiating temperature of Venus should be the fourth-root of 1.91 (or the square-root of 93/67.25) = 1.176 times that of the Earth. Furthermore, since the atmospheric pressure varies as the temperature, the temperature at any given pressure level in the Venusian atmosphere should be 1.176 times the temperature at that same pressure level in the Earth atmosphere, INDEPENDENT OF THE DIFFERENT LEVELS OF INFRARED ABSORPTION in the two atmospheres. In particular, the averaged temperature at 1000 millibars on Earth is about 15ºC = 288K, so the corresponding temperature on Venus, WITHOUT ANY GREENHOUSE EFFECT, should be 1.176 times that, or 339K. But this is just 66ºC, the temperature we actually find there from the temperature and pressure profiles for Venus.

[Note: The derivation of the radiating temperature above is for absolute temperature, in degrees Kelvin (K), so the 1.176 factor relates the Kelvin temperatures, not the Celsius temperatures.]

So there is no greenhouse effect. You have just proved that climate science is utterly wrong to think otherwise. This is the scandal that so many "experts" in climate science, and all the scientific authorities, will not face. Listen to the physicists that tell you there is no greenhouse effect; they know without having to go to the Venus data -- and I am one of them. The continuing incompetence on this vital point among so many scientists, for more than a century, is amazing, and tragic.

Here is a table more precisely comparing the temperatures at various pressures in Earth's atmosphere (the standard atmosphere) with the corresponding temperatures in Venus's atmosphere:


(updated 12/02/10)

My uncertainty in finding T_Venus from the graphs is +/- 1.4 K, so any error less than about 1.2 K (in the last column) is negligible. I don't know why the comparison falters slightly between 600 and 300 mb, or why it improves suddenly at 200 mb (~60 km altitude), but the Venus cloud top is given as 58 km, between the 300 and 200 mb levels.

The Venus atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, and supposedly superheated due to a runaway greenhouse effect, yet that portion of it within the pressure bounds of the Earth atmosphere is remarkably like the Earth in temperature. This is student-level analysis, and could not have been neglected by climate scientists, if they were not rendered incompetent by their dogmatic belief in the greenhouse hypothesis. (Again, the overwhelming extent of fundamental incompetence exhibited by scientists today is the real underlying story.) This result also flies in the face of those who would say the clouds of Venus reflect much of the incident solar energy, and that therefore it cannot get 1.91 times the power per unit area received by the Earth -- the direct evidence presented here is that its atmosphere does, in fact, get that amount of power, remarkably closely. This in fact indicates that the Venusian atmosphere is heated mainly by incident infrared radiation from the Sun, which is not reflected but absorbed by Venus's clouds, rather than by warming first of the planetary surface. (It also indicates that the Earth atmosphere is substantially warmed the same way, during daylight hours, by direct solar infrared irradiation, and that the temperature profile, or lapse rate, for any planetary atmosphere is relatively oblivious to how the atmosphere is heated, whether from above or below.) This denies any possibility of a "greenhouse effect" on Venus (or on Earth), much less a "runaway" one. This has already been pointed out recently by physicists Gerlich and Tscheuschner, who have written succinctly, "...since the venusian atmosphere is opaque to visible light, the central assumption of the greenhouse hypotheses [sic] is not obeyed." Yet they are ridiculed by climate scientists, who thus behave like spoiled children who refuse to be chastised by their parents.

Update March 14, 2012: This analysis is so easy, the result so immediately amazing, and the interpretation just above so obvious to me, yet the opposition to accepting it so universal and so determined, that I was led to unconsciously accept, partially but nevertheless wrongly, the premise of incompetent critics, that my findings were invalid because I had not "corrected for albedo", or in other words had wrongly assumed the Earth and Venus atmospheres were blackbodies, absorbing all the radiation incident upon them. I inadvertently got caught up, over time, in claiming the Earth-plus-atmosphere system behaves like a blackbody (although I never claimed it absorbs all the radiation incident upon it, as a blackbody is defined to do, and as the incompetent dismissers of my analysis have determinedly, dogmatically insisted). Although this has thoroughly hindered the acceptance of my analysis, my initial approach to the problem was in fact sound (even if too simple-minded for most), and my above, initial interpretation is quite correct, and in fact unavoidable, although it is not a complete statement. The complete interpretation, which I have stressed (as a logical fact) ever since, both in comments below this article, and on other internet sites, is that the two atmospheres must DIRECTLY absorb the SAME FRACTION of the incident solar radiation. For, supposing that both atmospheres do so absorb, and are solely warmed by, the same fraction (f), and given that the ratio of the two planets' distances from the Sun--Venus/Earth--is (A), the governing formula becomes, for the Earth and Venus atmospheres in turn

This result is independent of the fraction f absorbed, which is why naively approaching the problem as if f = 1 nevertheless gives, without the need to even consciously consider albedo beforehand, the amazingly clear result that the temperature ratio depends only--and amazingly, quite precisely--upon the ratio of the two planets' distances from the Sun. Any "expert", upon seeing this amazing result, should quickly have realized it means both atmospheres must absorb the same fraction of the incident solar radiation, and be warmed only by that fraction. So I apologize for not presenting the explicit equations above sooner, for it would have saved me stumbling into error later, and embarrassing my few defenders, in my "blackbody" defense of the original analysis--but I insist my critics have all been more incompetent than I in this matter, in refusing to even consider my correct interpretation, because of what they merely assumed was a fatal error. There was no physical error in my original analysis, because the temperature ratio I obtained was an empirical fact, and the absorbed power ratio I implied from that was a logical fact (simply stated, Venus's atmosphere DOES absorb 1.91 times the power that Earth's atmosphere does, as their temperature ratio shows--and that ratio is precisely that predicted simply from the ratio of their distances from the Sun). Since the two atmospheres DO, factually, absorb the same fraction of the solar radiation incident upon them, there was, in reality, no physical reason to extend the analysis by "correcting for albedo". But I seriously underestimated the level of determined ignorance--alias incompetence--of the "experts", and dropped part way down to their level for a time.

Another way to look at the Venus/Earth data is this:

Venus is 67.25 million miles from the Sun, the Earth, 93 million.

The radiating temperature of Venus should be 1.176 times that of the Earth.

Without ANY greenhouse effect as promulgated by the IPCC, at any given pressure within the range of the Earth atmosphere, the temperature of the Venus atmosphere should be 1.176 times that of the corresponding Earth atmosphere.

The facts:
at 1000 millibars (mb), T_earth=287.4 (K), T_venus=338.6, ratio=1.178
at 900 mb, T_earth=281.7, T_venus=331.4, ratio=1.176
at 800 mb, T_earth=275.5, T_venus=322.9, ratio=1.172
at 700 mb, T_earth=268.6, T_venus=315.0, ratio=1.173
at 600 mb, T_earth=260.8, T_venus=302.1, ratio=1.158
at 500 mb, T_earth=251.9, T_venus=291.4, ratio=1.157
at 400 mb, T_earth=241.4, T_venus=278.6, ratio=1.154
at 300 mb, T_earth=228.6, T_venus=262.9, ratio=1.150
at 200 mb, T_earth=211.6, T_venus=247.1, ratio=1.168
(Venus temperatures are +/- 1.4K, Earth temp. are from std. atm)

The actual ratio overall is 1.165 +/- 0.015 = 0.991 x 1.176. It does not vary from the no-greenhouse theoretical value at any point by more than about 2%.


There is no sign whatever of a greenhouse effect on either planet. The fact that the temperature ratios are so close to that predicted solely by their relative distances from the Sun tells us that both atmospheres must be warmed, overall, essentially in the same way, by direct IR solar irradiation from above, not by surface emissions from below. Keeping it simple, the atmospheres must be like sponges, or empty bowls, with the same structure (hydrostatic lapse rate), filled with energy by the incident solar radiation to their capacity to hold that energy.

There is no greenhouse effect on Venus with 96.5% carbon dioxide, and none on the Earth with just a trace of carbon dioxide.